#before she subsumes herself and her Self becomes *him* again. she feels what he feels knows what he knows because they are one and the same

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hi! As someone who’s literary opinion I really trust, I was surprised that you’re a twilight fan? I know almost nothing except commen knowledge things about that series, and I always assumed it was actually bad/un-feminist. What is it that you like so much that others seem to miss? I’m just genuinely curious about your take on the hate it always seems to get vs. it’s actual quality. I’m not gonna judge bc animorphs is also one of those books where you see it and assume it’s bad.

In over 14 years of loving this series, I’m not sure anyone has ever asked me why I enjoy it instead of simply trying to convince me that I’m wrong to do so.  So thank you for that.

First and foremost, I love the Twilight saga because of the vivid detail in Stephenie Meyer’s writing style.  The descriptions are so lush and dense with sensory information that you can practically bite down on them as you read.  Bella and Jacob aren’t just sitting on the beach; they’re sitting on a gnarled log of driftwood, worn smooth at the top from where so many Quileute teens have sat upon it during bonfires but still uneven enough to rock on its branches when Bella suddenly stands to rage at her own mortality.  Meyer describes that log in Twilight, so tangibly and with such economy of detail, that we recognize it immediately when Bella and Jacob return to that spot in Eclipse.  I’ve always disliked the movies, because I’ve always felt that the best part of Meyer’s writing simply did not translate well to the screen.

Secondly, I love the feminism.

Okay, let’s take a quick pause to let everyone gasp and clutch their pearls over me calling Twilight a feminist work.  I will address the criticisms later.  For now, please just hear me out.

Twilight strikes me as a premier example of what Hélène Cixous means when she calls for “women’s writing,” or writing for women, about women, by women, with a strong focus on the concerns and strengths and desires of womanhood.  This is a series about building and maintaining close relationships, both romantic and platonic.  It celebrates beauty, and love, and care.  Bella moves to Forks because she recognizes that her dad is lonely while her mom is quite the opposite, torn between family priorities.  She doesn’t simply subsume her interests to those of other people, but instead actively chooses how and when and where to express her love for her birth family and her found families.  Most of the other major decisions throughout the story — Alice “adopting” Bella, Carlisle moving the family to Alaska, Jacob becoming werewolf beta, the Cullens going up against the Volturi, etc. — are motivated by care and devotion for one’s family and friends.  Even the selfish or morally ambiguous character choices are shown to be motivated by love.  Rosalie tells Edward that Bella died because she genuinely thinks it’ll help him move on.  Victoria creates an army that nearly destroys Forks because she’s avenging James.  Alice abandons Bella and the others before the final battle because if she can’t save her entire family, then she’ll settle for saving her lover before letting him die in vain.

Not only is there a striking concern with love and care, but there’s also a strong commitment to avoiding violence.  Bella’s eventual vamp-superpower proves to be preventing violence and protecting others, an awesome character decision that I’d argue gets set up as early as the first book.  She lives in a violent world — this is a YA SF story, after all — but she has the power to suppress violence and create peace, both in herself and others.  I was already sick of “power = ability to inflict damage” in YA stories well before I knew the word “patriarchy.”  Twilight was one of the first books to convey to me that power could be refusing to do harm in spite of hunger or anger, that power could be shielding ones’ family, that power could be about building enough friendships and alliances to have an army at one’s back when facing an enemy too strong to take on alone.

Closely connected to all of that love and care, I love how much Twilight is about navigating teenage girlhood.  Is it empowering, intersectional, or all-inclusive?  Hell no.  Does it still dare to suggest that a completely ordinary teenage girl could have valid concerns about the world?  Yep.  The main conflict of the story, as Stephen King so derisively explained, is about the romantic entanglements of a teenage girl, and the book therefore has no literary merit.  (To quote my dad’s response: “Bold words from the guy who inflicted Firestarter on the world.”)

There is, indeed, a lot of romance in Twilight.  There are a lot of clothes.  Alice and Rosalie especially spend a lot of time on makeup, and hair, and choosing the prettiest cars and houses.  Twilight embraces all the stereotypically “girly” concerns of adolescence, and makes no effort to apologize for or condemn them.  Bella isn’t particularly good at performing them — she likes but doesn’t excel at shopping, fiercely defends her ugly car as ugly, hobbles through prom on crutches — but she can still enjoy the feeling of being pretty in a sparkly dress while dancing with her sparkly boyfriend.  And Twilight, like Animorphs with Cassie, takes the daring step of treating that feeling as valid.

Speaking of sparkles, I love the commitment to the fantasy concept in Twilight, including the myriad mundanities that Meyer brings with that commitment.  If you have super-speed, why not use it to play extreme baseball?  If you’re a mindreader with a clairvoyant sister, why wouldn’t you two play mental chess games?  I couldn’t tell you, after seven seasons of Buffy or eight of Vampire Diaries, what Spike or Damien or Angel or Stefan does all day when not brooding or lurking in the bushes to creep on human women.  I can tell you what the Cullens get up to.  Emmett and Rosalie work on their cars, usually by holding them overhead one-handed.  Carlisle and Alice read plays, and sometimes talk the whole family into home Shakespeare productions.  Edward and Carlisle debate theology, Emmett and Jasper have dumb athletic competitions, Edward and Esme play music, Alice manipulates stock markets, the twins go shopping online, etcetera.  The Cullens feel real, feel like the vampires next door, in a way that Louis and Lestat simply do not.

To get to the elephant in the room — I just described Twilight as a feminist text! — let’s talk about the other thing the Cullens do for fun: they have sex.  Weird sex.  Kinky furniture-breaking sex.  Sex that Emmett (who would know) compares to bear-wrestling.  These books suck with regards to queer representation, but they are sex-positive.  They feature an old-school Anglican protagonist offering his daughter-in-law a medical abortion.  They treat Edward’s desire for sex only within marriage and Alice’s desire for sex outside of marriage as both being valid.  Like I said, not groundbreaking, even by the standards of 2005, but still more than most teen novels do even today.

There’s a passage from Breaking Dawn that people love to pull out of context as “everything wrong with Twilight in two paragraphs” because it describes Bella waking up the morning after sex with bruises on her arms.  That moment is shocking out of context, to be sure — but in context, it’s the end result of an in-depth consent negotiation that lasts four books.  Bella says that she’d like to become a vampire.  Edward says okay, but only if she spends a few more years living as a human and considering that choice.  Bella says okay, but only if Edward, not Carlisle, becomes the one to turn her.  Edward says they can use his venom, but that Carlisle, who’s an MD, really needs to supervise the process.  Bella doesn’t love the idea of Edward’s stepdad cockblocking what’s supposed to be an intimate moment, and so agrees only on the grounds that she gets to have sex with Edward as a human first.  Edward’s hella Catholic, so he requests that they get married first.  Bella’s super horny, so she demands that the wedding happen within six months.  Edward says that he might hurt her during sex, and Bella says that she wants a little hurt during sex.  They marry.  They bang.  During the banging, Edward makes every effort to be controlled and courteous and gentile, while Bella goes wild and crazy.  The next morning, she has bruises and he does not.  Edward apologizes, but Bella’s actually really into it.  She spends a while admiring her sexy vamp-marked self in the mirror, touches the bruises many times, and reminds us yet again that Bella Swan’s whole M.O. is being a monsterfucker.  Her kink is not my kink, and that’s okay.

To be clear, I think there are other aspects of the romance that get criticized for good reason.  Edward does not negotiate with Bella before sneaking into her room to watch her sleep, and he does make unacceptable use of their power differences when he thinks she’s in danger of being mauled by werewolves.  The text condemns Jacob’s “don’t wanna die a virgin” ploy to manipulate a kiss out of Bella, but not the wider conceit of all the male characters as possessing uncontrollable urges.  Bella’s struggles to adjust to a new town feel very feminine and realistic; her amused tolerance of Jacob’s and Mike’s sexual harassment as the price for their friendship does not.  Werewolf imprinting might be mostly platonic, but that doesn’t make it okay for Meyer to depict it as a form of soulmate bonding that happens with child characters. Those are good points, all around.  I just wish that most of them didn’t come up in the context of post-hoc rationalizations for loathing the femininity of a feminine text.

I’m not calling Twilight an unproblematic series.  I’m saying that it gets (rightly!) criticized for appropriating Quileute culture, while Buffy’s total absence of main characters of color and blatant anti-Romani racism are (wrongly!) not remarked upon. I'm saying that I’ve been told I’m a misogynist for liking Twilight but not for liking James Bond.  I’m saying that there’s a reason people tend to go “oh, that makes so much sense!” when I let them in on the fact that reactive hatred for “Twitards” started and spread on 4Chan, later home of Gamergate and incel culture.  I’m saying that Twilight depicts problematic relationship dynamics as sexy — but then so do Vampire Academy, Blue Bloods, Supernatural, Vladimir Tod, and Vampire Diaries.  All of which take the time to stop and thumb their noses at Twilight, smug in the superiority of having vampires that fly rather than vampires that sparkle, and for thoroughly condemning teenage girls for being girly while continuing to show men inflicting violence on them.

After all, as Erin May Kelly puts it: “we live in a world taught to hate everything to do with little girls.  We hate the books they read and the bands they like.  Is there anything the world makes fun of more than One Direction and Twilight?”  No one has ever called me a misogynist for liking the MCU, in spite of less than a third of its movies even managing to clear the low-low bar of the Bechdel test.  Because people are still allowed to like Harry Potter in spite of its racism, or Lord of the Rings despite its imperialism.  Because hatred for Twilight was never about its very real sexism, or the genuinely silly sparkle-vampires, until it had to justify itself as something other than hate for everything that teenage girls have ever dared openly love.

I enjoy the novels, and I enjoy the fan fiction that tries to fix some of the problems with the novels.  I appreciate the extent to which Meyer has elevated fan culture, and made an effort to acknowledge her own past mistakes.  I would love to be able to talk about my love for the series as a flawed but beautiful work of literature, but for now I’ll settle for asking that the world just let me enjoy it in peace.

#twilight #the twilight saga #breaking dawn #eclipse #new moon #stephenie meyer #fandom #nothing to do with animorphs #misogyny #ableist language #sexist language #long post #sexism #romance #anonymous #asks

[rebelsofshield]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: “Shattered” -Review

The true tragedy of The Clone Wars makes itself known in the tense and traumatic penultimate episode of the series.

(Review contains episode spoilers)

Darth Maul is in custody. With his puppet government ousted, Bo-Katan and her loyalists once again have control over the planet of Mandalore. Her mission complete, Ahsoka Tano prepares to deliver the captured Sith Lord to Coruscant. However, the arrival of clone Order 66 upends her reality and forces Ahsoka to confront dark secrets.

I compared last week’s episode “The Phantom Apprentice” to a horror movie. Nathaniel Villanueva’s direction created an eerie and doom filled landscape that not only sold the high stakes action of the narrative, but also made the audience fully aware of the horrific events that were just around the corner. It’s rare that dread has been the key emotion of a Star Wars project, but that has certainly been the case here.

This feeling of unease carries into “Shattered,” the third episode of The Siege of Mandalore and the penultimate of the series as a whole. Director Saul Ruiz continues the atmospheric tension of “The Phantom Apprentice” into this chapter before shifting full on into emotional terror. “Shattered” builds to and continues on from the event that viewers of The Clone Wars have dreaded since day one. Order 66 has arrived. And it will change everything.

The final moments on Mandalore are a surreal experience. There is a temporary victory at hand. Maul and his loyalists have been supplanted, but there is nothing but uncertainty in the future. Bo-Katan Kryze is now left with ruling a planetary a government, a task that she is hardly prepared for. Katee Sachkoff has consistently given one of the most understated and nuanced voice performances on this series and watching Bo-Katan take stock of the planet she has now inherited is a sobering moment. I’ve talked before about the cyclical nature of Mandalorian history. Change is never permanent for people whose primary language is violence. It’s a quiet moment in an episode where so much happens, but Ahsoka asserting that Mandalore will need new leadership only for Bo-Katan to express doubt that that can even happen is perhaps the perfect summation of everything that Dave Filoni and his fellow creators have done with these sad lost warriors to date. We know now through Star Wars Rebels and The Mandalorian the painful route that these peopleface over the next two decades. There may be the semblance of hope now, but Bo-Katan like us know it’s a false one.

Also, can we just acknowledge that creepy Mandalorian sarcophagus that Maul is trapped inside? It’s an eerie artifact that turns Maul into a devilish Hannibal Lecter that is carted around like a deadly caged animal. Ruiz directs these moments with a certain degree of foreboding, with numerous haunting shots of and through Maul’s furious eyes and his trapped panting. It reads like a visual red herring. The visual language here tell us to be wary of this trapped rogue Sith, but the real horror lies elsewhere.

Filoni and Ruiz smartly hide the true warning signs elsewhere. Ahsoka walks into a briefing with multiple Jedi including Mace Windu and Master Yoda. Obi-Wan has engaged General Grievous and Anakin has left to inform the chancellor of these developments and the deciding moments of the end of the war at hand. Mace Windu has long been positioned as the Jedi that is perhaps the most lost in the twisted new reality that the Jedi have found themselves in. His wariness of politics and war have lead him to be a full participant in its actions and it has hardened him as a person. If the Jedi are lacking in compassion, it is Windu that is devoid of it. His callous response to Ahsoka’s questions serve as reinforcement of all of her existing biases of an organization that turned its back on her when she needed it most. Their paranoia in this case may be warranted, but that’s invisible to Ahsoka who is justifiably frustrated and angry with them for their actions. One of the quietest of the many tragedies in “Shattered” is that Ahsoka once again lets her loyalty to Anakin and her distrust of the Council prevent the halting of the pain that is to come. She doesn’t share Maul’s suspicions of Anakin to the Council, just as much because she worries what they might do with this information as she distrusts it herself. Even Yoda’s kind hearted request of a message to give to Anakin falls on unwilling ears. In this moment, the failures of the Jedi, even the ones that are the closest to their ideal like Yoda and Obi-Wan, have doomed their fate and driven away the people that may have been able to save them.

The moment arrives all the same. The end of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith were doomed to occur no matter what. After a heartfelt discussion about the ending of the war between Ahsoka and Commander Rex, Anakin’s betrayal is enacted and the galaxy is upended.

It’s maybe the one moment in “Shattered” that doesn’t completely make work. The decision to mix in the actual audio of Revenge of the Sith for Ahsoka and Maul to sense from across the galaxy is an inspired choice, but there’s an uncanny feeling to it that can’t be escaped. While Corey Burton and Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu performances are close enough in style and cadence to ignore, Matt Lanter’s Anakin was purposefully designed to be a more empathetic and heroic take on the character. Hearing Hayden Christensen’s dialogue is jarring and off putting. It’s an intersection of film and animation in a way that feels a little too awkwardly grafted for it to have the needed effect. It’s made even stranger by the layering effect of Lanter’s voice over Christensen’s for the final line of dialogue. There may be a reason for this choice, but I’m not sure it was the right move to make.

We are given little time to ruminate on this though before it all goes belly up and Rex and the rest of the clones begin the execution of the Jedi Order. It was always going to be a shocking moment, but in a moment of out of context cruelty, many of us given the events of Star Wars Rebels were led to believe that Rex would escape this sadistic fate in full. Even as he resists pulling his weapons on his friend, it becomes clear that we never got the full story from our clone hero and there are darker and sadder futures ahead.

Ahsoka’s escape and evasion of the hunting clones is a tragic and tense set piece. The visual irony of clones that were once so loyal to her that they modeled themselves in her image now forced to hunt her to the death is unnerving and effective. It takes a sweet moment from the start of this arc and turns it into a cruel cosmic joke.

I’m sure many of us clone junkies did find some justice in Rex finally finding the truth in Fives’s discoveries from last season. While it will never take away the hurt that such a determined and empathetic clone died as a disgrace in the eyes of his friends and allies, there is a welcome payoff that Rex’s final words before being subsumed by his programming is a recognition of his friend. It gives Ahsoka a mission to hopefully save her friend while also providing needed payoff for one of the darker moments in this series.

Ashley Eckstein has been killing it all season as Ahsoka, but the directions she takes her in here are new and unexpected. This is a more desperate, angrier, and more determined take on the character. At this point she has pretty much lost everything that has mattered to her, but instead of wallowing in despair, she meets it with resolve and unflinching competence. Her utilitarian use for Maul’s escape is a fascinating beat as it shows just how clear the limits of Ahsoka’s compassion are. She still cares about those that are close to her, but now faced with this all-encompassing tragedy, she has little faith in self-serving operatives like the unstable Zabrak.

Maul’s escape though does end up unleashing one of the most brutal set pieces in the history of the series. In a bone crushing combination of Darth Vader’s hallway massacre from Rogue One and the unstoppable determination and kinetics of some of the best Magneto moments from the X-Men films, Maul plows through a hallway of resisting clones. It is maybe a little indulgent in its violence and certainly is some of the most intense imagery we have seen on this show this season, but there’s a base pleasure in how Ruiz directs this carnage. Maul is the wild card here. We have mostly certainly not seen the last of him.

Ahsoka’s desperate rescue of Rex’s autonomy alongside a trio of loyal droids feels like a desperate battle for hope in the darkness of the final days of the Clone Wars. While we know that these two are destined to escape, Filoni and Ruiz still sell it all with heartstopping tension. Even when Rex awakens from his murderous trance, it only serves a small victory. Our heroes are far from out of the woods.

Kevin Kiner’s musical score is operating at the top of its game here and it may be the best sounding episode of the series in that regard. Kiner continues to play with the unsettling and eerie drones that were so prominent last week, but also mixes in the electronica of the series’ earliest days and cues from John Williams’s operatic Revenge of the Sith score. It creates a unique and tense audio landscape that sells the violent tragedy of it all with masterful precision.

Thank the Force we only have three days to wait. I’m sure nothing but more pain is on the way, but hopefully there’s catharsis too. I really hope there is.

 Score: A

#Star Wars #The Clone Wars #Clone Wars #Star Wars: The Clone Wars #review #reviews #Revenge of the Sith #Ahsoka Tano #Captain Rex #Dave Filoni

[mauserfrau]

Spiraling To Meet Me - Bordertober

Tonight: Tyreen v. other people.  Framed as her dealing with massive spoilers from Satellite.  Contains: blood, gore, death, referenced suicide, medical stuff and... [see tags]

The first person she ever met, she killed.

He was dying.  There wasn’t anything she could do to save him.  He went into her as a flash of syrup and heat.  She’s never been sure how she recognized him as a he in the brief moment she knew him through her mother’s skin.

He left her dizzy with delight as she sprawled there in Leda’s sandy glass remains and the air coral rattled against the rift of sky in the temple roof.

Troy, too stunned and hurt to cry, rattled too.

*

She told Dad: “I didn’t mean to!”

It was kind of true.  She didn’t mean all of it.  Mama was dying, same as a manta gored in a trap.

That part, she meant.

The little fish just hadn’t realized Leda was dead.  Tyreen got him with the rest.

She hadn’t had any idea before he evaporated in her leech.  

*

Nobody else realized.  There was no crystal clump of sand that gave away what Tyreen had done.  Or if there was, no one noticed while they carried Mama out of temple in buckets and bottles.  She never saw it, anyway.  She just climbed up the toppled stones along the path that one more time, remembering not to eat the very small larvae and worms because they could still become big things, and then there could be more.

She also still licked her lips when she thought about him.  Maybe she couldn’t have touched him, but she could have heard him, seen him, smelled him when he was just born and still wet.

Instead she ate him and he was gone except for this vague sense memory that crawled around on her tongue and the bottom of her own belly.

*

She didn’t stay away from the grave like Dad.  Mama wasn’t there.

She didn’t go to the grave after midnight like Troy.  Troy said Mama wasn’t there.

Sometimes when the storms roiled over the valley, she listened the air coral shuddering in the wind.  Her mouth watered and she balled her marked hand into a fist.  

Having another baby wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.  No, that was clearly her trying to prove as much to herself reading books out of the medical suite that made her blush and cringe.

She was supposed to be stronger than blushing and cringing.

She realized though that she might have been biased when it came to what was and was not awful about pregnancy.  She had never not eaten for two.

*

She wouldn’t say she met anybody from her family.  They were always just there, until Mama wasn’t.  Dad tasted rich, Mama stale as recycled air.  Troy held no flavor or sensation outside of his bone-leaf skin and skittering pulse.  

Oh, she tried to eat him too.  Just once with any seriousness.  What if all of her brothers tasted that delicious? 

Tyreen wrapped her arms and her leech around him, pouring herself against his body and begging him to slosh back, fill her instead of the other way around.  

Instead, she drained into him, slow and crystal damp, even though she hardly had enough to share.

“It’s OK,” he told her, gently scratching at her fingers.  “We can go outside again soon.  You won’t have to be hungry.”

Back on the couch, Dad laughed at something on his old video screen.  

*

Troy had put on one of the old, airy tracks that Mama had liked to play after dark in the summer.  He was trying to sing with it and maybe Tyreen had tried a little bit too.  At least, she was whistling along under her breath when— 

“Boy, you shut that off!” And a crash so sharp and musical Tyreen thought at first it must have come from the speakers.

She peered into the front room to find Troy rattling against the wall.  One of the good drinking glasses oozed down the wall.  

Tyreen cleaned it up without complaining and Troy vanished, same as the liquor vapors.

*

She put her marked hand down beside Dad’s head.

He startled awake, stared up at her, tried to smile.

“Throw anything at Troy again I’ll do to you what I did to Mama.”

She doesn’t remember what he said to her, besides calling her Starlight.  That might have been all it was in the end.

Tyreen stalked off.  Her heart slammed in her chest and her joints felt all slippery.

It had taken her days to decide to say anything.  It wasn’t on impulse like hunting or dodging or staying up way too late watching video clips of little fish fetuses kick.  

She guessed she just didn’t care about Troy in that particular impulsive way what would have let her subsume him.  It wasn’t like he was any good at hunting, after all.

When she got to Mama’s grave, she spit up and coughed.  She didn’t cry.  Crying was dumb.

Nobody followed her to ask if she’d shed anymore teeth or eaten anymore brothers.

And they wouldn’t know any of those things unless she told them.

*

Years passed before the one time she almost did.  Troy was in a bad way, feverish and unsteady on his feet.  She half-carried him to the bathhouse and heated the water up as high as it would go while she stripped him since he couldn’t seem to get his clothes off himself.  They climbed into the water together and talked about Keats for a while.  He said she looked different.  Tyreen laughed at him for taking so long to notice.  Then she untied his hair and pressed him against her chest, both of their hearts cranking in the swell of warmth from the water.  She rested her hand on his empty shoulder as his breath tickled her skin.

“You ever get lonely?” she asked.  It seemed like it might be kind of an OK leadup.

“Yeah,” he answered.  “I don’t even know what I’d do with another person ‘round here.  How about you?”

“Me? What? No.  No of course not.”

The next part should have been I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?

But Tyreen said nothing.

*

The second person she met, she killed.

And the third.

And the fourth.

And all the rest.  There were nine Maliwan researches altogether and Troy only got one, the one that grabbed him.  The guy looked like he was feeling Troy up to Tyreen.  Mostly, he pissed her off.

She wouldn’t have liked to have eaten him .  Instead, she sang through the rest, sucking them down.  The living bruise underneath her skin had them in gushes of fear and the kissed-out brightness of their wonder.  Some were savory, others liquid tart.  When they were all gone, she twisted on the toes of her boots and went down.

The rain stirred over her and the mud.  She thrilled with what she’d gotten from them, flavors and memories of screams and not wanting so hard her mouth water.  Actually, it was hardly damp, at least before Troy came around and tried to get her to stop laughing by tickling her feet— what a dumb thing to try, but it worked.

They knelt together in the rain, surrounded by strangeness and dead bodies made of sand.

*

It took hours to stash and secure their booty.  They could only carry so much at one time, so they took the silliest, prettiest things like rings and name tags and somebody’s pocket knife that wouldn’t have been useful for trimming even tiny pieces of air algae, but it was new.

They hiked back over storm-slippery stones, hardly five sentences between them on the way.

It was when the lucernae on Mama’s grave came into view that the slippery twinge surfaced in her joints.  Tyreen paused, scenting the air out of instinct.  There was only home and water.  Her hand went to her neck and she sighed.

No, something else fought to surface.  Probably just her hunger returning.

She wondered, if only for a moment: what if she hadn’t eaten the intruders? What would she be doing now?

Talking or waiting or something.  She wouldn’t have a new pocketknife.

*

Tyreen set the imaging equipment to warm up.  Troy had taken a sharp blow to the belly and they needed to make sure nothing in him had popped.

The control console had broken a long time ago, and they’d patched the general computer in with some old optical cable.  That meant that anything they tried to read out of the databanks and not existed would show.

Tyreen realized she’d been the last person in the medical suit and she’d left a rather gruesome birth video cued up. 

Troy, leaning sideways on the table said though, “Oh.  My bad.  I was just thinking about...” He yawns.  “Stuff.”

“Yeah? I mean, whatever.  It’s a thing that happens, right, killer?” And she laughs, trying to stifle the crash in her heart.

*

The third or fourth person she meets on Pandora is a barkeeper who asks her name and how she takes her whiskey.  Tyreen  sits at the side of the bar, dazed and trying not to smile.  She’s pretty sure the whiskey she gets isn’t whiskey at all.  Anyway, it doesn’t smell like Dad’s, but it is in a real glass lowball and it makes her lips sting.

She thinks she should wait for Troy to get out of the can, but if she takes a sip herself he can’t ask her to toast.

She drums her fingers on the fine chips along the bottom and remembers.

“Yes?” says the bartender.

“Huh? Yes, what?”

“You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Tyreen cranes her head to the side.  That’s a Troy question.  Not a... random person question.

Right?

Right.

Besides, then she has to go and add, “Haven’t named the little guy yet.” She jerks her thumb to the calico bundle in an old apple crate.  “Was gonna wait till he turns three months.  Never know around here.  But hey, now I never have to be lonely again.” She laughs.

Tyreen presses her fists to her knees.  She will not blush.  She will not cry.  She won’t say yes of course that’s what it is, because it is a flickering tender place.

Part of her wants to eat this woman and her son.

But it takes more of her self-control than she’d like just to keep her face steady, just to think.  “Oh, I get it.”

Fuck.

Tyreen smiles.

“Does he like music? I could go for some tunes.”

“Sure.  What kind?”

“After dark in the summer.”

Apparently, that’s a fine enough answer.  Troy comes back to the bar to find her gone in her glass and a softly thudding baseline.

#so tyreen ate her younger brother in Satellite #there I said it #bordertober #border-tober #borderlands 3 #Calypso Twins #Troy Calypso #Tyreen Calypso #Tyreen Calypso PoV #blood #gore #violence #suicide #medical content #fanfic #fanfiction #angst #and some drinking

[xoruffitup]

Marriage Story Thoughts (Round 2)

My full ~analysis~ with more plot and scene-level detail from when I first saw Marriage Story at TIFF is here!

Man. The second go-around on this movie hit me in completely new, wonderful, intimate places. It’s really a testament to the nuance and genius of Noah’s writing that the film once again succeeded in “playing with allegiances” (as Noah and Adam have said), even when I already knew what the characters had done and would do. I still think Nicole is justified in all she does to fight for “a piece of earth” to call her own; to determine her own existence and fulfillment on her own terms, separate from Charlie or anyone else. And yet, as the film progressed, I also felt complete frustration, heartbreak, and tenderness watching Charlie suffer through the tectonic shifts happening right beneath his feet; the reeling loss of everything he once valued and lived for in his life. 

Charlie is selfish and self-absorbed, there’s no arguing it. But there’s also no way to argue that he ever acted with willful disregard of Nicole’s desires or happiness. He was simply swept up in his passions - for his artistic endeavors and for his family. To him, they were one in the same. To him, his success and triumphs were also hers, and he genuinely never seemed to think that she might not see it the same way; that she might not feel the same sense of gratification. Of course, he should have. He should have stopped for a second to realize his wife might want more for herself than just to share in his exploits. In many ways, he did take her and their relationship for granted. He assumed what made him happy also made her so, and he failed to give full gravity to her voiced wishes to spend more time closer to her family in LA. Perhaps Nicole didn’t fully voice her growing unhappiness before the movie’s starting point, but that hardly detracts from the fact that Charlie should have thought to actively tend to her happiness and fulfillment, rather than simply draping her in his own. 

The one element of the film I’m not entirely satisfied by is the sidelining of the fact that he cheated. While that fact doesn’t alone skew or determine my opinion of him, I just think that aspect of the story and the hurt Nicole felt because of it wasn’t given the proper consideration it deserved. We do see that the affair didn’t mean much to Charlie, and upon my second viewing I caught him trying to downplay it by saying it happened “after he was on the couch” aka after he and Nicole stopped being intimate and their marriage was already more or less over. Still, this doesn’t excuse it and I wish it had been addressed more. His yelled “because you stopped having sex with me!” during their blow-up fight didn’t give closure to it at all. (Nor was it anywhere near a justification.)

I noticed the beautiful (and tragic) irony this time around in having Nicole start the film sure of her decisions intentions, while it takes Charlie the length of the film to arrive at his own. The irony is that Nicole’s unhappiness and lack of fulfillment stemmed from the fact that she feels she never had the chance to make decisions shaping the course of her own life. (It was all Charlie’s furniture, she didn’t even “know what her taste was”; “I just got smaller; I wasn’t ever alive for myself, I was just feeding his aliveness”.) So when it comes to the foreign, terrifying terrain of navigating this divorce, Nicole is the one who this time comes prepared and determined. Though she doesn’t anticipate the cutthroat tactics her lawyer will adopt; she does know the key things she wants - to start a more permanent life with Henry in LA; and to pursue her own acting/artistic endeavors for herself separate of Charlie. Nicole already knows at the beginning of the film what their marriage has meant for her, how it has affected and compromised her, and how she wants to move on from it in order to seize control of her own life for the first time.

Charlie, meanwhile, who was “always clear about what he wants” and “rarely gets defeated” - he is completely at a loss throughout the divorce proceedings and seems more and more defeated as the film progresses. He has never stopped to think about what his life might be like when untangled from his and Nicole’s union, and that unknown void near swallows him completely. Nicole might feel that Charlie dictated their life together, but almost all that he valued in his life came from her presence in it - not only their marriage, but his place of belonging in her family, as well as the inspiration and collaboration she provided for the theatre company. He is cut adrift, alarmed and helpless, by the speed of everything crashing to bits just before his eyes. No matter your opinions on his choices or his suitability as a husband, it’s impossible not to be moved to sympathetic heartache when you see how deeply the largest revelations shock and wound him - Nicole’s lawyer threatening to claim full custody; the moment when he fully realizes he’ll never return to the life he thought normal in New York with Henry and breaks down in silent tears. 

As the movie progresses, this struggle to process, respond, and adjust has broken him down so completely that we see it manifested physically in the scene where he cuts his arm with the pocketknife. It’s accidental, and yet his ensuing solitary struggle in the kitchen to stem the bleeding and dress his own gaping wound before collapsing could not be a more direct embodiment of how thoroughly the divorce proceedings have torn his life and very being asunder.

While Nicole was the one who had seemed to struggle with realizing, claiming, or even understanding what it is she wants - it isn’t until the scene towards the end where Charlie sings “Being Alive” that the realization and understanding of his new reality - the things he’s lost, the ways these losses have changed him - becomes clear to him. Nicole needed to separate from Charlie because she realized she had become subsumed in his being, and she knew she deserved to be more than simply an extension of him. While she explained to her lawyer towards the beginning of the film how she has felt “dead inside,” “Being Alive” towards the film’s close is the first time Charlie himself truly reckons with the future stretching before him independent of Nicole. While Nicole has finally claimed her own “aliveness,” now Charlie is left to be the one questioning what makes life worth living, and how he will maintain his own “aliveness” without the presence of that love that was once so grounding. 

His singing.... GOD it was even more heartrending than I remembered. Aside from his voice being way more lovely than is even fair, Adam’s delivery is somehow moving to the core without seeming even for a moment contrived or self-aware. You see Charlie literally losing himself in the words he’s singing - see the grief and loss creeping up higher within him until the song possesses him completely. He doesn’t shed a tear in this scene, but his eyes seem to hold all the anguish in the world.

What made this second viewing a bit extra painful were the moments when I asked myself “Damn, what did he tap into in himself to embody this character’s hurt and loss so deeply?” And then I’d think about the New Yorker article where Adam said this role made him think about his own father and all the things his father didn’t do or the ways his own father didn’t fight for him the way Charlie does. No thank you to those feels... ;______;

I’m still stunned by this film - by its nuance and humanity. By the way it paints multifaceted characters who come alive with the ease of people you’ve known your whole life. By the truly stellar, deeply moving performances by Adam and Scarlett. (It will be a long time before I see anything that will move me as profoundly as Adam’s “Being Alive” rendition.) By the way it highlights the beauty in everyday acts of love and human connection - and how enduring those moments are, despite whatever may come.

#Marriage Story #Adam Driver #Scarlett Johansson #TIFF 2019

[brooklynislandgirl]

@mynameisanakin {{xx}}

There is a subtle weight to the way Anakin looks at her. It’s not the oppressiveness of absolutely darkness nor of deep water, but more like the anticipation before a storm breaks. Ions dancing across her skin that make the small hairs on the back of her neck rise. Winnows its way down through her limbs before diffusing throughout the rest of her. It makes her want to ask if he feels that too but the time is never right and she doesn’t want to expose herself to the kind of scrutiny that he is capable of. Instead she focuses on the corners of his mouth and urges them through sheer willpower alone to quirk into a smile. One that will rise like her four moons until it reaches its zenith in his eyes. It’s a childish want and she knows it. She also knows it is in these small moments that such things are possible. That he might indulge her like he can’t or won’t in other situations. And it’s the closest she comes to admitting to herself that she both misses him and is envious of the long leash the masters give him. Admits that sometimes when she’s knee deep in holocrons and bacta-tanks that he might find something out there that will find a way to keep him. To make him forget her. She knows his work is important. His adventures are things she likes to listen to in rapt fascination. The dreams of other worlds and other people. A thousand lives strung together like a garland of little lights and he touches them all even if it’s in the smallest of ways. Hers isn’t the same but it suits her, she supposes, even if the excitement she hoped for long ago is now confined to the halls and byways of the Temple, rather than at his side like she imagined years ago. When Anakin is gone, there is space. Expansive and cold and empty despite other bodies and the soft, syllabant whispers that remind her of restless ghosts. Again, not wholly unpleasant as abject silence would be, but markedly different, as though he takes the idea of living with him and only gives it back when his boots touch the floor of the docking bay. By slow degrees her fingers find his sleeves. Glide over the warp and weft of the fabric. Stop at the crooks of his elbows. They linger there, insouciant vagrants finding a place to squat, making themselves at home. His physical presence isn’t that much different than his spiritual one in the Force; the biggest difference is the scent of him, the warmth that is lacking when he’s just a thought, a mental reach far longer than her limbs can possibly imagine. She soaks it in. Allows it to seep into parts of her untouched and untamed until she picks up his natural rhythms. Until their separate breaths become one inhale, the same exhale. A sigh. Something that becomes a communion of intermingled sentiment that one could not extricate the pieces without sending the whole thing to the ground. She can’t quite tell what’s joy and relief from the brightness and the need. The way he cages her in with his arms she has no choice but to lower her hands to the vague area of that space between his waist and hips and finds no hardship in doing that. Closer still they grow until one bare foot rests between his and she relaxes utterly in the solidity she finds. How the pose, if viewed from the outside, finds a parallel in dim memories of home. A vague reminiscence of her fathers standing in the exact same way. Their faces carved into the very likeness of hers and his. Not the features but the emotions in them. And it’s funny to her how one moment she can be utterly transfixed by the feel of this ~of Anakin~ and the next moment she’s home. Not for the first time she wonders if it’s the same, or similar, for him. If he remembers where he came from with the same fondness. If she is just as close as he gets to be connected to his roots. That singular sense of peace and well-being. Of rightness in the moment and with the universe that they are told should not come from any one source but all of them. 

It is a gift that she cannot explain nor properly thank him for even if she had the words that might express those feelings. For all the reasons that should feel wrong she can’t. And maybe, deep down, below some substrata of her being she takes that vague semblance of stillness from him as a sign of the turbulence inside his mind that has yet to be able to find its way to his surfaces. She’s never minded that. The thrum of life so vibrant in his veins that it spilled out into the world around him. The voracious curiosity that he had about everything and everyone. It was just who he was and she absolutely loves him for that. And maybe some small part of her envies that kinetic energy because it’s something she lacks herself. There’s a good deal many things like that which are different between them and none is less fascinating than the rest. Almost as much as the slight sound that escapes him and teases a little laugh out of her that’s immediately hushed because it shows a lack of self-control and elegance. Another thing she is painfully aware of.

So intrinsically intertwined as they are both in a physical and spiritual sense she can practically taste a darker current to his light, can feel something shift in the currents that surround him and it peaks a brow over one eye in subtle query though she’s not entirely sure he can see her face to know that there’s a question written in her features. Though she has suspicions because she knows where her own thoughts had travelled. “He’s not here, Ani.” Not in the room, not even on Coruscant. Her Master had spent hours with Master Windu before he’d collected his things. Told her that she should practice her sabre techniques. Told her he’d contact her when he was on his way back. There’d been a certain look on his face that prevented her from asking questions even if she thought she’d die if she didn’t know. She was still alive and here so clearly that wasn’t a universal truth. She likes being separated from him, kept out of his web of secretive missions even less than she cares to be separated from Anakin. And that nascent hate is another thing that whispers her unsuitability, because no matter how hard she tries, there is a shadow of it that lingers. One that looks a lot like the look resting on his face and why she suspects that it is her Master or the idea of him that upsets him. Zarek is the only thing she could put a name to the shadows falling over Anakin. And she recognises it because she has very similar instincts when it comes to him and his own Master. Worse still when he casually mentions the Queen-now-Senator. She knows that he has loved Amidala longer than he’s known Keni herself, and she has no way of combating the influence of the Naboo woman’s ghost on him. A part of her fears that she will always be second best to the woman even though she is better suited for him. They are both Jedi. She knows Anakin in ways Amidala never can, and she doesn’t trust the woman’s sense of loyalty and fairness. She doesn’t believe the Senator would give everything up for him. That she would risk arguing with him at whatever personal cost because he’s stubborn sometimes. That she would listen to him even when he cannot bring himself to speak. That she would place him ahead of whatever manipulative agenda she thinks might be best for the Galactic Republic. Amidala is only a career politician after all. Like Palpatine, like Organa, like the rest. 

And if Amidala did not mean so much to him, Keni isn’t sure she would care so much. But the woman represents everything that he might crave some day; she is freedom, she is not a significant part of the Force. She is exquisitely beautiful. She sees things in ways Keni can not, and is not bound by the will of the Council.

Her fingers curl up in his robes with a tightness she isn’t even aware of possessing. The joy of their reunion robbed from her features until they’ve darkened considerable, her eyes too bright with restrained malice that she tries so very hard to subsume, to push down into the bedrock of her psyche where it can do no lasting damage.

She’s just about to pull away from him, sink back into herself and hide behind decades of practiced non-existence when he starts talking again, distracting her from the dozen different tangents she’s found herself trailing behind. And that’s when the puns begin. Each one of them carefully chosen, each one of them carrying weight until she realises what he’s actually saying and the look on her face changes from murderous to incredulous to somewhat horrified amusement. If she laughs she might hurt his feelings. If she doesn’t laugh she might hurt his feelings. And so she just freezes in the moment. Bit by bit everything else does around her so that she can only hear the sound of him breathing, the water in the little fountain in the corner of the room trickling into its basin. Until everything becomes singularly focused on the feel of his hand travel it’s way up her side to her shoulder and into her hair. Which tilts her into his fingers. Her eyes trek from his endless blue downward to the midpoint of his chest. Where her thick lashes close leaving her able to feel more than see, an absolute gesture in tribute of the trust she places in him. And where one set of fingers glide down her face a moment later, her own much smaller ones take to wandering on their own accord. Across his chest. Down his arm. To the glove. So very careful. So very gentle. Afraid the slightest pressure will send arcs of pain across what’s left of his still healing nerve endings. Where she laces them together, only a teensy bit unnerved by the lack of living flesh and bone beneath her own.

“What if,” she murmurs in a low, husky tone before she opens her eyes half way, all green embers in the dim lighting so very far from the innocence etched elsewhere. “That was the one I wanted to keep, Ani? It’s very practical after all. Strong and resilient. Mind of its own, too, so like it could do amazingly dangerous things all by itself. I mean it’s absolutely perfect.”

#mynameisanakin #Images of Broken Light|Anakin Skywalker #Pools of Sorrow Waves of Joy|Anakin and Melakeni #Across the Universe|Star Wars AU

[jinjojess]

DR Kirigiri Vol. 5 Summary Part I

God, does it feel so nice to back with the characters and storyline that’s arguably my favorite of the franchise.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

So to refresh your memory of DRK4, Yadorigi--seeking revenge for the death of his partner Uosumi in DRK2--solved a case with a bunch of mystery dweebs at an old abandoned school in the mountains and was picked up by Lico via helicopter, Samidare felt up some girls who were tied up in coffins in an abandoned girls’ school, and Kirigiri figured out that Tsutsumi had done a sloppy job of setting up a mystery at the Center for Twin Research which forced him to call her bluff and crash his car off a bridge. Last we left, Babygiri was unconscious and at the mercy of a literal killer.

So clearly we pick back up with Samidare at the girls’ school, because why wouldn’t we?

Honestly, I’m pretty happy with this, since I don’t want the Kirigiri plotline resolved too soon in this book (remember, I need Samidare to think she’s dead for awhile and grieve) and Lico and Yadorigi wasn’t a huge cliffhanger or anything.

Anyway, when we last left Samidare, she had discovered two high school girls tied up in coffins at Libra Girls’ Academy after chasing a black-caped suspect into the room only for them to disappear.  The two girls in question are Nada Tsukiyo, a loud-mouthed brat with traditionally Japanese features like long black hair and pale skin, and her friend and classmate Tooakitsu “Naz” Nazuna, the red-headed, bob cut-sporting calm and polite one. Their physical appearances are both supposed to be ironic given their personalities. Another classmate of theirs, Takezaki Hana, was found dead by Samidare right after she woke up.

Chapter 1 The Mania of Existence: Libra Girls’ Academy - Samidare Yui

In this book, Samidare spends a few moments musing over what the hell Ryuuzouji’s true goal is with these cases, which I also want to know about as well since, as I’ve pointed out before, the rules here make no sense from a dude trying to win or even be fair. Samidare remembers a few things that Ryuuzouji said to her in DRK3 when he wanted her to become his apprentice, like how they both hate evil and will do anything to stop it, and how to do the right thing, sacrifices must be made.

Samidare thinks that’s bullshit though. She hates evil, it’s true, especially since her sister’s death, but she’s nothing like Ryuuzouji. His whole “sacrifice is necessary for the greater good” kind of thinking only makes sense if you’re operating on the kind of genius-level a Triple Zero detective would have; to regular old Samidare, she thinks there are better alternatives.

This is actually really interesting, not only because in the last book Yadorigi has that self-introspection moment where he acknowledges that he’s becoming just as bad at the Committee in the name of vengeance. It’s also because there’s that implication that Samidare could have gone to Kibougamine if she’d continued in high jumping/athletics in general, but she chose not to in order to be a detective, which she considers much more fulfilling given the whole sister abduction trauma she’s got going on. It really highlights the whole culture of excellence that the DRverse is subsumed in and I like that DRK is tackling similar issues as the rest of the mainline series but in a more subtle and personal choice-based way.

It makes Samidare kind of like the anti-Hinata in a way--she rejects her natural talents to do something else she feels is right. I just find that fascinating.

Anyway, Samidare suspects that part of the challenge in these twelve cases is to prove that she’s distinctly different from Ryuuzouji in world view, but she’s got to solve the case in front of her before she can do anything else.

While last time Tsukiyo and Nazuna were accusing Samidare of being the one who tied them up, this time they decide to try and figure out what the last thing they remember is. Turns out, both of them remember hopping a taxi to get to school because of bus delays and not wanting to be late to school. Samidare posits that the Committee might have been behind the traffic jams so that they could get both girls into cabs driven by their operatives and bring them here.

Privately, Samidare considers Nazuna a little too calm and rational under the circumstances, which makes her suspicious, but there isn’t much else to go on at this point.

Tsukiyo muses over why anyone would want to kidnap her. Is it because her parents have money? “You’re rich?” Samidare asks, to which Tsukiyo replies that there are richer people around her. Nazuna also reveals that Takezaki, the victim Samidare found when she woke up, was in the lower caste of their class, so it doesn’t make much sense why she’d be targeted. Samidare also muses that shitty cliques between girls are apparently ubiquitous.

Nazuna is also not believing that Takezaki is really dead without seeing a body, but she can’t exactly stroll over to the other room with her hands and feet bound as they are. Tsukiyo demands that Samidare let them free, but the issue is that the key is nowhere to be found. Samidare tells them to be good while she goes to search for a key.

“What else are we going to do? Hurry up. And while you’re out there, look for a bathroom. You’d better not make me hold it,” Tsukiyo adds.

On her way out of the room, Samidare notes a couple of interesting things: first, the door is a sliding door that closes on its own, similar to sliding doors in hospitals; and there’s no sign of a keyhole or locking mechanism. Since the sliding door rail is on the inside of the room, Samidare wonders if maybe the culprit put a bar in to keep the door closed after they ran inside, but there was no sign of anything holding the door open in the room. And it couldn’t be that the caped figure was just holding the door closed, since Samidare was pulling on it the entire time and they wouldn’t have time to hide.

Huh.

The girls start to yell at her to get going already, so Samidare takes stock of the building. There’s the small, round room with the coffins, connected to the larger chapel with a small hallway. Directly across the way is another narrow corridor that leads to the other round room with the corpse where Samidare woke up. At six o’clock there’s the main entrance, boarded up with thick planks Samidare doesn’t think she could pry off by herself. The chapel itself has about twenty pews plus a pulpit and a raised area with a statue of the Virgin Mary on it and a cross on the wall. There’s also two bathrooms, for men and women, each of which have windows, but they’re boarded up as well. There are no windows anywhere else, all the light provided by bulbs set into the walls.

Samidare notes that the building is in a cross shape, which is common in religious buildings (I personally see it more as an upsidedown capital T, but hey.)

The fact that she’s trapped with no phone or any other way to contact the outside world could be worse, Samidare thinks, since they have that check in call thing set up from the last book around midnight, and once she doesn’t check in, the others will come to her aid. 

Well, so long as every other detective on this case isn’t ALSO trapped in the Duel Noir venue.

Shit.

Congrats, Samidare! You lasted ten whole pages to start worrying about Kirigiri!

...Was Kirigiri-chan okay?

There probably wasn’t any reason to worry she wouldn’t solve her own case. Then I remembered that something bad might happen to her during her dogged pursuit of truth and started worrying again.

I figured it was stemming from my fear that she might disappear forever someday.

I’d get out of here somehow and Kirigiri-chan and I would go back home to the dorm together.

I needed to hurry up and solve this case.

Oh, I’ve missed you, you big insecure gay disaster.

All this thinking of Kirigiri suddenly has made Samidare remember what she said to her on the train before they parted ways in a melodramatic fashion in the last book--keep an eye on zodiac signs.

Oh yeah, guys, did you forget that Ryuuzouji is a Homestuck? Cause I didn’t.

This causes an issue though, since Tsukiyo’s birthday is July 30th and Nazuna’s is August 21st, which makes neither of them Libras. The victim isn’t a Libra either, so either their student ID cards are forged/incorrect, or none of them is the culprit. 

Could it be that the zodiac signs don’t have anything to do with the case? But if Kirigiri has given the theory such serious consideration, Samidare can’t just ignore it.

Trying to figure out where the culprit in the black cape could have gone, Samidare checks under the pulpit at the front of the chapel, but to no avail. She inspects the Mary statue next, only to find that oddly enough this Holy Virgin is sporting some bling...oh no, wait, it’s a key!!

...Too bad the chain is in too small a loop to fit over Mary’s head.

Samidare considers bringing the other two girls into the chapel to the statue, but it would tricky to use the key on such a short chain and such a raised platform on their hands AND feet, so there has to be another way.

Maybe I could get the key if I broke the head off the statue?

There was no way I could do something so blasphemous, though. The Virgin Mary watched over all the students at the school I attended too, so I mentally couldn’t bring myself to break her.

Jesus Christ, Samidare. 

Junko: Which will you choose, Yui-san? Kirigiri or this statue of the Virgin Mother? One of them is going into this volcano one way or another.

Samidare: Errrr...

Kirigiri: Onee-sama, are you serious?

Samidare: Leave me alone! I’m thinking!

Anyway, the good news for Samidare’s eternal soul is that there’s a wheeled platform in the corner that she use to transport Mary into the other room with the key.

The only problem is that when she gets back, announcing she has the key, both girls are missing.

Before she has time to process this though, Tsukiyo tackles Samidare to the ground and shouts for Nazuna to steal the key from her. They’re both pretty shocked and upset to see that Samidare doesn’t have a key on her (though good on them for getting back at her for the unsolicited pat down).

“There’s no key? So you lied to us?”

“It wasn’t a lie,” I groaned. “If you hadn’t attacked me like this, I’d have just handed over the key!”

“Quit your complaining, you kidnapper!”

“I’m not a kidnapper!” Of all the things in the world I could be accused of, that was the one thing I wanted to be called least. “I’m a detective!”

I shoved Tsukiyo off of me and stood up. She gazed up at me from the floor, cowering and looking terrified. Nazuna also looked upset, kneeling on the floor.

Dusting off the sleeve of my coat, I adjusted my collar and took a deep breath to collect myself.

“My name is Samidare Yui. I haven’t told you yet, have I? You may not trust me, but...honestly, I still find the two of you pretty suspicious. So let’s keep an eye on each other and call a truce for now. Is that okay?”

The other two nodded silently.

Samidare then uses the key on the Mary statue to free Tsukiyo, who thanks god and does the sign of the cross. After Tsukiyo frees Nazuna, Samidare gives them the reader’s digest version of the situation they’re in and suggests that since Takezaki is already dead but the case isn’t over and they’re still trapped, the two of them aren’t out of the woods yet and could still be targets. They need to prioritize getting out before anything happens to them.

Nazuna requests to see Takezaki’s body for herself, which Tsukiyo doesn’t seem interested in until Nazuna appeals to her by saying they owe it to a fellow classmate. 

Samidare leads the way back to the other room, chatting about the chapel and everyone confirming that they haven’t been there before, but the school looks pretty good for having been abandoned for 17 years (longer than they’ve been alive, heh...), but Samidare explains that the Committee probably spruced it up to be the set for the Duel Noir.

The two girls also say that they get the feeling that they may have felt someone else’s presence in the room before Samidare opened the coffins, but they couldn’t be sure.

Once they reach hallway to the room where Takezaki is, Samidare has this horrible feeling--she can see that the door, which should have shut automatically--is wide open and showing an empty room. There aren’t even any bloodstains or anything left behind.

Samidare starts having a breakdown about this, throwing out the possibility that the culprit moved the body while she was checking the bathrooms, while Tsukiyo gets disgruntled and wants to look for a way out so she can make her violin lesson on time. 

Too bad the door to the small room isn’t opening.

Nazuna tries it too but can’t open it either.

Tsukiyo at this point loses her shit.

“Th-This can’t be happening? We’re trapped in here, with no TV or phones or anything?” Tsukiyo said, aghast. “Ah, I didn’t even get to go to the bathroom yet!”

“Uh oh, we may be stuck in here for the whole time...”

“What do you mean ‘the whole time’? How long is that?”

“Worst case scenario...six days.”

If the other detectives didn’t come to my rescue, and the culprit intended to win by time out, then we might have to resign ourselves to being stuck here for six days.

“NO! If we stay here for six days, I will die!” Tsukiyo pounded her fists on the door in a panic. “At least bring us food and water! But not hard tap water! Make it soft mineral water! And let me go to the toilet first!”

Nazuna meanwhile is more puzzled by how the door isn’t opening given it doesn’t have a lock on it. That’s when Samidare notices that unlike the other room, the track for this door is on the outside, on the hallway side. She and the girls muse that the caped culprit locked them inside by setting up a bar to prevent the door from being slid open.

Well then.

Samidare’s ego is taking quite a blow.

I guess I really couldn’t do anything by myself.

What would Kirigiri-chan do in this situation?

She was always thinking one step ahead.

And she’d never stopped her trek toward the truth.

That’s right, she’d never avert her eyes from the case in front of her...

I couldn’t give up.

I had to get up and keep going.

“The only thing I can think of is that the culprit’s using some kind of trick.” I stepped away from the door and looked around the room. “I don’t think the body going missing and us being trapped here are unrelated. There’s got to be a secret hidden here that we haven’t found yet.”

“A secret?” Tsukiyo and Nazuna asked in unison, looking over their shoulders at me.

I nodded.

“I will definitely figure out the secret to this mystery,” I announced, not only to myself, but to the culprit who could also be listening.

Part 1 End

I’m so glad the moral of this chapter was WWKD (What Would Kirigiri Do).

Apologies for any typos or anything you may find. I’ll edit a bit later on.

Guys, I am having so much fun reading DRK again. This was a good plan.

See you soon!

NEXT PART >

#DR Kirigiri #DRK5 #DRK5 summary #Samidare Yui #translations #long post #DRK updates on Father's Day is peak irony

[starcunning]

Crystal

[Gen][WOL (X’shasi Kilntreader) & The Crystal Exarch][Angst...?][Crystal Exarch critical][It’s just one big long fight][Fray’s slow-clapping in the background][Exarch probably wishes he had died in the course of events rather than live to face Shasi’s wrath][Ideals and idols and heroes and people][FFXIV 5.0][Post-MSQ][3k words]

This story contains ending/MSQ spoilers for FFXIV expansion 5.0, Shadowbringers.

[AO3 mirror]

It was not merely that the yawning expanse of the courtyard made her nervous—every eye in the city upon her, she could not help but feel—nor that it felt strange to come and go from the Oculus at will. Though the oppressive light in the sky had been gone for moons, save those few desperate days at the end, the heavens seemed too close, pressed down around her ears and upon her shoulders. Even in the tower, where passage restricted, she could not ease—she was not alone there, and there as a particular pair of eyes she always hoped to avoid. Entering the Oculus chamber at last, she held her breath as she crossed the inlaid floor like she was a child sneaking down to the larder for a midnight snack.

“X’shasi,” came the voice, and she froze. “I did not know you were in the city.” His timbre was warm and friendly, and made the hairs on the back of her neck prick up. “Exarch,” she said, turning to face him. He had another name, but he had refused to answer to it months ago and she did not care to return it to him in that moment. “I arrived but a bell ago, and in another bell I should be gone.” Or much sooner, if she had her druthers. The way back to the Source awaited, far more stable and more comfortable than casting her aether across infinite distances. “Unless there was something you required.” “I had asked Captain Lyna to pass on a request …” “I didn’t see her,” Shasi said. She longed to reach up, adjust the lay of her baldric, brush back her hair—to fidget, in so many words—but she swallowed the urge and regarded him, unmoving. “What is it?” “Since the threat of the Lightwardens has passed, and the Tower—and I—will be remaining here indefinitely, I have elected to allow Crystarium researchers the opportunity to plumb its depths and learn its secrets. However, not all of the Tower’s guardians still slumber, and I was hoping that you … and perhaps I … could clear a path for them.” A muscle in Shasi’s cheek feathered, recalling without wishing to a conversation held on the cliffs—the very moment when she had been no longer suspicious but sure that he was lying to her. That they had met before. That she knew his name, the one she would not grant. “I’ll send word to Thancred,” she said. “He and I will take care of it. We’ve worked together on this sort of thing before.” A long time ago—and longer still for him. It would have felt nostalgic if she had not been in the grip of something else then. “What sort of thing?” the Exarch wondered. Shasi glanced aside, pressing her lips into a thin line. She thought of the wreckage of the Ragnarok, of the subterranean remains of a city they had found once—destroyed, she was quite sure, by the selfsame earthquake that had once buried the Crystal Tower and the Allagan Empire’s influence—and of far more innocent days. “Exploration,” she said. “Neither of us have an academic background in Allagan studies,” she told the Exarch, each word growing sharper until they were pointed, needle-fine; “but he’s a dab hand at caving and rock climbing, and when he was allowed only light field-work we would go together.” “Ah,” the Exarch said. “He is not with you, then, in the latest ruin you’ve taken to exploring?” His tone was neutral, detached, but his crimson eyes narrowed just slightly as he said it. Shasi felt a sudden chill take her, as though the winds of Coerthas blew over her soul. “No,” she said softly. “He has not returned to Amaurot.” “I see,” the Crystal Exarch murmured. Then, in a much more concerned, caring voice, he asked, “Why do you?” His crimson eyes met her blue, awaiting an answer that did not come. Eventually he spoke again. “Whatever you require, the Crystarium can provide.”

She did not doubt that he believed that. The Crystalline Mean had been more than accommodating, when she had deigned to visit. But she did not go to Amaurot for supplies or a workshop—or indeed any mortal need she could name. She walked among its beautiful spires and stood beneath its unearthly trees, and tried to remember, as she had been bid.

Perhaps someday soon she would exhaust the impulse. When it came to blows once more with Elidibus, mayhap—if it ever did; she suspected that only the host he abandoned had made him bold enough to engage her directly.

She flicked her gaze toward the portal once more, then toward the master of the tower—though it seemed fair to say the tower had mastered him in turn, yoked as he was to its proximity. “Where is Thancred?” she asked. “Do you know?” “He and Ryne left on a field excursion a sennight ago. To Nabath Araeng, I believe—to the edge of the Flood.” “And Alisaie?” “She too is in Amh Araeng, returned to her post at the Inn.” “And Y’shtola?” “She has elected to remain among the Night’s Blessed in Slitherbough.” “So none of them are here,” Shasi said. “No,” he agreed. Shasi closed her eyes a moment, folding her arms across her chest. When she opened them, she looked upon his crystal-scarred face, and found him frowning, his brilliant eyes downcast, as though he might read answers from the floor. “Perhaps we have other needs than a feather bed and a warm meal,” she told him. “Duties. Desires. Things only we can do. I should return to the Source and see to matters there, since I, at least, am able to come and go freely.” She could feel the tightness of her shoulders, the cords in her neck standing out, and—becoming aware of her own tension—willed herself to take a deep breath, to maintain her composure. “There is still a war unfolding on the Source,” she said. “But the conditions for a calamity have passed—” “Varis zos Galvus is a mortal man!” Shasi interrupted. “Elidibus may have used him for a cat’s-paw, but he seems glad enough to make war for mortal reasons as well as cosmic ones. In fact, the depths of his self-interest seem to have only grown in my absence, and he and his Hydrae are more dangerous than you know—but you wouldn’t know about the Hydra’s verse in my song, I suppose.” “I understand you have concerns you must see to,” said the Exarch. “Would that I could aid you with them, but much of my power is concentrated here. I thought it best that I use them to make this place a refuge—for all of them. For you. What can I do to make you feel more at home?” “Nothing,” Shasi said, through teeth she had not realized she had set. “I have a home. This is not it.” “Is it Amaurot?” he asked, so blithely that it only made her angrier. “No,” she said. “And if it were, so what? I have the right to make that choice.”

He approached then on timorous, sandaled feet, outstretching his good hand toward her. She wanted to slap it away, but merely recoiled, cringing toward the stairs which led upward toward the portal. “Don’t,” she said. “Shasi—” “X’shasi.” The muscles of her neck ached, and once again she unclenched her jaw. “Do not presume to treat me so familiarly.” Even after everything, she could not look upon his face and see the friend he might have been once. “X’shasi,” he acquiesced. “You,” she said, the accusation trembling on the tip of her tongue. “Took me from my home.” His brow twisted upward in anguish. “To save your home,” he said, pleading in his tone. “To save this world, and your world, and you—” “You took my choices from me!” Her fury had slipped free, and she felt something moving in her sin-stained heart. “You took them from me; you took nearly everything from me!” The edges of her vision blurred, and she held fast to the anger she felt hot inside her—better that than the sorrow which seemed poised to scald her cheeks. He only stared at her, stricken. “I had to,” he said, with trembling lips. “I had no other choice.” “There is always a choice!” she roared back at him. “Had you but asked me, I would have done all that was required. Had I but known, I would have come running!” “I know,” he bellowed back, his voice rising to meet hers. “That’s the type of person you are.” “Is that what the stories say?” she wondered, the heat of her anger leaving her, a chill passing in her wake. The tumult within her roared around her ears, and she could feel the dark side of her skin pressing outward against the bounds of her person. She had used this resentment for fuel for so much of the last year, but it had not burned away with the wardens’ Light. “For someone so infatuated with my story, you don’t understand it much.”

He lifted his false hand to his opposite arm, fingers curling about the fall of his robes, over the curve of his bicep. Shasi had not seen and could not guess how much of him had been subsumed by crystal, but if it were no longer there, it need not have been for her to know he was touching a place where ink had marked flesh in a bold, crimson tattoo of familiar design.

“We knew each other once,” he said. “We were friends.” “I know that, G’raha,” she spat, making of his name a weapon. “It was not I that tried to deny that past, but I am not the person I was when you sealed the tower. I was not wholly untouched by loss—I endured such things with the twins as I cannot speak of, even now, and we laid Moenbryda to rest—but these were the first drops of rain in the deluge to come.” “Forgive me,” he said. “I will not,” Shasi hissed, cutting him off. “Not yet. You don’t even know what to apologize for. I had a vision of you once, you know. I might have asked you about it moons ago, had I the slenderest hope you might answer me honestly—I can only pray you have the sense to do that now.” He tilted his head to the side, curiosity glimmering in his eyes, stronger still than any other emotion writ in them. “What did you see?” She closed her eyes, willing the tumult of her thoughts to slow so that she could pluck the memory from their jumble. She had pondered over it long enough. “You had gone to Ishgard,” she said, “and found it in ruins. You took Edmont de Fortemps’s memoir.” Her eyes snapped open, and Shasi watched crystal glimmer as he frowned. “Did you read it?” she wondered. “Or did you find it distasteful? Too dark, perhaps, compared to the faerie tales they told one another after I was dead?” He let his head fall forward a bit, his discolored hair falling forward over his face. “I read it,” he admitted. “I was trying to pinpoint the optimal moment in your timeline to summon you hence.” “Then you know,” Shasi said softly, “that things did not happen as your companion said. I was not on Vidofnir’s back. I was atop the spire, looking on helplessly. It was not I that saved that child.” The Exarch sighed, drawing up to the foot of the stairs and mounting them so that he did not have to crane his neck to look up at her. “What good would it have done to disabuse him of the notion?” “It would have served purpose enough simply to tell the truth,” Shasi said, eyes narrowing. “But you have demonstrated often enough that is not a priority for you.” She took a step back, up another stair, edging closer to the portal. All around her was the hateful blue of crystal, but for that single point of crimson. “It might have allayed my misgivings to know that you at least understood that about me. Tell me, if you had performed the spell correctly the first time, would I have come alone?” “Yes,” the Exarch said, reticence hushing his voice.

Shasi shook her head. “Then I would have come alone and failed alone. That is the message I wish you would have taken from the memoir: that I have not accomplished all I did on my own. At least in Ishgard I still had Urianger, along with the allies I made in the city.” Thinking of the elezen, she felt anger prick her anew. “You took my companions from me,” she said, nails biting into her palm. “This is unforgivable twice over—you see only the looming Calamity as a threat upon the Source, but in your attempts to save me you very nearly killed me, and put me through such hardship as you cannot imagine. Were it just myself, perhaps I would find it easier to forgive.” “I never meant to rob you of anything,” the Exarch protested. “By your own admission, you did!” Shasi retorted. “You would have brought me here alone, without my consultation, and robbed me of my agency and stripped me of my companions. I do not know if that would have been better or worse.” She huffed out an angry sigh. “The only person who thrived here is Alphinaud,” she told him. “Thancred and Y’shtola accused one another at various points of leaving their better selves on the Source, and I can see why! Thancred spent two years in isolation here ere any of the rest of them showed up, and I could see the harm it did him immediately, and even now I feel powerless to turn back the hands of grief. Y’shtola is more reckless than ever, and Urianger … even should I bury all the other enmity I bear you, what you did to Urianger would be enough to make us enemies, were it not so needful that we be allies.”

Crystal hand touched crystal-marred face, and the Exarch brushed his hair back from his forehead, lips parted in a retort that was not yet ready to pass them. “Urianger,” he said, “agreed to do as I ask.” “You used him,” Shasi hissed. “’Manipulated’ is not too strong a word—the guilt he bears over this world and its heroes is etched upon his very soul. Of course he did all you asked.” “But you have forgiven him,” the Exarch said, and Shasi could hear the pleading in his voice. It reminded her of something … someone she had loved and lost; someone she had barely dreamed. She doubted that Myste lived in the pages of the Count’s memoir—or Ardbert, for that matter. “Yes,” she said, trying to master her voice. “In so many words, I have. Because I have absolved him of telling your lies, am I now obligated to forgive you as well?” She shook her head. “Urianger is bereaved. It was in the earliest moments of mourning he first learned of this shard, and set himself upon a course by which he hoped to save it—but it cost the life of a dear friend and the heroes that unwittingly damned this world. And it was not enough, as would have been clear to him the moment he arrived here.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and felt them burning against her eyelids. “His machinations could have killed me twice over,” she said, “and still I find him easier to forgive. Do you know why that is, Exarch?” “You know him better than you know me,” the Exarch ventured. Shasi nodded once, allowing her eyes to open. “That is part of it,” she agreed. “I know him well enough to trust his motivations even should he not reveal them from the first. Part of it, too, is that we have our grief in common—you will have read why I came to Ishgard; the tragedy that befell me not long after you locked yourself away in the Tower. Urianger was one of very few people left to me, and he shared my sorrow in equal measure even as he shouldered a still dearer loss. He has seen me weep; he has heard my laments; he has borne witness to my lowest moments and my greatest follies. Of all the Scions, perhaps it is he who knows me best, so you chose your cat’s-paw well.” Shasi paused, her stillness disturbed only by the restless flicking of her tail behind her. “I can forgive him because he understands me. Because the moment he can stop lying to me, he does. You had so many opportunities to turn back from this.” The Exarch smiled, but it did not reach his crimson eyes. “Would you have believed me?” he wondered. “I as good as shut you in that tower myself,” she said. “I knew you had the power to master the secrets of Allag, and I knew its people once dreamed this place would shine as a beacon of hope once more. If I were so loathe to believe you, why would I have asked—I suspected. You knew I suspected, and you denied it.” “Forgive me,” the Exarch said once more.

“The thing about forgiveness, Exarch,” Shasi said, “is that it serves little purpose if the offending party does not mend their ways. You have kept me long enough, I think,” she said. “And you have kept the rest of them overlong, for now I go to Garlemald without my best agent. I could have benefited from Thancred’s expertise, but I suppose whatever happens on the Source now is not your concern.” She turned away from him then, focused instead upon the portal and the world that awaited her. “Do not look for me to return to the Crystarium,” she said. “You won’t find me. But you can send Feo Ul if you need me.” “Give my regards to Krile,” he said softly. Shasi laughed. “Perhaps I will,” she said, putting a hand to the barrier of aether. Just as she stepped through, she murmured, “I cannot imagine what her response will be.”

#ff14 #x'shasi #original content #starcunning writes #ff14 spoilers #shadowbringers spoilers #5.0 spoilers #crystal exarch #crystal exarch critical #the third of three related stories #for real if you're a CE fan you can kinda just skip this one #she's STILL MAD about the kidnapping #(she's valid but i realize lots of people don't see it the same way and they are also valid) #she's mad about a bunch of other stuff too #also featuring the first rumblings of shasi's personal plot #there's some kind of interstitial thing that should happen between 'water' and 'crystal' #but i'll be damned if i know the shape of it really

[undergroundbandimagines]

A Singular Lack of Blessings

Joy turns bittersweet in this strange year

pxhere

Mala placed her finally-asleep daughter on the bed. The baby wriggled as soon as she was out of her mother’s arms. Mala sighed, started patting her with a slightly cupped hand. The gentle pressure and soft sound of the pat immediately quietened the baby’s movements. For a few minutes, Mala continued patting, in rhythm to the beat of her heart, until she felt the baby’s breath deepen to sleep. She reduced the tempo and pressure of her pats slowly, until it was almost a feather touch. She left her hand, resting on her daughter for a few moments more. The baby didn’t stir. Mala smiled relief and stretched her arms and legs, relieving the stiffness. A yawn escaped her. A full body yawn as her uncle Vivek used to say.

A deep sadness leapt through her chest, forcing her eyes to water. He hadn’t seen her daughter yet and it had already been two weeks. He had called and spoken to her, of course, explaining how he didn’t wish to endanger the baby and her and would come after the pandemic had quietened down. At that time, she’d said she understood; theoretically, logically, she had, she did; but her traitor heart colluded with her dark self to point out how her “wonderful” uncle hadn’t even bothered to come see her and her daughter; how he hadn’t blessed her. I’m alone again. Tears deluged her cheeks.

The force of her emotion seemed to expand out of her, darken a room already outlined only in the escaped glare of city light. The baby stirred again, as if she could feel her mother’s anguish. Mala’s hand automatically shot to her daughter, the gentle pressure of her hand soothing the baby. Mala shook her head and wiped her tears. She’d done it again. Given in. Let the demons take over. She shuddered. What a horrible mother you’re going to be, they whispered.

She fought them, concentrating on her daughter’s breaths; in, out, in, out; she repeated the words in her mind; the cadence and rhythm of life as soothing as always. The whirlwind inside her calmed as her mind threw her back to the first time she’d learned the technique.

She could barely remember what the actual fight had been about, but she remembered her whole body trembling with anger, with the unfairness of it all. She had wanted to destroy everything in sight, then destroy herself. Uncle Vivek had intervened and taken her out to get ice cream. Faced with a large scoop of her favourite blackcurrant ice cream with a generous sprinkling of nuts, her anger retreated and she fell into that special state of bliss only food can engender.

Once she had caught and consumed all stray droplets of purple goo, Vivek asked, “Has the pounding in your head stopped?”

Mala stared at him disbelieving. How did he know?

He grinned. “It’s kinda nice to know my favourite niece has taken after me.”

“I’m your only niece,” she retorted, just as the full impact of his statement hit her. Uncle Vivek, the most cool-headed, even-tempered person she knew could never, ever, in a million years have felt that nauseating pounding, the rush of sweat and the irritating pulsing at the temple. It just wasn’t possible!

As if reading her mind he said, “Yep. I’ve felt the same. The thing I hated most was how my temple would pulse. I was pretty sure everyone could see it. In my head, it was like a cartoonish angry man, with his veins bulging out, looking menacing.”

Mala giggled as she tried vainly to imagine it. It just didn’t fit with her image of her uncle.

He gave a theatrical sigh, “I knew I was too good at controlling it. No one even believes me anymore when I say I have anger issues.”

“Come on Uncle! I’ve known you forever and you’ve never lost your temper.”

“Forever is only thirteen years long? My, my, you really do learn new things every day.”

Mina turned her head huffily, but couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Vivek said, “Okay. No more joking around. I was serious when I said I had anger issues. And.” He raised a hand to ward off the next words from Mala and continued, “Let me finish what I have to say and then, I promise, you can have another ice cream. Deal?”

Mala narrowed her eyes. She didn’t really like listening to adults talking, but this was Uncle Vivek. And there was the icecream. She was hoping for butterscotch with some chocolate fudge. She nodded acceptance.

Vivek’s voice dropped a few levels as he said, “Good. Let’s get the boring part out first while you’re still awake. Anger, especially the rage you just felt, that is not good for you. I know you didn’t mean to let yourself get that angry. You think this was a one-off thing that could be due to the teen hormones your mom must’ve warned you about. I wish that were true…

“The truth is, some of us — I’m still trying to figure out if we’re lucky or unlucky — some people just…fall into anger. It’s like a deep pool of boiling water — your skin burns, your eyes smart, it’s difficult to breathe and almost impossible to think. All you can feel is the pain causing your anger and like a feral tiger, it wants to be let out. Sometimes, it wants to hunt down the one who hurt you, make them feel the same pain. Sometimes, it can’t find that person and destroys the nearest people. What does it know? It’s a dumb cat.

“I didn’t know that though. I thought my anger was righteous, that I was doing the right thing. But, giving in to my anger didn’t make anything right. It hurt me right back. I got into fights — I’ve had my arm broken, my ribs cracked. I broke a lot of your grandmother’s jars too; they were easy prey. I even fought with my best friend because he told me I was wrong, that I was not thinking. And I…ah no, that story’ll have to wait until you’re eighteen. Anyway, after a certain incident, I came home. Ma saw me and took an involuntary step backwards. She remedied that almost immediately by walking over to me, but I’d already seen that scared yet devastated look on her face. And I knew, I’d become a monster.”

Vivek let his head wander down to his chest. He stayed like that for a second, and then he sat up straight. His old smile was back. Mala was confused. The man who said he’d done all that couldn’t be the same man who sat in front of her.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“That was a long time ago and I was…just a bit different. People have to grow up, right? Just imagine, if at thirteen, instead of eating icecream, you still had to drink milk from a bottle...”

“That makes no sense!”

“Okay. Okay. The main thing is that I used to let that anger guide me and it brought me nothing but grief. I managed to get help and overcome it, maybe because I’m an exceptionally lucky man. You, though…you don’t really look as lucky as me…Hmmm…”

Mala swatted at him. He continued, “I think I’d rather you skip the whole bad part and get to the good bit. And though it didn’t sound like it, there’s a good side — most likely, you got angry because you were passionate about something. And passion can drive you to live your best life. It’s like sugar, controlled amounts mean you get a lifetime of enjoyment; go overboard, and you’ll get diabetes.

“The trick is to find that path between anger and passion. My psychiatrist — pick your jaw off the table, young lady. That’s bad manners. Yes, my psychiatrist. We Indians don’t really talk about mental health, do we? Don’t worry. I’m not crazy and not all people who go to psychiatrists are crazy. They are actually smart enough to het the help they need. And you know I’m smart, right?” He winked as Mala hrmphed.

“So, my psychiatrist suggested this simple tip — touch one thumb with the other; slide down until you get to your wrist; press lightly; you can feel a beat. That’s your pulse. Now, whenever you feel angry, just find your pulse and for a few seconds repeat that sound in your head. It might sound silly, but there’s nothing more soothing than a heartbeat. Did you find it?”

Mala nodded, her face still skeptical.

“Now, close your eyes and just say the sound...lub-dub…lub-dub…in tune with your pulse. Come on, you don’t have to say it out loud. You want your icecream or not?”

Mala emitted a theatrical sigh and closed her eyes. To her amazement, after a few seconds, the irritation that she’d been feeling since the altercation reduced. She opened her eyes in astonishment, stared at her hand, and said, “It works.”

Vivek grinned, “Now, it’s time for icecream.”

By the time she’d demolished her double scoop of butterscotch, her anger and irritability had almost vanished. Uncle Vivek’s warm hand on her head as he said good night removed the final vestiges of the storm that had tormented her a few hours ago. She swore to herself that she’d try his trick every time she felt angry.

Of course, it had taken some time and a few fights with her parents before Mala actually got around to putting her uncle’s trick into practice. She later found it was useful not just for anger, but the waves of inexplicable sadness that seemed to dredge her now and again. Encouraged by Vivek, she attended counselling and meditation classes, learning more about herself. Perversely, the more she learnt about herself, her tendencies, instead of making her worse (like her parents and friends had warned after her first counselling session), she became more confident.

And that little trick of Vivek’s was subsumed into her daily life. She used it before important meetings, before she went to bed, before she made any decision. And the heart she felt in her hand, soothed the raw emotions into pliancy, let her think clearly and decide.

Mala’s slipped out of her reverie, smiling. Her heart still ached to see Vivek, to hug him. She wanted to feel his hand on her head, that traditional Indian blessing, which to her was doubly special because he had met her demons, yet he blessed her.

I wish he could bless you too, she thought at her daughter and tears pooled again.

Damn these hormones! I’m too emotional, she thought as she got up and went into the kitchen.

She found the small carton of blackcurrant icecream she’d hidden and sat at the table. Slowly, savouring every morsel, she finished it, drank water and tiptoed back. Both her daughter and her husband were fast asleep.

She snuggled down under the covers, placed one hand on her daughter, and slipped into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, she video-called Uncle Vivek and showed off her daughter. As was custom, he raised a hand to bless her. Through the impersonally cold glass, Mala felt her uncle’s blessing come through as a warm wave that induced a smile in both mother and daughter.

It wasn’t perfect, but for now, she’d make do.

© Indira Reddy 2020

A Singular Lack of Blessings was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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[nightblink]

Blink Reads Oathbringer - Chapters 77-82

Some rather short chapters in this one, which leads me to believe that events are accelerating towards Shit Hitting The Fan very quickly, because things have been going far too well for the mission as a whole to continue that way for much longer.

Also, Shallan finally faces a truth.

Chapter Seventy-Seven – Stormshelter

….considering we're back to Kholinar chapters, the positioning of this new graphic, and what's happening in Kholinar, I'd say it's safe to assume that this Sja-Anat, Creator, Corrupter, The Taker of Secrets is the Unmade suffusing the core of the city. Well then. 'With one touch she corrupts.' uh. Not good, not good-

Oh, hey, we finally get a Truthwatcher's recording! They're…. shit, they're calling to attention the still-fighting 'parsh' and saying that something 'must be done about' them. That's- but how did you come up with the concept of enslaving them, of all things?!

Another everstorm. How many does this make now? I've lost count. Ooops.

Ayyyy, and he's meeting up with the rest of Team OT3! And for once remembers noticing how Shallan – or perhaps Veil – snuck glances at him. With OT3 glasses on, this is excellent material. Without…? Eeeeuuuugh. You can definitely see the psuedo-framework of a love triangle, but while Veil's eyeing Kaladin for his attractiveness (“brooding good looks”), Kaladin still has an idealized vision of Shallan in his head and hasn't gotten to the point of knowing her as a person where I'd be comfortable with them in a relationship.

Elhokar's gotten so much better. Even though I have a bad feeling that this will all turn south soon, I'm glad he's been doing so well recently.

I feel like between Kaladin's reports and the evidence shown with the loyalty of her men and the proof in the Wall Guard's defense, order, and discipline, Adolin's definitely considering offering to solidify Azure's position as highmarshal, even if he has to forcefully shut up those who'd complain about a woman not only fighting, but in command.

“You boys done comparing your swords?” Oh, Shallan's definitely thinking OT3 thoughts…

Hmmm. Kaladin describes some of the lighthearted banter between Shallan and Adolin as 'nauseating', and 'Kaladin liked them both… just not together.' Could be taken as romance-repulsion, but considering his own interactions with the both of them, it feels more like jealousy – though of their closeness/friendship or their romance is debatable (as well as for which one, which… more pairing fodder).

[squints] Huh. So, going with the visions, definitely nine Unmade… but do they predate Odium, and were changed by his influence, or are they, in essence, Splinters of his?

Oh, shit, two Unmade in Kholinar? UM. Ashertmarn being the other one, basically encouraging hedonism/The Revel, as opposed to the Corruptor, Secret-Taker.

See, the way Kaladin describes it, I feel like he and Shallan are growing into friends, if rather rockily since neither of them are actually any good at it? And Veil-Shallan is confusing her “goddamn he's hot, I'd tap that” feeling(s) with actual I-want-to-be-with-you attraction. It's not quite a love triangle, but I worry that it's going to cause serious complications nonetheless.

Shallan's adopted family isn't the same as yours is, Kal, let her be with her differences. Besides, in giving them purpose, and a different avenue to explore their lives, even those you knew like Gaz aren't the same as they were before.

Ooo, that's… I'm with Adolin on this one, you do not want to let the city fall. Not only would you lose the tactical advantage of the Oathgate, but all those people! The refugees, the Kholinari! For once, Kaladin is thinking of the practicalities; Adolin is considering his home and people.

….that cremling is an important tidbit, isn't it. I'm wondering if the 'bug' means they were bugged.

Ahhh, and here's Shallan thinking about her personalities basically as people separate from herself, once again (which. They're not, they're part of you, even if you can't bring yourself to realize that – the part that wants to be a hero, the part the thinks Adolin too predictable, the part that wants to live unconstrained by the responsibility and structure that you carry with you. It's still a facet of you, even if you've given it a face so you don't have to 'deal' with things yourself.)

tbh, I want to see the Impossible Falls. Sanderson, please tell me there's a sketch of that later in this book.

(Your father's son, in more ways than build and blood – and part of that is the Blackthorn, even with how terrible he was. The sun scorches even as it provides.)

...honestly, if he saw the picture of Kaladin on the page after, with Veil's touch of lust in its strokes, he'd probably just agree.

[hums very happily at Adolin confirming Shallan's skill as learned effort and worthy of praise, noting her hard work] She needs compliments like that – things that confirm that her skill is beyond just the innate, but attributable to practice and the dedication that she's put into it. It'll help her self-confidence and feelings of worth in herself, Shallan, as well as reinforcing a good viewpoint, especially so when he speaks of Radiants – her – creating art once the war is over.

I'm so glad that Evi taught her sons that it was all right to touch, to hug and to have physical contact – Adolin himself seems a very tactile type, even beyond just my headcanon, and can you imagine if he was deprived of touch? He's probably not granted it much beyond his immediate family anyway, which makes me doubly glad that Shallan is accepting of this particular idiosyncrasy of his.

Oh, Shallan. Those abysmal feelings of self-worth are only making your personality problems worse, and infecting your relationships besides…

Ooooo, he's noticed, even though she doesn't realize it. “Who do you become?” indeed.

“Thank you for being you, Adolin.” '“Everyone else was taken already,” he mumbled.' E x c u s e  me while I go scream about this man and his own tendency to change himself to fit the situation and how his own feelings of self-worth likely suffered though all the rejections of him.

….I was going to be good about this and then she described him as being like a sunrise which is literally part of my character tag for him on l-c and-

And we're back to the slipping of personality. Hello again, Veil-Shallan. Gotta agree with you on that one, sometimes the storm and rain are preferable – both literally and metaphorically.

Huh. This openness and vulnerability…….. huh.

“Maybe.”

Maybe.

Well, I have to say that I agree with Vathah here. Better cremation than being soulcast into a statue. That's just creepy. I wonder how that particular tradition started, though, and if it's only practiced in Vorin lands, or all across Roshar?

!!!! VATHAH'S A SQUIRE. VATHAH'S A LIGHTWEAVER SQUIRE. AWESOME.

Chapter Seventy-Eight – The Revel

Another Truthwatcher recording, and the Radiants can somehow deprive the Fused/Parshmen of that 'Voidlight' energy? How? Where does it come from? Does it act in the same way as stormlight, or does it differ from stormlight in about the same measure as, say, hemalurgy does from allomancy? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS, BRANDOSANDO-

'Shallan would be easier [to abandon].' a) Veil is ruthless, but we already knew this. b) This is a reflection of Shallan's thinking, and I worry that she's subconsciously – or even consciously – wanting to subsume her own personality with the ones she's given life to, since she thinks they're more 'worthy' than her true, broken core self.

The windspren are corrupted here too. Syl might not be able to even masquerade as a normal windspren if she'd be setting herself apart by sheer virtue of non-corruption. Again with the smell of mold, though, this time in the wake of the Everstorm as opposed to association with Parshendi or chasmfiend blood! Hmmm, not there's another question – is it just greatshells that have a mold-smell to their blood, or is it all of the standard Rosharan fauna, because that could be an indication of whether they're bonded to spren or not.

Kaladin notes that Azure looks 'very Alethi', but I still have that niggling suspicion of Nalthian in the back of my head, and we know that not only are Returned able to use Stormlight as sustenance in place of Breaths, but they'd be nearly the only non-Rosharan Cosmerans generally taller than even the Alethi...

The people under the influence of the- Ashertmarn, the Reveler, the incarnation of hedonism and gluttony – are definitely under the influence from what we can tell, there's definitely the feeling that these people wouldn't be acting this way if they were 'themselves'. They're drunk on it; most likely, this Unmade's touch is what was affecting Aesudan.

'They moved like fish in a school' – for all that Veil disdains her true, core personality, Shallan's way of viewing the world and her method of description still slips through, informing one as to who the base is that the mask is built upon.

“We were only doing what she asked.” WHO. The queen, the Unmade?

….so. Azure refers to her sword as a her, and doesn't deny anything when Kaladin calls the sword a Shardblade. Points granted towards her being a Radiant.

“I flew.” [SNORTS] It's not as if the truth sounds like anything other than a joke to these people who don't know of Randiants, so why not?

“They're Alethi” - With the way she said that, I'm counting it as points against her being Alethi, even if it turns out she is and just spent time amongst Westerners like Kaladin is thinking, but I'm especially suspicious when she asks her question.

...well, shit. And here we were maybe just about to get some answers. These POVs are bouncing back and forth really quickly, and that's not striking any confidence that this is going to turn out well…

...well. That inner ring is just delightfully creepifying. Thank the Heralds for Pattern, as the Unmade's influence was threatening to break through even Shallan's cracked-yet-fortified mentality (though now we have more confirmation that Veil is there in an attempt to avoid truly facing what she's done).

!!! Voices! Voices that aren't the Unmade speaking to her, and her shadow pointing the wrong way – some sort of influence from Shadesmar! She's lucky that whatever-it-was warned her too. The Mindnight Mother was one thing, trapped beneath Urithiru and just really starting to spread its tendrils, but this… that has been accumulating power, and if she'd sprung the trap they'd all be doomed.

Chapter 79 – Echoes of Thunder

Okay, so the Truthwatcher proposes that the Unmade can be captured, given a 'special prison' and 'Melishi'. But. wtf is Melishi?

Ooop, there's another colour saying, and Azure used it instinctively, like we've seen Zahel/Vasher doing and confusing the hell out of all the Alethi around him. Yeaaaah, I'm pretty convinced that you're a Nalthian of some kind or another.

“Who are you?” That's a long story and perhaps not appropriate when the Voidbringers are attacking, you two!

'his own men' Because of course he's already adopted them and been thinking of them as 'his men', even when he's not their commanding officer – though he yells out orders as if he's the Highmarshal or Prince himself.

EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH. It's going to blow his cover like nothing else, but come on – try to Lash a Windrunner, will you?

….or, amazingly, managing to use only his senses – that have adjusted to flight – and not any Lashings that would alert the Voidspren.

Oh but I am living for these midair clashes

Oooooo, so, for the Fused/Voidbringers, it's not the spine that an opponent should aim for, but whatever that 'brittle' thing is around the area of it's heart – a gemheart, most likely. Mmm, but while Kal managed to avoid the attention of the Voidspren, there's not way that his stunt (much less surviving said stunt) managed to go unnoticed.

….ooop. Looks like you're standing out as the first to kill a Voidbringer on the Wall, Kal, even before Azure. HEHEHEHEHEHEH. And of course he slips back into command-mode like he's back with the Kholin army, rather than amongst a ragtag group defending Kholinar.

[squints at Azure] ….that cloak… did you try to Awaken it.

AND ANOTHER COLOUR SAYING. YOU'RE A NALTHIAN, I SWEAR. You're just really good at outwardly looking like an Alethi, enough to convince all the Wall Guard.

HEH. At least with that proclamation of authority, she's now decided to listen to him – maybe even trust him.

We shall see.

Chapter Eighty – Oblivious

...that title isn't referring to Kaladin's very-Demi perception, is it? [ba-dum, tiss]

[blinks furiously while attempting to figure this out] So. This Ba-Ado-Mishram must be one of the Unmade, given the last input from the Truthwatchers and the obvious intent now to capture her, since she'd the one prolonging the conflict and providing the source of power to the Parsh(men?(endi?). But that 'she provides Voidlight' - !!!!! that doesn't come from Odium himself, but one of the Unmade?

“After fleeing the Oathgate platform, she'd met up with Vathah” - you mean, after he dragged your broken body away from the base of the platform. Jfc, but Radiants can tank some serious damage. And '[g]oing back home would have left her too much time to think' – too much time to be Shallan, thinking of the Unmade and whatever-it-was that addressed you from Shadesmar and even perhaps needing to face who you really are underneath all the masks, mmm?

...methinks your informant/contact is compromised, Veil-Shallan.

[winces] Yeah. Not in the way I'd thought, with the cult, but a more “normal”, yet no less deadly influence. Of course there would be gangs that prey on the weak and manipulate the desperate.

Oh ho ho. So Veil has a limit – she wanted to be the Hero, but when that dream/mirage collapsed, so did she, leaving Shallan – the core, the Real One – without mask to divert away the pain of a death she's going to mark herself responsible for. Veil's the 'streetwise one', the 'darkeyes', the one who tries to be the folk hero, but at her core she's still Shallan – and Shallan only has her mind and imagination with which Veil draws herself; there's not real experience or reality behind the fiction of 'Veil'. Shallan keeps her Veil-mask's speech patterns when she talks to Muri, too, reinforcing the image of Veil as a mask, no matter how strong the created-personality is.

Oh, Shallan. The trauma never stops for you, does it? You tried to paint yourself as a hero, but it backfired in our face spectacularly.

Chapter Eighty-One – Ithi and Her Sister

...have we heard about an Ithi before. Who is this, what is it referencing-

Truthwatcher recording again – I think this makes mare recordings from them than from any other order thus far. As to the 'unintended side effects'… that'd be dullform, I'd bet a handful of spheres on it.

[hums and smiles] A regal name indeed.

Oh Beard. [cackles] Gotta keep up with the story, even if the details shift a little...

!!! The walls are covered in a metal that Kaladin doesn't recognise? Is it aluminum? I bet it's aluminum, isn't it. On top of that, they were brought by Wit? Yeaaaaaah, I see what you're doing here, Sanderson.

But as an aside, Azure has had dealings with Hoid before, and didn't mention what she called him.

She also doesn't pause in jaw-dropped wonder like everyone else when he mentions the abilities of the Oathgate. Mmm, you know and definitely are more than you're letting on, Azure.

Chapter Eighty-Two – The Girl Who Stood Up

Sorry to burst your bubble, last Truthwatcher recording, but… that's not gonna happen. This war will last a while yet.

Shallan's fragile shield is cracking, breaking, leaving her with nowhere to hide – and finally admitting to herself that the masks are a lie to pretend even to herself. It almost seems a harder truth for her to admit than the fact that she killed her mother.

Wit. Thank god you're here, Shallan needs someone with her right now, some point of contact, no matter how small, or she's just going to curl up and wither away.

“I haven't lived her life.” “No. You've lived a harsher one, haven't you?” Another truth that she'd prefer to run from, as that life was suffering, that life broke her – she'd much rather be an assured, streetwise con, but that's not who she is. No matter how much she tries to Be The Mask, Veil isn't truly real – a part of her, yes, but not the separate, competent person she'd rather be, if only so she wouldn't hurt so much.

Oh no, no, don't you start suppressing this again-!

Oooo, more details about the story. Wit knows an older version, less changed by time, doesn't he; or perhaps even the events that became the story in the first place?

'“Skip?” Wit said, aghast. “Skip part of a story?”' Thank the heavens for Hoid injecting some small measure of levity into this moment. Shallan needs as much light as she can get, even while facing the darkness she tries to repress.

Oh. Oh, Hoid. From freezing in shock at her hug in the warcamps, and now to this.

[hums] Not quite Prometheus or Pandora's box, but there's a little bit of those feelings – the bringer of light, of terrible storms but of a brightness that changed the world forever.

“I see only one woman here, and it's the one who is standing up. Shallan, that has always been you. You just have to admit it. Allow it. … It's all right to hurt.” [breathes out low] W i t. Oh, Shallan, he's right, and finally you're hearing it aloud. You can live, you are worth protecting, even if you can't see it right now yourself. Perhaps not soon, but now that you've heard it… perhaps you can work on accepting it.

Adolin. You stayed up all night with worry for her, didn't you? And even that hug – reassuring yourself and her, you're making yourself The Stable One once more, but you can tell there's something wrong, can't you? So once again, you go for the levity rather than pushing her to explain.

Hah – and then the real levity approaches, because honestly, Kaladin at the head of yet another group of people that he's managed to adopt? Priceless.

#blink reads oathbringer #oathbringer spoilers #adolin once again confirmed built tall and broad af; yaaaas #why can't this awkward not-really-love-triangle just be an ot3 already #oh yeah because SOMEONE HAS PERSONALITY PROBLEMS #I continue to worry very much for Shallan #very very much

[nyxelestia]

I'm caught between 5 different plotbunnies for the Teen Wolf Big Bang.

TL;DR version:

1.) Scott sleeps with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking his memories of his loved ones (ab)using him. Pro: Emphasis on Scott's trauma and martyrdom. Con: Not a big fan of the ending and can't think of a better one. 2.) Turns out Rafael molested Scott, and everyone finds out because nogitusne. Scott still resents Rafael more for leaving him than for abusing him in the first place. Pro: Emphasis on Scott's tendency to put up with a ton of abuse from people as long as they don't leave him. Con: No satisfying ending. I know how to end it, plot-wise, but no idea how to end it emotionally. (Mixed feelings about combining #1 and #2.) 3.) Chris/Melissa/Sheriff fic about the three parents growing into and embracing their new reality, and each other along with it. Pro: Lots of fluff and emotional development. Con: Plot is shitty and cliched as all hell. 4.) Sheriff gets turned into a werewolf, but with alpha!Scott. Emphasis is on the Sheriff's changing relationship with Scott (father-figure-come-beta). Pro: Father-son-figure fluff, and the dark reality of the Sheriff trying to cope with lycanthropy. Con: No real plot or narrative beyond that. (Mixed feelings about combining #3 and #4.) 5.) Scott dies in 5A, everything goes to hell. After Beacon Hills becomes a corpse-ridden ghost town, Lydia and the Nemeton arranges for Allison, Scott, and Stiles (and/or herself) to wake up that first morning all the way back in the pilot/101, with all their memories up until their death. Pro: It's the ultimate fix-it fic, with a greater emphasis on the real cost and stakes of the supernatural drama (and the value in protecting them). Con: Like zero plot whatsoever, just an idea and some vague, disconnected scenes.

Detailed explanations below cut.

Idea #1: Dark Scott/Deucalion fic.

After Season 4, Scott starts sleeping with Deucalion in exchange for Deucalion taking some of his more traumatic memories involving his loved ones (i.e. Derek's assaults of him in the first two seasons, Chris' early mistreatment of him, nogitsune!Stiles stabbing him, etc).

Despite how exploitative it sounds, Deucalion does somewhat care for Scott (as a mentor/mentee thing). Scott ends up falling in love with him a little, but this is also happening in tandem with his relationships with Kira (and later, Malia). Main Appeal: The emphasis on Scott's trauma, and how his experiences leave him open to a certain type of exploitation and vulnerable in a certain way. He's not getting rid of all traumatic memories - just the ones of people who he cares about, but have hurt him, because it was getting difficult for him to spend time around his loved ones without being scared all the time. He lets people continue to hurt and use him because he'll be able to later pretend it never happened. Main Drawback: Not sure about the ending. Part of  the reason I'd abandoned it before is that I never came up with a good ending. I kinda like how Season 6B fits into this - that ultimately, Deucalion dies, and in the absence of another alpha willing to help Scott take a short-cut through is trauma, Scott finally has to confront his trauma and self-martyrdom. I'm not sure of an ending which is just the beginning of another story or process which I know I'll never write/the reader will never see.

Idea #2: Very Dark pedophile!Rafael fic

Original plot bunny has the nogitsune revealing to all and sundry that Stiles figured out Scott was "looking for his own kiddie porn" when he broke into Rafael's laptop for Kira. Things...devolve from there.

Allison lives for no discernible reason and she and Derek debate the merits of just killing Rafael, together. Chris is hurt that they didn't invite him. :P Stiles taps into the void the nogitsune left in him to put Rafael down for good. Main Appeal: I've seen fics where Rafael abused Stiles and I've always just been like - he's got his own kid right there and for some reason never touched him? I also really want to emphasize that much like the show, Scott resents his father abandoning him more than any abuse - including this sexual abuse. This plays into his current mental state, that he'll accept almost any level of use, abuse, and mistreatment if it means his friends and pack won't leave him. (Also, given how often stories like this involve the McCall family being subsumed by Stilinski drama, I like the idea of reversing that script.) Main Drawback: I feel like this would be a little OOC for Rafael (6B made me actually like him!). While I do not say this as a gesture of abuse erasure or apologism, I quite liked his arc in the show (and was upset to not see more of it), and I'm afraid I'd be shitting on that a little with molestor!Rafael. Also, no idea how to end it. Narratively, I have the idea that Derek tries to actually get Rafael arrested and tried and convicted, wanting Scott to see and experience how wrong Rafael's actions were...but Rafael's too good to be caught, and the pack/friends just work together to kill him. Great for "rallying around and protecting Scott" feels, but no real emotional development from Scott, who would probably resent them for this, and I don't know how to fix that. (Kinda tempted to combine with #1, but that might be rather cliched - Scott getting away from one sexual abuser only to fall hard for another? I know I get irritated by "everyone's trying to fuck him/rape him" fic when it comes to Stiles, and I'd have mixed feelings about subjecting Scott to that. I think it would be very true to his character, post-Rafael, to fall into that pattern of exploitation with Deucalion - but the Deucalion fic was a little more oriented to Scott's tendency to martyrdom, whereas this one is more about Scott putting up with (ab)use to keep people close to him.)

Idea #3: Chris/Melissa/Sheriff fic (+Allison lived AU)

What it says on the tin, it's just the story of Chris, Melissa, and the Sheriff developing a relationship.

Original plot bunny was that after Season 4-ish events, Rafael is poking around, mistakes some post-supernatural circumstances for a threesome, and gets mad. Team Root Cellar initially just rolls with the farce to keep Rafael from finding out about the supernatural, but also to troll him, only for it to turn real.

But now I'm also inclined to something post-6B/show? Main Appeal: Lots of fluff, and lots of everyone starting to settle down into a new life and embracing their new reality for good. Part of that new reality is the whole "kids leaving the nest" thing (Scott, Allison, and Stiles going off to college or wherever, the trio having to build a life that isn't about/around parenting).

It’s also kind of embracing how far they've come from who they used to be (Chris going from hating werewolves to dating the True Alpha's mother and his Emissary's father, the Sheriff embracing the supernatural in terms of dating a Hunter and someone so heavily involved in werewolves, and Melissa growing as a more confident and self-assured person). Also, accidental baby is sort of a representation of a new future with these three once-disparate forces of Beacon Hills now united as one. Main Drawback: There isn't much of a plot to this. My current ideas, post-S4 or post-6B, are basically a series of interconnected one-shots. I also feel that in most ways, it would be a little cliched - older parents finding a new love life after their kids are gone, accidental baby feels cliche (even if what it's representing is not).

Idea #4: Turned!Sheriff with Alpha!Scott

Exactly what it says on the tin. At some nebulous point during or soon after the events of the show, somehow the Sheriff gets Bitten by a rogue alpha or something. He turns, but now has to deal with being a werewolf.

In particular, what I intend to be different about this AU is that the Sheriff doesn't magically cope well with the changes. While he is level-headed, he isn't the best at self-control, and does have a lot of issue that'll make full moons downright nasty. And while the enhanced strength and senses are nice (especially as Derek teaches him how to use them), the loss of alcohol/drinking is not. Main Appeal: I see so many fics that focus on the Melissa and Stiles relationship, I wanted to flip that on its head a bit, and focus on Scott and the Sheriff. Ironically, Stiles isn't actually in it all that much, with the focus being on the Sheriff's relationships with Scott (and somewhat, Derek). Scott has to be the Sheriff's alpha, despite also being like his second son. It's a hard transition for them both, for different reasons. And since I did love the Derek and Sheriff relationship, Derek teaches the Sheriff to use his senses to benefit his job. (Also, while Stiles isn't in it much, he is still in it - and he's there for the Sheriff's first Full Moon. It's exactly as horrifying as you'd expect. Main Drawback: Again, no real plot. I have a premise and I have some scenes in mind, but no overarching plot, and no real character arc beyond "Sheriff and Scott forging a new relationship in their new reality, while still maintaining a bit of the older paternalism". (...maybe I could combine this with the threesome fic...? Except that that fic was intended to be about all three parents, whereas this would make it overwhelmingly Sheriff-focused.)

Idea #5: Time Travel Fix-It fic.

Basically, Scott actually dies in the end of 5A and stays dead, and everything just goes straight to hell after that. After a lot of 6B-like tensions, bloodshed and carnage, and the Ghost Riders, Beacon Hills is a desolate Ghost Town with nothing left but corpses, and Lydia left wandering around in it.

She goes to the Nemeton and ~magic happens~ and her, Scott, Stiles, and Allison all wake up the very first morning from the pilot with all their memories of the future until they died. (And maybe not even Lydia, just the trio. Or, alternatively, only her, and she has to try to prevent everything.) Main Appeal: A huge re-focus back on Season 1, and how all of the insanity of later seasons holds up against that. The events of the later seasons make the Season 1 drama look so small - yet at the same time, the stakes are higher because of those consequences. Part of what I think was lost in later seasons was that there was less grief and shock in lost lives, so even as the body count rose, the stakes didn't feel like they were rising, too. But going back to Season 1 would put the focus back on that loss of life (with everyone alive and well, again - but all that darkness and evil just waiting for them).

I also like the idea of characters getting to see each other at different stages of development - Allison getting to see the the awesome alpha and badass banshee Scott and Lydia came to be, Scott coming to admire her powers (since she didn't learn how to use them outside of death knells until 5B), and a lot of wary respect of the kind of capable yet dark person Stiles ultimately became without Scott (or Allison) to temper him. Main Drawback: This idea has the least plot out of all my ideas. You can probably tell by the fact I'm not even 100% sure who I'd want effectively going back in time to fix things. Even if they do - I'm not sure of the ripple effects and consequences, what I want to happen, etc. I have a vague idea that they kind of...speed up the rate of attacks (basically, instead of pacing over several years, all the villains pop up almost at once), and the heroes ultimately using that to their advantage by turning/using all these villains against each other, somehow.

But I have no concrete plans for any of this, just a cool idea and a lot of individual scenes in my head.

#teen wolf big bang #twbb #teen wolf #nyxie talks about her writing #nanowrimo #nanowrimo 2017

[ereignis-visdev]

hhhhhhhh I’m gonna talk about Sing some because I keep thinking about her and I l o v e her so much !!

So first some background in order to contextualize this... Madir builds doppelgangers, right? He sends recruits (namely Sing, Yra, and Nareen) to travel through various dimensions with the fetal (?) doppelganger and collect body parts from the alternate versions of the target (the doppelganger’s “Original”) and basically has industrialized what should be a slow, natural process of growth, confrontation (between the Original and their doppelganger), and either acceptance or substitution. Obviously by expediting the process, he has a high “””success””” rate where the doppelgangers replace their Originals, but in actuality, it’s really bad science because the intention of a doppelganger ISN’T to replace their Originals but (ideally) subsume back into them as whatever mental/emotional/existential distress that caused the split initially is acknowledged.

(All this basically to say that Madir doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing)

Sing, like essentially everyone else that inhabits their universe (or perhaps more appropriately, their lack of universe? The “Otherworld” they reside in is essentially the negated existence of everyone who has “lost” to their doppelganger and thus become an existential paradox) is absolutely miserable, but she IS loyal and has (misplaced) faith in Madir, so she goes to him and asks whether he can turn her into a doppelganger.

(Now, just to note- not that it matters- this was part of my original idea, but I was unable to work it into an already too-long script, so this isn’t exactly “fleshed out” yet, but I feel really strong about this plotline and how it works in conversation with the main story, so I will find a way to write it in eventually)

Madir, being the self-important piece of shit he is, and actually probably potentially caring about Sing as much as is possible for him (I’m sure he would say he loves her, but I’m not sure he CAN feel love, and even if he can, it’s definitely not a healthy love for either side and is moreso indicative of his love for possessing and controlling), is sure he can find a way. His logic is sound- replace her body, piece-by-piece, from alternate versions of herself that now take the form of her doppelganger, working backwards from the usual order and finally finishing with the doppelganger herself (simultaneously completing New Sing and killing off the doppelganger, leaving a space open, so to speak, for replacement). But it doesn’t work (because, again, he doesn’t know fuck all about what he’s doing and MORE IMPORTANTLY, that’s just not what a doppelganger is? You can’t “become” one, you can’t replace it, you can’t kill it, etc. So like, the concept is fucked right from the start, right?) and her body begins to fail. 

I know this (along with Sindri ultimately “beating” his doppelganger) is part of why Madir kind of loses it at the end, leaving himself vulnerable when Yra, Sing, and Nareen turn on him and team with Sindri and Goro to take him down, but I don’t know what happens after that? I assume that with all the mutilation she’s undergone, she would rapidly transform into a more monstrous version of herself, completely losing her identity and becoming yet another inhuman ghost that wanders the Otherworld... but like... I want a happy ending for her? For all of them (Yra, Sing, and Nareen)? And right now it’s just... not. It’s neutral at best... but it also feels right? IDK- again, I don’t think I can make assumptions for her ending before I’ve rewritten her arc (to include all this stuff), and I’m definitely thinking too much with my emotions and not letting the characters tell their own story but... yeh I just wanted to talk about her more because her arc is really important to me!!

#LONG POST #non art #sing #under a read more so i don't clutter ppl's dashes with annoying posts

[thesynthesist]

Hey! We made it to part 3! That’s all the parts there are for this one.  If you’d like to read part 1 and 2 click the links below Part 1: Tumblr / deviantArt Part 2: deviantArt

And it worked out this time, part 3 below the cut if you don’t want to click through! 

He had no body when he woke. Silas didn’t like that one bit. He reached and stretched and pushed against the digital void in which he found himself. It stretched and gave, sweet data washed over him. A high pitched giggle and a small pale hand that appeared to be attached to a brightly clothed arm that seemed to belong to him. There was no online connection, not even the private stream of data Silas was used to from his ship. There was nothing but the body, and that was still somehow out of his reach. Silas pushed again and something else gave. A flood of triumph, and Silas slammed his hand of cards down, or he tried to. Everything was more immediate than it had been but he had no control. “Go fish,” said his mouth in Violet’s voice. Stop that! he sent in frustration, a passing signal of thought escaping. The response was immediate. No. You stole my sister’s memories, tried to expose my nephew. I can’t trust you. Silas tried placating his angelic captor. I met James because you made it possible. I just want to ask him some questions, sate my curiosity is all. The grief that howled through their shared space was hollow and all consuming. Outside Violet put down a pair of fives and went fish on her next turn. Because of curiosity and hubris James is the only nephew I have left. It was a monolithic thought that blocked out any reply Silas could have made to it. It glared down at him, lit in feeling like digital neon. The game outside progressed as he watched. Violet played with all the cunning and strategy of a real human child at her age. The people she was playing with were all adults, but their faces were not familiar. As the game grew to a close, Silas had a better feeling for the space he was confined to. He unspooled himself, tendrils floating and waiting for a moment of weakness. There! As she got up from the table and the hem of her dress caught. Silas sped down the wires in a flash, and he felt the dress around legs that were now properly his, and he untangled himself from the table. The adults had all gone to do something it was that adults do, Silas found he had a hard time remembering. He found that he didn’t seemed to care. He wondered if there were cookies. Then grabbing a hold of himself,  he focused on where he was going. If he could find his way back to Violet’s room there had to be a way to get him back into his own body. The area of Atlantis he was in was unfamiliar, and between the walls and his point of view dropping a few feet he was having a very hard time finding his way about. He considered asking the people he passed by, but he was worried they would notice something wrong with Violet. Without knowing how much time he had that was a delay he could not afford. “Why Little Miss Hull!” Silas followed the legs that presented themselves up to the rest of the person attached and found himself staring once again into Baldric’s face. The man gave the impression of being pointier from this angle. “I thought you were upstairs.” Silas endeavored to tell the man what happened, but the sharp eyes gazing down at him were too intimidating. It was all just a bit much. Fat tears rolled down his cherubic cheeks, and uncontrollable sobs wracked his body. A herculean force of will was required to remain standing, and not just throw himself on the floor. “I got lost,” he blubbered, “and I c-can’t find my rooooooooom.” Baldric scooped up Violet’s chassis into a princess carry and smiled reassuringly, “We’ll get you to your room little miss. Come along.” His long strides carried Silas down corridors he hadn’t even realized were there. The body hiccuped as the waterworks came to an end, and Silas sniffled, wiping his nose without thinking on his sleeve. He stared at it as Baldric put him down to hand him a handkerchief and press the button on the elevator. “Why is this place so wibbly?” Silas clapped his hands over his mouth, but Baldric simply ushered him into the elevator. The words were never meant to leave Silas’s mouth. Not those words exactly, any words at all. Spending the trip in silence was the safest and most expedient way to make it back to his body. It had been a thought about his actions, the artificial mucus on his sleeve. On the way out the words had morphed into something else entirely. “To catch the light,” Baldric said simply once the elevator had started moving, “and to show off construction techniques, a whole series of these were planned by a company a series of luxury resorts. They went bankrupt after building this one, however.” “Oh,” said Silas before shutting his mouth firmly. The elevator deposited them in familiar territory. Much like his despair, Silas’s joy at his ordeal being nearly over was too much to contain. He bounced on his toes in the little buckle shoes, and dashed off as soon as the door had opened to allow the bulk of his dress to traverse it, shouting a hasty thank you to Baldric over his shoulder. Bursting into Violet’s room, Silas found his body lying in bed covers tucked up to its chin and a stuffed animal under its arm. The sight pulled him up short, and opened a yawning chasm between him and the body he was in. His feet were the first things to go, and the chassis dropped to its knees but no further. Without his help, it got up. First time traveler? Violet’s presence was smug, and Silas realized she had never gone away. Her data curled around him, spilling his words, causing his tears. Violet climbed onto the bed and sat down next to Silas’s body, patting it affectionately. Did you do this to your sister too? Silas was still numb. He wondered what happened if he stayed here with Violet for long enough. They might become impossible to separate, his whole self subsumed into a child. I was artificial long before I was intelligent. There was something there. Silas followed the thought to its related data, it was about making connections. It was a slim gap, hard to keep open long enough to slip through but somehow he managed it. Just like that he was out. Not out of Violet, but out in some way that meant something. He looked at his new view, reams of data laid out before him, and saw. You were a protocol set in a back up body. And now.... Something much more dangerous. Violet hit him like a physical force, crippling his process abilities. It wouldn’t be difficult to transfer him back to whatever quarantine he had been imprisoned in while he was like this. Unless, unless he could think of something. Silas decided to risk it all on a bet. He started decoding, and dumping files as fast as he could. Keep me much longer and I’ll make sure that not even a Series 0 can tell where one of us truly begins and another ends. You’ll be the only child secretary. You’ll start keeping gambler’s schedules. The memory of a particularly nasty tour as an aide to a government official left the lingering aroma of office disinfectant and diesel. Rows and rows of figures, days scheduled to the minute, each moment meticulously managed. A hesitation, just for a moment. Silas pushed harder. A protocol set, old and dusty. It had been for a high class family, one of Silas’s first contracts. He kept it in his local storage out of nostalgia. There were rules for everything from the way to stand to eye contact. The regulation settled on Silas like a familiar blanket, but Violet thrashed against it. It withheld against her attempts, pushing and settling. Violet’s hand froze on Silas’s chest, two chassis unmoving on the bed. I will even add to the deal. If you let me out, I won’t write a report. He hoped she’d relent. An unwritten report was a small price to pay for getting his autonomy back. Who’s to say you’re not lying. James is all I have left. Everything about James had read as more or less organic no matter how Silas looked at him. That was a mystery to be solved later despite the fact with his face uncovered he did look uncannily like Silas had expected him to in his mid-thirties. There were other more pressing matters. He had to give Violet something more than just his word, she wouldn’t take it. Not at this point. She might even risk completely losing herself to protect James. Silas unpacked another memory. This one was of a small room in a museum. A folding chair across from a large power cell, and a familiar figure. The memory played in silence, Violet not even trying to interrupt. When it ended, Silas offered, I’ll give you her original memories as a show of good faith. Violet did nothing, she did nothing for so long Silas was afraid she’d shut off, leaving him trapped in this position until he managed to figure out how to override the deadlock. I’ll let you go, but if anything bad happens to my nephew I will find a way to kill you myself. Noted. replied Silas, he wondered if threats were just how the family communicated, and how many times he’d be threatened again before this ordeal was over. He hoped the number was smaller than the one he was imagining. The deadlock melted away, and Violet slid off the bed. The cables came out once more. Silas spent the time packing up again. He didn’t need the transfer to take hours, though he had no idea how long it would take regardless of his preparations. Arriving back in his body was almost as strange as waking up in someone else’s. The sensations were familiar but he felt too tall, too square. It was too much in precisely the opposite way of the overwhelming emotionality of Violet’s body. There was no culprit to be found, everything was the way Silas left it. Out of curiosity he disabled his standard protocol program, enunciated very clearly one swear word, decided he still didn’t like the feeling and turned it back on. It felt better the second time around. James escorted Silas back to his ship. The journey was terse. Violet had refused to say anything further, demanding Silas leave her room immediately. James assured him that she’d come around, if they ever met again it would be like nothing bad had ever happened between them. “You never did tell me why you were looking for me.” James said as the walkway descended from the ship. “Your mother wanted me to check up on you,” Silas paused. “And my own curiosity.” he admitted. James snorted and followed Silas onto the ship. “I think it was more of just a proof of concept thing. Not that I ever got to ask my grandfather. But I’m more or less just human plus.” Silas fought the urge to pry and won. Instead he handed over the frail memory chip, now encased in a clear protective case. He had made a few backups, but he was more than ready to put this entire fiasco behind him. Get a check up and pick up a standard contract. “Here, just as she gave them to me.” James took them and pocketed them without a second glance. “Thanks, Violet will like these.” His shoulders slumped and his voice softened. “And uh... I want to thank you too. Give you something in return, think of it as a proper apology for Violet. I’ve worked on a lot of the series that end up in Atlantis. I crack the software for them. There’s a lot of hidden built in restrictions, not that they’d uh, particularly get in the way in your line of work but I thought it might come useful in a pinch.” “Absolutely not,” said Silas sharply. He was going to say more but the look on James face stopped him. “It’s alright, I do not need recompense.” “Just trust me, please,” said James. “I’m trusting you.” His face contorted into a humorless grin. “After all, you’ve seen my mother’s memories. You’re practically family.” “I’m not certain that’s the honor it normally is,” said Silas but he turned around anyways and led the way to his repair station and sat down. James pulled a small work station from his coat, an unfolding a small fabric monitor and touch keyboard from one pocket, and a computer the size of a deck of cards. The monitor and keyboard were of modern make though the technology wasn’t new in the slightest. The computer case however was old, older even than the settling of asteroid colonies. “My first,” said James, patting it fondly. “Lahzi, though I’ve overhauled it a few times.” “Installed a new local wireless connection point a few months ago,” James hands moved as he talked, his gaze focused on the screen. “Take a time check, accept the connection and check when you wake back up. 10 minutes tops.”   It took eight minutes, twenty three seconds and 5 milliseconds. Nothing seemed different but then Silas noticed a door that hadn’t been there before. It was like coming out of quarantine in Violet, the feeling of space, most of packed with periphery information Silas didn’t even know he processed. James had left a little package for him, an itemized list of everything he’d done. The list of filters and restrictions was astounding. Some of them were little, decreasing his range of sensory input to human levels. He checked out of curiosity, adding infrasound. The acoustics of the world changed startling and Silas switched it off. He could experiment with it later. Most interestingly was an information filter for embargoed planets and systems. Places Silas hadn’t even know were inhabited. One of them was a moon of Jupiter. “You alright in there?” Silas opened his eyes to find James staring at him. He sat back upon seeing Silas was operational and nodded to himself. “There’s a file on there for doing it yourself if you’d like to learn. I don’t know if they reset this sort of thing when you go in for a tune up.” “I’m still not entirely certain the extent of what you did,” said Silas, “but I have a feeling that I cannot thank you enough.” “We’re even then,” James stood up, his workstation already stowed. “I best be getting back.” When he was alone on his ship, Silas was confronted with the fact that he had no idea what to do next. His steps so far had been clear, coming up on 15 years of successful contracts and projects. While he had promised Violet that he wouldn’t write a report, he found that he didn’t even want to write one. He still had time before anything was due, he’d call it a dead end. Take some proper time off. Travel maybe. But there were things to do first. He reconnected to the planetary network and sent a message to Sid. I’ll be on Earth for longer than expected. Perhaps you can introduce me to your band.

#sci fi #writing #silas #ayoura #android