#but given the opportunity (and setting aside for a moment the fact that she was utterly hammered)

[sleeplesslionheart]

The Haunting of Bly Manor as Allegory: Self-Sacrifice, Grief, and Queer Representation

As always, I am extremely late with my fandom infatuations—this time, I’m about three years late getting smitten with Dani and Jamie from The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Because of my lateness, I’ll confess from the start that I’m largely unfamiliar with the fandom’s output: whether fanfiction, interpretations, analyses, discourse, what have you. I’ve dabbled around a bit, but haven’t seen anything near the extent of the discussions that may or may not have happened in the wake of the show’s release, so I apologize if I’m re-treading already well-trod ground or otherwise making observations that’ve already been made. Even so, I’m completely stuck on Dani/Jamie right now and have some thoughts that I want to compose and work through.

This analysis concerns the show’s concluding episode in particular, so please be aware that it contains heavy, detailed spoilers for the ending, as well as the show in its entirety. Additionally, as a major trigger warning: this essay contains explicit references to suicide and suicidal ideation, so please tread cautiously. (These are triggers for me, and I did, in fact, manage to trigger myself while writing this—but this was also very therapeutic to write, so those triggering moments wound up also being some healing opportunities for me. But definitely take care of yourself while reading this, okay?).

After finishing Bly and necessarily being destroyed by the ending, staying up until 2:00 a.m. crying, re-watching scenes on Youtube, so on and so forth, I came away from the show (as others have before me) feeling like its ending functioned fairly well as an allegory for loving and being in a romantic partnership with someone who suffers from severe mental illness, grief, and trauma.

Without going too deeply into my own personal backstory, I want to provide some opening context, which I think will help to show why this interpretation matters to me and how I’m making sense of it.

Like many of Bly’s characters, I’ve experienced catastrophic grief and loss in my own life. A few years ago, my brother died in some horrific circumstances (which you can probably guess at if you read between the lines here), leaving me traumatized and with severe problems with my mental health. When it happened, I was engaged to a man (it was back when I thought I was straight (lol), so I’ve also found Dani’s comphet backstory to be incredibly relatable…but more on this later) who quickly tired of my grieving. Just a few months after my brother’s death, my then-fiancé started saying things like “I wish you’d just go back to normal, the way you were” and “I’ve gotten back on-track and am just waiting for you to get back on-track with me,” apparently without any understanding that my old “normal” was completely gone and was never coming back. He saw my panic attacks as threatening and unreasonable, often resorting to yelling at me to stop instead of trying to comfort me. He complained that he felt like I hadn’t reciprocated the care that he’d provided me in the immediate aftermath of my brother’s loss, and that he needed me to set aside my grief (and “heal from it”) so that he could be the center of my attention. Although this was not the sole cause, all of it laid the groundwork for our eventual breakup. It was as though my trauma and mourning had ruined the innocent happiness of his own life, and he didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

Given this, I was powerfully struck by the ways that Jamie handles Dani’s trauma: accepting and supporting her, never shaming her or diminishing her pain.

Early in the show—in their first true interaction with one another, in fact—Jamie finds Dani in the throes of a panic attack. She responds to this with no judgment; instead, she validates Dani’s experiences. To put Dani at ease, she first jokes about her own “endless well of deep, inconsolable tears,” before then offering more serious words of encouragement about how well Dani is dealing with the circumstances at Bly. Later, when Dani confesses to seeing apparitions of Peter and Edmund, Jamie doesn’t pathologize this, doubt it, or demean it, but accepts it with a sincere question about whether Dani’s ex-fiancé is with them at that moment—followed by another effort to comfort Dani with some joking (this time, a light-hearted threat at Edmund to back off) and more affirmations of Dani’s strength in the face of it all.

All of this isn’t to say, however, that Dani’s grief-driven behaviors don’t also hurt Jamie (or, more generally, that grieving folks don’t also do things that hurt their loved ones). When Dani recoils from their first kiss because of another guilt-inspired vision of Eddie, Jamie is clearly hurt and disappointed; still, Jamie doesn’t hold this against Dani, as she instead tries to take responsibility for it herself. A week later, though, Jamie strongly indicates that she needed that time to be alone in the aftermath and that she is wary that Dani’s pattern of withdrawing from her every time they start to get closer will continue to happen. Nonetheless, it’s important to note that this contributes to Dani’s recognition that she’s been allowing her guilt about Eddie’s death to become all-consuming, preventing her from acting on her own desires to be with Jamie. That recognition, in turn, leads Dani to decide to move through her grief and beyond her guilt. Once she’s alone later in the evening after that first kiss, Dani casts Eddie’s glasses into the bonfire’s lingering embers; she faces off with his specter for a final time, and after burning away his shadow, her visions of him finally cease. When she and Jamie reunite during their 6:00 a.m. terrible coffee visit, Dani acknowledges that the way that she and Jamie left things was “wrong,” and she actively tries to take steps to “do something right” by inviting Jamie out for a drink at the village pub…which, of course, just so happens to be right below Jamie’s flat. (Victoria Pedretti’s expressions in that scene are so good).

Before we continue, though, let’s pause here a moment to consider some crucial factors in all of this. First, there is a significant difference between “moving through one’s grief” and simply discarding it…or being pressured by someone else to discard it. Second, there is also a significant difference between “moving through one’s grief” and allowing one’s grief to become all-consuming. Keep these distinctions in mind as we go on.

Ultimately, the resolution of the show’s core supernatural conflict involves Dani inviting Viola’s ghost to inhabit her, which Viola accepts. This frees the other spirits who have been caught in Bly Manor’s “gravity well,” even as it dooms Dani to eventually be overtaken by Viola and her rage. Jamie, however, offers to stay with Dani while she waits for this “beast in the jungle” to claim her. The show’s final episode shows the two of them going on to forge a life together, opening a flower shop in a cute town in Vermont, enjoying years of domestic bliss, and later getting married (in what capacities they can—more on this soon), all while remaining acutely aware of the inevitability of Dani’s demise.

The allegorical potentials of this concluding narrative scenario are fairly flexible. It is possible, for instance, to interpret Dani’s “beast in the jungle” as chronic (and/or terminal) illness—in particular, there’re some harrowing readings that we could do in relation to degenerative neurological diseases associated with aging (e.g. dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, progressive supranuclear palsy, etc.), especially if we put the final episode into conversation with the show’s earlier subplot about the death of Owen’s mother, its recurring themes of memory loss as a form of death (or, even, as something worse than death), and Jamie’s resonant remarks that she would rather be “put out of her misery” than let herself be “worn away a little bit every day.” For the purposes of this analysis, though, I’m primarily concerned with interpreting Viola’s lurking presence in Dani’s psyche as a stand-in for severe grief, trauma, and mental illness. …Because, even as we may “move through” grief and trauma, and even as we may work to heal from them, they never just go away completely—they’re always lurking around, waiting to resurface. (In fact, the final minutes of the last episode feature a conversation between older Jamie and Flora about contending with this inevitable recurrence of grief). Therapy can give us tools to negotiate and live with them, of course; but that doesn’t mean that they’re not still present in our lives. The tools that therapy provides are meant to help us manage those inevitable resurfacings in healthy ways. But they are not meant to return us to some pre-grief or pre-trauma state of “normality” or to make them magically dissipate into the ether, never to return. And, even with plenty of therapy and with healthy coping mechanisms, we can still experience significant mental health issues in the wake of catastrophic grief, loss, and trauma; therapy doesn’t totally preclude that possibility.

In light of my own experiences with personal tragedy, crumbling mental health, and the dissolution of a romantic partnership with someone who couldn’t accept the presence of grief in my life, I was immediately enamored with the ways that Jamie approaches the enduring aftereffects of Dani’s trauma during the show’s final episode. Jamie never once pressures Dani to just be “normal.” She never once issues any judgment about what Dani is experiencing. At those times when Dani’s grief and trauma do resurface—when the beast in the jungle catches up with her—Jamie is there to console her, often with the strategies that have always worked in their relationship: gentle, playful ribbing and words of affirmation. There are instances in which Dani doesn’t emote joyfulness during events that we might otherwise expect her to—consider, for instance, how somber Dani appears in the proposal scene, in contrast to Jamie’s smiles and laughter. (In the year after my brother’s death, my ex-fiancé and his family would observe that I seemed gloomy in situations that they thought should be fun and exciting. “Then why aren’t you smiling?” they’d ask, even when I tried to assure them that I was having a good time, but just couldn’t completely feel that or express it in the ways that I might’ve in the past). Dani even comments on an inability to feel that is all too reminiscent of the blunting of emotions that can happen in the wake of acute trauma: “It’s like I see you in front of me and I feel you touching me, and every day we’re living our lives, and I’m aware of that. But it’s like I don’t feel it all the way.” But throughout all of this (and in contrast to my own experiences with my ex), Jamie attempts to ground Dani without ever invalidating what she’s experiencing. When Dani tells her that she can’t feel, Jamie assures her, “If you can’t feel anything, then I’ll feel everything for the both of us.”

A few days after I finished the show for the first time, I gushed to a friend about how taken I was with the whole thing. Jamie was just so…not what I had experienced in my own life. I loved witnessing a representation of such a supportive and understanding partner, especially within the context of a sapphic romance. After breaking up with my own ex-fiancé, I’ve since come to terms with my sexuality and am still processing through the roles that compulsory heterosexuality and internalized homophobia have played in my life; so Dani and Jamie’s relationship has been incredibly meaningful for me to see for so, so many reasons.

“I’m glad you found the show so relatable,” my friend told me. “But,” she cautioned, “don’t lose sight of what Dani does in that relationship.” Then, she pointed out something that I hadn’t considered at all. Although Jamie may model the possibilities of a supportive partnership, Dani’s tragic death espouses a very different and very troubling perspective: the poisonous belief that I’m inevitably going to hurt my partner with my grief and trauma, so I need to leave them before I can inflict that harm on them.

Indeed, this is a deeply engrained belief that I hold about myself. While I harbor a great deal of anger at my ex-fiancé for how he treated me, there’s also still a part of me that sincerely believes that I nearly ruined his and his family’s lives by bringing such immense devastation and darkness into it. On my bad days (which are many), I have strong convictions about this in relation to my future romantic prospects as well. How could anyone ever want to be with me? I wonder. And even if someone eventually does try to be with me, all I’ll do is ruin her life with all my trauma and sadness. I shouldn’t even want to be with anyone, because I don’t want to hurt someone else. I don’t want someone else to deal with what I’ve had to deal with. I even think about this, too, with my friends. Since my brother’s death and my breakup, I’ve gone through even more trauma, pain, grief, and loss, such that now I continue to struggle enormously with issues like anhedonia, emotional fragility, and social anxiety. I worry, consequently, that I’m just a burden on my friends. That I’m too hard to be around. That being around me, with all of my pain and perpetual misfortune, just causes my friends pain, too. That they’re better off not having to deal with me at all. I could spare them all, I think, by just letting them go, by not bothering them anymore.

I suspect that this is why I didn’t notice any issues with Dani’s behavior at the end of Bly Manor at first. Well…that and the fact that the reality of the show’s conclusion is immensely triggering for me. Probably, my attention just kind of slid past the truth of it in favor of indulging in the catharsis of a sad gay romance.

But after my friend observed this issue, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I realized, then, that I hadn’t extended the allegory out to its necessary conclusion…which is that Dani has, in effect, committed suicide in order to—or so she believes, at least—protect Jamie from her. This is the case regardless of whether we keep Viola’s ghost in the mix as an actual, tangible, existing threat within the show’s diegesis or as a figurative symbol of the ways that other forces can “haunt” us to the point of our own self-destruction. If the former, then Dani’s suicide (or the more gentle and elusive description that I’ve seen: her act of “giving herself to the lake”) is to prevent Viola’s ghost from ever harming Jamie. But if the latter, if we continue doing the work of allegorical readings, then it’s possible to interpret Bly’s conclusion as the tragedy of Dani ultimately succumbing to her mental illness and suicidal ideation.

The problems with this allegory’s import really start cropping up, however, when we consider the ways that the show valorizes Dani’s actions as an expression of ultimate, self-sacrificing love—a valorization that Bly accomplishes, in particular, through its sustained contrasting of love and possession.

The Implications of Idealizing Self-Sacrifice as True Love

During a pivotal conversation in one of the show’s early episodes, Dani and Jamie discuss the “wrong kind of love” that existed between Rebecca Jessel and Peter Quint. Jamie remarks on how she “understands why so many people mix up love and possession,” thereby characterizing Rebecca and Peter’s romance as a matter of possession—as well as hinting, perhaps, that Jamie herself has had experiences with this in her own past. After considering for a moment, Dani agrees: “People do, don’t they? Mix up love and possession. […] I don’t think that should be possible. I mean, they’re opposites, really, love and ownership.” We can already tell from this scene that Dani and Jamie are, themselves, heading towards a burgeoning romance—and that this contrast between love and possession (and their self-awareness of it) is going to become a defining feature of that romance.

Indeed, the show takes great pains to emphasize the genuine love that exists between Dani and Jamie against the damaging drive for possession enacted by characters like Peter (who consistently manipulates Rebecca and kills her to keep her ghost with him) and Viola (who has killed numerous people and trapped their souls at Bly over the centuries in a long since forgotten effort to reclaim her life with her husband and daughter from Perdita, her murderously jealous sister). These contrasts take multiple forms and emerge from multiple angles, all to establish that Dani and Jamie’s love is uniquely safe, caring, healing, mutually supportive, and built on a foundation of prevailing concern for the other’s wellbeing. Some of these contrasts are subtle and understated. Consider, for instance, how Hannah observes that Rebecca looks like she hasn’t slept in days because of the turmoil of her entanglements with Peter, whereas Jamie’s narration describes how Dani gets the best sleep of her life during the first night that she and Jamie spend together. Note, too, the editing work in Episode 6 that fades in and out between the memories of the destructive ramifications of Henry and Charlotte’s affair and the scenes of tender progression in Dani and Jamie’s romance. Other contrasts, though, are far more overt. Of course, one of the most blatant examples (and most pertinent to this analysis) is the very fact that the ghosts of Viola, Peter, and Rebecca are striving to reclaim the people they love and the lives that they’ve lost by literally possessing the bodies and existences of the living.

The role of consent is an important factor in these ghostly possessions and serves as a further contrast with Dani and Jamie’s relationship. Peter and Rebecca frequently possess Miles and Flora without their consent—at times, even, when the children explicitly tell them to stop or, at the very least, to provide them with warnings beforehand. While inhabiting the children, Peter and Rebecca go on to harm them and put them at risk (e.g. Peter smokes cigarettes while in Miles’s body; Rebecca leaves Flora alone and unconscious on the grounds outside the manor) and to commit acts of violence against others (e.g. Peter pushes Hannah into the well, killing her; Peter and Rebecca together attack Dani and restrain her). The “It’s you, it’s me, it’s us,” conceit—with which living people can invite Bly’s ghosts to possess them, the mechanism by which Dani breaks the curse of Bly’s gravity well—is a case of dubious consent at best and abusive, violent control at worst. (“I didn’t agree,” Rebecca says after Peter leaves her body, releasing his “invited” possession of her at the very moment that the lake’s waters start to fill her lungs).

Against these selfish possessions and wrong kinds of love, Jamie and Dani’s love is defined by their selfless refusal to possess one another. A key characteristic of their courtship involves them expressing vulnerability in ways that invite the other to make their own decisions about whether to accept and how to proceed (or not proceed). As we discussed earlier, Dani and Jamie’s first kiss happens after Dani opens up about her guilt surrounding her ex-fiancé’s death. Pausing that kiss, Jamie checks, “You sure?” and only continues after Dani answers with a spoken yes. (Let’s also take this moment to appreciate Amelia Eve’s excellent, whispered “Thank fuck,” that isn’t included in Netflix’s subtitles). Even so, Dani frantically breaks away from her just moments later. But Jamie accepts this and doesn’t push Dani to continue, believing, in fact, that Dani has withdrawn precisely because Jamie has pushed too much already. A week later, Dani takes the initiative to advance their budding romance by inviting Jamie out for a drink—which Jamie accepts by, instead, taking Dani to see her blooming moonflowers that very evening. There, in her own moment of vulnerability, Jamie shares her heart-wrenching and tumultuous backstory with Dani in order to “skip to the end” and spare Dani the effort of getting to know her. By openly sharing these difficult details about herself, Jamie evidently intends to provide Dani with information that would help her decide for herself whether she wants to continue their relationship or not.

Their shared refusal to possess reaches its ultimate culmination in that moment, all those years later, when Dani discovers just how close she’s come to strangling Jamie—and then leaves their home to travel all the way back to Bly and drown herself in the lake because she could “not risk her most important thing, her most important person.” Upon waking to find that Dani has left, Jamie immediately sets off to follow her back to Bly. And in an absolutely heartbreaking, beautiful scene, we see Jamie attempting the “you, me, us,” invitation, desperate for Dani to possess her, for Dani to take Jamie with her. (Y’all, I know I’m critiquing this scene right now, but I also fuckin’ love it, okay? Ugh. The sight of Jamie screaming into the water and helplessly grasping for Dani is gonna stay with me forever. brb while I go cry about it again). Dani, of course, refuses this plea. Because “Dani wouldn’t. Dani would never.” Further emphasizing the nobility of Dani’s actions, Jamie’s narration also reveals that Dani’s self-sacrificial death has not only spared Jamie alone, but has also enabled Dani to take the place of the Lady of the Lake and thereby ensure that no one else can be taken and possessed by Viola’s gravity well ever again.

And so we have the show’s ennoblement of Dani’s magnanimous self-sacrifice. By inviting Viola to possess her, drowning herself to keep from harming Jamie, and then refusing to possess Jamie or anyone else, Dani has effectively saved everyone: the children, the restive souls that have been trapped at Bly, anyone else who may ever come to Bly in the future, and the woman she loves most. Dani has also, then, broken the perpetuation of Bly’s cycles of possession and trauma with her selfless expression of love for Jamie.

The unfortunate effect of all of this is that, quite without meaning to (I think? I hope—), The Haunting of Bly Manor ends up stumbling headlong into a validation of suicide as a selfless act of true love, as a force of protection and salvation.

So, before we proceed, I just want to take this moment to say—definitively, emphatically, as someone who has survived and experienced firsthand the ineffably catastrophic consequences of suicide—that suicide is nothing remotely resembling a selfless “refusal to possess” or an act of love. I’m not going to harp extensively on this, though, because I’d rather not trigger myself for a second time (so far, lol) while writing this essay. Just take my fuckin’ word for it. And before anybody tries to hit me with some excuse like “But Squall, it isn’t that the show is valorizing suicide, it’s that Dani is literally protecting Jamie from Viola,” please consider that I’ve already discussed how the show’s depiction of this lent itself to my own noxious beliefs that “all I do is harm other people with my grief, so maybe I should stop talking to my friends so that they don’t have to deal with me anymore.” Please consider what these narrative details and their allegorical import might tell people who are struggling with their mental health—even if not with suicidal ideation, then with the notion that they should self-sacrificially remove themselves from relationships for the sake of sparing loved ones from (assumed) harm.

Okay, that said, now let’s proceed…‘cause I’ve got even more to say, ‘cause the more I mulled over these details, the more I also came to realize that Dani’s self-sacrificial death in Bly’s conclusion also has the unfortunate effect of undermining some of its other (attempted) themes and its queer representation.

What Bly Manor Tries (and Fails) to Say about Grief and Acceptance

Let’s start by jumping back to a theme we’ve already addressed briefly: moving through one’s grief.

The Haunting of Bly Manor does, in fact, have a lot to say about this. Or…it wants to, more like. On the whole, it seems like it’s trying really hard to give us a cautionary tale about the destructive effects of unprocessed grief and the misplaced guilt that we can wind up carrying around when someone we love dies. The show spends a whole lot of time preaching about how important it is that we learn to accept our losses without allowing them to totally consume us—or without lingering around in denial about them (gettin’ some Kübler-Ross in here, y’all). Sadly, though, it does kind of a half-assed job of it…despite the fact that this is a major recurring theme and a component of the characterizations and storylines of, like, most of its characters. In fact, this fundamentally Kübler-Rossian understanding of what it means to move through grief and to accept loss and mortality appears to be the show’s guiding framework. During his rehearsal dinner speech in the first episode, Owen proclaims that, “To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them,” with such eerie resonance—as the camera stays set on Jamie’s unwavering gaze—that we know that what we’re about to experience is a story about accepting the inevitable losses of the people we love.

Bly Manor is chock full of characters who’re stuck in earlier stages of grief but aren’t really moving along to reach that acceptance stage. I mean, the whole cause of the main supernatural haunting is that Viola so ferociously refuses to accept her death and move on from her rage (brought about by Perdita’s resentment) that she spends centuries strangling whoever she comes across, which then effectively traps them there with her. And the other antagonistic ghostly forces, Rebecca and Peter, also obviously suck at accepting their own deaths, given that they actually believe that possessing two children is a perfectly fine (and splendid) way for them to grasp at some semblance of life again. (Actually…the more that I’ve thought about this, the more that I think each of the pre-acceptance stages of grief in Kübler-Ross’s model may even have a corresponding character to represent it: Hannah is denial; Viola is anger; Peter and Rebecca are bargaining; Henry is depression. Just a little something to chew on).

But let’s talk more at-length about this theme in relation to two characters we haven’t focused on yet: Hannah and Henry. For Hannah, this theme shows up in her struggles to accept that her husband, Sam, has left her (Charlotte wryly burns candles in the chapel as though marking his passing, while Hannah seems to be holding out hope that he might return) and in her persistent denial that Peter-as-Miles has killed her. As a ghost, she determinedly continues going about her daily life and chores even as she’s progressively losing her grip on reality. Henry, meanwhile, won’t issue official notifications of Dominic’s death and continues to collect his mail because doing otherwise would mean admitting to the true finality of Dominic’s loss. At the same time, he is so, completely consumed by his guilt about the role that he believes he played in Charlotte and Dominic’s deaths that he’s haunting himself with an evil alter-ego. His overriding guilt and despair also result in his refusal to be more present in Miles and Flora’s lives—even with the knowledge that Flora is actually his daughter.

In the end, both Hannah and Henry reach some critical moments of acceptance. But, honestly, the show doesn’t do a great job of bringing home this theme of move through your grief with either of them…or with anybody else, really. Peter basically winds up bullying Hannah into recognizing that her broken body is still at the bottom of the well—and then she accepts her own death right in time to make a completely abortive attempt at rescuing Dani and Flora. Henry finally has a preternatural Bad Feeling about things (something about a phone being disconnected? whose phone? Bly’s phone? his phone? I don’t understand), snaps to attention, and rushes to Bly right in time to make an equally abortive rescue attempt that leaves him incapacitated so that his not-quite-ghost can hang out with Hannah long enough to find out that she’s dead. But at least he decides to be an attentive uncle/dad to Miles and Flora after that, I guess. Otherwise, Hannah and Henry get handwaved away pretty quickly before we can really witness what their acceptance means for them in any meaningful detail. (I blame this on some sloppy writing and the way-too-long, all-about-Viola eighth episode. And, on that note, what about the “acceptances” of Rebecca, Peter, and Viola there at the end? Rebecca does get an interesting moment of acceptance—of a sort—with her offer to possess Flora in order to experience Flora’s imminent drowning for her, thereby sparing the child by tucking her in a happy memory. Peter just…disappears at the end with some way-too-late words of apology. Viola’s “acceptance,” however, is tricky…What she accepts is Dani’s invitation to inhabit her. More on this later).

Hannah and Henry’s stories appear to be part of the show’s efforts to warn us about the ways that unprocessed, all-consuming grief can cause us to miss opportunities to have meaningful relationships with others. Hannah doesn’t just miss her chance to be with Owen because…well, she’s dead, but also because of her unwillingness to move on from Sam beforehand. Her denial about her own death, in turn, prevents her from taking the opportunity as a ghost to tell Owen that she loves him. Henry, at least, does figure out that he’s about to lose his chance to be a caring parental figure to his daughter and nephew—but just barely. It takes the near-deaths of him and the children to finally prompt that realization.

Of the cast, Dani gets the most thorough and intentional development of this move through your grief theme. And, importantly, she learns this lesson in time to cultivate a meaningful relationship that she could’ve easily missed out on otherwise. As we’ve already discussed, a critical part of Dani’s character arc involves her realization that she has to directly confront Edmund’s death and start absolving herself of her guilt in order to open up the possibility of a romantic relationship with Jamie. In Episode 4, Jamie’s narration suggests that Dani has had a habit of putting off such difficult processes (whether in regards to moving through her grief, breaking off her engagement to Edmund, or coming to terms with her sexuality), as she’s been constantly deferring to “another night, another time for years and years.” Indeed, the show’s early episodes are largely devoted to showing the consequences of Dani’s deferrals and avoidances. From the very beginning, we see just how intrusively Dani’s unresolved guilt is impacting her daily life and functioning. She covers up mirrors to try to prevent herself from encountering Edmund’s haunting visage, yet still spots him in the reflections of windows and polished surfaces. Panic attacks seem to be regular occurrences for her, sparked by reminders of him. And all of this only gets worse and more disruptive as Dani starts acting on her attraction to Jamie.

It's only after Dani decides to begin moving through her grief and guilt that she’s able to start becoming emotionally and physically intimate with Jamie. And the major turning point for this comes during a scene that features a direct, explicit discussion of the importance of accepting (and even embracing) mortality.

That’s right—it’s time to talk about the moonflower scene.

In a very “I am extremely fed up with people not being able to deal with my traumatic past, so I’m going to tell you about all of the shit that I’ve been through so that you can go ahead and decide whether you want to bolt right now instead of just dropping me later on” move (which…legit, Jamie—I feel that), Jamie sits Dani down at her moonflower patch to give her the full rundown of her own personal backstory and worldview. Her monologue evinces both a profound cynicism and a profound valuation of human life…all of which is also suggestive, to me at least, of a traumatized person who at once desperately wishes for intimate connection, but who’s also been burned way too many times (something with which I am wholly unfamiliar, lol). She characterizes people as “exhaustive effort with very little to show for it,” only to go on to wax poetic about how human mortality is as beautiful as the ephemeral buds of a moonflower. This is, in essence, Jamie’s sorta convoluted way of articulating that whole “To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them” idea.

After detailing her own past, Jamie shifts gears to suggest that she believes that cultivating a relationship with Dani—like the devoted work of growing a tropical, transient Ipomoea alba in England—might be worth the effort. And as part of this cultivation work, Jamie then acknowledges Dani’s struggles with her guilt, while also firmly encouraging her to move through it by accepting the beauty of mortality:  

“I know you’re carrying this guilt around, but I also know that you don’t decide who lives and who doesn’t. I’m sorry Dani, but you don’t. Humans are organic. It’s a fact. We’re meant to die. It’s natural…beautiful. […] We leave more life behind to take our place. Like this moonflower. It’s where all its beauty lies, you know. In the mortality of the thing.”

After that, Jamie and Dani are finally able to make out unimpeded.

Frustratingly, though, Jamie’s own dealings with grief, loss, and trauma remain terribly understated throughout the show. Her monologue in the moonflower scene is really the most insight that we ever get. Jamie consistently comes off as better equipped to contend with life’s hardships than many of Bly’s other characters; and she is, in fact, the sole member of the cast who is confirmed to have ever had any sort of professional therapy. She regularly demonstrates a remarkable sense of empathy and emotional awareness, able to pick up on others’ needs and then support them accordingly, though often in gruff, tough-love forms. Further, there are numerous scenes in which we see Jamie bestowing incisive guidance for handling difficult situations: the moonflower scene, her advice to Rebecca about contacting Henry after Peter’s disappearance, and her suggestion to Dani that Flora needs to see a psychologist, to name just a few. As such, Jamie appears to have—or, at least, projects—a sort of unflappable groundedness that sets her apart from everyone else in the show.

Bly only suggests that Jamie’s struggles run far deeper than she lets on. There are a few times that we witness quick-tempered outbursts (usually provoked by Miles) and hints of bottled-up rage. Lest we forget, although it was Flora who first found Rebecca’s dead body floating in the water, it was Jamie who then found them both immediately thereafter. We see this happen, but we never learn anything about the impact that this must have had on her. Indeed, Jamie’s exposure to the layered, compounding grief at Bly has no doubt inflicted a great deal of pain on her, suggested by details like her memorialization of Charlotte and Dominic during the bonfire scene. If we look past her flippancy, there must be more than a few grains of truth to that endless well of deep, inconsolable tears—but Jamie never actually shares what they might be. Moreover, although the moonflower scene reveals the complex traumas of her past, we never get any follow-up or elaboration about those details or Dani’s observation of the scar on her shoulder. For the most part, Jamie’s grief goes unspoken.

There’s a case to be made that these omissions are a byproduct of narrator Jamie decentering herself in a story whose primary focus is Dani. Narrator Jamie even claims that the story she’s telling “isn’t really my story. It belongs to someone I knew” (yes, it’s a diversionary tactic to keep us from learning her identity too soon—but she also means it). And in plenty of respects, the telling of the story is, itself, Jamie’s extended expression of her grief. By engaging in this act of oral storytelling to share Dani’s sacrifice with others—especially with those who would have otherwise forgotten—Jamie is performing an important ritual of mourning her wife. Still, it’s for exactly these reasons that I think it would’ve been valuable for the show to include more about the impacts that grief, loss, and trauma had on Jamie prior to Dani’s death. Jamie’s underdevelopment on this front feels more like a disappointing oversight of the show’s writing than her narrator self’s intentional, careful withholding of information. Additionally, I think that Bly leaves Jamie’s grieving on an…odd note (though, yes, I know I’m just a curmudgeonly outlier here). Those saccharine final moments of Jamie filling up the bathtub and sleeping on a chair so that she can face the cracked doorway are a little too heavy-handedly tear-jerking for my liking. And while this, too, may be a ritual of mourning after the undoubtedly taxing effort of telling Dani’s story, it may also suggest that Jamie is demurring her own acceptance of Dani’s death. Is the hand on her shoulder really Dani’s ghost? Or is it Jamie’s own hopeful fabrication that her wife’s spirit is watching over her? (Or—to counter my own point here and suggest a different alternative—could this latter idea (i.e. the imagining of Dani’s ghost) also be another valid manner of “accepting” a loss by preserving a loved one’s presence? “Dead doesn’t mean gone,” after all. …Anyway, maybe I would be more charitable to this scene if not for the hokey, totally out-of-place song. Coulda done without that, seriously).

But let’s jump back to the moonflower scene. For Dani, this marks an important moment in the progression of her own movement through grief. In combination, her newfound readiness to contend with her guilt and her eagerness to grow closer to Jamie enable Dani to find a sense of peace that she hasn’t experienced since Eddie’s death…or maybe ever, really (hang on to this thought for this essay’s final section, too). When she and Jamie sleep together for the first time, not only does Dani actually sleep well, but she also wakes the next morning to do something that she hasn’t done to that point and won’t do again: she comfortably looks into a mirror. (One small qualification to this: Dani does look into her own reflection at the diner when she and Jamie are on their road trip; Viola doesn’t interfere then, but whether this is actually a comfortable moment is questionable). Then, shifting her gaze away from her own reflection, she sees Jamie still sleeping soundly in her bed—and smiles. It’s a fleeting moment of peace. Immediately after that, she spots Flora out the window, which throws everything back into accumulating turmoil. But that moment of peace, however fleeting, is still a powerful one.

However, Bly teases this narrative about the possibilities of finding healing in the wake of traumatic loss—especially through the cultivation of meaningful and supportive relationships with others—only to then totally pull that rug out from under Dani in the final episode.

During that final episode, we see that Dani’s shared life with Jamie has supported her in coming to terms with Viola’s lurking presence, such that “at long last, deep within the au pair’s heart, there was peace. And that peace held for years, which is more than some of us ever get.” But it’s at the exact moment that that line of narration occurs that we then begin to witness Dani’s steady, inexorable decline. Sure, we could say that Dani “accepts” Viola’s intrusions and the unavoidable eventuality that the ghost will seize control of her. But this isn’t a healthy acceptance or even a depiction of the fraught relationships that we can have with grief and trauma as we continue to process them throughout our lives. At all. Instead, it’s a distinctive, destructive sense of fatalism.

“I’m not even scared of her anymore,” Dani tells Jamie as the flooded bathtub spills around them. “I just stare at her and it's getting harder and harder to see me. Maybe I should just accept that. Maybe I should just accept that and go.” Remember way back at the beginning of this essay when I pointed out that there’s a significant difference between “moving through one’s grief” and allowing one’s grief to become all-consuming? Well, by the time we reach the bathtub scene, Dani’s grief and trauma have completely overtaken her. Her “acceptance” is, thus, a fatalistic, catastrophizing determination that her trauma defines her existence, such that she believes that all she has left to do is give up her life in order to protect Jamie from her. For a less ghostly (and less suicidal ideation-y) and more real-life example to illustrate what I’m getting at here: this would be like me saying “I should just accept that I’m never going to be anything other than a traumatized mess and should stop reaching out to my friends so that I don’t keep hurting them by making them deal with what a mess I am.” If I said something like this, I suspect (hope) that you would tell me that this is not a productive acceptance, but a pernicious narrative that only hurts me and the people who care about me. Sadly, though, this kind of pernicious narrative is exactly what we get out of Bly’s ending allegory.

“But Squall,” you may be thinking, “this scene is representing how people who struggle with their mental health can actually feel. This is exactly what it can be like to have severe mental illness, even for folks who have strong support systems and healthy, meaningful relationships. And there’s value in showing that.”

And if you’re thinking that, then first of all—as I have indicated already—I am aware that this is what it can be like. Very aware. And second of all, you make a fair point, but…there are ways that the show could’ve represented this without concluding that representation with a suicide that it effectively valorizes. I’ll contend with this more in the final section, where I offer a few suggestions of other ways that Bly could’ve ended instead.

I just want to be absolutely clear that I’m not saying that I think all media portrayals of mental illness need to be hopeful or wholesome or end in “positive” ways. But what I am saying is that Bly’s conclusion offers a really fuckin’ bleak outlook on grief, trauma, and mental illness, especially when we fit that ending into the framework of the show’s other (attempted) core themes, as well as Dani’s earlier character development. It’s especially bleak to see this as someone with severe mental health issues and who has also lost a loved one to suicide—and as someone who desperately hopes that my life and worldview won’t always stay so darkly colored by my trauma.

Additionally, it’s also worth pausing here to acknowledge that fatalism is, in fact, a major theme of The Beast in the Jungle, the 1903 Henry James novella on which the ninth episode is loosely based. I confess that I’ve only read about this novella, but haven’t read the story itself. However, based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of it, there appears to be a significant thematic rupture between The Beast in the Jungle and The Haunting of Bly Manor in their treatments of fatalism. In the end of the novella, its protagonist, John Marcher, comes to the realization that his fatalism has been a horrible mistake that has caused him to completely miss out on an opportunity for love that was right in front of him all along. The tragic fate to which Marcher believed that he was doomed was, in the end, his own fatalism. Dani, in contrast, never has this moment of recognition, not only because her fatalism leads to her own death, but also because the show treats her fatalism not as something that keeps her from love, but instead as leading her towards a definitive act of love.

All of this is exactly why Dani’s portrayal has become so damn concerning to me, and why I don’t believe that Bly’s allegory of “this is what it’s like to live with mental illness and/or to love (and lose) someone who is mentally ill” is somehow value-neutral—or, worse, something worth celebrating.

How Dani’s Self-Sacrifice Bears on Bly’s Queer Representation

In my dabblings around the fandom so far, I’ve seen a fair amount of deliberation about whether or not Bly Manor’s ending constitutes an example of the Bury Your Gays trope.

Honestly, though, I am super unenthused about rehashing those deliberations or splitting hairs trying to give some definitive “yes it is” or “no it isn’t” answer, so…I’m just not going to. Instead, I’m going to offer up some further observations about how Dani’s self-sacrificial death impinges on Bly’s queer representation, regardless of whether Bury Your Gays is at work here or not.

I would also like to humbly submit that the show could’ve just…not fucked around in proximity of that trope in the first place so that we wouldn’t even need to be having these conversations.

But anyway. I’m going to start this section off with a disclaimer.

Even though I’m leveling some pretty fierce critiques in this section (and across this essay), I do also want to say that I adore that The Haunting of Bly Manor and its creators gave us a narrative that centers two queer women and their romantic relationship as its driving forces and that intentionally sets out to portray the healing potentials of sapphic love as a contrast to the destructive, coercive harms found in many conventional dynamics of hegemonic heteronormativity. I don’t want to downplay that, because I’m extremely happy that this show exists, and I sincerely believe that many elements of its representation are potent and meaningful and amazing. But…I also have some reservations with this portrayal that I want to share. I critique not because I don’t love, but because I do love. I love this show a lot. I love Dani and Jamie a lot. I critique because I love and because I want more and better in future media.

So, that being said…let’s move on to talk about Dani, self-sacrifice, and compulsory heterosexuality.

Well before Dani’s ennobled death, Bly establishes self-sacrifice as a core component of her characterization. It’s hardwired into her, no doubt due to the relentless, entangled educational work of compulsory heterosexuality (comphet) and the aggressive forms of socialization that tell girls and women that their roles in life are to sacrifice themselves in order to please others and to belong to men. Indeed, Episode 4’s series of flashbacks emphasizes the interconnectedness between comphet and Dani’s beliefs that she is supposed to sacrifice herself for others’ sakes, revealing how these forces have shaped who she is and the decisions that she’s made across her life. (While we’re at it, let’s also not lose sight of the fact that Dani’s profession during this time period is one that—in American culture, at least—has come to rely on a distinctively feminized self-sacrificiality in order to function. Prior to becoming an au pair, Dani was a schoolteacher. In fact, in one of Episode 4’s flashbacks, Eddie’s mother points out that she appreciates Dani’s knack for identifying the kids that need her the most, but also reminds Dani that she needs to take care of herself…which suggests that Dani hadn’t been: “Save them all if you can, but put your own oxygen mask on first”).

In the flashback of her engagement party, Dani’s visible discomfort during Edmund’s speech clues us in that she wasn’t preparing to marry him because she genuinely wanted to, but because she felt like she was supposed to. The “childhood sweethearts” narrative bears down on the couple, celebrated by their friends and family, vaunted by cultural constructs that prize this life trajectory as a cherished, “happily ever after” ideal. Further illustrating the pressures to which Dani had been subject, the same scene shows Eddie’s mother, Judy O’Mara, presenting Dani with her own wedding dress and asking Dani to wear it when she marries Eddie. Despite Mrs. O’Mara’s assurances that Dani can say no, the hopes that she heaps onto Dani make abundantly clear that anything other than a yes would disappoint her. Later, another flashback shows Dani having that dress sized and fitted while her mother and Mrs. O’Mara look on and chatter about their own weddings and marriages. Their conversation is imbued with further hopes that Dani’s marriage to Edmund will improve on the mistakes that they made in their lives. Meanwhile, Dani’s attentiveness to the tailor who takes her measurements, compliments her body, and places a hand on her back strongly suggests that Dani is suppressing her attraction to women. Though brief, this scene is a weighty demonstration of the ways that the enclosures of heteronormativity constrain women into believing that their only option is to deny homosexual attraction, to forfeit their own desires in order to remain in relationships with men, and to prioritize the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the people around them above their own.

Dani followed this pathway—determined for her by everyone else except herself—until she couldn’t anymore.

During the flashback of their breakup, Dani explains to Eddie that she didn’t end their relationship sooner because she thought that even just having desires that didn’t match his and his family’s was selfish of her: “I should’ve said something sooner. […] I didn’t want to hurt you, or your mom, or your family. And then it was just what we were doing. […] I just thought I was being selfish, that I could just stick it out, and eventually I would feel how I was supposed to.” As happens to so many women, Dani was on the cusp of sacrificing her life for the sake of “sticking out” a marriage to a man, all because she so deeply believed that it was her duty to satisfy everyone’s expectations of her and that it was her responsibility to change her own feelings about that plight.

And Eddie’s response to this is telling. “Fuck you, Danielle,” he says. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Pay close attention to those last two words. Underline ‘em. Bold ‘em. Italicize ‘em.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

With those two words, Eddie indicates that he views Dani’s refusal to marry him as something that she is doing to him, a harm that she is committing against him. It is as though Dani is inflicting her will on him, or even that she is unjustly attackinghim by finally admitting that her desires run contrary to his own, that she doesn’t want to be his wife. And with this statement, he confirms precisely what she anticipated would happen upon giving voice to her true feelings.

What space did Edmund, his family, or Dani’s mother ever grant for Dani to have aspirations of her own that weren’t towards the preordained role of Eddie’s future wife? Let’s jump back to that engagement party. Eddie’s entire speech reveals a very longstanding assumption of his claim over her as his wife-to-be. He’d first asked Dani to marry him when they were ten years old, after he mistakenly believed that their first kiss could get Dani pregnant; Dani turned him down then, saying that they were too young. So, over the years, as they got older, Eddie continued to repeatedly ask her—until, presumably, she relented. “Now, we’re still pretty young,” he remarks as he concludes his speech, “but I think we’re old enough to know what we want.” Significantly, Eddie speaks here not just for himself, but also for Dani. Dani’s voice throughout the entire party is notably absent, as Eddie and his mother both impose their own wishes on her, assume that she wants what they want, and don’t really open any possibility for her to say otherwise. Moreover, although there’s a palpable awkwardness that accompanies Eddie’s story, the crowd at the party chuckles along as though it’s a sweet, innocent tale of lifelong love and devotion, and not an instance of a man whittling away at a woman’s resistance until she finally caved to his pursuit of her.

All of this suggests that Eddie shared in the socialized convictions of heteropatriarchy, according to which Dani’s purpose and destiny were to marry him and to make him happy. His patterns of behavior evince the unquestioned presumptions of so many men: that women exist in service to them and their wants, such that it is utterly inconceivable that women could possibly desire otherwise. As a political institution, heteropatriarchy tells men that they are entitled to women’s existences, bodies, futures. And, indeed, Eddie can’t seem to even imagine that Dani could ever want anything other than the future that he has mapped out for them. (Oh, hey look, we’ve got some love vs. possession going on here again).

For what it’s worth, I think that the show’s portrayal of compulsory heterosexuality is excellent. I love that the writers decided to tackle this. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I found all of this to be extremelyrelatable. I might even be accused of over-relating and projecting my own experiences onto my readings here, but…there were just too many resonances between Dani’s experiences and my own. Mrs. O’Mara’s advice to Dani to “put your own oxygen mask on first” is all too reminiscent of the ways that my ex’s parents would encourage me to “heal” from my brother’s loss…but not for the sake of my own wellbeing, but so that I would return to prioritizing the care of their son and existing to do whatever would make him happy. I’ll also share here that what drove me to break up with my ex-fiancé wasn’t just his unwillingness to contend with my grief, but the fact that he had decided that the best way for me to heal from my loss would be to have a baby. He insisted that I could counteract my brother’s death by “bringing new life into the world.” And he would not take no for an answer. He told me that if I wouldn’t agree to try to have children in the near future, then he wasn’t interested in continuing to stay with me. It took me months to pluck up the courage, but I finally answered this ultimatum by ending our relationship myself. Thus, like Dani, I came very close to sacrificing myself, my wants, my body, my future, and my life for the sake of doing what my fiancé and his family wanted me to do, all while painfully denying my own attraction to women. What kept me from “sticking it out” any longer was that I finally decided that I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself for a man I didn’t love (and who clearly didn’t love me) and decided, instead, to reclaim my own wants and needs away from him.

For Dani, however, the moment that she finally begins to reclaim her wants and needs away from Eddie is also the moment that he furiously jumps out of the driver’s seat and into the path of a passing truck, which leaves her to entangle those events as though his death is her fault for finally asserting herself.

Of course, the guilt that Dani feels for having “caused” Eddie’s death isn’t justa matter of breaking up with him and thereby provoking a reaction that would prove fatal—it’s also the guilt of her suppressed homosexual desire, of not desiring Eddie in the first place. In other words, internalized homophobia is an inextricable layer of the culpability that Dani feels. Internalized homophobia is also what’s haunting her. As others (such as Rowan Ellis, whose deep dive includes a solid discussion of internalized homophobia in Bly, as well as a more at-length examination of Bury Your Gays than I’m providing here) have pointed out, the show highlights this metaphorically by having Dani literally get locked into a closet with Edmund’s ghost in the very first episode. Further reinforcing this idea is the fact that these spectral visions get even worse as Dani starts to come to terms with and act on her attraction to Jamie, as though the ghost is punishing her for her desires. Across Episode 3, as Dani and Jamie begin spending more time together, Edmund’s ghost concurrently begins materializing in more shocking, visceral forms (e.g. his bleeding hand in Dani’s bed; his shadowy figure lurking behind Dani after she’s held Jamie’s hand) that exceed the reflective surfaces to which he’d previously been confined. This continues into Episode 4, where each of Eddie’s appearances follows moments of Dani’s growing closeness to Jamie. A particularly alarming instance occurs when Dani just can’t seem to pry her gaze away from a dressed-up Jamie who’s in the process of some mild undressing. Finally turning away from Jamie, Dani becomes aware of Eddie’s hands on her hips. It’s a violating reminder of his claims over her, horrifying in its invocation of men’s efforts to coerce and control women’s sexuality.

It is incredibly powerful, then, to watch Dani answer all of this by becoming more resolute and assertive in the expression of her wants and needs. The establishment of her romantic relationship with Jamie isn’t just the movement through grief and guilt that we discussed earlier; it’s also Dani’s defiance of compulsory heterosexuality and her fierce claiming of her queer existence. Even in the face of all that’s been haunting her, Dani initiates her first kiss with Jamie; and Eddie’s intrusion in that moment is only enough to temporarily dissuade her, as Dani follows this up by then asking Jamie out for a drink at the pub to “see where that takes them” (i.e. up to Jamie’s flat to bang, obviously). The peace that Dani finds after having sex with Jamie for the first time is, therefore, also the profound fulfillment of at last having her first sexual experience with a woman, of finally giving expression to this critical part of herself that she’d spent her entire life denying. Compulsory heterosexuality had dictated to Dani that she must self-sacrifice to meet the strictures of heteropatriarchy, to please everyone except herself; but in her relationship with Jamie, Dani learns that she doesn’t have to do this at all. This is only bolstered by the fact that, as we’ve talked about at length already, Jamie is very attentive to Dani’s needs and respectful of her boundaries. Jamie doesn’t want Dani to do anything other than what Dani wants to do. And so, in the cultivation of their romantic partnership, Dani thus comes to value her own wants and needs in a way that she hasn’t before.

The fact that the show nails all of this so fucking well is what makes all that comes later so goddamn frustrating.

The final episode chronicles Dani and Jamie forging a queer life together that the rest of us can only dream of, including another scene of Dani flouting homophobia and negotiating her own internal struggles so that she can be with Jamie. “I know we can’t technically get married,” she tells Jamie when she proposes to her, ���but I also don’t really care.” And with her awareness that the beast in the jungle is starting to catch up with her, Dani tells Jamie that she wants to spend whatever time she has left with her.

But then…

A few scenes later—along with a jump of a few years later, presumably—Jamie arrives home with the licenses that legally certify their civil union in the state of Vermont. It’s a monumental moment. In 2000, Vermont became the first state to introduce civil unions, which paved the way for it to later (in 2009) become the first state to pass legislation that recognized gay marriages without needing to have a court order mandating that the state extend marriage rights beyond opposite-sex couples. I appreciate that Bly’s creatorsincorporated this significant milestone in the history of American queer rights into the show. But its positioning in the show also fuckin’ sucks. Just as Jamie is announcing the legality of her and Dani’s civil union and declaring that they’ll have another marriage ceremony soon, we see water running into the hallway. This moves us into that scene with the flooded bathtub, as Jamie finds Dani staring into the water, unaware of anything else except the reflection of Viola staring back at her. Thus, it is at the exact moment when her wife proudly shares the news of this incredible achievement in the struggle for queer rights—for which queer folks have long fought and are continuing to fight to protect in the present—that Dani has completely, hopelessly resigned herself to Viola’s possession.

I want to be careful to clarify here that, in making this observation, I don’t mean to posit some sort of “Dani should have fought back against Viola” argument, which—within the context of our allegorical readings—might have the effect of damagingly suggesting that Dani should have fought harder to recover from mental illness or terminal disease. But I do mean to point out the incredibly grim implications that the juxtaposition of these events engenders, especially when we contemplate them (as we did in the previous section) within the overall frameworks of the show’s themes and Dani’s character development. After all that has come before, after we’ve watched Dani come to so boldly assert her queer desire and existence, it is devastating to see the show reduce her to such a despairing state that doesn’t even give her a chance to register that she and Jamie are now legal partners.

Why did you have to do this, Bly? Why?

Further compounding this despair, the next scene features the resumption of Dani’s self-sacrificial beliefs and behaviors, which results in her demise, and which leaves Jamie to suffer through the devastation of her wife’s death. This resumption of self-sacrifice hence demolishes all of that beautiful work of asserting Dani’s queer existence and learning that she doesn’t need to sacrifice herself that I just devoted two thousand words to describing above.

Additionally, in the end, Dani’s noble self-sacrifice also effects a safe recuperation of heteronormativity…which might add more evidence to a Bury Your Gays claim, oops.

And that is because, in the end, after we see Jamie screaming into the water and Dani forever interred at the bottom of the lake in which she drowned herself, we come to the end of Jamie’s story and return to Bly Manor’s frame narrative: Flora’s wedding.

At the start of the show, the evening of Flora and Unnamed Man’s (Wikipedia says his name is James? idk, w/e) rehearsal dinner provides the occasion and impetus for Jamie’s storytelling. Following dinner, Flora, her fiancé, and their guests gather around a fireplace and discuss a ghost story about the venue, a former convent. With a captive audience that includes her primary targets—Flora and Miles, who have forgotten what happened at Bly and, by extension, all that Dani sacrificed and that Jamie lost so that they could live their lives free of the trauma of what transpired—and with a topically relevant conversation already ongoing, Jamie interjects that she has a ghost story of her own to share…and thus, the show’s longer, secondary narrative begins.

When Jamie’s tale winds to a close at the end of the ninth episode, the show returns us to its frame, that scene in front of the cozy, crackling fire. And it is there that we learn that it is, in fact, Jamie who has been telling us this story all along.

As the other guests trickle away, Flora stays behind to talk to Jamie on her own. A critical conversation then ensues between them, which functions not only as Jamie’s shared wisdom to Flora, but also as the show’s attempt to lead viewers through what they’ve just experienced and thereby impart its core message about the secondary narrative. The frame narrative is, thus, also a direct address to the audience that tells us what we should take away from the experience. By this point, the show has thoroughly established that Jamie is a gentle-but-tough-love, knowledgeable, and trustworthy guide through the trials of accepting grief and mortality, and so it is Jamie who leaves Flora and us, the audience, with the show’s final word about how to treasure the people we love while they are still in our lives and how to grieve them if we survive beyond them. (But, by this point in this essay, we’ve also learned that Bly’s messages about grief and mortality are beautiful but also messy and unconvincing, even with this didactic ending moment).

With all of this in mind, we can (and should) ask some additional questions of the frame narrative.

One of those questions is: Why is the secondary narrative being told from/within this particular frame?

Answering this question within the show’s diegesis (by asking it of the narrator) is easy enough. Jamie is performing a memorialization of Dani’s life and sacrifice at an event where her intended audience happens to be gathered, ensuring that Miles and Flora begin to recognize what Dani did for them in a manner that maybe won’t just outright traumatize them.

Okay, sure, yeah. True. Not wrong.

But let’s interrogate this question more deeply—let’s ask it of the show itself. So, Bly Manor: Why is the secondary narrative being told from/within this particular frame?

We could also tweak this question a bit to further consider: What is the purpose of the frame? A frame narrative can function to shape audiences’ interpretations of and attitudes towards the secondary narrative. So, in this case, let’s make our line of questioning even more specific. What does the frame of Flora’s wedding do for Bly’s audiences?

Crucially, the framing scene at the fireplace provides us with a sense that we’ve returned to safety after the horror of the ghost story we’ve just experienced. To further assure us of this safety, then, Bly’s frame aims to restore a sense of normality, a sense that the threat that has provoked fear in us has been neutralized, a sense of hope that endures beyond tragedy. Indeed, as we fade from the secondary narrative and return to the frame, Jamie’s narration emphasizes how Dani’s selfless death has brought peace to Bly Manor by breaking its cycles of violence and trauma: “But she won’t be hollow or empty, and she won’t pull others to her fate. She will merely walk the grounds of Bly, harmless as a dove for all of her days, leaving the only trace of who she once was in the memory of the woman who loved her most.”

What Dani has accomplished with her self-sacrifice, then, is a longstanding, prevailing, expected staple of Western—and especially American—storytelling: redemption.

American media is rife with examples of this narrative formula (in which an individual must take selfless action—which may or may not involve self-sacrificial death—in order to redeem an imperiled community by restoring a threatened order) to an extent that is kind of impossible to overstate. Variations of this formula are everywhere, from film to television to comics to videogames to news reports. It is absolutely fundamental to our cultural understandings of what “heroism” means. And it’s been this way for, umm…a long time, largely thanks to that most foundational figure of Western myth, some guy who was crucified for everybody’s sins or something. (Well, that and the related popularization of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, but…I’m not gonna go off onto a whole rant about that right now, this essay is already too long as it is).

In Bly Manor, the threatened order is the natural process of death itself, which Viola has disrupted with a gravity well that traps souls and keeps them suspended within physical proximity of the manor. Dani’s invitation to Viola is the initial step towards salvation (although, I think it’s important to note that this is not entirely intentional on Dani’s part. Jamie’s narration indicates that Dani didn’t entirely understand what she was doing with the “It’s you, it’s me, it’s us” invitation, so self-sacrifice was not necessarily her initial goal). It nullifies the gravity well and resumes the passage of death, which liberates all of the souls that have been trapped at Bly and also produces additional opportunities for others’ atonements (e.g. Peter’s apology to Miles; Henry’s guardianship of the children). But it’s Dani’s suicide that is the ultimate completion of the redemptive task. It is only by “giving herself to the lake” that Dani is able to definitively dispel Viola’s threat and confer redemptive peace to Bly Manor.

It’s tempting to celebrate this incredibly rare instance of a queer woman in the heroic-redemptive role, given that American media overwhelmingly reserve it for straight men. But I want to strongly advise that we resist this temptation. Frankly, there’s a lot about the conventional heroic-redemptive narrative formula that sucks, and I’d rather that we work to advocate for other kinds of narratives, instead of just championing more “diversity” within this stuffy old model of heroism. Explaining what sucks about this formula is beyond the purview of this essay, though. But my next point might help to illustrate part of why it sucks (spoiler: it’s because it tends to prop up traditional, dominant structures of power and relationality).

So…What I want us to do is entertain the possibility that Dani’s redemptive self-sacrifice might serve specific purposes for straight audiences, especially in the return to the frame at the end.

Across The Haunting of Bly Manor, we’ve seen ample examples of heterosexuality gone awry. The show has repeatedly called our attention to the flaws and failings of heterosexual relationships against the carefully cultivated safety, open communication, and mutual fulfillment of a queer romance between two women. But, while queer audiences may celebrate this about this show, for straight audiences, this whole situation might just wind up producing anxiety instead—as though heterosexuality is also a threatened order within the world of Bly Manor. More generally, asking straight audiences to connect with a queer couple as the show’s main protagonists is an unaccustomed challenge with which they’re not normally tasked; thus, the show risks leaving this dominant viewer base uncomfortable, threatened, and resentful, sitting with the looming question of whether heterosexuality is, itself, redeemable.

In answer to this, Dani’s self-sacrifice provides multiple assurances to straight audiences. To begin with, her assumption of the traditional heroic-redemptive role secures audiences within the familiar confines of that narrative formula, which also then promises that Dani is acting as a protector of threatened status quos and not as another source of peril. What Bly Manor is doing here is, in effect, acknowledging that it may have challenged (and even threatened) straight audiences with its centerpiece of a queer romance—and that, likewise, queers themselves may be challenging the status quos of romantic partnerships by, for instance, demanding marriage rights and improvements in media representations—while also emphatically reassuring those audiences in the wake of that challenge that Dani and Jamie haven’t created and aren’t going to create too much disturbance with their queerness. They’re really not that threatening, Bly swears. They’re harmless as a dove. They’re wholesome. They’re respectable. They—and queer folks more generally—aren’t going to totally upend everything, really. Look, they’ll even sacrifice themselves to save everyone and redeem imperiled communities and threatened orders—even heterosexuality itself!

A critical step towards achieving this assurance is the leveling of the playing field. In order for the show to neutralize the threat of queerness for straight audiences, comfort them with a return to safety, and promise them that heterosexuality is redeemable, the queer women need to have an on-screen tragic end to their relationship just like all of the straight couples have. And so, Dani must die and Jamie must grieve.

That accomplished, the show then immediately returns to the frame, the scene at the fireplace following Flora’s rehearsal dinner.

There—after we’ve witnessed so much queer joy and queer tragedy crammed into this final episode—we see Flora and her fiancé, bride and groom, sitting together, arms linked, taking in all that Jamie has to tell them. And with this warm, idyllic image of impending matrimony between man and wife, the safety to which straight audiences return in the frame is, therefore, also the safety of a heterosexuality that can find its redemption through Dani’s self-sacrifice. Not only does Dani’s death mean that Flora can live (and go on to marry her perfectly bland, unremarkable husband, all without the trauma of what happened at Bly), but it also means that she—and, with her, straight audiences—can ultimately benefit from the lessons about true love, loss, and grieving that Dani’s self-sacrifice and Jamie’s story bestow.

And so, Bly Manor concludes with a valorization of redemptive self-sacrifice and an anodyne recuperation of heteronormativity, bequeathing Flora with the opportunities to have and to hold the experiential knowledge that Dani and Jamie have provided for her. Here, queer tragedy serves up an educational opportunity for heterosexual audiences in a challengingly “inclusive,” but otherwise essentially non-threatening manner. The ending is a gentle, non-traumatizing, yet frank lesson to heterosexual audiences in the same way that Jamie’s story is a gentle, non-traumatizing, yet frank lesson to Flora.

Did the show’s creators intentionally do all of this to set about providing such assurances to straight audiences? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really know—or care! But, especially in light of incidents like the recent “Suletta and Miorine’s relationship is up to interpretation” controversy following the Gundam: Witch from Mercury finale, I absolutely do not put it past media corporations and content creators to very intentionally take steps to prioritize the comfort of straight audiences against the threats of queer love. And anyway, intentional or not, all of this still has effects and implications loaded with meaning, as I have tried to account for here.

Honestly, though, I can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s some tension between Jamie, Owen, and maybe also Henry about Jamie’s decision to publicly share Dani’s story in front of Flora and Miles. Owen’s abrupt declaration that it’s getting late and that they should wrap up seems like an intervention—like he’s been as patient and understanding as he possibly could up to that point, but now, he’s finally having to put a stop to Jamie’s deviance. I can’t help but read the meaningful stares that pass between them at both ends of the frame as a complex mixture of compassion and fraught disagreement (and I wish that the show had done more with this). The scene where Dani and Jamie visit Owen at his restaurant seems to set up the potential for this unspoken dispute. By their expressions and mannerisms (Dani’s stony stare; the protective way that Jamie holds her as her own gaze is locked on Dani), it’s clear that Dani and Jamie are aghast that Flora and Miles have forgotten what happened and that Owen believes that they should just be able to live their lives without that knowledge. And it’s also clear, by her very telling of Dani’s story, that Jamie disagrees with him. Maybe I’m over-imposing my own attitudes here, but I’m left with the impression that Jamie resents the coddling of Miles and Flora just like I’m resenting the coddling of straight audiences…that Jamie resents that she and Dani have had to give up everything so that Miles and Flora can continue living their privileged lives just like I’m resenting the exploitation of queer tragedy for the sake preserving straight innocence. (As Jamie says to Hannah when Dani puts the children to work in the garden: “You can’t give them a pass forever.” Disclaimer: I’m not saying that I want Miles and Flora to be traumatized, but I am saying that I agree with Jamie, because hiding traumatic shit is not how to resolve inter-generational trauma. Anyway—).

Also, I don’t know about y’all, but I find Flora and Jamie’s concluding conversation to be super cringe. Maybe it’s because I’m gay and just have way too much firsthand experience with this sort of thing from my own comphet past, but Flora’s whole “I just keep thinking about that silly, gorgeous, insane man I’m marrying tomorrow. I love him. More than I ever thought I could love anybody. And the crazy thing is, he loves me the same exact amount,” spiel just absolutely screams “woman who is having to do all of the emotional work in her relationship with an absolutely dull, mediocre, emotionally illiterate man and is desperately trying to convince herself that he does, in fact, love her as much as she (believes) that she loves him.”

I feel like this is a parody of straightness?? Is this actually sincere??

This is what Dani gave up her life to redeem??

To me, this is just more bleak shit that Bly leaves us with. It is so painful to watch.

Bless.

Okay, so I know that I said that I wasn’t going to offer a definitive yes or no about whether Bly commits Bury Your Gays with Dani’s death, but…after writing all of this out, I’m honestly kinda leaning towards a yes.

But I’m already anticipating that folks are gonna push back against me on this. So I just want to humbly submit, again, that Bly could have just not done this. It could have just not portrayed Dani’s death at all.

To really drive this point home, then, I’m going to conclude this essay by suggesting just a few ways that The Haunting of Bly Manor could have ended without Dani’s self-sacrificial death—or without depicting her death on-screen at all.

Bly Manor Could Have Ended Differently

Mike Flanagan—creator, director, writer, editor, executive producer, showrunner, etc. of The Haunting of Bly Manor—has stated that he believes that the show’s ending is a happy one.

I, on the other hand, believe that Bly’s ending is…not. In my view, the way that the ending treats Dani is unnecessarily cruel and exploitative. “Happy ending”—really? If I let myself be cynical about it (which I do), I honestly think that Dani’s death is a pretty damn transparent effort to squeeze out some tears with a sloppy, mawkish, feel-good veneer slapped over it. And if we peel back that veneer and look under it, what we find is quite bleak.

To be fair, for a psychological horror show that’s so centrally about grief and trauma, Bly Manor does seem to profess an incredibly strong sense of hopefulness. Underlying the entirety of the show is a profound faith in all the good and beauty that can come from human connection, however fleeting our lives may be—and even if we make a ton of dumb, awful mistakes along the way. If I’m being less cynical about it, I do also think that the show’s ending strives to demonstrate a peak expression of this conviction. But—at least in my opinion—it doesn’t succeed in this goal. In my writing of this essay, I’ve come to believe that the show instead ends in a state of despair that is at odds with what it appears to want to achieve.

So, in this final section, I’m going to offer up a few possibilities for ways that the show could have ended that maybe wouldn’t have so thoroughly undermined its own attempted messages.

Now, if I were actually going to fix the ending of The Haunting of Bly Manor, I would honestly overhaul a ton of the show to arrive at something completely different. But I’m not going to go through all the trouble of rewriting the entire show here, lol. Instead, I’m going to work with most of what’s already there, leading out from Viola’s possession of Dani (even though I don’t actually like that part of the show either – maybe someday I’ll write about other implications of Viola’s possession of Dani beyond these allegorical readings, but not right now). I’m also going to try to adhere to some of the show’s core themes and build on some of the allegorical possibilities that are already in place. Granted, the ideas that I pose here wouldn’t fix everything, by any stretch of the imagination; but they would, at least (I hope), mitigate some of the issues that I’ve outlined over the course of this essay. And one way or another, I hope that they’ll help to demonstrate that Dani’s self-sacrificial death was completely unnecessary. (Seriously, just not including Dani’s death would’ve enabled the show to completely dodge the question of Bury Your Gays and would’ve otherwise gone a long way towards avoiding the problems with the show’s queer representation).

So, here's how this is going to work. First, I’m going to pose a few general, guiding questions before then proposing an overarching thematic modification that expands on an idea that’s already prominent across the show. This will then serve as the groundwork for two alternative scenarios. I’m not going to go super into detail with either of these alternatives; mostly, I just want to demonstrate that the show that could’ve easily replaced the situation leading to Dani drowning herself. (For the record, I also think that the show could’ve benefitted from having at least one additional episode—and from some timing and pacing restructuring otherwise. So, before anybody tries an excuse like “but this wouldn’t fit into the last episode,” I want to urge that we imagine these possibilities beyond that limitation).

Let’s start off by returning to a point that I raised in the earlier conversation about grief and acceptance: the trickiness of Viola’s “acceptance.”

What Viola “accepts” in the end aren’t her losses or her own mortality, but Dani’s desperate, last-ditch-effort invitation to inhabit her. Within the show’s extant ending, Viola never actually comes to any kind of acceptance otherwise. Dani’s suicide effectively forces her dissolution, eradicating her persistent presence through the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. But in all of my viewings of the show and in all of my efforts to think through and write about it, there’s a question that’s been bugging me to no end: Why does Viola accept Dani’s invitation in the first place?

We know that Peter figured out the “it’s you, it’s me, it’s us” trick in his desperation to return to some form of life and to leave the grounds of Bly Manor. But…what is the appeal of it for Viola? How do her own motivations factor into it? For so long, Viola’s soul has been tenaciously persisting at Bly all so that she can repeatedly return to the physical locus of her connection with her husband and daughter, their shared bedroom in the manor. She’s done this for so long that she no longer even remembers why she’s doing it—she just goes back there to grab whatever child she can find and strangles whoever happens to get in her way. So what would compel her to accept Dani’s invitation? What does she get out of it—and what does she want out of it? What does her acceptance mean? And why, then, does her acceptance result in the dissipation of the gravity well?

We can conjecture, certainly. But the show doesn’t actually provide answers to these questions. Indeed, one of the other major criticisms that I have of Bly is that it confines all of Viola’s development to the eighth episode alone. I really think that it needed to have done way more to characterize her threat and at least gestureat her history sooner, rather than leaving it all to that penultimate episode, interrupting and drawing out the exact moment when she’s about to kill Dani. (Like, after centuries of Viola indiscriminately killing people, and with so many ghosts that’ve been loitering around for so long because of that, wouldn’t Bly Manor have rampant ghost stories floating around about it by the time Dani arrives? But there’s only one minor suggestion of that possibility: Henry indicating that he might’ve met a soldier ghost once. That’s it. And on that note, all of the ghosts at the manor needed to have had more screentime and development, really). Further, it’s disappointing that the show devotes that entire eighth episode to accounting for Viola’s motivations, only to then reduce her to Big, Bad, Unspeakable Evil in the final episode, with no rhyme or reason for what she’s doing, all so that she can necessitate Dani’s death.

As we continue pondering these unanswered questions, there’s also another issue that I want to raise, which the show abandons only as an oblique, obscure consideration. And that is: How the hell did Jamie acquire all that extensive knowledge about Viola, the ghosts of the manor, and all that happened, such that she is able to tell Bly’sstory in such rich detail? My own sort of headcanon answer to this is that Viola’s possession of Dani somehow enabled Viola to regain some of her own memories—as well as, perhaps, a more extended, yet also limited awareness of the enduring consciousnesses of the other ghosts—while also, in turn, giving Dani access to them, too. Dani then could have divulged what she learned to Jamie, which would account for how Jamie knows so much. I bring this up because it provides one possible response to the question of “What does Viola get out of her possession of Dani?” (especially given the significant weight that the show places on the retention of one’s memories—more on this in a moment) and because this is an important basis for both of my proposed alternative scenarios.

Before we dig into those alternative scenarios, however, there’s also a thematic modification that I want to suggest, which would help to provide another answer to “What does Viola get out of her possession of Dani?” while also alleviating the issues that lead into the valorization of Dani’s suicide. That thematic modification involves how the show defines love. Although Bly’s sustained contrasts between love and possession have some valuable elements, I think that the ending would’ve benefitted from downplaying the love vs. possession theme (which is where we run into so much trouble with Dani’s self-sacrifice, and which has also resulted in some celebratory conflations between “selflessness” and self-sacrifice that I’ve seen crop up in commentary about the show—but, y’all, self-sacrifice is not something to celebrate in romantic partnerships, so please, please be careful idolizing that) to instead play up a different theme: the idea that love is the experience of feeling such safety and security with another person that we can find opportunities for peace by being with them.

Seeking peace—and people with whom to feel safe enough to share traumas and experience peace—is a theme that already runs rampant across the show, so this modification is really just a matter of accentuating it differently. It’s also closely linked to the moving through grief theme that we’ve already discussed at length, as numerous characters in Bly express desires for solitude with loved ones as a way of finding relief and healing from their pain, grief, and trauma. (And I suspect that I latched onto this because I have desperately wanted peace, calm, and stillness in the midst of my own acute, compounding traumas…and because my own former romantic partner was obviously not someone with whom I felt safe enough to experience the kind of peace that would’ve allowed me to begin the process of healing).

We run into this idea early in the development of Jamie and Dani’s romance, as narrator Jamie explains in the scene leading up to their first kiss, “The au pair was tired. She’d been tired for so long. Yet without even realizing she was doing it, she found herself taking her own advice that she’d given to Miles. She’d chosen someone to keep close to her that she could feel tired around.” Following this moment, at the beginning of Episode 5, narrator Jamie then foregrounds Hannah’s search for peace (“The housekeeper knew, more than most, that deep experience was never peaceful. And because she knew this ever since she’d first called Bly home, she would always find her way back to peace within her daily routine, and it had always worked”), which calls our attention to the ways that Hannah has been retreating into her memory of her first meeting with Owen as a crucial site of peace against the shock of her own death. Grown-up Flora even gushes about “that easy silence you only get with your forever person who loves you as much as you love them” when she’s getting all teary at Jamie about her husband-to-be.

Of course, this theme is already actively at work in the show’s conclusion as well. During her “beast in the jungle” monologue, Dani tells Jamie that she feels Viola “in here. It’s so quiet…it’s so quiet. She’s in here. And this part of her that’s in here, it isn’t…peaceful.” As such, Viola’s whole entire issue is that, after all those centuries, she has not only refused to accept her own death, but she’s likewise never been at peace—she’s still not at peace. Against Viola’s unpeaceful presence, however, Dani does find peace in her life with Jamie…at least temporarily, until Viola’s continued refusal of peace leads to Dani’s self-destructive sense of fatalism. Still, in her replacement of Viola as the new Lady of the Lake, Dani exists as a prevailing force of peace (she’s “harmless as a dove”); however, incidentally, she only accomplishes this through the decidedly non-peaceful, violent act of taking her own life.

But…what if that hadn’t been the case?

What if, instead, the peace that Dani finds in her beautiful, queer, non-self-sacrificing existence with Jamie had also enabled Viola to find some sense of peace of her own? What if, through her inhabitation of Dani, Viola managed to, like…calm the fuck down some? What if Dani’s safety and solitude worked to at least somewhat assuage Viola’s rage—and even guide her towards some other form of acceptance?

Depending on how this developed, the show could’ve borne out the potential for a much more subversive conclusion than what we actually got. Rather than All-Consuming-Evil Viola’s forced dissolution through the violence of Dani’s redemptive self-sacrifice (and its attendant recuperation of heteronormativity), we could’ve instead had the makings of a narrative about sapphic love as a source of healing that’s capable of breaking cycles of violence and trauma. And I think that it would’ve been possible for the show to accomplish this without a purely “happy” ending in which everything was just magically fine, and all the trauma dissipated, and there were no problems in the world ever again. The show could have, in fact, managed this while preserving the allegorical possibilities of Viola’s presence as mental and/or terminal illness.

But, before I can start describing how this could’ve happened, there’s one last little outstanding problem that I need to address. In the video essay that I cited earlier, Rowan Ellis suggests that there are limitations to the “Viola as a stand-in for mental/terminal illness” reading of the show because of the fact that Dani invites Viola into herself and, therefore, willingly brings on her own suffering. But I don’t think that this is quite the case or that it interferes with these allegorical readings. As I’ve already mentioned at various points, Dani doesn’t entirely understand the implications of what she’s doing when she issues her invitation to Viola; and even so, the invitation is still a matter of a dubious consent that evidently cannot be withdrawn once initially granted—at the absolute most generous characterization. Dani’s invitation is a snap decision, a frantic attempt to save Flora after everyone and everything else has failed. Consequently, we don’t necessarily have to construe Viola’s presence in Dani’s life as a matter of Dani “willingly inviting her own suffering,” but can instead understand it as the wounds and traumas that persist after Dani has risked her life to rescue Flora. In this way, the show could have also challenged the traditional heroic-redemptive narrative formula by offering a more explicit commentary on the all-too-often unseen ramifications of selflessly “heroic” actions (instead of just heedlessly perpetuating their glorification and, with them, self-sacrifice). Dani may have saved Flora—but at what cost to herself? What long-term toll might this lasting trauma exact on her?

And with that, we move into my two alternative ending scenarios.

Alternative Ending 1: Progressive Memory Loss

Memory and its loss are such significant themes in Bly Manor that theycould use an essay all their own.

I am, however, going to refrain from writing such an essay at this moment in time (I’m already super tired from writing this one, lol).

Still, the first of my alternative scenarios would bring these major themes full-circle—and would make Jamie eat her words.

In this alternative scenario, Viola would find some sense of peace—even if fraught and, at times, tumultuous—in her possession of Dani. As her rage subsides, she is even able to regain fragmented pieces of her own memory, which Dani is also able to experience. The restoration of Viola’s memory, albeit vague and scattered, leads Dani to try to learn even more about Viola’s history at Bly in an effort to at least partially fill in the gaps. As time goes on, though, Viola’s co-habitation within Dani’s consciousness leads to the steady degradation of Dani’s own memory. The reclamation of Viola’s memories would occur, then, concomitant with a steady erosion of both herself and Dani. Thus, Dani would still undergo an inexorable decline across the show’s ending, but one more explicitly akin to degenerative neurological diseases associated with aging, accentuating the “Viola as terminal illness” allegory while also still carrying resonances of the residual reverberations of trauma (given that memory loss is often a common consequence of acute trauma). Jamie would take on the role of Dani’s caregiver, mirroring and more directly illuminating the role that Owen plays for his mother earlier in the show. By the show’s conclusion, Dani would still be alive, including during the course of the frame narrative.

I mentioned earlier in this essay that I’ve endured even more trauma and grief since my brother’s death and since my breakup with my ex-fiancé. So, I’ll share another piece of it with you now: shortly after my breakup, my dad was diagnosed with one of those degenerative neurological diseases that I listed way back at the very beginning. I moved home not only to get away from my ex, but also to become a caregiver. In the time that I’ve been home, I’ve had no choice but to behold my dad’s continuous, irreversible decline and his indescribable suffering. He has further health issues, including a form of cancer. As a result, he now harbors a sense of fatalism that he’ll never be able to reconcile—he does not have the cognitive capacities to address his despair or turn it into some other form of acceptance. He is merely, in essence, awaiting his death. Hence, fatalism is something that I have had to “accept” as a regular component of my own life. (In light of this situation, you may be wondering if I have thoughts and opinions on medical aid in dying, given all that I have had to say so far about fatalism and suicide. And the answer is yes, I do have thoughts and opinions…but they are complex, and I don’t really want to try to account for them here).

Indeed, I live in a suspended, indefinite state of grieving. Day in and day out, I watch my father perish before my eyes, anticipating the blow of fresh grief that will strike when he dies. I watch my mother’s grief. I watch my father’s grief. He forgets about the symptoms of his disease; he looks up his disease to try to learn about it; he re-discovers his inevitable demise anew; the grieving process restarts again. (“She would wake, she would walk, she would forget […] and she would fade and fade and fade”).

What, then, does acceptance look like when grief is so ongoing and so protracted?

What does acceptance look like in the absence of any possibility of acceptance?

Kübler-Ross’s “five stages of grief” model has been a meaningful guide for countless folks in their efforts to navigate grief and loss. Yet, the model has also been subject to a great deal of critique. Critics have accused the model of, among other things, suggesting that grieving is a linear process, whereby a person moves from one stage to the next and then ends conclusively at acceptance (when grieving is, in fact, an incredibly uneven, nonlinear, and inconclusive process). Relatedly, they have also called attention to the fact that the model commonly gets used prescriptively in ways that usher grieving folks towards the end goal of acceptance and cast judgment on those who do not reach that stage. These are criticisms that I would level at Bly’s application of Kübler-Ross as well. Earlier, we thoroughly covered the show’sissues with grief and acceptance as major themes; but in addition to those issues, Bly alsotends to steer its characters towards abrupt endpoints of acceptance, while doling out punishments to those who “refuse” to accept. At root, there are normative ascriptions at work in the show’s very characterization of deferred acceptance as refusal and acceptance itself as an active choice that one has to make.

This alternative ending, then, would have the potential to challenge and complicate the show’s handling of grief by approaching Jamie’s grieving and Dani’s fatalism from very different angles. As Dani’s caregiver, Jamie would encounter and negotiate grief in ongoing and processual ways, which would continue to evolve as her wife’s condition worsens and her caregiving responsibilities mount, thereby lending new layers of meaning to the message that “To truly love another person is to accept that the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them.” Dani’s fatalism here could also serve as a different interpretation of James’s Beast in the Jungle; perhaps her sense of fatalism ebbs and flows, morphs and contorts along with the progression of her memory loss as she anticipates the gradual whittling-away of her selfhood—or even forgets that inevitability entirely. Still a tragic, heart-rending ending to the show, this scenario may not have the dramatic force of Jamie screaming into the waters of the lake, but it would be a relatable depiction of the ways that many real-life romances conclude. (And, having witnessed the extent of my mom’s ongoing caregiving for my dad, lemme tell ya: if y’all really want a portrayal of selflessness in romantic partnerships, I can think of nothing more selfless than caring for one’s terminally ill partner across their gradual death).

Additionally, this scenario could allow the show to maintain the frame narrative, while also packing fresh complexities into it.

Perhaps, in this case, Dani is still alive, but Jamie has come to Flora’s wedding alone, leaving Dani with in-home caregivers or within assisted living or some such. She comes there determined to ensure that Miles and Flora regain at least some awareness of what Dani did for them—that they remember her. The act of telling Dani’s story, then, becomes not only the performance of a mourning ritual, but also a vital way of preserving and perpetuating Dani’s memory where both the children and Dani, herself, can no longer remember. To be sure, such purposes already compel Jamie’s storytelling in the show: Narrator Jamie indicates that the new Lady of the Lake will eventually lose her recollection of the life she had with the gardener, “leaving the only trace of who she once was in the memory of the woman who loved her most.” But in the context of a conclusion so focused on memory loss, this statement would take on new dimensions of import. In this way, the frame narrative might also more forcefully prompt us, the audience, to reflect on the waysthat we can carry on the memories of our loved ones by telling their stories—and also, maybe, the responsibilities that we may have to do so. “Almost no one even remembers how she was when her mind hadn’t gone,” Jamie remarks after returning from Owen’s mother’s funeral, a subtle indictment of just how easily we can lose our own memories of those who suffer from conditions like dementia—how easily we can fail to carry on the stories of the people they were before and to keep their memories alive. (“We are all just stories in the end,” Olivia Crain emphasizes during the eulogy for Shirl’s kitten in The Haunting of Hill House. In fact, there’re some interesting comparative analyses we could do about storytelling and the responsibilities incumbent on storytellers between these two Flanagan shows).

Along those lines, I think that this would’ve been an excellent opportunity for the show to exacerbate and foreground those latent tensions between Jamie and Owen (and maybe also Henry) about whether to share Dani’s story with the now-adult children.

In the show’s explorations of memory loss, there’re already some interesting but largely neglected undercurrents churning around about the idea that maybe losing one’s memory isn’t just a curse or a heartbreaking misfortune (as it is for Viola, the ghosts of Bly Manor, and Owen’s mother), but can, in certain circumstances, be a blessing. Bly implies—via Owen and the frame narrative—that Miles and Flora have been able to flourish in their lives because they have forgotten what happened at Bly and still remain blissfully unaware of it…which, to be clear, is only possible because of the sacrifices that Dani and Jamie have made. But this situation raises, and leaves floating there, a bunch of questions about the responsibilities we have to impart traumatic histories to younger generations—whether interpersonally (e.g. within families) or societally (e.g. in history classrooms). Cycles of trauma don’t end by shielding younger generations from the past; they especially don’t end by forcing impacted, oppressed, traumatized populations (e.g. queer folks) to shoulder the burdens of trauma on their own for the sake of protecting another population’s innocent ignorance. But how do we impart traumatic histories? How do we do so responsibly, compassionately, in ways that respect those harrowing pasts—and those who lived them, those most directly impacted by them—without actively causing harm to receiving audiences? On the other hand, if we over-privilege the innocence of those who have forgotten or those who weren’t directly impacted, what do we lose and what do we risk by not having frank, open conversations about traumatic histories?

As it stands, I think that Bly is remiss in the way it tosses out these issues, but never actually does anything with them. It could have done much, much more. In this alternate ending, then, there could be some productive disagreement among Jamie, Owen, and Henry about whether to tell Flora and Miles, what to tell them, how to tell them. Perhaps, in her seizing of the conversation and her launching of the story in such a public way, Jamie has taken matters into her own hands and has done so in a way that Owen and Henry can’t easily derail. Perhaps Owen sympathizes but does, indeed, abruptly cut her off just before her audience can completely connect the dots. Perhaps Henry is conflicted and doesn’t take a stand—or perhaps he does. Perhaps we find out that Henry had been torn about whether to even invite Jamie because of the possibility of something like this happening. Or, perhaps Henry wants the children to know and believes that they should hear Dani’s story from Jamie. Perhaps we see scenes of past quarrels between Jamie and Owen, Owen and Henry. Perhaps, once the story has ended, we see a brief aftermath conversation between Owen and Jamie about what Jamie has done, their speculations about how it may impact Miles and Flora. Perhaps the show presents these conversations in ways that challenge us to reflect on them, even if it does not provide conclusive answers to the questions it raises, and even if it leaves these conflicts open-ended, largely unresolved.

Alternative Ending 2: Living with the Trauma

If Bly’s creators had wanted Viola’s inhabitation of Dani to represent the ongoing struggles of living—and loving someone—with severe mental illness and trauma, they could have also just…done that? Like, they could have just portrayed Jamie and Dani living their lives together and dealing with Viola along the way. They could have just let that be it. It wouldn’t have been necessary to include Dani’s death within the show’s depicted timeline at all.

The show could’ve more closely aligned its treatment of Dani’s fatalism with James’s Beast in the Jungle—but with, perhaps, a bit more of a hopeful spin. Perhaps, early on, Dani is convinced that her demise is imminent and incontrovertible, much as we already see in the final episode’s diner scene. For a while, this outlook continues to dominate her existence in ways that interfere with her daily functioning and her relationship with Jamie. Perhaps there’s an equivalent of the flooded bathtub scene, but it happens much earlier in the progression of their partnership: Dani despairs, and Jamie is there to reinforce her commitment to staying with Dani through it all, much like her extant “If you can’t feel anything, then I’ll feel everything for the both of us” remarks. But maybe, as a result of this, Dani comes to a realization much like The Beast in the Jungle’s John Marcher—but one that enables her to act on her newfound understanding, an opportunity that Marcher never finds before it’s too late. Maybe she realizes that her fatalism has been causing her to miss out on really, truly embracing the life that she and Jamie have been forging together, thus echoing the show’s earlier points about how unresolved trauma can impede our cultivation of meaningful relationships. Maybe she realizes that her life with Jamie has been passing her by while she’s remained so convinced that Viola will claim that life at any moment. Maybe she comes to understand that her perpetual sense of dread has been hurting Jamie—that Jamie needs her in the same ways that she needs Jamie, but that Dani’s ever-present sense of doom has been preventing her from providing for those needs. And maybe this leads to a re-framing of the “you, me, us,” conceit, with a scene in which Dani acknowledges the extent to which her fatalism has been dictating their lives; in light of this acknowledgement, she and Jamie resolve—together—to continue supporting each other as they navigate Viola’s lasting influences on their lives.

By making this suggestion, I once again do not want to seem like I’m advocating that “Dani should fight back against Viola” (or, in other words, that “Dani should fight harder to win the battle against her mental illness”). But I do want to direct us back to a point that I raised at the very beginning: grieving, traumatized, and mentally ill folks can, indeed, cause harm to our loved ones. Our grief, trauma, and mental illness don’t excuse that fact. But what that means is that we have to take responsibility for our harmful actions. What it absolutely does not mean is that our harms are inevitable or that our loved ones would be better off without us.It means recognizing that we still matter and have value to others, despite the narratives we craft to try to convince ourselves otherwise. It means acknowledging the wounds that fatalistic, “everybody is better without me” assumptions can inflict. It means identifying the ways that we can support and care for our loved ones, even through our own struggles with our mental health.

“Fighting harder to win the battle against mental illness” is a callous and downright incorrect framing of the matter; but there are, nevertheless, intentional steps that we must take to heal from trauma, to receive treatment for our mental illnesses, to care for ourselves, to care for our loved ones. For instance…the very process of writing this essay incited me to do a lot of reflecting on the self-defeating narratives that I have been telling myself about my mental health and my relationships with others. And that, in turn, incited me to do some course-correcting. I thought about how much I want to work towards healing, however convoluted and intricate that process may be. I thought about how I want to support my family. How I want to foster a robust social support network, such that I feel a genuine sense of community. How I want to be an attentive friend. How, someday, if I’m fortunate enough to have a girlfriend, I want to be a caring, present, and equal partner to her; I want to emotionally nourish her through life’s trials and turmoil, not just expect her to provide that emotional nourishment for me. I started writing this essay in August; and since then, because of it, I’ve held myself accountable by reaching out to friends, spending time with them, trying to support them. I’ve also managed to get myself, finally, to start therapy. And my therapist is already helping me address those self-defeating narratives that have led me to believe that I’m just a burden on my friends. So, y’know, I’m workin’ on it.

But it ain’t pretty. And it also ain’t a linear upward trajectory of consistent improvement. It’s messy. Sometimes, frankly, it’s real ugly.

It could be for Dani, too.

Even with her decision to accept the certainties and uncertainties of Viola’s intrusive presence in her life, to live her life as best she can in the face of it all, perhaps Dani still struggles from day to day. Perhaps some days are better than others. Perhaps Viola, as I suggested earlier, begins finding some modicum of peace through her possession of Dani; nonetheless, her rage and disquiet never entirely subside, and they still periodically overtake Dani. Perhaps Dani improves, only to then backslide, only to then find ways to stabilize once again. In this way, the show could’ve more precisely portrayed the muddled, tumultuous lastingness of grief and trauma throughout a lifetime—without concluding that struggle with a valorized suicide.

Such portrayals are not unprecedented in horror. As I contemplated this ending possibility, I couldn’t help but think of The Babadook (2014), another piece of horror media whose monster carries allegorical import as a representation of the endurance and obtrusion of unresolved trauma. The titular monster doesn’t disappear at the film’s end; Sam emphasizes, in fact, that “you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” And so, even after Amelia has confronted the Babadook and locked him in the basement of the family’s home, he continues to lurk there, still aggressive and threatening to overcome her, but able to be pacified with a bowlful of worms. Like loss and trauma, the Babadook can never be totally ignored or dispelled, only assuaged with necessary, recurrent attention and feedings.

Bly could have easily done something similar with Viola. Perhaps, in the same way that Amelia has to regularly provide the Babadook with an offering of worms, Dani must also “feed” Viola to soothe her rage. What might those feedings look like? What might they consist of? Perhaps Viola draws Dani back to Bly Manor, insisting on revisiting those same sites that have held implacable sway over her for centuries. Perhaps these visits are what permit Dani to gradually learn about Viola: who she was, what she has become, why she has tarried between life and death for so long. Perhaps Dani also learns that these “feedings” agitate Viola for a while, stirring her into fresh furor—but that, in their wake, Viola also settles more deeply and for longer periods. Perhaps they necessitate that Dani and Jamie both directly confront their own traumas, bring them to the surface, attend to them. Perhaps, together, they learn how to navigate their traumas in productive, mutually supportive ways. Perhaps this is also what quiets Viola over time, even if Dani is never quite sure whether Viola will return to claim her life.

You may be wondering, then, about what happens with the frame narrative in this scenario. If Dani doesn’t meet some tragic demise, what happens to the role and significance of grieving in the act of Jamie’s storytelling? Would Jamie’s storytelling even occur? Wouldn’t Dani just be at Flora’s wedding, too? Would we miss the emotional gut-punch of the reveal of the narrator’s identity at the end?  

Perhaps, in this case, the ending removes some of the weight off of the grief theme to instead foreground those troubled deliberations about how to impart traumatic histories (as we covered in the previous scenario). As such, the frame could feature those conflicts between Jamie (and Dani here too this time), Owen, and Henry concerning whether or not to tell Dani’s story to Miles and Flora. Perhaps Dani decides not to attend the wedding, wary of contributing to this conflict at the scene of what should be a joyous occasion for Flora; perhaps she feels like she can’t even face the children. And then, without Dani there, perhaps an overwrought Jamie jumps into the story when the opportunity presents itself—whether impulsively or premeditatedly.

Or…Perhaps the show could’ve just scrapped the frame at Flora’s wedding and could’ve done something else instead. What might that be? I have no idea! Sky’s the limit.

At any rate, even with these changes, it would’ve still been possible to have the show conclude in a sentimental, tear-jerking way (which seems to be Flanagan’s preference). Perhaps Jamie’s storytelling does spark the return of the children’s memories. Perhaps, as they begin to remember, they reach out to Dani and Jamie, wanting to connect with them, wanting especially to see Dani again. And then, perhaps, the show could’ve ended with a scene of Miles and Flora finally reuniting with Dani—emotional, sweet, and memorable, no valorized suicide or exploitation of queer tragedy needed.

Conclusion

In my writing of this essay—and over the course of the Bly Manor and Hill House rewatches that it inspired—I’ve been finding myself also doing a great deal of reflection about the possibilities and purposes of horror media. I’ve been thinking, in particular, about the potential for the horror genre to provide contained settings in which we can face and explore our deepest fears and traumas in (relatively) safe, controlled ways. Honestly, I think that this is part of why I enjoy Flanagan’s work so much (even if it also enrages me at the same time). If you’ve read this far, you’ll have seen just how profoundly I relate to so much of the subject matter of The Haunting of Bly Manor. It has been extremely meaningful and valuable for me to encounter the show’s depictions of topics like familial trauma, grief, loss, compulsory heterosexuality, caregiving for aging parents, so on, all of which bear so heavily on my own existence. Bly Manor produced opportunities for me to excavate and dig deeply into the worst experiences of and feelings about my life: to look at them, understand them, and give voice to them, when I’m otherwise inclined to bury them into inconspicuous docility.

Even so, the show does not handle these relatable topics as well as it could have. Flanagan and the many contributors to this horror anthology can’t just preach at us about the responsibilities of storytellers; they, too, have responsibilities as storytellers in the communication of these delicate, sensitive, weighty human experiences. And so, to reinforce a point that I made earlier, this is why I’ve written this extensive critique. It’s not because I revile the show and want to condemn it—it’s because I cherish Bly Manor immensely. It’s because I wanted more out of it. It’s because I want to hold it and its creators accountable. It’s because I want folks to think more critically about it (especially after how close I came to unreflectively accepting its messages in my own initial reception of it).

Television usually doesn’t get me this way. It’s been a long time since I was this emotionally attached to a show. So this essay has been my attempt to honor Bly with a careful, meticulous treatment. I appreciate all of the reflection and self-work that it has inspired me to undertake. I’ve wanted to pay my respects in the best way I know how: with close, thorough analysis.

If you’ve read all this mess, thanks for taking the time to do so. I hope that you’ve been able to get something out of it, too.

Representation matters, y’all.

The end.

#the haunting of bly manor #bly manor #thobm #dani clayton #jamie taylor #dani x jamie #damie #sapphic romance #lesbian romance #mental health #compulsory heterosexuality #queer representation #not a fix-it fic but a fix-it essay

[feather2004]

Who is macaque’s killer and why I think it is Peng

Okay so I know this has been a source of discussion within the fandom basically ever since Macaque’s backstory got revealed. But I’ve got a pretty good case as to who I think the killer is and why it’s not Wukong.

For starters we already know that one of the shows developers has stated that Wukong and Macaque’s relationship is full of misunderstandings, and one of them was hinted to be Macaque’s belief that he was killed by Wukong.

Now dear reader there are many possible culprits for who could’ve done it however, based on the evidence the show has given us thus far and what we know of the possible suspects I have narrowed it done to three main suspects.

Suspect number 1 Wukong

He’s ruled out for obvious reasons, number one it’s almost confirmed by the creators that Wukong is innocent, but there is other evidence such as.

Number one: Wukong doesn’t react the way a normal person would to finding out someone you killed is most certainly alive.

He’s not shocked to see Macaque during his debut episode in season one, at least not the way he should be if he new Macaque was dead. He seems just angry and annoyed to see him, especially after all this time which would imply that Wukong most likely believed Mac fled during whatever battle they had and survived.

But we know better, now you could say that perhaps Wukong and him met up before that episode so that’s why he’s not shocked. This explanation however, dose not convince me since we have no idea how long Mac’s been resurrected for for all we know he could’ve been alive for a few months before meeting MK.

Plus it just doesn’t seem like Mac to immediately rush off to fight the man who killed you to moment he comes back. No it’s far for likely he waited, hid and schemed for a possible opening to attack before confronting Wukong, and a brand new Monkie Kid who’s inexperienced with his new powers and easy to manipulate now that’s a perfect opportunity.

Number two: it wouldn’t make sense from a writing point to make Wukong the killer, it’s obvious that they’re trying to make this version of him more kid friendly and having your main characters mentor brutality murder his best friend is not the way to do that. That and it’s obvious the writers are setting up for Mac and Wukong to reconcile it would be really hard for that to happen if Wukong just straight up killed Mac, that’s kinda something you can’t come back from.

So yah from all logical standpoints it makes no sense for Wukong to willingly be the killer, and if he is he had to have done it unknowingly or at least against his will.

Suspect number 2 The Lady Bone Demon

Okay so I get why people would think it’s her but honestly, there’s absolutely no way it’s her, and think my reasons for thinking this are very valid.

Number one: she would have no motive to do so or opportunity.

This I feel I’d quite obvious if we look hard enough at the story, it’s stated in her backstory that she was defeated by Wukong and sealed after she tried to kill the whole world. But nowhere is it stated that she new Wukong or had beef with him before this, in fact it wouldn’t make sense for her to as she was busy with her mission and it’s implied that Wukong and the gang were sent in as a last resort and succeeded on their first try.

So, how exactly would she have been able to mess with Mac and Wukong’s relationship when she was imprisoned? My guess she wouldn’t have and even if she could why would she waste her time targeting Macaque when she was most likely focusing on trying to escape her prison. And I know the chains look like hers but there’s no reason that those can’t be ghostly underworld chains, plus we don’t know if that ability is exclusive to her.

And if I’m wrong about the original battle timeline she still would have no reason target Mac since it’s very clearly implied that almost no one new of him aside from Wukong and the brotherhood. I mean he wasn’t a very flashy demon and he kept to himself mostly so how could she have known about him. And even if she did who’s to say Mac wasn’t already dead by the time Wukong and her fought.

Plus it just isn’t within character for her to do this, Lady Bone Demon is all about logic and is usually quite impersonal with her victims she isn’t the type to needlessly torment someone. She’s cruel yes, but she’s not sadistic at least not to the point of destroying someone’s relationship and killing their best friend.

Remember her core motivation as a villain is to end all suffering, in an extreme way yes but that’s still what she wants.

Number two: it would also narratively be underwhelming for it to be her.

If I’m wrong and she is the one who did it, well wahoo I guess she’s already dead so there’s no karmic justice that can come from this revelation. She can’t be punished or yelled at or anything really, she’s gone it wouldn’t mean anything if it was her.

No it would make way more sense for the writers to pick someone who is alive, someone who the heroes can bring justice against a new juicy villain to write all kinds of interesting character dynamics with.

And that brings us to our final suspect, the one who I actually think did it.

Suspect Number 3 Peng

Now this guy, this guy is the kind of person who would kill Macaque: we already know that he and Mac have a heated rivalry at least on Peng’s side, we know that he’s bloodthirsty wanting to kill MK the moment he met him because he was to powerful to let live and we also have a perfect opportunity for him to commit the crime. Plus he just screams filthy backstabber from his voice to his design.

He has motive, opportunity and the skills to accomplish such a task.

It would be incredibly easy for someone like him to kill Mac, one we know it’s most likely that Mac died during the brotherhoods fight against heaven that Wukong was present for as he was shown there during the flashback. Two two the battle was probably hectic and could have easily given him time to slip away and attack an unguarded or unconscious Macaque during the battle leaving everyone else none the wiser.

Three we already know that Mac and him were fighting about whether Wukong had betrayed them or not plus it was clear in the flashback that Mac was in the brotherhood for Wukong and didn’t actually like the others except maybe DBK and Azure. So it would make sense at least in Peng’s mind that Macaque was a liability that would betray them the moment Wukong asked him to, so it’d make sense to kill him when he had the chance and save the brotherhood two mystical monkeys against them.

It would be the perfect plan to him, plus the idea of killing Wukong’s best friend and the immense pain it would cause the monkey would probably just be a bonus to him. The only reason why he might’ve not is because Azure would have disagreed but as I’ve stated before the battle would have been a good cover as everyone else would be distracted fighting their own battles, plus Peng probably thought he could convince Azure it was for the greater good with the reasons I’ve listed above.

Not to mention this has AMAZING story potential, just imagine Wukong finding out one of his of friends killed Mac imagine what’d that do to him: constantly pondering on how he could’ve prevented it why was he so blind ect.

And on Macaque’s side we’ve got this eternal rival who he thought was his ally but instead was the knife in his back all along, that could be a great villain vs hero dynamic.

Even Azure would be tested if he found out, questioning the brotherhood’s integrity and if his actions are actually morally correct. Imagine the strain that would put of his and Peng’s relationship who are shown to be particularly close.

To me it just makes perfect sense for Peng to be the killer. So yah that’s my theory it was Peng all along.

#lego monkey kid macaque #lego monkie kid wukong #lego monkie kid #lego monkie kid azure lion #lego monkie kid peng #lego monkie kid lady bone demon #lego monkie kid lbd #lmk spoilers #lmk sun wukong #lmk analysis #lmk theory #lmk macaque #lmk azure lion #lmk peng #media analysis #theory

[butwhatifidothis]

I’m gonna put on my nerd glasses for a second to talk about something I find weird with a particular user making the rounds. A while ago, I answered an ask proposing the possibility that Edelgard wasn’t meant to be a villain in 3H by pointing to the myriad of ways the story both directly and indirectly tells the player that she is, even with all of the uwu waifu bait moments dragging down her overall quality of character. The user in question, which I’ll be calling Dolphin, responds with this:

Even setting aside the brazen ableism of “this mentally ill person would totally murder their loved ones because they’re crazy” - even though, um, fucking yikes - it’s just so... completely irrelevant to anything that I said or was brought up. I point out things that objectively did happen in 3H - Dolphin responds by bringing up what they think an unrelated character would do in a hypothetical that never even appears in the game. We as the player are not privy to ever actually seeing any character, let alone Dimitri specifically, directly interact with a spouse of any kind on-screen - the most we are given are the end cards that are essentially our last look into the character in question’s life (and, well, look at that Dimitri does not, in fact, do what Dolphin think he’d do - shocking, I know).

But Dolphin is using this nonexistent hypothetical as part of their grounds for their actual argumentation. They think that Dimitri would do this thing in this setting that never happens in the game, therefore that adds onto the (implicit) idea that he is in fact the bad guy. And not only that, it adds onto the idea that describing Edelgard as a villain over Dimitri is wrong, because Dolphin thinks Dimitri would hypothetically beat his wife in a fit of rage or delusion should the opportunity to do so ever come up.

I could have just as easily said “I could see Edelgard as the kind of woman who would throw slurs at POC who slightly annoy her.” Or I could have said “You know, I think Raphael and his family are secretly Nabateans and he uses the front of a simple young man to hide safely amongst humans - he’s not dumb at all, he invented color contacts to hide his green eyes!” Or I could have slammed my feet against my keyboard and posted whatever garbled mess comes as a result. All of these responses would have been as related to the topic as Dolphin throwing their extremely subjective headcanon into the discussion at hand.

So arguing with this sort of person and getting anything of actual note out of the discussion is just not feasibly possible, because at any moment they will pull out their subjective opinion during a talk about the objective events of the game. And not to make a point about why they, personally, do or don’t like a particular aspect of the game, but to prop it as part of their objective assessment (the front liner of their assessment, no less). Even, again, setting aside the ableism, as well as the general hyper-focus on sexuality seemingly being a determinant factor in a character’s status as villain or Not Villain - there is no point in arguing with this person. They do not care to actually talk about the game, its characters, its themes, its writing, or anything like that; being a bit mean here, it seems like they just want to say words into the air hoping to find a Polo to their Marco.

Sorry, Dolphin, that I can’t bring myself to really care about what you’re saying

#anti edelgard #Anti-edelgard #edelgard critical #edelgard discourse #just to be safe #like omega safe lmao #it's like if we were talking about how chlorophyl makes grass green and someone else walked in and said that grass tastes like chicken #like even ignoring the bizarre statement we. weren't talking about that #it shows off how little they actually care to partake in an actual discussion because they'll just fuckin'. ignore what you're talking abou

[cosmereplay]

Day 27: Diamond (part 2)

Rated Explicit, Ialai/Beryl, set during Way of Kings Cross posted on ao3 Click here for part 1 on tumblr

Hearing the woman use her given name made Ialai’s blood boil. It was exactly the feeling she got around Jasnah. Oh, this woman is good, she thought.

“Your poor mother will faint when she hears how rude you’ve been to her old friend,” Ialai said sweetly, feeling her rage simmer inside. 

“My mother is neither poor nor weak of constitution,” the Jasnah snapped back, then walked past her, putting her back to Ialai as she made a show of examining some blank pages on a nearby desk. “A fact where you compare terribly, I’ve noted.”

Ialai’s hands balled into fists. “Jasnah, I have known you for more years–”

“Brightness Jasnah, if you please,” she said with a practiced smile. “After all, I outrank you.”

The audacity of it caused her temper to flare. She wouldn’t expect a whore to know the intricacies of the top four dahns. But just the idea that Jasnah might someday outrank her somehow made Ialai see red. It was evil. She loved it. “How dare you walk onto my territory, enter my house, and act like you own everything!” Ialai yelled. She didn’t have to play games, or hold back. She could let her rage free like a storm. “I will show you who is a Highprincess and who is a failed son!” 

Fully in the moment now, Ialai grabbed Jasnah’s arm and threw her against the bed. She pushed her forward until Jasnah was standing against the side of the tall bed, bent at the waist with her face shoved into the sheets. Ialai lifted her havah skirts up and over her head, then yanked off her undergarments. 

She slapped Jasnah’s ass with a flat palm, feeling the pleasure of releasing her rage on the woman. Even in Kharbranth Jasnah was a menace, inserting her opinions and making Ialai’s job of manipulation more difficult. Storms, if this were the woman herself she would tear her apart. 

“You think you can embarrass me like this?” Jasnah asked, her voice muffled by the bed.

“I can do much more than this,” Ialai smiled, a cool wave of power washing through her. She grabbed her by the hair and made her stand. Jasnah stood proud in front of her, but her chin jutted a bit too hard, her eyes watered with a hint of shame. Oh, Ialai was going to love taking her apart. 

She started with the havah. “You had a lot of nerve coming here unaccompanied by guards, Jasnah,” she said, relishing the feeling of leaving the honorific off her name. This time she didn’t complain. “You’re going to discover that you’re too smart for your own good sometimes.” Button by button, Ialai made quick work of the outer havah and peeled it off her, leaving her in her shift and skirts.

“Move,” Ialai ordered, and Jasnah stepped aside, looking properly chastised. Good, good. “Now take off the rest.”

Jasnah’s jaw shifted as she pondered fighting back, but Ialai knew she was powerless to stop her. Sure enough, she made the smart choice. Blushing and looking upset, Jasnah removed her shift and skirts, leaving her completely nude. She looked utterly vulnerable, her hands unable to conceal the curves of her body, the fullness of her breasts.

Ialai licked her lips. “Now attend me. Take off my clothes.”

The object of her hatred stepped forward, then demurely started removing Ialai’s clothes. The pout was a bit much, but still, Ialai felt a swell of pleasure at the thought of thoroughly demeaning Jasnah by treating her like a ward or personal attendant. 

Oh yes, Jasnah would hate it. The woman knelt to remove Ialai’s skirts, then looked up with angry, resentful eyes. Storms, that made Ialai drip. She took the opportunity to shove Jasnah’s face between her legs, where she reluctantly lapped her up. 

“Stand,” Ialai said when she was nice and warmed up, the waves of pleasure and power indistinguishable. Jasnah stood, her makeup messed by her mouth work, and that just made Ialai happier. 

She moved to the bed, then had Jasnah lay across her lap. “It’s time I did something that your mother failed to do,” she said, and slapped her ass again. 

Jasnah moaned. 

“Oh, you like that?” Ialai said, and gave her another. Jasnah moaned again. “Maybe if you’d had more of this, you would’ve learned to behave.”

Two more slaps, across Jasnah’s thighs. 

More moans, muffled in the bed.

“Well that won’t do, I need to hear that you’re learning your lesson,” Ialai said, and grabbed her hair, forcing her to arch her back. 

With the next slap, Jasnah cried out in obvious pleasure, then covered her mouth. “I won’t…I shouldn’t…” she said against her own mouth.

Ialai pushed her hand off. “You can and you will,” she said with glee. She slapped her again, and Jasnah’s ass and thighs were turning red. 

Her hand hovered in the air. “Will you be good for me now? Will you obey me?” Ialai asked, her heart racing with excitement.

Jasnah twisted in position, her eyes shining with tears, her makeup running, her hair a mess. “Yes, Brightness,” she said, and every word sounded like a grinding admission.

Yes! Oh, yes!

She couldn’t wait any longer. She scrambled backwards, then flipped Jasnah onto her back. She straddled Jasnah’s belly and started to touch herself vigorously.

“You’re going to do everything I say now, aren’t you?” she asked between panting breaths.

“Yes, Brightness,” Jasnah answered.

You’re going to turn right back around and leave the Plains to me. You’re going to leave Dalinar and Navani to me. Oh, Taln’s palms, she was close. “You’re going to admit I’m greater than you.”

“You…you’re greater than me,” Jasnah admitted.

“Ahhh!” Ialai cried, and she came, squirting over Jasnah’s ample breasts and soft belly. She kept touching herself as she came down, and drew a quick glyph through the wetness of Jasnah’s body. Victory.

The whore stayed silent, still acting out Jasnah. Storms, Ialai had to admit the woman was good at her job. Finally, Ialai tapped the woman and got off her. She quickly put on a robe, then called for a washbasin and a bath.

She took the washbasin and cloth in hand from the surprised master-servant, then shut the door. 

“I’ll expect you to be gone when I return from my bath,” Ialai said, setting down the basin for the woman. “And you made an excellent Jasnah. I might just call for you again, assuming your discretion can be counted on, of course.”

The woman’s demeanour changed in an instant, from Jasnah’s confused arousal to an expression of pride and excitement, like a schoolgirl who had passed a test. “That would be an honour, Brightness Ialai!”

“Yes, I know,” Ialai said absentmindedly, and left, feeling more relaxed than she had in ages.

#minifemslashfeb2024 #cosmere femslash february #ialai sadeas #beryl stormlight #ialai/beryl #ialai x beryl #stormlight fanfic #my fic

[writtenonreceipts]

First time really writing Emerie and first CresseidaxEmerie, so I’m not sure about this…but here we are…

On mobile, so no tag list <3

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The Girl With the Shop

Bright sunlight filtered through the wide windows of the shop illuminating the set of tables full of merchandise and a small couch pushed up against one wall for casual seating.  It wasn’t anything special, Emerie knew.  She’d spent the last few weeks scouring thrift shops and yard sales for unique decorations that would give her own venture its own style.  Given the fact that her own merchandise was a bit lacking right now, she worried that the shop would fall apart before anything began.

 It was only the second day of being open, but it was easy to get caught up in thoughts of failure.  Emerie glanced at the potted plant resting on the register counter.  Nesta brought it by on opening day, the small cactus was a surprising source of strength to her at that moment.  According to Nesta, the cactus was a symbol of endurance, though she wasn’t convinced.

“It’s going to be a good day,” she told herself.  

The door opened for a young woman to enter.  She had white blonde hair that hung in loose curls well past her shoulders and framed a slim face.  She was beautiful.  Her flowy sundress danced around her lean form as she swept into the shop.  

She was the first customer of the day and Emerie had to push aside her own doubts for the day.

“Welcome in!” She greeted, suddenly self conscious about the simple braid she’d put her hair in.  Like she did every day. “Can I help you find anything today?”

The woman flashed her a smile. “Hi, you know, I’m trying to find a present for my cousin.  He likes collecting books…I don’t know if you’d have anything that might work?”

“Yeah,” Emerie said, she stepped away from the counter and immediately went to one of the back displays she’d first set up.  “Just back here.”

The table in question was full of leather coverings she’d outsourced from another local business that processed both real and faux leather.  Emerie purchased the covers and decorated them herself with special carving equipment or she did some burn art into the leather.  She might not be the best artist, but there were a few designs she was proud of.  Feyre, Nesta’s sister, had even volunteered to design a few.  Though, Emerie was already thinking she’d completely outsource the actual artwork.

“These can be used as protective covers for books or journals,” Emerie said as she grabbed one of the covers.  She’d done this one, inscribing the Adriata coastline along the front and adding some embellishments along the spine.  It was one of her favorites. “Or, these journals can be used as reading trackers here.  And then those display blocks there.”

Emerie had always loved reading, it was the one thing that had connected her to her two best friends and led her to finally opening this shop.  

The woman reached over and took the leather covering.  Her slim fingers traced the careful lines Emerie had carved.

“Adriata?” she asked looking up.  Delight danced in her warm, brown eyes as she eyed Emerie.

“Yeah,” Emerie admitted with a small smile, “I went there once, briefly, but I loved it.  I’ve always wanted to go back.”

“You designed this?” the woman asked.  When Emerie nodded the woman practically glowed as she smiled. “It’s beautiful.  I’m from Adriata actually.”

“Really?” Emerie felt a foolish little spark in her chest at that.  

“Yeah, I came up to Velaris for a work opportunity.” The woman nodded as she continued to run her fingers along the different markings over the cover. She glanced to the window where the sun continued to slant through the windows. “It’s not the same though.  Are you from Velaris?”

“My whole life,” Emerie said, “I’ve never been able to do much traveling.  Other than that one trip.”

Between the way she grew up, catering to her father, and then trying to get back on her own two feet--Emerie had been pulled in so many different directions she sometimes didn’t know which was up.  The only reason she’d gone to Adriata was to celebrate her father dying.  It was the one thing she could do for herself that she knew would make her the man spin in his grave.

“Well,” the woman chuckled, “I’d say you have excellent taste in travel destinations.”

Emerie felt a bit of heat rush to her cheeks at that comment.

“I think I’ll take this and one of those bookmarks,” the woman said.

“Perfect,” Emerie took the requested items back and gestured to the front. “I can ring you up.”

“I’ve never noticed this shop before, how long has it been hiding here?” the woman asked.  She brushed an errant strand of hair over her shoulder.  She leaned across the counter as Emerie wrapped the leather cover and bookmark in tissue paper.

“I actually just opened yesterday,” Emerie admitted.  “The space used to be a record shop.”

The piqued the woman’s interest.  She raised a brow. “Owning your shop?  That’s pretty incredible.”

“I guess,” Emerie laughed. “It’s strange…I mean, this isn’t what I was expecting to do, you know?  But now that I’m here…”

She let herself trail off, not sure why she was talking so much about things that she’d never really spoken about before.

“I think we’re our own worst enemies when it comes to stuff like that,” the woman said.  She passed over her credit card without a second thought. “It’s so easy to doubt ourselves that we don’t see all that we’ve accomplished.”

She shrugged a delicate shoulder.

It made sense, really made sense.  And if Emerie were being honest, helped offer her a new perspective in her situation at the moment.

“I can see that,” she said, the thought made her smile, if a bit.  She walked around the register with the bag of purchased items. “You’re all set.” She paused a beat. “I’m Emerie, if you ever find yourself coming back.”

“Cresseida.” Another bright smile that could rival the Adriata sun. “There’s a lot you have to offer here.  I’ll see you around, Emerie.”

Cresseida took her purchases and with a glance over her shoulder, left the shop.

Exhaling slowly, Emerie leaned against the counter and watched as Cresseida passed the front window before disappearing again.  

She glanced at the cactus.  Well.  Maybe she could endure just a little longer.

#acotar #emerie #emerie of illyria #cresseida #emerie x cresseida

[stillhavetodothat]

Replaying Nancy Drew without Cheating - Part 7: The Haunted Carousel

Ah, yes, a game that I rarely even think about when considering the Nancy Drew universe as a whole. I didn’t even know Ingrid Corey’s name was Ingrid Corey when I first sat down to play this game. I didn’t remember Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine. In fact, this is having me question if I have ever actually finished the game in the first place, because aside from who the culprit was, I didn’t remember a thing about that ending. The last scene was just a lot of clicking around in blind hope, trying not to die. Unfortunately, this meant that I got to see a whole lot of this face.

Honestly, thank god I didn’t ever finish this one as a kid, because that face would have given me more nightmares than Joseph’s in FIN (and that already scared me shitless enough).

But anyway. CAR. And not cheating when playing it. I was able to move through the story pretty quickly, without getting stuck, until I had to play the harmonica for MtMM. I played those 6 notes over and over again, and he kept telling me to try again. I was getting ready to throw my laptop in a rage. Eventually when I went away, talked to some other people, and returned, I was able to replay the 6 notes and he finally accepted the answer. This had to have either been a bug, or it was set up in such a way that I couldn’t move on to solving the riddle unless I had had another conversation first? I don’t know. Either way, that was maybe the most frustrating moment in my entire journey so far, and the one I was most willing to risk my no-cheating streak for. BUT ALAS, I prevailed!

Some thoughts about this game:

1. Why does the location suck so bad? This game is about a theme park, but you can only go to a few attractions inside the park, a couple stuffy offices, and the butt-ugly hotel room across the street. Herein starts the trend of games where very little wandering takes place. Obviously other games have maps with marked locations on them, but they also have an entire museum, an entire soap opera set, or a huge forest and underground tunnels to explore. Idk, this game felt slightly claustrophobic to me for some reason. And I would have loved to be able to wander through the park itself to feel a little bit more immersed. Missed opportunity.

I will say that this hotel room captures the feel of New Jersey perfectly, though.

2. For a game whose namesake is a “haunted carousel,” we see very little haunting and honestly very little carousel. Half the game is running around solving convoluted riddles for a helpless Joy, and the other is doing Ingrid’s job for her, leaving very little time for much else.

3. Speaking of Ingrid, why on earth is an engineer asking me, an 18-year-old stranger, to fix circuitry and program software updates? And some of her passive aggressive comments (”It isn’t exactly rocket science,” “He’s not exactly a mechanical genius,” and “You can check in the binder if it’s too cryptic for you”) made her a VERY unpleasant suspect. Being a park engineer is YOUR job, girl, not mine. However, she IS the most beautiful suspect in the games so far. LOOK at her bone structure.

4. For some reason, I remember the burning-down-the-hotel thing as an explosion, where you get to see the entire hotel get engulfed in violent flames as you stand outside in horror. I mean, getting the call from Paula Santos is good and all, but it was disappointing when I was gearing up to see some serious destruction (I even left the iron on, on purpose, just to see it).

5. I felt like Nancy was particularly annoying in this game. She hears Harlan is an ex-con, and immediately tries to get him fired over it (extremely anti-woke of her...why have I never realized how terrible she really is?). Instead of ordering a soft drink with her burger, she ordered a tall glass of milk (barf). Half the time she pronounces carousel “carouSEL,” which irked me for no reason at all. Obviously Joy and Ingrid were battling for the Most Annoying Character award this game, but seems like Nancy decided to throw her hat in the ring, too.

6. I was about to shit all over Nancy for being a hude nerd and thinking finding a book on carousels was “cool,” but then I read it and was actually enthralled. I even read some tidbits of information to my fiance, and he was also fascinated, and even asked some follow-up questions (very detective of him!). So I will apologize to Nancy for that, but only that!

7. The first game where Nancy has a cell phone! Hilarious that she has to pull out her blank notepad and a pencil for every single impromptu call, but at least we are spared running back to a specific room just to make a phone call. AND, we get to answer phone calls in this game, too, not just make them! So futuristic.

8. This is also the first game where you have to actually get information from one of your regular phone contacts (Bess, George, Ned) in order to move forward in the game. I have been generally avoiding calling any of those contacts throughout these play-throughs, since it is mostly just recapping stuff I’ve already done. This left me racking my brain trying to remember where we are supposed to learn about shorthand to translate the Glory note, thinking it was in a book somewhere, when really it really required a phone call to Bess all along.

9. This is also the first playthrough of this game where I actually got to mention the Poppy Dada piece to Elliott, and hear him say that she thinks he is hot (she ain’t wrong). I love discovering new experiences in older games, and love when games make references to games that preceded them.

10. This picture of Mike DeSalle and K.J. Perris is the best part of the game, hands down. The hair! The mustache! The crossed eyes! The awkward holding of the jewelry!

11. Not to brag or anything, but I managed to beat Barnacle Blast the first time through. Not sure how this is even possible, since I have been dreading that very game since I started STFD. I must be getting more dexterous in my old age.

I know I just bitched about CAR for several paragraphs there, but I did enjoy playing it. The ending was actually really great, and it made sense when you think about other clues that were pointing to it the entire game (the fact that Elliott kept calling me “Nance” was suspicious on its own - you can never trust anyone who gets too friendly. See: Lisa, Joe). This is Nancy Drew, so any and every game is a treat for me. Even if I have complaints.

Never been so excited to get out of New Jersey. Onward and upwards to the PNW, and one of my favorite games of all time!

#nancy drew #nancy drew pc games #nancy drew games #game review #her interactive #the haunted carousel #clue crew

[decomposited]

Scaramouche didn't say anything as they entered the lab, their hands full. This felt stupid, and they were uncomfortable despite themself. This was sentimental. This was... well, Epsilon was fairly sentimental, wasn't he? Which was the entire reason they were doing this in the first place.

"Here," they said as they sat the warm bowl of chazuke on the desk before him. It wasn't fancy by any means, but it was the dish they could most reliably make taste the best. Comfort food. But they'd made it for him countless times before, and it wasn't anything special or out of the ordinary. "Eat. You've been at this a while."

They grabbed the arm of another rolling chair with their free hand, pulling it closer to slouch into it. They hesitated a moment more before holding out the red box in their hand, nudging his arm with the corner of it. "...and this."

Inside the box, once opened, are some small chocolate ganache squares, evenly sized and perfectly cut, covered in cocoa powder. "It's Valentine's Day. We don't celebrate it in Inazuma, but Margo wouldn't shut up about it last time she was in here... it stuck." It almost seemed like they were trying to disappear into the chair, as slouched as they were. But then they sat up and rolled the chair closer to Epsilon, their hand resting on his forearm, delicate fingers picking idly at the hem of his shirt. "Seemed like the kind of thing you'd be into, as sentimental as you are." Of course, this was a horribly obvious diversion of attention away from the fact that they had done this for him of their own choice, without any prompting.

The doors opened with a swoosh. The following silence made it readily apparent who was passing through. 

Epsilon was clearly busy with something, too involved to look over as they entered. He was sitting at his desk, scrutinizing some sort of technical drawing. There was one pencil in his hand, and another tucked behind his ear. He got like this sometimes—really, all the segments did—becoming so absorbed in a particular problem or area of study that it was as if the entire world fell away. Every concern or consideration went out the window.

“Not now, Scaramouche, I have to…” he started to say, and trailed off as the chazuke caught his attention. No matter how focused he was (and how little he wanted interruptions) it did look appetizing.

The urge to resist was finally subdued entirely when Scaramouche nudged him with something else. A box? Epsilon set the pencil aside to accept it, ignoring the implement rolling dangerously close to falling off the edge of the desk. 

He was befuddled at first, as he opened it to reveal the chocolates. This wasn’t something they would do normally.

“Valentine’s Day?” he asked. Oh. That would explain it.

Then the realization struck. “...It’s Valentine’s Day?!” His eyes fluttered from the box, to Scaramouche. Back and forth, until the pieces clicked together in his mind. It was Valentine’s Day, and Scaramouche had given him chocolate. No wonder they looked so horribly embarrassed. 

No matter how much they seemed to want to withdraw, however, they lingered, hand on his arm. 

Epsilon was beginning to find he wasn’t sure what to do next. 

“It’s funny that you’d say that. No one has ever given me anything for Valentine’s Day before,” he said. He was aware of the holiday, or at least the original was. He has memories (that aren’t his) of students from Mondstadt at the Akademiya extolling the virtues of the tradition, seeing it as an opportunity to share their affections with those who had caught their eye. It wasn’t something Zandik had ever seen in a positive light. The combination of the present and the past created a bittersweet sort of feeling. 

He carefully deposited the box on the desk. It didn’t matter at this point if it covered up the drawing, he wasn’t about to be getting any more work done anyways. And besides, he also needed one of his hands free to lay it on top of theirs—so very lightly. Not out of concern, but out of leaving them the freedom to pull away. 

“Thank you.” His voice was as soft as that touch, full of sincerity. It was so disarmingly at odds with his typical demeanor that it surprised even him for a moment.

#ic. // epsilon #stillgrows #stillgrows // scaramouche #v. // fatui #what if i became insane. #he's so. grr. hes making me crazy #theyre in love your honor...

[vendettavalor]

@prodijedi said: inspo + Aurelia

⚔️ Muse Inspo Collage // ACCEPTING ⚔️

SISUDATU - RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON

Sisu's was a primary inspiration for Aurelia's dragon from design. The long body with shorter limbs, fur, and horns was something I wanted to incorporate into her design. I wanted her to look fierce and graceful but also have some level of charming adorableness that embodied the fact she's a lot more friendly and approachable than she looked. And while she was never naive like Sisu was, the idea of being the main star in some powerful prophecy that will bring about grand change but having no idea how to fulfill it and create a positive outcome was something I drew upon for her backstory. The idea of being someone with big shoes to fill but not knowing how was a major detail I wanted her to have, especially given that she's a Star Wars OC. And Star Wars is all about prophecies when you really peel back a few layers.

MOLL MACTIRE - WOLFWALKERS

One of the things I wanted to convey with Aurelia is a connection to nature and magic. For that, I drew from Moll. Moll is a very mysterious character who we don't really get to learn much about except from what we hear Mebh say of her. We know she's a wolfwalker. She leads her pack, she uses magic to help hide them and keep them safe, to heal wounds, and to keep the forest alive and thriving. She's a protector of nature despite increasing pressure and dire circumstances. And the one thing Moll is most protective of is her daughter, Mebh. So much so that she is willing to sacrifice herself and remain trapped in order to give Mebh the opportunity to escape. But when all is said and done, she's also willing to turn very quickly on anyone who tries to hurt Mebh and break her own rules to defend her (i.e. no biting). That sort of characterization was another being inspiration for Aurelia. She's meant to be this grand protector of life. A healer by trade and someone who does not want to fight but will defend those closest to her. She's willing to go against her own code to do so, and is more than willing to sacrifice herself in order to give her loved ones a chance when the odds are at their worst.

TORIEL - UNDERTALE

Toriel was a major inspiration for Aurelia. Both design-wise and personality wise. I wanted her humanoid form to be very soft and gentle in appearance. Someone who exudes comfort and calm during the worst moments. Also, Toriel inspired the idea of Aurelia being very maternal. The idea of loving children, wanting to guide them and protect them and nurture them - that came from Toriel. Though unlike her inspiration, Aurelia is less overprotective and knows when to let go and let children explore for themselves. And unlike Toriel, Aurelia does not know the devastation of losing a child. She only knows the frustration of not being able to have them due to restrictions set by her religion.

GRANMAMARE - PONYO ON THE CLIFF BY THE SEA

Granmamare, at least from what we hear from the sailors in Ponyo, is known as a sea goddess and a goddess of mercy. She's adoring of all living things, of nature, and regarded as being a loving mother who understands change and the importance of letting go. Her love for Fujimoto is pure, showing grace even when he blames himself for losing Ponyo. She's the only one who can calm him down when he begins to stress out about it and show a deep sense of love and understanding for Ponyo. Even when Fujimoto points out that Ponyo could turn to seafoam if Sasuke's love is not pure, she accepts that keeping her trapped where she is not happy would be far more painful. This sense of understanding, connection with others, and empathy was something I wanted to carry over into Aurelia well. Aside from the fact that she is a goddess in her own right, I wanted her to be able to display this same sort of grace and understanding that things change. This sort of acceptance and adaptability is something she prides herself on having. In public anyway.

PRINCESS CELESTIA - MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC

Similar to Granmamare, although perhaps more so, Princess Celestia display a lot of grace and wisdom. She's a teacher who enjoys engaging with her students, who leads by example, and who is incredibly powerful - something that can sometimes be forgotten just looking at her. She also brings to the table the idea of opposing forces in balance. She cares very deeply for all the people she's tasked with protecting, but in particular, her sister Luna. The idea of being viewed as "the good sibling" and the one who protects against evil versus her sister, who has a dark prophecy about her and was banished to the moon for becoming a monster, are part of what inspired Aurelia's backstory. The idea of being a twin that holds great power in a balance with her sibling, and is largely viewed as the "good" one despite the prophecy saying that both are needed was partly inspired by Celestia and her story.

TE FITI - MOANA

Te Fiti was a really big inspiration for the whole Life Goddess part of Aurelia's character. Being able to spread foliage and life with just a touch and having a heart that can create life from seemingly nothing gave me the idea for Aurelia's prophecy. A being that broke away from the wrath of a god of death and destruction and chose instead to be a maker of things and bringer of life to a suffering people. The idea of being able to just walk around and have plants bloom under and around your feet is a concept I love, ngl. So of course, I had to incorporate that into my thoughts about Aurelia's Goddess abilities.

PTAH - EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

The biggest inspiration by far. So much so that I actually pay homage to them in her name. In Egyptian mythology, Ptah is known as creator-god and maker of things. He's a patron of craftsmen, especially sculptors, said to have formed all, from the cosmos to the other Gods of the Egyptian pantheon. This inspiration really ties back into the concept of Aurelia as the avatar of a creation goddess that was known for bring balance to a race of beings who had only known wildness, and chaos, and destruction by giving them the power to create and channel themselves into productive acts like art, music, and dance. One who created life from seemingly nothing and challenged the pre-existing god who thrived in death and destruction. Hands down if I had to pick just one out of this ensemble to say as my main inspiration for Aurelia, it would be Ptah.

ELINOR - DISNEY’S BRAVE

Elinor from Disney's Brave was a relatively minor inspiration but an inspiration nonetheless. Specifically though, her change at the end of the movie is what I took to create Aurelia. Throughout the film, Elinor prides herself and projects unto her daughter this image of perfection, of grace, and of power. The idea that fate is out of our hands and that things should be done for the greater good even if it comes at our expense. That's not Aurelia. Aurelia is very much the kind that measures pros and cons and weighs options, and while she believes in self-sacrifice to a degree that border on martyrdom for herself, she doesn't allow others to make those sacrifices themselves. Rather, it's the Elinor at the end of the film that inspires my portrayal of Aurelia. How quickly she forsakes all of her grace and queenliness the second she sees her daughter in danger. She calls on strength she never knew she had and fights like a wild beast, throwing all of her carefully crafted manners out the window in a display of sheer ferocity to protect the one she loves. That's Aurelia. So willing to mold herself to the expectations of the Jedi Council, willing to sacrifice that which she wants and her own comforts to serve a greater good- until there is an extreme point at which she cannot stand aside anymore. And that point is when it comes to her loved ones. How quickly she will revert to wild instincts, getting on all fours, biting, clawing, wrestling - unleashing the dragon in a display of intense, powerful emotion and raw ferocity, all to protect the ones she loves most.

#// god this was so much fun!!! #ask : is this what you wanted #prodijedi #mutual : all of my best friends #about : you’re just a lost cause #( ocm : aurelia pta'hoa the motherly jedi master )

[the-lonelybarricade]

La Vie En Rose: Chapter 9

Chapter title: Gone, I'm Gone

Fic Summary: After everyone is freed from Under the Mountain, Elain is given the opportunity to stay in the Spring Court as a human so she can get to know her soulmate. Set in the timeline from A Court of Faded Dreams.

Read on A03 ❀ Masterlist

The fortunate thing about Lucien being poisoned was that Elain was able to savor his company for three entire days.

“It’s my magic that doesn’t work, not my legs,” he complained. 

“The healer was very clear,” Elain hummed, as she settled a tray of food into his lap. She was not the least bit put out by having him in her bed, and she’d been doing very little to hide her pleasure at the circumstance. “You’re on strict bed rest until your magic returns.”

Lucien glanced wearily at the food in his lap. “And how am I to trust this isn’t laced with faesbane, just to keep me in your bed longer?”

The idea had certainly struck her, though she had no means of procuring faesbane even if she had wanted to resort to something so nefarious. Lucien could see she was entertaining it, because with a soft laugh he pushed the tray aside so he could pull Elain into his lap instead.

“You’re meant to be eating,” she admonished. 

Lucien’s lips found her neck. “Gladly,” he murmured into her skin, broad hands already sliding along her thighs to push up her skirts. 

“The healer was strict about that, too,” she said, slapping his hands away.

Lucien sighed, pressing a conceding kiss to her shoulder as his hands settled much more sensibly around her waist. “When I imagined spending all day in bed with you, I thought it would be much more… strenuous.”

“Rogue,” she accused. “The whole point is to avoid anything strenuous. Are you saying you haven’t been enjoying my company?”

She made a point of pouting her lips, earning her a begrudging smile from her mate. “I would never say that, lady,” he said, grabbing a piece of bread from the tray if only because he knew it would please her. “I’ll admit, restless as I’ve been, I will miss these quiet moments with you once war settles over Prythian.”

Part of Elain was tempted to avoid the conversation entirely. She wanted to continue living happily in this little bubble they’d created, and pretend like this peace was not a fragile thing. But… Belladonna had reminded them that the world beyond that manor’s gates was still dangerous. And Lucien had seemed especially contemplative the last three days.

“What will I do?” she asked quietly, “When you go off to war, will you take me with you?”

 Lucien looked out towards the window, where the morning Spring air washed through the room despite the fact that in the Mortal Realm, autumn would soon be falling to winter. His lips pressed tightly together and his metal eye began slowly clicking in a way that she sensed as being deep in thought. Elain couldn’t decide if he was remembering the battles he had witnessed, or imagining the ones that were to come. “I… I will not tell you what you can and can’t do, lady, but I do not think it’s a good idea. You would be better staying where it’s safe. Either here, or in the Night Court.”

Her hands fisted in her skirts. It was the answer she expected—the answer that she knew was appropriate and reasonable. And she knew that Lucien, who would be in the thick of battle facing all that violence and bloodshed, faced a far larger burden. It was why she restrained herself from telling him how frustrated she felt to be incapable of doing anything more. Because truly, shouldn’t she feel grateful all that was expected of her was to sit and wait?

With a gentle hand, Lucien pried her grip away from her dress. She heard the rattle of teacup against saucer from the tray behind her, and then a warm mug of tea was being pressed between her fingers. Elain accepted it instinctively, letting the warm porcelain ground her as she glanced up into steady russet and gold eyes.

“What would you do, if I took you with me?” He asked curiously. “I presume you don’t wish to fight.”

“I don’t know a lot about war,” she admitted shyly, leaning into the steam that curled beneath her chin. “But I assume there’s more to it than fighting. Perhaps I could help with the wounded? Or help disperse rations to the soldiers, or… just stay in your tent, and know whether or not you were able to make it back each night.”

Elain ducked her head to take a sip—mostly because she couldn’t bear to see another rejection on the tip of his lips. She knew it was foolish, perhaps even selfish, to ask this of him. But when she slyly peaked over the rim of her teacup, Lucien looked considerate.

“Is it purpose that you’re searching for, lady? Or reassurance? Because if you need something to occupy yourself, to feel as though you’ve helped, you needn’t come to war with me to find it. There will be plenty of help that can be done here, while Tamlin and his soldiers are away. We’d need someone like yourself who could keep order in the Court.” Elain lowered her cup so she could look fully at his face, assessing if his words were genuine.

Lucien smiled, as if he found it amusing that his words surprised her. “I’ve seen how well the people here respond to you. How easily you helped me with those reports. I could think of no one better suited to be the interim Lady of Spring.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, now that she could see he was being serious. “I’m just a human.”

She couldn’t imagine that any fae, regardless of how friendly Elain had become with them, would stomach being ruled by a human. No matter how temporary.

Long fingers circled her chin, and she could feel the scrape of calluses she would never have expected from someone so refined as Lucien. Those fingers pulled her face upward as Lucien leaned closer so that their faces met levelly, hardly a feather’s width apart.

His eyes were blazing as he said fiercely, “You are so much more than that, Elain Archeron.”

Those words burned in the space between them—through his body and every place where they connected. Where her legs pressed into his own. Where his breath fanned her face. And especially where his fingers still gripped her chin, as though every ounce of his conviction had focused on one spot, channeling a heat that made Elain yelp and spill her tea over both their laps.

Air rushed between her teeth at the sharp sting of hot, wet cotton.

“Fuck, sorry Elain!” He quickly scrambled to help her off the bed, frowning as he watched her bundle the soaked parts of her skirt away from her skin.

“I guess your magic is back,” she said lightly, turning so that Lucien could help unlace her dress. He obliged wordlessly, nimble fingers tugging at the satin ribbons until she could slide out of the fabric.

Elain was half expecting some comment about scheming to undress her, but when she turned to face him Lucien’s gaze dropped immediately to the pink, irritated skin that dappled her thighs. She wondered if he wasn’t moments away from dropping to his knees and begging forgiveness.

“I’m fine, Lucien,” she assured, stepping closer to press a hand to his cheek. “It’s just a little hot water.”

She felt him relax, just slightly. He stretched his hand out to the side, studying his open palm like it held some great mystery.

“That’s never happened to me before,” he admitted. “My magic just… reacted. It happened in the forest, too.”

Elain recalled that bright flash of light that Lucien had emitted. Different, somehow, from the flames she had seen from him before, though she couldn’t place why. They were both bright, both warm… and yet, it was like comparing a campfire to the sun. 

Still, with her limited knowledge on magic, she searched for some way to reassure him. “Perhaps it’s reacting strangely to the faesbane?”

“Perhaps,” he murmured, looking unconvinced. Then, after a moment longer of consideration, Lucien shook his head, dropped his hand, and fixed Elain with an easy smile. “In any case, it seems my magic’s back. Per the healer's instruction, I’m allowed physical activity once more. And as it just so happens, you’re already undressed and the bedsheets are already ruined.”

“You are unbelievable,” she said, suppressing a smile.

But she didn’t stop him as he removed the food tray and the ruined sheets from the bed, or as he stripped out of his own clothes and lowered her onto the mattress.

❀❀❀

They didn’t tell anyone that Luicen had regained his magic until an entire extra day had passed—spent doing little more than getting lost in the heat and passion of her newly energized mate. Elain was tempted to pretend the magic hadn’t returned until Tamlin came to investigate it himself.

But loyal, duty-bound Lucien rolled out of bed at dawn the next morning. Elain watched him, groggy and half asleep, as he shrugged on his jacket. 

“I’m going to join Bron and Hart for training,” he murmured, ducking his head to press a kiss to her temple. “I will see you at lunch.”

Elain grumbled a sound that sounded more like complaint than agreement, nuzzling into the warm space his body had left behind. She heard Lucien laugh under his breath before he crept out of the room.

She woke up properly when Alis burst through the door hours later, looking unusually flustered. 

Fear pulsed sharply through her heart, enough so that Elain threw aside the covers and bolted out of bed. “What’s wrong?”

“It is best you dress quickly, lady,” Alis said, already standing in front of the open wardrobe and throwing a dress over her arms. “There is not much time for your questions.”

Sensing the urgency, Elain stayed silent as she let Alis hurriedly lace her dress. The moment she was decent, Elain ran out the door and down the hall. Her head was spinning with all the things that could have gone wrong since she’d seen Lucien that morning. Had he been hurt in training? Had Belladonna come back? Something worse? Whatever it was must have been serious—everyone in the manor seemed to be rushing about with a distinct look of panic. Had Hybern come to the Spring Court?

Elain headed towards the barracks, her teeth digging into her cheek when she noticed that it was unusually crowded. The sentries she spied coming and going were seemingly dressed for battle, carrying all manner of weaponry. Tamlin was nowhere to be seen, and it was Lucien—Lucien at the front of all the warriors, giving them some sort of pep talk. Her heart plummeted. He was safe, yes, but for how much longer?

He finished speaking, and the sentries seemed to disperse. Elain took advantage of the moment to grab his arm. Lucien paused, looking as though she’d surprised him in the middle of a thought.

“Elain,” he said, the dread in his voice confirming her every suspicion. “Winter Court is under attack.”

She swallowed back the scream that was building in her throat, knowing she could save all of her distress for when he was away. And though it was obvious, she still asked, “Is it Hybern?”

He nodded, jaw clenched tight. “Tamlin got word an hour ago, he’s already left to captain his fleets in Summer—the Night Court is also sending their aid. I’m leaving…” He winced. “Immediately.” 

Though she had known it was coming, had dreaded it, it somehow felt surreal that the war had truly come. She clenched her teeth in an attempt to stop her lip from quivering. Lucien touched her face gently, reading the latent fear and disappointment. “We knew I’d have to go into battle sooner or later, little dove.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon,” she admitted, knowing she probably seemed ridiculous with the tears that sprang to her eyes. She pulled him into a tight embrace, pressed her face into his chest. “Promise me you’ll come back.”

He clicked his tongue, fingers loftily catching at a lock of her hair as he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “I’ve the most valuable thing a soldier can have—someone to come home to. Of course I’ll come back.” 

She sniffled, pulling away because she knew she needed to let him finish preparing. She felt useless enough, the last thing she wanted was to impede them any further. 

Lucien gripped her shoulders, grip firm but still gentle. “Elain, love—” she froze at that— “I know we talked about you coming with me, but for now, while we’re away, please stay in the manor. The wards are up, and we’ll leave sentries behind to guard, but… I need to go into battle knowing that you’ll be safe. Okay? So just… do whatever you need to pass the time.” He smiled teasingly and added, “You can even finish some of my reports if you’re up to it. And I’ll be back before you realize.”

She nodded, mind still caught on his chosen term of endearment. Was it a slip of the tongue, and he’d meant to say dove? Or did he perhaps only mean it in a casual sense—

“Elain?”

She blinked, snapping her attention back to his face. In a different circumstance, her lack of attention might have been amusing to him, but now he only looked concerned. 

“I’ll be fine, Lucien,” she answered, thankful he was not the sort of faerie who could read minds. “I’ll stay in the manor, like you ask. It’s you I’m far more worried about. Please, be safe.”

He leaned in for a kiss, chaste and sweet even as it lingered on Elain’s lips when he pulled away, nodded his goodbye, and hurried back into the barracks to make up for the time he’d lost in saying farewell. 

❀❀❀

Shortly after their departure, Elain found that his request of passing the time was laughable indeed. Knowing that Lucien and her sister were on the other side of Prythian, battling an unknown army, all Elain felt truly up to doing was pacing circles in her room. Every attempt at busying herself with a small, mundane tasks was interrupted by any sound outside her window. She was growing tired of running to press her face against the glass only to find a pair of servants who were taking advantage of their High Lord’s absence to have a romp in his gardens.

So she ended up pacing the study, wishing that she and Lucien had a more direct means of contact like Rhys and Feyre. Then, at least, she would know he was safe. She’d be able to relax knowing that at least he was alive.

But perhaps it was better not to know. She couldn’t imagine the grief she would feel if she knew he wasn’t okay, and she had to stay in the Spring Court with that knowledge while having no way of helping him. Elain couldn’t imagine a greater agony. The anxiety of not knowing was second only to that. 

At one point, she’d heard a commotion downstairs, and she felt flooded with elation, thinking that the battle was over and they’d finally returned home. It seemed to be over much quicker than she’d imagined, but perhaps the threat wasn’t as great as they’d been led to believe, perhaps the combined armies of the Spring, Night, and Winter Courts were enough to subdue the threat quickly. 

The marble walls and floor became a blur as she dashed through them with a singular goal—to see that Lucien was safe. When she saw the whisper of scarlet hair around the corner, she nearly sobbed in relief, nearly barrelled into his arms to shower him with kisses. 

But he turned, and Elain nearly stumbled from the momentum as she grinded to an abrupt stop.

For it wasn’t Lucien at all who stood before her, but someone who bore a similar face. All the warmth and kindness that she associated with Lucien, this male possessed none of it. Her stomach twisted at the cruel smile he offered her, sizing her up with a scrutiny that could only ever be predatory. Elain knew all at once who he was. 

Though she knew she was hopelessly defenseless, Elain still sprinted back the direction she came. She didn’t know why one of Lucien’s brothers was here, didn’t know how he’d gotten into the manor, but she knew no good could come of it. 

She took a sharp corner, knowing her lone advantage was in her familiarity of the manor. If she took enough turns, she could make it to the kitchen and pray that some of the staff were around to help. If not, she could still use their entrance to escape. 

It was like Lucien chasing her through the woods. There was no sound beside her own crashing footsteps and the thunderous beat of her heart, no way of knowing if they were near or far. And just as she glimpsed the final turn at the end of the hall, a flash of red hair darted out before her. Her feet skidded against the smooth marble, hoping to break the other direction, but as she turned she saw he was there, too. 

Two brothers. Perhaps they were all here. Not that it mattered, for two was enough to corner her. 

Elain’s eyes darted around, searching for something to aid her. She grabbed a still life painting that hung on the wall, brandishing it overhead like it would do anything against two High Lord’s sons. They didn’t even carry weapons, which was somehow the opposite of reassuring. The one to her left cackled. 

“I like you. It’s too bad I can smell Lucien on you,” he taunted, voice cold and merciless. “Typical of him not to invite us to the mating ceremony.” 

They weren’t mated—not yet—but it hardly seemed an important distinction to make in her present company. 

“You’re so pretty,” the other one cooed. “Maybe he didn’t want to share. We had so much fun with the last female he brought home.” 

They closed in, snickering like a pair of foxes to themselves, as if they’d caught something much more impressive than a creature that couldn’t even hope to fight back. Still, Elain tried, just as much for Lucien as for herself. She couldn’t imagine the way it would devastate him to learn she’d been taken by his brothers—the last thing she wanted was for him to relive what he’d gone through with Jesminda.

So when they lunged at her, Elain put all of her might into swinging the painting at the taller one’s head, breaking the frame and canvas in half. He grunted, though she sensed it was more in irritation than pain, and grabbed at her shoulder. She did her best to take advantage of her much smaller form, trying to duck and evade and twist out of their grip, at one point thinking she’d escaped before one of them seized her by the hair. He tugged fiercely, pulling her back into his solid frame so she could be restrained properly.

“Feral thing” the taller one sneered. “A lesser faerie is bad enough, but a human? it’s almost pitiful how easy it would be to break you.” 

“Maybe we’ll put you through our own trials, so you can prove yourself like your sister,” the other one said mockingly. 

Elain only bared her teeth, knowing it wasn’t the least bit intimidating but refusing to let them see how scared she was. Even if they could most likely smell it. 

A third brother came into view, this one seemingly older. “Mother said not to harm her,” he said, sounding irritated to see the younger pair had been playing with their prey. “Now let’s go, before anyone can send word to Tamlin and Lucien.”

Elain only had enough time to quickly untie the leather around her wrist, watching it fall to the floor before she was enveloped in smoke and shadow. A signal, just as much as it was a message: Don’t come for me if it means risking your life.

Taglist: @arrowmusings @daydreamer-anst @darling-archeron @bridgertononmymind

#La Vie En Rose #LVER #Elucien #Elucien fic #Elain x Lucien #Lucien x Elain #no smut just plot sorry

[yolki-palki]

Harbinger for yon WiPs, please!! 💞

Harbinger plagued me for quite some time. In fact, I started Beast just to get away from it for a while. I made a solemn vow not to work on Harbinger until Beast was done. Then it turned into a 150k+ monstrosity and I haven't written on Harbinger since. I really do want to finish it after Beast is done though.

Please enjoy this very early scene from Harbinger.

“Let me tell you a story, my little insect. You always did love to hear my stories.” She walked across the room to a small desk. The glow of the hearth cast warmth on her milky skin as if she were made of wax. She moved aside a ledger and a bottle of ink to pull a small glass case from the desk with a dark wood base. Gracefully she turned and walked to the foot of the bed where Jaskier lay. “Do you like it? It’s particularly exotic, the last of its kind some say. They are only found on a small island far off the western coast. They call it the cypris.” She held out the glass jar, casually crossing her feet as her head fell to the side.  Jaskier tried to focus on the insect as it flitted around inside the glass. It was quite beautiful, a little thing with creamy wings that were splotched in deep velvet blue.  “Once upon a time there was a little girl. She loved beautiful things and wanting nothing more than to see all the wonders of the world around her. One day she saw a butterfly fluttering about in the gardens and she caught the thing. She loved the silly little bug for all its curiosity and all its beauty. She built it a glass castle, made of the most beautiful, little plants and the finest bobbles she could procure. But one day, the lid was left askew and despite all her tender care the butterfly escaped.”    To illustrate her point the countess lifted the glass from the wooden base and let the butterfly flutter out into the open air. 

“The girl was heartbroken, devastated, furious — after all, she had done nothing but love a thing for its beauty and lavish it with all she knew how. A garden of glass she had built for the insect and yet given the first opportunity it flew away.” Her voice grew dark and her lips curled into a nasty snarl.  With frightening speed, she plucked the butterfly out of the air and held it in delicately by the wings. She looked at the squirming thing with an odd hunger in her face and Jaskier tried not to grimace, concerned for a moment that she was going to put it in her mouth. “When the girl found her precious butterfly it was perched on the windowsill as if to fly out into the world beyond. With care, she caught it and brought it back to the safety and comfort of its garden of glass. Try as she might, she could not forget the betrayal. For she had loved the thing and now knew that it could never love her in return. Mindless things that it was, the insect, could not feel loyalty or love but the betrayal was all the same.”

She stepped closer and it took everything within him not to recoil. Still tangled in the bedsheets he leaned back against the headboard. The countess climbed carefully onto the foot of the bed and crawled forward on her knees until she sat straddling his hips. He could feel her warmth through the sheets.  No, please no. Please.  He found himself shaking his head desperately, hearing his breathing deepen as he stared at her.  Please. Not this.  “The girl wanted nothing more than to care for her treasure. She would keep it there, in its glass garden, and be certain it could never escape again. Now perhaps, you’re wondering how she made certain it could not fly away. After all, not even the finest of things could keep the butterfly from roaming.”  Jaskier gasped in horror as she ripped the wings from the insect. The wingless thing wriggled helplessly in the palm of her hand. Her eyes wandered from her hand to Jaskier’s face. She leaned forward to whisper against the skin of his throat.  “I will see my kingdom reduced to ashes and soot before I set you or my cub free, little butterfly. That which I own, that which I command is mine and mine alone. If I cannot have it then I will destroy it.” She looked him in the eyes, unyielding and full of fire as the wingless butterfly fell from her hand to Jaskier’s lap. It writhed on the silk sheets for far too long until mercifully, it fell still.

#asks #wip game #my beloved crushcandles #harbinger #yolki-palki #honey lemon trash

[juniperhillpatient]

The Swamp Re-Watch

Alright, this episode was a fun spooky adventure. I enjoyed the ghostly nature of the Swamp as a setting. Loved the horror movie moments as well as the opportunity for characters like Yue & Kya to haunt the narrative a little. Grief is an ongoing theme in Avatar, & it's fun to see it presented in the form of characters who are gone reappearing as visions.

(Something to keep in mind as I write this recap review is that I have been drinking wine steadily since 3 pm & it's now 3 am soooo about 12 hours? I'm not an alcoholic or on a bender, it's just Thanksgiving & I was with family now I'm home. Uh, the point is, I am doing my very bestest to be coherent okay 🙂)

Anywayyy! This episode was fun. I was gonna say I think this is the first time I'll really disagree with @theowritesfiction's overall opinion on the episode as we both do our re-watches because I really did enjoy this episode & I can't say anything negative about it but then I re-read the re-watch post in question & actually I overall agree with the commentary made. I just enjoyed the episode personally.

I think this episode's main fun comes from the ghostly vibe & overall horror movie homage vibe but it's also significant for the characters.

We see Katara seeing Kya again & breaking down. I think the main issue I have with this if I'm critiquing the writing, is that we should've gotten more...not closure, but emotional impact maybe? from that interaction. I think that part of the reason Katara's "complaints about her dead mom" are critiqued in this fandom (aside from blatant sexism & fandom idiocracy when it comes to Katara) DOES have to do with the way we're never really given significant flashbacks that tell us anything about Kya herself. Even this ghostly vision has her back turned. Can't haunt the narrative if you were never really a character. Still, it's an emotional moment for Katara, & important for understanding her character & the grief she is still holding onto.

I'm really glad that we got to see Yue again, & her vision's accusations that Sokka "didn't protect her" hit hard. Unlike the vision of Kya, I think that from a writing perspective, the vision of Yue was really thoughtful & fascinating. The real Yue chose to sacrifice herself & would never have blamed anyone else for her death. This vision berates Sokka for not doing better. I think that this says a lot about the nature of the Swamp. It doesn't show you actual ghosts, it shows you your own psyche.

That said....actually now my original thesis or like, point or whatever that this episode was super well written actually is falling apart because how does that fit in with the swamp guru dude's speech?

"In the swamp, we see visions of people we've lost, people we loved, folks we think are gone. [The shot cuts to show the people that Sokka and Katara saw in the swamp, before cutting back to Huu.] But the swamp tells us they're not. We're still connected to them. Time is an illusion and so is death."

My theory about this is that Huu doesn't fully understand the Swamp himself. No other option makes sense to me, because I think that the visions Sokka & Katara had only make sense from their own perspectives as manifestations of their grief. Kya turning away & saying nothing & Yue making Sokka feel worse for not preventing her death makes no sense unless it's Sokka & Katara's own fears manifesting. This isn't digging too deep or Pepe Sylvia-ing even, it's just...true. Huu, you don't get the Swamp, I'm stating it as fact now.

Anyway anyway. Um, on to Aang's vision! TOPH MY BELOVED <3 I love it but I also hate it. Again, I'm pissed that the whole "time is an illusion" thing just does not work because Kya & Yue's presence/actions/vibe literally just do not make sense in that context, it has to be a psychological thing for Sokka & Katara BUT the "time is an illusion" thing IS a clever allusion (ahhh I love getting to use that word when we're also talking about 'illusions') to Toph's future introduction.

Okay, I'm gonna be real honest with you guys I've been drinking even more wine the entire time I've been writing this re-cap/review & I'm running out of remotely intelligible thoughts (maybe none of these make the mark) BUT I thought of a funny idea. @theowritesfiction is doing a jerk point competition right? Okay well, I'm gonna do a "Iconic Points " competition. Basically, every time a character behaves in a way that makes me go "iconic" they get points. I have been trying to think of a fun - ummm I can't think of a word other than "alternative" but I KNOW that's not the word I'm looking for? but whatever - alternative to the "jerk points" thing to do myself & here we are.

Since I'm starting this competition late, the characters are getting raw points from Book 1 based fully on Wine Tipsy™ Rose's vague memories, which I think is a 100% Fair & Neutral & Objective (/joking) way to start this competition:

Katara: 1000 points for 'Imprisoned' & the pirate episode combined

Zuko: 1000 points for - well, I can't think of a specific instance but ILY Book 1 Zuko you depressed bastard you deserve some points

Jet: 1001 points - he gets 1 more point than Zuko & Katar for becoming one of my favorite characters in just one episode while they both took an entire season also for being better than everyone & done dirty by the Narrative™ AND the fandom & therefore deserving for first place status thus far

Sokka: 1000 points total. 800 points for 'The Northern Air Temple.' 200 for the Northern Siege episodes for making me fall in love with Yuekka & generally acting badass

Aang: 1000 points for Book 1 as an entirety because he had a lot of iconic moments, especially kicking Zhao & Zuko's asses

Yue: 1050 for the same reasons as Jet AND for sacrificing herself for the greater good

Book 2 so far:

Gaang: 0, they've been fine I guess but none of them have won any points sorry

Azula: 2000 for...I don't know? Everything? If you have to ask you've failed some kind of litmus test

Mai: 1000 for trying to kill the Gaang

Ty Lee: 1000 for acting suave about her childhood crush trying to kill her

Iroh: 500 for my perceived fan theory that I entirely made up about him tricking Zuko into getting help from Song.

Zuko: 500 for mugging a Karen Dude who embarrassed Iroh in the Swamp Episode

Okiii that is all I have to say for now! I will be more specific about assigning points & create a document to keep track in the future, but there you have it for now. Also, sorry for low-key copying you, Theo, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery & I really wanted to do a points thingy myself too, it makes it so fun.

That's all for this episode!

Edit! I forgot that Suki gets 500 points for being a boss ass badass bitch in Book 1 but she's still not getting the super high 1000 count as everyone else for being low key forgettable. Not hate, just a noted thing about Book 1 & a further point that Suki needs more backstory

#...........i was so clearly burning out on brain power toward the end of that. IF i ever had any #i can't tell you my estimate for how many bottles of wine ive been through today because you guys would judge me LMAO #atla re watch #the swamp

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Idris Elba

full name: Marquis Owusu

nickname(s) / goes by: Marcus 

pronouns & gender: he/him/his and cis man 

sexuality: heterosexual 

birth date: November 24, 1973 ( 50 years old )

birth place: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

arrival to merrock: 2011, twelve years ago. 

housing: the coast and pier

occupation: Owner and CEO of Le Marquis Business Consultancy and Investments Inc  

work place: 

family: deceased mother and father, deceased wife of eight years, one older siblings and two younger siblings, three children: Charlotte “Lottie” Rose, daughter born October 2017 and twins Finn Dion and Sienna Alexandra born August 2018

relationship status: Widower / Single

PERSONALITY

He’s got a face that people often takes him to be incredibly serious, and when it comes to work, he plays no games. Marquis can often seem cold and aloof, aside from when he is with close friends and family. There, another side of him comes out, a more charming and caring side of him comes out. He knows his fault is shutting people out after so much loss in his life but he tries his best to not come across as harsh or standoffish but it’s something he knows that his personality comes with a fault and is something he continually is working on to just not be the ‘business man’ that he often exudes when in public. 

WRITTEN BY: Bri (she/her), est.

BACKGROUND / BIO

triggering / sensitive content: tw parental death, tw parental loss, tw death mention, tw spousal death, tw childbirth, tw death, tw infertility, tw early term pregnancy

Born to Omari Osuwu and Penelope Osuwu in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France life with the Osuwu’s was relatively normal. Well, as normal of a life could be for a household of six. Being the second born child came with less challenges, at least that was his mother always alleged. When she welcomed Marquis into the family she was expecting him to be the rebel son, the hot-headed tempered child, much like her pregnancy had been. Hot and cold the entire time, but from the moment he popped into the world he was the levelheaded peaceful child of the bustling bunch. 

Despite the challenges that came with his father always working, his mother made the best home for them. They didn’t go without, his father providing for the family financially while being the disciplinary in the household. For the most part he ruled with an iron fist, but that was just due to the fact he liked order. It was never too much of a power trip, or nothing his mother couldn’t manage to smooth over if she felt he was being too particularly difficult with any of the children. Still, as most people saw it, he was a man attempting to raise a family of four children and keep a happy wife. Sometimes that meant having things more strict and set at times than others. Still, if you asked him, there was no doubt that his mother was the shining star of their Owusu family. She made sure they got to live their best childhoods possible. There were trips to Paris, day or weekend long excursions to neighboring countries, and endless activities that pepper his memory. One thing his mother was determined o do was raise well-rounded, worldly children. For this, from the moment they were just starting school, each child was enrolled by their mother into multiple language lessons. 

By the time Marquis was thirteen he was fluent in French, English, Spanish, and German. Given both his parents were well-versed in multiple languages themselves, his father always appreciated the love and care that his wife put in to making sure the kids would have the best opportunities for their future, starting with being fluent in other languages and enrolling them in a top accredited school for their primary and secondary education. In his father’s eyes this would give them the best advantage when going out into the world when they became adults.

To Marquis, by any other standard, the Owusu’s lived a normal life with his family. When he turned seventeen he started interning with his father at the bank he worked at, and it was the first lightbulb that went off in his head that things made sense. He caught onto patterns faster than his father, started to build client relationships, and before he knew it he had caught the eye of the local bank president who decided to make him a personal project and take him under his wing as a mentee. With a new mentor leading him distance grew between his father and him. After finishing secondary school, and with glowing recommendations from his mentor he entered a business school in Paris. Part of him wasn’t expecting to excel as well as he did but each time he turned around he was catching the eyes of several professors — and the women on the campus. 

During his university years he was know as a bit of a lady’s man, wining and dining them, but never was in the mindset to settle down. If anything it was just the little bit of fun he needed while building towards whatever future career he was planning for himself. To him, a relationship wasn’t needed to him to be happy. To him his goals were always more career oriented, much like his father. Setting his eyes on someday being a president of a local bank in France, living a comfortable life, once all the things fell into place. It wasn’t until one of his professors approached him and told him he could do so much more with his skill set. That aiming for just working in a bank was well below what he could do. While back to interning with his father, he signed up for all different classes at his university that his new mentor suggested from accounting, investing, human resources, project management, and more. This was where he got the first taste of the world of investment. 

When he graduated university he accepted a position in an investment firm as an entry level advisor. At the beginning it was mostly just paperwork and mind-numbing dribble. There came a point he almost gave it up, starting to think this wasn’t the career path for him. But, stubborn like a bull, he stuck it through and started to gather his own clientele and a name for himself within the business. 

Over the next few years Marquis continually raised through the ranks learning every bit he could about proper investing in companies, start-up businesses, and people. In his mid twenties, his father suddenly passed due to cardiac arrest leaving his mother well off financially. Though no amount of money can prepare a person for losing the love of their life. While his father had never been overly affectionate, his mother always said he loved her beyond measure at all times of the day. Something Marquis didn’t fully understand since he had never felt a love that powerful. What could he comprehend? His mother passing away only six weeks later. Doctors said it was respiratory failure but Marquis knew his mother died of a broken heart and couldn’t continue to live without the love of her life. Once the estate was settled each sibling was left a considerable amount of financials from everything from trusts to properties, something Marquis hadn’t even been aware they had. 

For awhile he floated lost in the world, losing both parents so close together and both of them prior to him turning thirty years old. He attempted his hardest to be a sounding board for his younger siblings when needed while still attempting to try and figure out his own grief and life — mainly how to move forward after something that rocked his life upside down. Anger, sadness, and grief started to consume him little by little so he threw himself into his work, storing his portion of money he had inherited into investments while he continued to work. 

After being overlooked and several promotions came and went with someone with less experience were brought up over him, despite the massive clientele base he had brought into the business, he decided to reach out to the one person he felt like he still had for his own sounding board. His old mentor and father’s old boss, this is where the budding idea started of opening his own investment firm in France. He wanted a mix of business consultancy and investments. Little did he know how good he’d be at running his own business, investing others money into proper channels and consulting for others to build their own businesses taking a percentage of profit to help up and coming business. For the next decade Le Marquis Business Consultancy and Investments Inc opened two more brick and mortar businesses in France, one in London, one in New York City, one in Miami and one in Los Angeles. For Marquis this was all about building his empire, building his legacy, and taking a no holds barge approach. 

Some considered him ruthless with the way he came in and built a company of seven offices around the world, but he was building something for himself, and no one else. His siblings, however, bugged him about settling down but it truly never crossed his mind. With the amount of travel and meetings to keep the expanse of businesses he had running who had time to think about settling down. It wasn’t that he didn’t date, he just didn’t let it get any further than a few fun nights in bed before going their separate ways. It wasn’t until he was home one Christmas at thirty five years old did he meet the new next door neighbor to his eldest sibling. It was here he understood the meaning of what it was to meet your other half and feel like you were struck by lightening all at once. Eleanor was confident, had a tiny business making jewelry and his idea of sweet talking was offering to invest into her business. What truly shocked him was the blunt way she told him to kick rocks and move along. 

It was no immediate love story, though he was captured by her immediately, but mostly it started off as bickering but slowly developed into more. Marriage followed nearly two years later after dating and they started talking about him slowing down as Eleanor wanted children. With a promise of opening one last firm, what he would coin his ‘retirement’ firm where he’d work most exclusively out of, would be what lead him to Merrock where Eleanor’s parents were local from. After finding the perfect building for his business they spent the next several months settling into Merrock life. 

Going from massive cities, constant traveling, and endless business meetings to small town life wasn’t easy for Marquis at first. It left him restless but his wife was patient with him. It was at 38 years old did both Marquis and Eleanor start trying for a family of their own. With his wife at only 32 years old he didn’t think it would be as hard as it was, but one year turned into two and they were slapped with potential infertility issues. With the help of medication and lots of patience, at 44 years old Marquis and his wife welcomed their first born daughter into the world. 

They were supposed to be on cloud nine, and it wasn’t supposed to happen, but twelve weeks later they got the news that after one night of celebrating, Eleanor was 5 weeks pregnant, and to bigger surprise came then when they found out she was pregnant with twins. Being that his wife was nearly 39 years old now she was placed in high risk. Marquis took every precaution possible once he heard those words, money was no object and he sought out the best medical care to bring to Merrock. At only twenty eight weeks along Eleanor went into labor delivering two premature babies, a beautiful baby boy and baby girl. They were small and needed time to develop in the NICU but they were strong, however his wife wasn’t as lucky. Due to the high risk pregnancy she suffered two embolisms in her lungs and by the time they caught it, it was too late and she didn’t survive through the night. 

At nearly 45 years old Marquis was now not only a widow but caring for three babies, an almost one year old, and newborn infants. His siblings came to Merrock and with the help of Eleanor’s parents to help him settle in as best as he could. Five years later he still regrets waiting so long to start a family. Part of him blames himself that if he hadn’t been so stubborn and worried strictly about his business, if they had tried earlier, she wouldn’t be gone. Not to mention the regrets he has not being careful enough after she had given birth to their first daughter. It’s a blame he hasn’t let himself forgive himself for, and not sure he ever will. 

At the end of the day, business doesn’t stop for anyone when you are running a global company. To be close to his wife’s roots and her family he decided to stay in Merrock, though his family suggested him coming back to France. After hiring a nanny to hep with the kids in between, he has done everything he can to be as devoted of a father, attempting to give them anything and everything they could want. It means learning how to balance the business that he hopes to someday pass onto his children, and spending time with his little family. Though if you had told him in his twenties he’d never thought at fifty years old he’d be a widower raising his six year old daughter and five year old twins. But something he’s learned several times in life, life doesn’t always go as planned. 

#merrockbio #marquisowusu #death tw #parental death tw #spousal death tw #childbirth tw #premature birth tw #early term pregnancy tw #infertility tw

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One: Fathers and Sons

Chapter 59: Spiritual Renewal

As Belle watched over Regina and Henry in the front room of the shop and Mary Margaret tended to her daughter, he got to work. He checked the ingredients he'd brought from the house, then went to the black bag in the corner and dug out the remainder of what he needed. The paste was a simple concoction with two steps. Add ingredients into a bowl. Stir until white. If he used magic to do the hard part, it would have been two to three minutes of work, if he didn't use magic, it was five minutes. Given the fact that Emma and Mary Margaret were still in his shop having a conversation that he felt no need to participate in, he stirred the mixture by hand. Once it was done, he took an old shaving brush out of his kit and brushed the mixture along the inside of the band. Then, for safety reasons, because the last thing he wanted was for Pan, in Henry's body, to burst in here and catch a whiff of their plan, he cleaned away the work he'd done on the table and stashed the bracelet away in the cabinet behind him, until the time was more opportune. With that done, he was about as prepared as he could be. The Spell of the Displaced Soul would work. It would exile Henry and draw Pan back into his body, once he had the wand, of course.

That part would take an extraordinary amount of power. But he'd give it. He'd give it because it was the only way to undo this and let his family have any sort of future. Admittedly, a sad one, but a future, nonetheless. He glanced over at Emma and Mary Margaret, to the mother calming the child, providing support. They would live. But they had no idea what was going to await them on the other side of this. The sacrifice they'd all have to make to survive…

Suddenly Belle brought Henry back through the curtain and into the room, Regina trailed behind.

"You doing okay, kid?" Emma asked with perhaps a little bit too much eagerness in her voice.

"Yeah, I'm just…ready to be me again," he answered as Belle settled him onto the cot beside Regina.

"Not much longer now, Henry," he assured his grandson, unable to meet his gaze. "Not much longer…"

And then the hell that he entered into would be a different sort of one. Once Pan was defeated, the sadness and longing that Henry would feel for his family was one that he was all too familiar with.

But that wasn't something they needed to think about at this moment. Defeating Pan, stopping them from forgetting themselves, that was the goal. Everything else was moot. And he was ready for it.

With a deep breath, he set the book he'd been reading aside and glanced over at the group before him, only to find their eyes on him. They expected more information than what he'd given them. All except Belle, her eyes just expected…more.

"Once we have the wand, all will be as it should," he stated, hoping it was enough.

"You hear that kid?" Emma smiled. "This is almost over."

Almost and yet never.

The heaviness they were left with in the room would have made it difficult to breathe if he had to. The others wandered. Regina asked if there was anything that she could do, pestered him more like it. He assured her there was nothing and was more than happy when Belle silently sauntered over to take her place and put her hand in his. Regina excused herself, and the other just continued to sit there. They continued to wait.

Waiting and patience…they were difficult tasks, as Nimue liked to remind him. Not everyone was up to it. He comforted himself by going over the plan in his head over and over again. Switch the bodies, find Henry, end the Curse, and get Baelfire and Emma over the town line with Henry.

And what dear Rumple of your father? Nimue's voice hissed in his ear. That Shadow of his is free. Do you really expect him to go quietly, for the Shadow to not come to his rescue even without that bracelet on?

He glanced down at the book before him. He hadn't thought that part out yet. Hadn't considered what he'd do when they had Pan back when he was weak and helpless. Pan was from the Enchanted Forest, though he wasn't involved in the original Curse, whether or not it would take him was as arguable as whether or not it would take Baelfire. He was assuming that so long as he could get Bae with Emma on the other side of the town line, he'd be safe. But if Pan stayed here…

He'd go back to the Enchanted Forest. There would be nothing to stop the Shadow from taking him back to the Island. There would be nothing to stop the Shadow from bringing him here and taking Henry again. Then all of this…it might be for nothing.

Unless-

The sound of the bell at the front of the shop pulled him from his thoughts, and suddenly he felt a type of magic he'd not felt in years sweep over him and the shop. It was his mother's magic. They had the wand.

Within seconds the backroom was at capacity when they were joined by David, Bae, and, to his displeasure, Hook. But every thought that he had to exile Hook from his space died the second he saw the long black instrument in Bae's hands. It was the source of his mother's magic. And he felt it right down to his core.

"She's back! David exclaimed. "The Blue Fairy…she gave us the wand."

There were sighs of relief and joy at the news, all while he fought the urge to shrug his shoulders and say something sarcastic. Naturally, that bug would have nine lives. And once they were home, he had no doubt that she'd use those nine lives to continue to pester him for his entire life. But that was a problem for later. For now…

"Do we need anything else?" Emma asked eagerly, glancing his way. Other than the wand…yes, there was something else they needed.

"Only one more item," he stated before turning back to the cabinet and fetching Cora's cuff from it only this time, he could clearly see the paste that had faded to clear lining the inside.

"What is that?" Mary Margaret asked, trying to see.

"This is one of the only useful things I managed to pilfer from Greg and Tamara before they left for Neverland. It renders anyone with magic utterly powerless," he explained to the room before approaching Henry.

"I haven't forgotten about that, by the way," he heard Regina comment. Ah yes, she was the last one it was used on, likely with Hook's knowledge. He'd never known anyone to carry a grudge quite like Regina, save himself, perhaps. But for the time being, it was a good reminder that they were going to have to carry it. Their current situation took precedence.

"Let me see your wrist, Henry," he ordered gently. Henry, in Pan's boy, obliged, and in one quick and simple movement, he placed the cuff onto Henry's wrist with the paste for the Displacement Spell that would assure his soul was cast out of the body and did not return. When Pan returned to his body, he'd be powerless.

And what shall you do with that power over the boy, Rumple?

Ignoring Nimue, he looked back at Henry. "I want to make sure that when my dear old dad wakes, he's weakened. This will block his powers."

So you can do what?

"So, what happens now?" Henry asked, looking from the cuff to the people around the room.

"I enact the spell, you fall into a deep sleep, and when you awake, you're back in your own body," he answered in the simplest possible way.

"Then you hang on to that scroll, and you come find us as fast as you can!" Regina finished for him.

As fast as possible, because he could feel the magic brewing in the air, and time was of the essence.

With that in mind, he turned to Neal and held his hand out for the wand he hadn't owned since they'd been in the Enchanted Forest. He'd have to hold on to it after this. He didn't want it to end up in the wrong hands again, or blue ones.

"When I gave my heart to Pan, I thought I was being a hero," he heard Henry state as he fit the wand into his hand. "I'm sorry."

"No, you're not the one that needs to be sorry," David corrected sternly. "Pan does."

And he wouldn't.

Unless, of course, you make him sorry.

"It's time," he whispered to the others. There was no way to make this easy on Henry, no way to make it something he wouldn't be scared of. All they could do was go through with this, and when all was said and done, they had to hope that Emma and Bae would take their son over the line and handle the scars with him. They'd be good parents, he assured himself, even without their own there. It was why they were perfect together.

As he turned back to the cot, Emma and Regina rose and allowed Henry to lay back down as he'd been when they'd sent him into the Red Room not long ago. His grandson really was one of the bravest people he knew. He'd be fine.

"Keep your eye on the wand," he explained as he began to push his magic into the wand to wake it up, then began to draw forth the power that it offered.

Sleep.

He tapped the wand against Pan's forehead, and after a flash of light, he closed his eyes. And then the hard part. The soul began to tear away from the body. Just like when a shadow was ripped from a body, it wasn't pleasant to watch. The body shook and trembled.

"What's happening?!" Emma cried. The eyes were closed, but even he knew that it made it look like he was in pain. That was the one relief in this. The body would be in pain, but Henry shouldn't be able to feel it as his soul peeled away. Of course, if he did this right, then he might feel the after-effects of it in his own body, but the worst of it would have passed so long as he could hold on.

"Henry's spirit is leaving Pan's body," he managed to explain. He through every last ounce of concentration that he had into the spell, into working the magic and letting it work for him rather than be owned by it. It was tempting, so tempting…the Dark Ones knew what he could do with that wand, knew that he could likely shred Henry's soul and dispel the prophecy for good, and no one would be the wiser. With Pan and Felix dead, they could figure out where the body was, they could find the Curse, they could save Storybrooke and take Emma and Bae to the town line. He could live out his days with Belle. He could have more children with her, and have life eternal, knowing his son was happy and healthy.

But long ago, his father had taught him that he couldn't have his cake and eat it too. And much to the voice's displeasure, much to Nimue's irritation, he'd rather be an honest and good man worthy of his family than take a smaller portion and build their life on a lie. So with the last bit of strength he had, he committed himself to getting Bae and Emma and Henry out of Storybrooke before the Curse could take them, to making them their own happy family, and to taking the joy he'd find in Belle back home as his consolation prize. He used his magic to give Henry an invisible thread of magic to grasp onto and pull himself up from, then let his soul leave Pan's body and find his own.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Dark One #Mr. Gold #Belle #Neal Cassidy #Baelfire #Peter Pan #Henry mills #Regina Mills #Evil Queen #Snow White #Mary Margaret Blanchard #Prince charming #David Nolan #Snowing #Blue Fairy #Black Fairy #Emma Swan #Savior #Captain Hook #Killian Jones #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

[beyond-far-horizons]

I feel the conflict within you...

I really don’t know how to feel about the Kenobi show.

*Spoilers*

 At its best it was great - the Prequels callbacks and integration of Star Wars Rebels were my favourites and it was a joy to see Ewan and Hayden back and enjoying their roles esp after all the negativity they got at the time (sadly I wasn’t a massive fan of everything in the Prequels myself, but I’m loving seeing them back.)

But frankly I felt it made little sense, had little point and tampered too greatly with the set-up for the OT. And don’t get me started on the amount of times characters had to hold the Idiot Ball or the terrible dialogue! I feel really ungrateful saying this as we are lucky to get what we did but I just feel so confused by the way it was put together. The number of times Vader just let Obi Wan go literally to serve the plot, the fact they couldn’t find a dude dressed exactly like a Jedi (cloak and everything) and he was able to hide Leia *under his cloak* in a top security military base it just seemed ludicrous. Empire’s hunting him/it’s letting him go/nope it’s def hunting him/no it’s letting him escape...Vader’s obsessed with him/no he’s letting a minion confront him/no he’s killing him!/nah he’s just gonna stare at him as he gets saved. And BOTH of them do the Bond Villain fail of walking away when they MUST KNOW the other is alive due to the Force?!

Also what was Kingo from the Eternals doing there? Totally took me out, he was awful. It felt like the MCU ffs! He was playing the character exactly the same.

And the dialogue - ugh. “YOu SHouLd HaVE KILLed ME ....WheN yoU HAd tHE cHanCE!”

“Goodbye...Darth...” His Sith name is Vader, you muppet! Darth is a title, you know that, you fought the bloody Sith. Oh someone Force Lightning me already!

Luke and Leia...hmm I just feel this was cute but it wasn’t good enough to mess with the OT the way it did and frankly it took some of the mystique off of Leia. There’s this thing with prequels and worldbuilding (I know I’m a writer) where you feel drawn to develop threads and fill in character by creating foundations for things in your initial narrative, but there’s also a thing with over-milked series  when they want to explain every damn thing and tie it neatly in bow (same issue with Solo) and I feel this is the latter. 

It also didn’t fill in two major plotholes it really could have done -Vader telling Luke Obi Wan once thought as he did aka that Obi Wan thought Vader could be turned back to the Light and Leia’s memory of Padme. 

Given what we got and what we could have gotten, would you have preferred this or Obi Wan learning Anakin is alive and trying to redeem him, maybe against Qui Gon’s wishes (call back to Luke and Yoda in Empire and yes I would have brought Qui Gon back alot sooner) and have Anakin reject him, maybe with Palpatine laughing in the background. We could have Leia seeing Padme in Obi Wan’s mind (or recalling Force visions of Padme while she was in the womb - I really wanted to see Padme back for a moment!)  This could have been a real test of Vader as well as of Obi Wan as the series hinted at the end with Palpatine. I feel it was a real missed opportunity and in some ways the most elaborate cosplay exercise. I don’t feel it really had much to say overall aside a Sequels-esque ‘realistic’ view of Kenobi’s PTSD. Okay fine but it could have been done better and more in line with the Star wards feel.

And that’s it...yet again this series doesn’t feel like Star Wars. The music or lack of it made a big difference but really it’s the same reoccurring problem - the execs don’t understand the mythic base and how to grow something new out of it. Episodes of Clone Wars and The Mandalorian have come closest to this but they are still lacking the heart of what made the OT so magical. They really need to go back to the Jungian psychology underpinning the story - that the core, not the ‘used galaxy’ look, western/samurai feel or meme call backs.

Anyway I liked aspects of it, I’m grateful we have it but I do feel it was another missed opportunity with some bizarre choices. What do you think?

#star wars #obi wan kenobi #kenobi #spoilers #prequels

[ultramagicalternate]

ULTRAMagic Interlude: Shadowland Chapter 22

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Master Post

Gratiana was a bit confused when Torunn showed up at the house, telling her that Sten wanted to see her. Naturally she became fairly annoyed when Torunn brought up that she had told Sten everything. On one hand, it was a relief to know that it was not an arrest. On the other hand, this threw a massive wrench into her plans. Gratiana set her book down, got up, and rightfully slapped Torunn across the face. To be fair, she was expecting that.

Not wanting to be spotted, Gratiana led Torunn to a secret passageway in an alley near Hawk Street. It was dank and wet, with grime all over the place. Since the two needed to walk for a bit, Torunn took the opportunity to ask Gratiana about her skills and magic. Likewise, she talked about hers. The fact that her new leader was so eager to bury the hatchet baffled Gratiana. At the same time, she was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The door to the throne room was guarded by a goopy shadow construct, but it bowed once it saw Gratiana and opened the grinding door. “By the Source, Torunn. I keep forgetting how unbearable the mustiness of those tunnels are.” Gratiana took a deep breath of fresh air.

“You thought that was bad? We had livestock everywhere in my village back home. Summers were brutal when the fertilizer was ready…”

She gagged at the mere thought. “Torunn, please. I do not envy you in the slightest…”

Torunn laughed. “Alright, Sten, we’re here.”

“Very good. Gratiana, it is quite the occasion that you stand before me as an ally, given what Andelin has told me. Furthermore, I have been informed that you wish to duel for your honor?”

“Yes, your royal highness…” She turned to glare at Torunn. “Is there something about this that you wish to know?”

“No, because I hereby veto this duel…” This caused Gratiana to flare her nostrils at Torunn. “Now hold up, Lady Arlotti. I have a good reason for this…”

She relaxed. “And what would that be?”

“Dunja has informed me that Milosh still has a card up his sleeve, in the form of a secret stockpile of shadow constructs…”

“Gratiana, remember when Lia went over my head that one time?” Dunja inquired.

She thought about the incident in question. “Wait, she actually went through with setting up the delta plan?”

Dunja regretfully nodded. “Yup… Some of Sten’s spies within the cult have noticed Milosh going to check on them.”

“So the concern is that he might try to unleash them…”

“...during the demolition” Andelin continued. “A trivial threat, but they could complicate Barna’s plans greatly.”

Gratiana considered the ramifications of such an upset. “Fair enough, I’ll concede on this one.”

“We’re not trying to rain on your parade” Torunn assured. “It’s just that Barna may need more help than we initially thought.”

“Wait a second, Sten? What about my past actions with the cult?”

“I haven’t forgotten. Aside from what I’ve been told, it’s clear that you’re making an effort to right your wrongs. You can’t just tell me that multiple people and stations relevant to you just decided to give up. Someone in the upper echelons of the cult would have had to have orchestrated those.”

Dunja had a smug grin on her face as she looked directly at Gratiana. “Okay fine, Dunja: I was being a bit hypocritical for calling out your handwriting in regards to Albrecht.”

Sten gestured for a steward to hand a rolled up paper to Gratiana. “Aside from your recent actions, I am also fully aware of your secret acts of charity in the past. And since you have made it clear where your allegiance lies as of late, I have prepared your pardon.”

She was silent for a moment. “All of you are too nice…” Gratiana pointed out as she read, trying to hold back her tears. Dunja then gave her a hug.

Odo had been listening in from a side table and walked over. “All’s well that ends well, Gratiana. Given what Andelin has been telling me, I was hoping it’d come to this…”

“... agreed” Andelin said as she shuffled her deck. “Now if only Feuerland could have also gotten such a happy ending… Regardless, we’re all here now and that’s what matters. We can finally move on from all that cult nonsense.” Despite her positive outlook, something warranted a regretful sigh. “Too bad Lia’s still out there…”

“Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Who is this Lia individual?” This elicited groans from Gratiana and Dunja.

“Lia Alscher, or Lia the Proselytizer” Dunja answered. “She was the unofficial fourth blade, a role originally meant for Adriana Hawthorne… Andelin, what in blue blazes ever happened to Adriana? She’s not in your deck, is she?”

“Er, no… I just sent her off on a wild goose chase.”

“To where, exactly?” Gratiana questioned.

“Oh, The City of Mages to find an artifact I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. Don’t worry, she’s still alive.”

Sten’s interest peaked. “Curiously, what were you planning to do with her, Dunja?”

“Well, she was a bookworm and a good writer. Milosh wanted her on board as a propagandist, but obviously Andelin took issue with that…”

She chuckled. “Punish me as you see fit, Dunja.”

“Right… Sten, what do you want to do about her? As much as I wanted her on board, I have no idea what she’d do if she was here” Dunja said with concern behind her words.

“Given that she never actually served Milosh, I see no reason to keep her away” Sten put forth. “Could you summon her back, Andelin?”

“Sure thing.” She got out a card and prepared to speak into it. “Adriana, drop what you’re doing and head to The Iron City to standby.”

“The Iron City?” Odo asked, wondering.

“The City of Mages is no walk in the park and she’s prone to getting lost. Milosh will probably be long dead by the time she makes it out of there, hehe.”

“Ah, I see. Anyways, back to Lia. Dunja?”

“Right…” She sighed. “So Lia became the spokesperson for the cult. She was good at it too. Young, gorgeous, charismatic, and a way with words. The issue was that me and Gratiana never approved this recruitment. I wanted Adriana as a replacement for Torunn, as she came off as quiet and obedient. Lia on the other hand was proactive and shrewd, so you can imagine my anxiety back then.”

Torunn shook her head. “It’s surreal to hear you talk about me like that, you know?” The two chuckled.

“As for where she is now? Well Milosh sent her out to find new recruits when Blood and Leif flew over Shadowland…”

Sten thought about that. “Hmm… and given the lack of new cult members, she either died or got caught up in something. Knowing our luck, it’s probably the latter.”

“Well that’s concerning,” Odo replied. “I may have to pull double duty at the market district for a while…”

The rest of the meeting consisted of discussing concerns over the demolition. As it went on, Gratiana was growing more and more convinced that her original plans for a duel at the same time was not a good idea. It was unfortunate as Dunja had truly inspired her. Afterwards, to make things easier for all of them, Sten had Gratiana stay in the castle until everything was ready. She was hesitant at first, but everyone insisted. Plus there was the fact that Sten wanted to know more about Feuerland. Yngvild also wished to get to know her better.

Back at Claudius’ home, Aureolus was showing The Fear all sorts of stuff and telling him all about Blood-Wraith in particular. Entities like him were very rare and hard to come by, fascinating the primordial. The fact that Blood-Wraith had inherited The Dragon of Old’s power, making him Leif’s successor, deepened The Fear’s interest even further. Of course Aureolus joked that his friend was The Worrywart of Old in response to this idea of succession. While they laughed at the irony, it could not hide the legitimate concern behind it.

“I am worried for him. He’s been through a lot since his birth. A little too much if you ask me” Aureolus asserted.

The Fear thought about something relating to Milosh for a moment. “Hm, I hope Valerie doesn’t end up causing trouble, given that she’s still out there. That’ll probably drive Blood crazy.”

“Agreed. Unfortunately I have a feeling she’s up to something. Ultimatum was hinting at it before I left. Either way, I’m hoping the stuff I’m learning will cheer Blood up. And taking care of Milosh will probably help him sleep well too.”

“Hey, Aureolus? Do you think I could also achieve ULTRAMagic some day?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Fear. Do you think you have the fortitude for it?”

“Hum… I’m not sure…”

“Then don’t worry about it for now. Don’t push yourself into it if you don’t feel up to it. It’ll come to you when you’re ready.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right…” The Fear got up, only for his stomach to growl. This made him chuckle. “Well I guess I’m The Hunger rather than The Fear right now.”

Aureolus laughed. “Well it is close to dinner time after all. Let’s go see what Claudius is cooking up.”

The smell of pasta, tomato sauce, and fresh bread was wafting through the air as Aureolus and The Fear entered the dining hall. Several people were waiting at the table, that being Barna, Weaver, Albrecht, and Gabriella. The aromas became even greater as the boys entered the kitchen. Claudius was going back and forth, tending to various foods. From how things appeared, he was adding the finishing touches.

“Ciao, ragazzi. Getting hungry, I take it?” Claudius asked as he dropped something into a saucepan.

“Definitely” The Fear replied. “Hey, what did you just add to that?”

“Sugar. It balances out the acidity of the tomato sauce, but just a pinch. We don’t want to go overboard.”

“Oh, fascinating. Need any help?”

“Actually yes. Could you boys get the bread out of the oven? Use the oven mitts as they’ll be hot.”

Aureolus got ready and pulled out a loaf on a tray, followed by The Fear. They smelled amazing as they put them on the counter. “I take it that it’s pasta tonight?” Aureolus asked.

“SÌ. Something compelled me to do some cooking today, like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I figured why not do a big dinner tonight? Again, it’s the strangest feeling…”

The Fear put two and two together for a second, then giggled. “Well actually, Mr. Alfieri, that was probably my doing.”

He looked at The Fear, then nodded. “Then you have my gratitude. Moltobene.”

Just as Claudius and the boys began bringing the food trolleys out, Dunja and Torunn entered the hall. “Hungry! That is the name of the game!” Torunn proclaimed.

“Ma, mom! There you are” Albrecht welcomed. “Hey, where’s Andelin?”

“At the castle with Gratiana” Dunja replied. “Sten’s probably having them write an entire set of history books on Feuerland at this point.”

“I trust you guys got the letter we sent out?” Torunn asked as they sat down.

Barna nodded and put away his papers. “Definitely. Quite the shake up I have to say. I’ll have to treat Gratiana to a drink later for all the help she’s provided.”

“We would have told you about it sooner,” Weaver put in. “She wanted to be sneaky and clever, however.”

“Speaking of which, a drink to you too, when we get the chance. Well done for talking some sense into her.”

Weaver chuckled. “Hey, all in a day’s work.”

“It’s a shame she couldn’t be here, but there’s always next time” Claudius remarked. “Alright, everyone, come and get your food. Buon appetito.”

Next: 

ULTRAMagic Alternate © 2022 William Ford II (ChaoticTempleKnight)

#chaotictempleknight #ultramagic alternate #fantasy #sciencefiction #sciencefictionfantasy #literature #fiction #writing #story #writers on tumblr #chapter

[tailsrevane]

[tv review] tng 6x12 "ship in a bottle" (1993)

apparently the creative team loved the sherlock holmes setting but wasn’t able to return to it for quite a while thanks to a protracted legal dispute with the doyle estate, but once that was settled we saw them pick back up the thread of the sentient professor moriarty! they even made the long gap between the two episodes into a story beat with moriarty being pissed that picard & co appeared to have forgotten about him for all that time.

but undoubtedly the most memorable thing about this episode is the “we’re actually still on the holodeck!” twist. that’s just an iconic tng moment.

this isn’t a complaint exactly, but i think it’s pretty hysterical that when captain picard & co are faced with the seeming impossibility of a holodeck character literally walking off of the holodeck and existing in the real world, captain picard takes the time to lecture him about how crimes are still not allowed in the 24th century??? like, he literally sits him down and is sternly like “DON’T DO ANY CRIMES!!!” and it’s like, i really don’t think this is our biggest concern right now my dude? it just makes me laugh inappropriately every time.

but yeah, i have only two actually more substantial complaints about this episode? the first is that given her character’s rapport with moriarty in “elementary, dear data” i’d be pretty miffed if diana muldaur wasn’t offered a guest starring role in this. (and i haven’t seen any mention that she was.) that’s just a huge missed opportunity if they didn’t even try. but even if muldaur the actress was approached & declined, i think pulaski the character at least deserved a name drop here.

the other is that they play this ending like it’s a happily ever after sort of thing, but they’ve trapped a sentient being in a fictional world and lied to him about it? that’s… actually kinda dire, guys! you’re kinda literally doing the same thing as the bad guys in the matrix! like i do think they did their best, but idk, i’d like their tone to be less “we did good!” and more “we did our best but it kinda sucks and we’ll have folks working on this because it really sucks for him.”

okay actually one more thing, but this isn’t actually a problem with this episode? it’s more of a meta problem. i really wish we had had an episode between “chain of command” and this? maybe one where picard is taking some time off and riker is in command?

like, we don’t have to super dwell on what picard is going through or make it the focus of the episode, i get that tng likes to keep things light and i actually kinda love that because it makes stuff like “chain of command” stand out all the more? you can totally just have it be a riker episode or whatever, we don’t need to have him wrestle his older brother in the vineyard mud again.

just, having picard be so actively involved in this episode and making literally zero mention of what he’s just been through doesn’t really sit well with me? and the fact that it literally never comes up again for the rest of the series, all the tng movies, and two seasons of picard but his trauma from being assimilated comes up multiple times is just a rather glaring omission in my opinion.

but yeah, nitpicks aside, this is a seriously great episode. definitely one of the ones i’m always looking forward to.

s-rank

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