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dem-obscure-imagines · 1 year

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Moonborne

Wyatt Lykensen x Reader

Fandom: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

Note: This one’s been kicking around in my brain for a while. I think witches would fit in really well into the ZOMBIES world. This takes place after Z2 but before Z3.

Summary: Being the new girl in town is no easy feat, especially in a town full of zombies and werewolves. Wyatt takes a quick interest in you, but will he stick around once he learns about the magic you’re hiding beneath the surface?

Warnings: witchcraft? I guess? Other than that, none, I think.

Word Count: 4.7k

Reader is: A witch, implied to be female (they wear a dress) but I don’t think I ever used she/her pronouns.

You had been somewhat hesitant to move to Seabrook with your family. Something was brewing there, you could feel it in the wind, in the stars when they twinkled. There was magic there, of a few different kinds, which called to your own.

You and your mother were what were called Moonborne witches, a rare bloodline passed down through generations. Meanwhile, your father was a descendant of the Mysticwood coven, which had origins out in Massachusetts. But the Moonbornes were different. The Moonborne Coven had origins right there in Seabrook, which is why after three hundred years, your family was finally moving back.

It had been a few days since you’d moved in. Thanks to your magic, the boxes seemed to unpack themselves. Although, just because things were still…shaky in Seabrook after the introduction of werewolves to the community, you and your parents had decided to glamour for the time being, until you knew things were safe.

So, instead of your usually purple hair, you were rocking a nice, natural, human hair color. It was fine. Glamouring full time did tend to tire you out, but it was a sacrifice that needed to be made to ensure your family wouldn’t get chased out of yet another home.

You’d taken it upon yourself to be the one to paint the front door. It was a witch thing. The front door was to be painted purple, and while you did so, you’d also inscribe it with a protection sigil, to protect the house and bless all the people within it. It was while you were about halfway done that you felt a presence behind you. Two of them, technically. Definitely not human, swirls of magic lingering around their souls, and they smelled heavily of the woods.

Werewolves.

“Excuse me? Sorry to bother you.” One of the wolves, a boy, said. His voice was deep with a slight rasp. It was familiar to you in a way you couldn’t explain. “You just moved in, right?”

You turned around to face the strangers. You were correct. Two werewolves, one boy and one girl. The boy was tall, covered in toned muscle. He had short brown hair with a very distinct white streak near the front of his head, a few purple markings on his face and tattoos on his forearms. He had pointed fangs in his mouth, the tips of his ears coming to a point as well.

The other, the girl, was shorter. She had a wilder energy to her, long straight brown hair with a large chunk of white. He could have been the Alpha, but you didn’t think he was. He had the presence, but not the energy of the first in command.

“Hi. I’m (Y/N). We just moved in, yeah. Nice to meet you.”

The boy looked stuck, a lump in his throat or something of the sort as he stared at you. His breath hitched and his mouth opened, but he didn’t speak, just looking at you with this hypnotized kind of glaze in his eyes.

“Wyatt.” The girl hissed, elbowing him in the stomach.

Wyatt. You repeated in your mind, committing it to memory. It suited him, you decided.

“Oh! Um…” He gathered his thoughts, seemingly tugged back down to earth from wherever his mind had floated off to just then. “Right. Sorry about that. I’m Wyatt, this is Wynter. We’re from the local wolf pack, and we took it upon ourselves to, uh, introduce ourselves, welcome you to the community, and invite you to our picnic this weekend.”

“A picnic? That’s really nice.” You smiled. “I’d love to go. Is it at the park?”

“It is.” Wynter nodded. “Everyone is invited.”

“Do you need us to bring anything?”

Wyatt smiled, warmth in his eyes. “You don’t have to. You can if you want to, though.”

“Okay, awesome. I have a wicked recipe for cake cookies.”

“Cake cookies?” Wynter’s face lit up. “Is it a cake made of cookies or cookies made of cake?”

“They’re cookies, but they’re made from cake mix. They come out super moist and soft.” You explained, chuckling at just how hyperactive she seemed to be, especially compared to her counterpart. “They’re great.”

“They sound like it. So, uh, where did you move in from?”

“Just moved in from Michigan, actually. Kind of beautiful there, but uh…I don’t know, I’m excited to be here.” You shrugged. “This place has a really unique energy to it.”

“Well, don’t let us big scary wolves chase you off.” Wyatt joked, tilting his head at you. There was something glimmering in his eye that you couldn’t quite place. Something mischievous and…maybe even nervous? “I…I have a feeling you’re gonna make a great addition to our town.”

“I think so too.”

***

The day of the picnic, you put on your glamour, baked your cookies, and headed out to the park with your parents. You were nervous; you didn’t really know anyone aside from the werewolves who had showed up on your doorstep, but it seemed this was the whole point, to get to know more people.

You half-expected staring eyes, looks of disgust and fear that usually accompanied you and your family, but you didn’t find them. Sometimes, you almost forgot you could wave your hand and wish away your natural witchy features, blending in seamlessly with humans. It was almost unfair.

“You made it!” A cheery blonde girl beamed, walking up to you. “You must be (Y/N)! I’m Addison and this is Zed!” She introduced the rather tall, lanky zombie boy beside her.

“Nice to meet both of you.” You greeted warmly. You held up your container full of cookies. “Where should I put these?”

“I can set them with the rest of the food.” Zed offered, taking the container from you and bringing it over to one of the tables.

“Did you make those yourself?”

“Yeah, I did. I like baking.” You shrugged. “Didn’t have much time to before the move, all the packing and whatnot.”

“Oh, I bet. Well, I’m super glad you guys moved here! If you need anything let me know.” Addison said, her voice sincere.

“I will.” You promised. Your parents were off with the other adults, chatting. You wandered for a bit before walking right into a tall, warm, muscled body. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Of course it was Wyatt, his fanged grin confident and warm. “You came.”

“Of course I did. This is all great. Do you all do this often?”

“Only when the weather is this nice.” He motioned around at the perfect blue sky on the warm, sunny day. “And on full moons, but that’s more of a wolf thing.”

“Gotcha, gotcha.” You nodded.

“Want a hotdog? Bonzo and I just finished grilling them. We have vegetarian options, too, if you don’t do meat.” He offered, making sure to cover all of his bases.

“I’ll have a hotdog, yeah.” You chuckled. “The meat kind is fine. You guys have mustard?”

“We’ve got a little bit of everything.” He offered you his arm and, blushing, you took it, letting him guide you through the food options. You couldn’t ignore his warmth, nor the way his touch set your fingers tingling, your heart racing.

Something zinged through you, a floating, burning feeling. You’d never felt it before, but you’d heard whispers of it among the few remaining members of the Moonborne Coven. Strange things were said to happen when werewolves and witches crossed paths.

You pushed the thoughts out of your head. Wyatt was kind. He was beyond kind, actually. And already you could tell there was more to your connection than what lay on the surface.

***

After the picnic, Addison promptly got your number and added you to several groupchats, most of them including Wyatt as well as the other wolves, a handful of Zombies, and her friend Bree. They welcomed you with open arms, and it wasn’t long before they’d invited you to hang out with them. They’d agreed to meet at the bowling alley.

“I haven’t been bowling in ages.” You grinned, putting on the neon pink and green bowling shoes you’d rented.

“I haven’t been bowling ever.” Wyatt replied, putting on his shoes as well, tying them carefully despite the long claws he sported.

“Never?”

“It wasn’t until recently that we were actually let into town.” Wyatt told you, his demeanor shifting a little. He shrugged. “It’s nice, though. I like it here and I’m glad things are turning around.”

“That’s good.” You agreed. “People are really weird about differences and it sucks.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of why we moved here. We heard things were getting…better. Still not perfect, but better. Our last town was really closed-minded, especially about…well, everything supernatural, I guess.”

“You’re human, though.” Willa said, her eyes narrowing at you as you spoke with her brother. It seemed she was always listening. “Why do you care what other humans think of us?”

You hesitated. “Right. Yeah, but…I don’t know, it doesn’t mean I have to put up with hatred.”

Wyatt smiled. “That’s really awesome, actually.”

“Thanks.” You chuckled. “Be the change you want to see and all that.”

You stood up, going to get a bowling ball, Wyatt close behind you.

“I’m sorry about her. She gets a little…defensive.”

“Don’t be sorry. After everything you guys have been through, I couldn’t blame her for being cautious. I’m a stranger. It makes sense to make sure I’m actually a decent person before getting comfortable.” You chuckled.

“Well, for the record, I think you’re more than a decent person.” He winked, causing you to laugh.

“Thanks.” You picked a pastel purple bowling ball off of the rack, weighing it in your hands before deciding it was adequate.

“So teach me, how do I pick a good one? I wanna make sure I’ve got a fighting chance at beating you.” Wyatt asked, playful. This was fun, you decided, getting flirted with by a werewolf. You kind of hoped it would continue, if you were honest.

Once you all picked your balls of choice, Bonzo set up the bowling games on the handful of lanes you were occupying and you all got started. You couldn’t help but notice, however, Wyatt coughed a bit, his eyes flashing yellow. You felt it in his magic, then, something flickering. Something wrong.

“You okay?” You asked him, turning to him in concern.

“What? Oh, yeah.” He nodded, stifling another coughing fit. “Allergies.”

You didn’t think that was the case, but you’d have to keep an eye on him. It was concerning.

***

A few weeks later and Wyatt’s condition hadn’t improved. In fact, you were pretty sure it was getting worse. You took it upon yourself to study up, turning to the several books your parents kept on every magical creature they could find. It came in handy, especially when moving to an area where they were the most common in the known world.

You scanned the books and found one on werewolves, plucking it from the shelf. As soon as you pulled it, however, the book next to it fell off of the shelf as well, sitting on the floor. It had a brown cover, but the letters on the front of it were embossed in a metallic, shining silver.

Moonborne.

“Huh.” You said, bending down to pick it up. You set it back on the shelf and turned around to leave with your book on werewolves, but heard a thud behind you. Sure enough, when you turned back around, it was sitting on the floor, innocent. “Okay…”

You picked it up off of the floor. Whatever was in the book wanted to be read and who were you to deny it. That was the thing about magic, sometimes it knew what you needed more than you did. You left the study and started to walk back to your bedroom to do your own research when you heard your mom calling you downstairs.

“(Y/N)! Your friends are here!”

“Coming!” You called back, glamouring as fast as you could and setting the books down on your way to the door, where Addison, Bree, Eliza, Willa, and Wynter were standing, dressed for a day on the town. “Oh, hey guys. What’s up?”

“We’re going shopping for dresses for the Summer Solstice Celebration! You wanna come?”

“Oh! Uh, sure! Let me grab my purse.”

“Here.” Your mom handed it to you, urging you out the door. She loved that you were fitting in so well already, but she had something else in her eyes. Her intuition was the best in the house; you had no doubt she knew something you didn’t.

“Thanks. I’ll be back later.”

She winked. “I know you will.”

The girls took you to a place downtown, a cute little dress boutique full of dresses for the occasion.

“So, you guys celebrate the Solstice? That’s really cool.” You noted, browsing the racks.

“It’s a wolf thing.” Wynter explained. “We used to celebrate it back when the witches still lived here.”

“Wait, there were witches in Seabrook?” Addison asked, her eyes wide with excitement. You really did love her enthusiasm for the supernatural. The world needed more of that. “What…happened to them?”

“They left.” Willa all but growled. “Our pack used to be bonded to their coven and they left us here as soon as things got tough.”

Your heart was racing, cheeks basically on fire. You didn’t know Willa was harboring such harsh feelings for your coven, and given that none of them knew you were a witch, you couldn’t speak on it without outing yourself immediately. You were trapped between a rock and a hard place.

“Oh, come on, Willa. They were chased out. They didn’t…I don’t think they meant to leave.” Wyatt’s voice was unmistakable, even though you didn’t expect him to be there. Your head whipped around at the sound of his voice. He looked…weaker than when you’d last seen him, dark bags around his eyes.

“Wyatt, why are you here?” Wynter asked. “I thought you were getting some sleep.”

“I probably should be.” He chuckled, shrugging. “But I knew you’d all be here and…I wanted to talk to (Y/N).”

You tilted your head, smiling softly. “Me? You can always text or call me, you know.”

He grinned, taking a few steps closer to you. “I know, but uh…I wanted to do his in person.” Wyatt stopped in front of you, his hand rising to your face, clawed fingers careful, tentative, like he was waiting for you to wince away from his touch. Instead, you took his other hand with your own, savoring the warmth he always seemed to exude.

“What?”

He took a nervous breath. “(Y/N), will you go to the Solstice Celebration with me?”

“Yeah, of course I will.” You nodded, eyes sparkling as you looked up at him. “I…really like you, Wyatt.”

Wyatt sighed in relief, the tension rolling out of his shoulders. “Awesome. That’s…that’s great because I really like you too, (Y/N).”

“YES!” Zed burst out of one of the changing rooms, pumping his fist in the air. “I told you she’d say yes, dude! Congrats, both of you.”

“Zed?” Addison questioned, laughing.

“Hey, babe.” He pressed a quick kiss to her cheek on his way to Wyatt. “Now that that’s settled, it’s boy’s night!”

Bonzo, also coming out of a dressing room, shouted what you assumed was the equivalent of “BOY’S NIGHT!” in zombie and followed the others out the front door, Wyatt, looking back at you the whole way out, grinning like an idiot.

“That was…weird. Very on-brand for Zed, though.” Eliza laughed.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so excited! I can’t believe he finally asked you out!” Addison squealed. “He’s liked you since the day he saw you.”

“He has?” You grinned, heart racing. “Awwww…”

“I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but if you break his heart—”

“Willa, chill.” Eliza said, rolling her eyes. “We’re all friends.”

Willa, surprisingly backed off, choking down her next words.

“Anywayssss, what do you want to wear? I think you’d look really pretty in this one.” Addison held up a pastel purple dress.

“That’s pretty, but…” Your fingers wandered to a floor-length glittering black down hanging on the next rack. “I think this might be the one…”

***

The Solstice had arrived, finally. The morning of, you and your parents celebrated privately, as you always did on your witchy holidays, and put on your glamours for the day. Your mother had a club meeting with the other mothers in town, your father had to pop into the office for a bit, and you had to get ready with the girls.

They were all assembled at Addison’s house, getting into their dresses, doing their makeup and hair. Addison helped you with yours, pulling your hair up into a bun and accessorizing with a few sparkly clips, sealing it with hairspray. If there was anything the cheerleaders knew, it was hair. You did your own makeup, sitting in a chair in front of the mirror. Willa stared at you for a long moment. You half-expected her to confront you again, but instead, she approached you with an eyeliner pen.

“Hey, um…could you do mine?” She asked tentatively. “Yours looks really good, and I don’t want to mess mine up.”

“Yeah, of course!” You hopped up out of the chair and let her take your spot instead. She handed you the eyeliner and you got in close, carefully and expertly doing some basic eyeliner. “Do you want wings?”

“Um, sure.”

“Big thick ones, or thinner, sharper ones?”

“Big, bold ones.” She replied, confident.

“Coming right up.” You finished the lines to her specifications, proud of your handiwork. You stepped away so she could take a look for herself.

Willa smiled, looking at her reflection. “Thank you. They look great.”

“Anytime.”

“And…I’m sorry, for everything. I guess I still have my walls up when I should be letting them down, getting to know people. It wasn’t fair of me to treat you like that.”

“It’s okay, Willa. I get it. You…you guys have been through a lot. More than I can imagine. You’re the Alpha, the protector. It makes sense that you’d want your pack to be safe, your brother or otherwise. I never took it personally.”

“I really appreciate that.” She smiled, putting her hand on top of yours. “And I think you and my brother are going to be great together.”

“How…how is he, by the way?” You asked, concerned. “I know he’s got something going on, but…”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.” She nodded. “Maybe ask him about it tonight. Let him know he’s on your mind.”

“I will.” You were a little confused by what she meant, but werewolves loved their secrets, and you figured she was leaving it up to him to tell you this one, whatever it was.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Addison announced, rushing to get the door in her pretty pink dress.

The doorbell rang three more times before she got to it. Unsurprisingly, it was Zed and the guys on the other side, Zed being the one who rang the doorbell repeatedly.

“Babe! You look great!” You heard him compliment loudly while the boys shuffled in to see how you were all dressed.

Wyatt stood in the doorway for a long time, staring at you, looking absolutely starstruck. He swallowed. “W-wow. (Y/N), you look amazing.”

He had cleaned up nice, himself, wearing a sharp black suit, a purple bowtie with a moon pattern on it the only thing that called back to his usual attire.

You smiled. “Thank you. You look really nice, Wyatt.”

“Thanks.” He held out a little plastic box with a corsage in it, a white rose surrounded by smaller, purple flowers. “This is for you.”

You admired it for a long moment. “It’s beautiful.”

“I tried to find one as beautiful as you, but this was as close as I could get.” He told you, his voice soft and sincere, hints of that wolfy confidence in his tone as he slid the bracelet onto your wrist.

“You keep talking like that, I’m gonna melt into a puddle right here on the floor.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that, now would we?” He chuckled. “How would I take you to the dance, then?”

You shook your head at him, laughing as he offered you his arm, escorting you out to the limo. Addison’s mom, the mayor, had pulled some strings and you were grateful she did. You sat down next to Wyatt and he settled an arm on the seat behind you. After a moment, he coughed into his other elbow, eyes glowing golden once more and his moonstone shining. It was a pretty bad coughing session, and it obviously hurt him a lot. You were worried.

“Wyatt, are you alright?” You asked again, concern in your eyes.

“I’m okay.” He insisted, nodding. “I…well, I will be.”

Before you could ask what that meant, the rest of the group joined you in the limo and you took off, headed for the dance, which was being held in the town’s community center, a large, modern building that they used to host all kinds of holiday events, according to Addison. This was the first time, however, that a summer solstice had been celebrated there.

You were all making Seabrook history, in a way, and you were about to make even more. Wyatt escorted you inside, where people were laughing and dancing around on the dance floor. There was a table of snacks and beverages, and the DJ of the evening was none other than Addison’s cousin, Bucky, who looked like he was having almost too much of a good time.

The group of you took some pictures together, chatting, dancing around and having a good time. Finally, Bucky played something slow and you looked up to catch Zed standing beside him, flashing Wyatt a thumbs-up.

He took a nervous breath and turned to you. “Hey, do you wanna dance?”

“I’d love to.” You told him, taking his hand and walking out to the dance floor with him. Wyatt’s hands found your waist and tugged you closer to him as your arms settled around his shoulders while you swayed to the slow song. It was nice, dancing with him, being so close to him. It felt cosmic. Even though he didn’t know about your magic, didn’t know you were anything more than human, there was an undeniable bond between the two of you in the way only a witch and a werewolf could be bonded.

“Hey, um…could we actually go outside for a second?” He asked, eyes nervous and brimming on golden. You could tell there was a lot going on in that head of his.

“Yeah, of course. Come on.” You two walked out the door leading to the garden, which was decorated for the occasion as well, twinkling lights draped around a beautiful wooden gazebo. He led you into it, sitting on the bench within and staring up at the stars before looking back at you.

“Um, so…You like me, right?” He felt the need to check. “Like you really like me?”

“Of course I do, Wyatt, what’s going on?” You took his hand, tilting your head.

“I—” He coughed again, turning his face away from you, eyes glowing as bright as the twinkling lights all around you. Once he finally had his composure, he tried again. “This. All of this is because I’ve been hiding something from you. I just, well, I didn’t know how to tell you without…scaring you away.”

“Whatever it is, you could never scare me away. I promise. I…honestly, Wyatt, I knew there was a reason we moved here and I thought it was just that the people here would be more accepting, and they are…but the real reason we moved here is you. It has to be.”

He took a long breath, nodding. “I’m really glad you said, that actually. Because, well…I imprinted on you. That day we met.” He let out a huge breath, his eyes glowing for a moment before settling again, as though things were shifting back into place within him now that he’d finally gotten it off of his chest. “I…I imprinted on you. You’re…well, if you accept me…you’d be my mate someday. But again, I understand if…if that’s not something you want.”

You stared at him for a long moment, letting the information settle in your mind before you rushed into his arms, pulling them around yourself and resting your cheek against his shoulder. “I want that, Wyatt. I want you. I…”

“Oh thank the moon.” He let out a relieved sigh, holding you tighter and letting his head rest against yours. “This is going a lot better than I thought it would.”

“Good. But uh…there actually is one more thing.” You pulled away from him to look at him. “You haven’t been the only one keeping secrets.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not human, Wyatt.”

He took a long inhale, as though he was trying to get a whiff of what you actually were, deep down, but the glamour did a lot of things, one of which being it covered your natural scent. “You smell human.”

You chuckled. “Yeah, I bet. I…I think it’s probably just easier to show you.” You lifted a hand, summoning your magic to your fingertips and letting it cascade down your face and hair, taking off the glamour you’d used to hide for so long. You got a little choked up, tears welling in your eyes as you revealed yourself, your true self, for the first time in a very, very long time, purple hair cascading down your shoulders.

His expression melted as soon as he saw your tears, cupping your face in his warm hands and resting his forehead against yours, memorizing this new scent of yours. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s okay, I promise. I…I love you (Y/N).”

You choked on a sob, meeting his eyes. “I love you, too.”

“So you’re…you’re a witch?” He asked carefully.

You nodded against him. “I’m a Moonborne. My family’s coven is from here. Willa was right. We…we abandoned you. I don’t know why they didn’t stay here and it took us so long to come back, but—”

“But you’re here now. And you’re mine. And…you’re not going anywhere this time, right?” he checked, eyes searching your own for confirmation that this was permanent.

“Right.” You nodded, whispering your promise to him. “We’re staying right here.”

He admired you for a long moment before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours, careful not to get you with his fangs. You melted against him, kissing him deeply as fireworks went off in the sky. When you returned to the friend group in a few moments, you knew everything would change. They would know who you really were, your secret would be out on the table and Wyatt would be your boyfriend.

But really, there was no way you would rather have it.

You and Wyatt walked back into the dance, hand in hand, your hair bold and purple. The others cheered, supportive and excited for you on all accounts.

“Love the new look!” Bree complimented. “But how did you do your hair so fast?”

“I’m…I’m a witch, you guys. I’m sorry I hid it from all of you for so long, but…my parents and I have been chased out of so many homes and Seabrook is the first place that’s actually felt…safe.”

“You’re a witch?” Wynter asked, looking you up and down.

And while you expected Willa to change her opinion of you once again, her expression softened too. She got it. You knew she would. “Witch or human or anything else…you’re part of our pack, (Y/N). Thank you for showing us who you really are.”

You took a long breath, giving Wyatt’s hand a little squeeze, which he reciprocated, leaning down to kiss your cheek. Though you had been afraid of Seabrook and what you might find there, now, you knew it was where you were meant to be. It had been your ancestor’s home, and now it was yours, and you knew it would be for the rest of your life.

#wyatt lykensen x reader #wyatt lykensen #wyatt x reader #wyatt #zombies #zombies imagine #disney's zombies

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softspiderling · 9 months

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how you get the girl | d.h.

summary: it's been six months since derek stopped replying to your texts, so why was he suddenly standing in front of your door?

pairing: derek hale x reader, nickname "brooklyn"

word count: 3,2k

warnings: cursing

author's note: hello hello and welcome to the first fic of series inspired by taylor swift's 1989! we're starting off strong with how you get the girl. all the fics a part of this series are connected, but it's not necessary to read all of them to understand the plot though it is recommended by me. also i think you should know that i have adopted a way of avoiding the use of Y/N by giving my readers a nickname (courtesy of the top gun fandom) which is brooklyn/b. hope it's okay!! tagging @stilinskiderek bc i know she's been waiting for this. title is from taylor swift's how you get the girl

You had almost missed the tentative knocks on your front door with the endless rain pelting against your roof and all your windows, until the knocks became louder and more incessant. “I’m coming!” you shouted, wrapping your cardigan tighter around your frame as you padded to the front door. As you swung it open, you had to stop yourself from slamming the door shut again when you saw who was standing on your front porch. Derek lifted his head, his hair wet and stuck against his skin. If you hadn’t known that werewolves were basically a walking furnace, you’d guess he was shaking from the cold rain and invite him in. But alas, he probably wasn’t even cold and there was also the thing where you were super mad at him.

“Are you insane?”

Derek blinked at you and then had the audacity to give you a small smile. “Hey. It’s been a while, huh?”

Really? Six months of radio silence and that was the thing he decided to open with? You let out a sigh of disbelief and moved to shut the door in his face, before Derek put his foot in the gap, his hand pushing it back open.

“Wait, wait! I’m sorry!”

Reluctantly, you slowly pulled the door open again, glaring at him.

“What do you want?”

Derek gestured inside your house, small rain droplets flinging from his sleeve.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Can you give me a reason to?”

Your eyes were hard and Derek realized how serious you were being. He sighed softly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I can explain, okay? Can you just let me in? Please?”

Contemplating, you were quiet for a second before you opened the door wider for him to come in.

“Stay. I’ll get you a towel, don’t need you to track your muddy paws into my house,” you said, heading to your closet to grab him a towel. You knew the dog jokes were a low blow but you didn’t really care. Grabbing a spare towel from the shelf, you returned to Derek who apparently had taken his shoes off. His jacket was hanging off a coat rack and he was standing by the dresser, holding a picture frame. You knew exactly what picture it was. Instead of trying to find an excuse you tossed the towel at him, fully intending to sock him in the face with it, but he was still a werewolf, catching it easily with one hand. He put the picture back and dried himself off.

“Thanks.”

You forwent an answer and instead picked up the picture frame, putting it in the back; the image of you kissing Derek on the cheek being obscured by pictures of Isaac, Kira and Stiles. You could feel Derek’s eyes on you, but when you turned back to him, he was hanging his jacket on the coat rack, the towel around his neck.

Giving him a brief once over, you noticed that he looked good. Well-nourished and healthy. At least he wasn’t being held in some rotten basement. But that meant he didn’t really have an excuse for why he ghosted you.

“How long have you been in town?”

“Just got in. I just checked into the loft before I came here,” Derek said, toweling his hair dry with a frown.

“What, didn’t you have to announce your presence to the Alpha for breaching his territory?” you said, somewhat mockingly and Derek gave you a look. You just rolled your eyes at him, growing impatient.

“You said you were going to explain.”

Derek nodded, but it was clear that he was struggling to find his words. So much for that explanation.

“If you don’t have anything to say Derek, you can just leave,” you sighed, exhausted and disappointed at the same time. “That’s what you’re best at, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, you walked over to the couch, sitting down, but Derek was hot on your heels, clearly agitated.

“You knew I was trying to get Cora out of here, I was trying to keep her safe!”

“Yeah, but that was before you completely went AWOL and stopped returning my texts,” you interjected, glaring at him. “Six months, Derek. I didn’t even know if you were alive or not.”

Derek scoffed, glaring at the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-” he broke off with a frustrated huff, dropping down on the arm chair across from you. “I’m sorry I made you worry. That wasn’t my intention… I wanted to text you. I did, but I didn’t now what to say or how to explain myself… When I dropped Cora off with her old pack I envied her that she was able to start new after everything that happened. And I guess seeing her so happy and burden free… It made me wonder what I wanted out of my life.”

And it apparently wasn’t you?

You crossed your arms, burrowing deeper into the couch, not really liking his explanation so far. Did he just come here to insult you and make everything worse?

“Would you let me finish explaining before you plan my demise?” Derek asked dryly and your eyes snapped up at him, realizing that he could smell the anger coming off of you. You jerked your chin, telling him to continue.

“At first I stayed with Cora for a while, thought I could settle with a new pack but I didn’t feel right. Not really.” Derek rubbed the back of his neck. “I flew back here and picked up my car, started driving. I guess I just felt free for the first time, which I didn’t mind, but I really missed you so that’s when I started writing you letters.”

Wait, what?

“Hold up,” you said, waving your hands around for good measure. “Letters? What letters? I didn’t get any letters.”

Derek stared at you for a good minute, the tips of his ears turning pink honest to god. With a small exhaled stood up, disappearing into the hallway. For a split second, you were actually scared that he’d leave again, as you scooted to the edge of the couch, ready to jump up and follow him as soon as you heard the front door shut but Derek returned, a small brown package in his hand. You allowed yourself to sink back into the couch and Derek pretended not to notice as he unwrapped the paper wrapper slowly, revealing a stack of letters. He put the stack on the coffee table, pushing it in your direction as you stared at it. It had to be about 20 letters, all addressed to you, stamped and everything, just not mailed.

Mouth agape, you looked at Derek, who was resolutely staring at the floor.

“At first I felt stupid. But then I just thought about what I would tell you if this letter was addressed to you and then it just got so much easier writing it all down.” Derek glanced at you, face guarded. “You don’t have to read them. It’s not an excuse for not texting or calling, but-”

“I’m gonna read them.”

Derek raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I mean, I don’t forgive you.” Not yet, at least. “But I will read them.”

Derek huffed out dry laugh, sounding amused. “That’s fair, I guess.” He took another deep breath. “About two months after I left, something started changing in me. I felt like I was losing my abilities, my strength. I felt weaker.”

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I met up with an old pack that my mother used to know. They helped me figure out what was going on,” Derek explained and you narrowed your eyes at him.

“And? Don’t leave me hanging, what happened?”

Derek grimaced. “I think it’s better if show you.”

You had no idea what he meant, watching him intently as he got up. When he started taking off his shirt, your mouth flew open. “What the hell are you doing? Stop taking your clothes off!”

Derek glared at you, tossing his shirt on the arm chair before he disappeared behind the book shelf. You heard his belt hitting the floor and there were about a hundred thoughts racing through your head, trying to find a logical explanation for his behavior when a huge black wolf came out into the living room. Your eyes widened and instinctively you backed up against the couch, even as the wolf somehow gave you a look.

“Derek?”

The wolf flashed his eyes, a brilliant blue, the ones you loved so much on Derek, and you covered your mouth with your hand.

“Holy shit!”

The wolf, Derek, came around the couch and padded towards you, nosing his snout on your knee. You patted his head gently, fingers diving into the black fur, that was surprisingly soft. For some reason you had expected it to be hard and coarse. He let out a soft whine, pushing his head closer into your hands.

“Who’s a good doggy?”

You knew the dog jokes were so old but Stiles would’ve never forgiven you for not using this opportunity. Derek growled, snapping his teeth at you playfully before retreating behind the couch. For a second he stayed still then somehow shifted back into his human form. Wincing, you kept your eyes on his face as he walked back behind the book shelf, presumably to put his clothes back on.

“That’s insane, Derek,” you told him when he came back around, pants back on. “Your mother and Laura could turn into a wolf, too right? So, is it like a Hale gene thing, or?”

Derek shrugged, picking his shirt back up to put it on. “I don’t know. There’s not really a record of werewolves that can fully shift, but there are others who can do it. It’s unclear as to what triggers the transformation, though.” He sat back down on the arm chair, somewhat uncomfortable. Clearly he was much more open with his emotions as a wolf.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but it’s not like I can actually feel my bones changing.. I’ve always felt like I was… Incomplete. But when I fully shifted for the first time, it was so freeing. Like I finally achieved what I’ve been working towards my whole life.

“So, you finally got your life in order, huh? Got everything you want?”

Derek shifted nervously on the chair and you knew what he was struggling with. You didn’t know yet if you were going to make it easy on him.

“I called you every day.”

“I know and it took everything in me not to pick up.”

“You’ve got a lot of amends to make.”

And he did. Not only with you, there were people he hurt even before he left and you didn’t even have to say a name for Derek to know who you were talking about. He must have known as soon as he stepped into the house.

“Yeah. That is mostly also why I didn’t want to let him down again, I wanted to be able to protect him before I came back.”

Even if you could forgive Derek and take him back, you couldn’t promise it would help salvage Derek’s relationship with Isaac. Their bond was different and you didn’t want to intervene in it. It was Isaac’s decision to whether he would forgive Derek or not. You knew Derek cared a lot for Isaac, but he hurt him. It wasn’t something that Isaac could easily get past.

“I know I hurt you,” Derek started. “And I know it’s going to take a lot of work for you to trust me again not to leave. But I promise, I won’t leave again. Ever. You’re it for me, Brooklyn.”

You startled at the use of the old nickname. It has been a while since he called you that.

“I’ll wait for as long as it takes for you to trust me again. And even if we only stay friends, that’s fine with me. I’ll take you in any way you’ll have me.”

Your mouth was open, but you couldn’t find the words. While you’ve know how Derek felt for you, he had never actively said it, like you said, Derek was a man of little words.

“Are you seeing someone else?” Derek’s tone was mostly neutral, but you could tell there was an edge to it. Wolves have always been kind of jealous, and Derek wasn’t really an exception.

“Didn’t you just say you’d be fine with being friends?” You asked sharply and Derek clenched his jaw, lowering his head. You let him simmer in disappointment for a while before you sighed.

“Okay.”

Derek lifted his head, frowning at you. “Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll give you another chance.”

The smile that appeared on Derek’s face was almost worth all the pain he’d put you through for the past six months. Almost. He stood up and walked over to you, slowly, as if he was scared you’d change your mind. Lowering himself in front you, he took his hands into your, holding them tightly, but not so much that it hurt.

“If you’re gonna leave again, that’s it, Derek, you hear me?” you warned him and he nodded quickly, intently.

“I’m never leaving again.”

You huffed. annoyed, but appeased. You knew it took a lot for a born wolf to be kneeling in front of a human like this. Not that he had a higher rank than you. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I’m not,” Derek insisted. “Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re it for me. I love you.”

Rolling your eyes, you flushed. “Shut up.”

Derek opened his mouth to say something, but he tensed, stopping. You were about to ask what was wrong, when you heard the door open.

“Hey, I’m home!” Isaac called, shutting the door behind him. That explained Derek’s tense shoulders. “Shit, it’s crazy out there.”

You could hear him shaking his jacket out, cluttering in the hallway.

“Hey, why does it smell like-” Isaac’s footsteps came closer, until they stopped and you looked at him, frozen in the door way.

“Derek.”

Isaac's presence was a comfort to you, and you appreciated the way he didn't make things awkward between you and Derek. But you also knew that Isaac was hurt by Derek kicking him out, of the pack and his loft.

"You smell like wet dog," you teased Isaac, trying to lighten the mood.

Isaac grinned, "Yeah, it's been raining cats and dogs outside."

Derek cleared his throat. He squeezed your hand before he got up, walking over to his first beta. Isaac’s eyes flickered to you, but you shrugged your shoulders. It was his choice.

“I’m sorry for the way I handled things with you after- after Boyd died. I was trying to protect you and I know I went at it the wrong way. Im not sorry for trying to protect you, you’re pack. I care about you. But I should’ve done it differently,” Derek said, grimacing. He looked like he about hit his word limit of the day.

Isaac didn’t reply and you could tell he was conflicted as his hands curled into fists. You held your breath, knowing this could go either way, with Isaac being loyal to a fault and Derek was the first person gave him the chance to get away from his father.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Isaac then said, gently, and you exhaled slowly. He didn’t really acknowledge Derek’s apology, but you knew that was going to take time. This was a good start. He gave Derek a small smile, it was guarded, but it was a smile. Isaac’s eyes flitted over to you and he pointed towards his bedroom. “I'm gonna go change. I'm soaked. Can we do pizza for dinner?"

”Sure,” you agreed and Isaac bobbed his head twice, before going towards his room. When you heard his door shut, you turned to Derek, lifting a brow. “You’re lucky. Isaac has a big heart.”

Derek breathed a sigh of relief, looking at you with gratitude. "Yeah… I know I still got a long way ahead of me, but I’m glad he’s giving me another chance.”

As the rain continued to pound outside, the three of you settled in for a quiet evening of pizza and movies. Even though the three of you acted like this was just like before, it was obvious that everyone was walking on egg shells around each other. It was going to take longer before things would really get back to the way it was before.

“Hey, did you just pick the pepperoni off my pizza?!”

Or maybe not that long.

Dear Brooklyn,

I miss you more than words can express. It's been three months since I left and I still can't shake the feeling that I made a mistake. I am sorry for not responding to your texts and calls, but at the time, I just couldn't bring myself to talk to you. I was going through something, something that I didn't understand and I didn't want to burden you with it. But now, I realize that I should have at least told you what was going on. I'm sorry for shutting you out.

Something's happening to me, Brooklyn. I don't know what it is, but it feels like I am losing my strength. I wonder if it’s punishment from the universe for leaving you. I'm trying to figure it out, but it's difficult. I feel like I'm running out of time. I know you and Stiles would hit the books as soon as you find out about it, but I don't want to trouble you. I'm trying to get in contact with my mother's old allies to see if they can help me. That's why I'm in New York.

Being back here without you or Laura is hard. Everything reminds me of you both. I miss you so much, Brooklyn. You were always there for me, even when I didn't deserve it. And I'm sorry for hurting you. I know I have a lot of making up to do. But I promise you this, I will make it up to you. I will never leave you again.

I hope you're well and happy. How's Isaac? I know he's probably still mad at me, and I don't blame him. I messed up. But I'm glad you two have each other. Maybe you can both be mad at me together. I hope I can fix things when I come home. But even if you don't want to take me back, I'll understand. I just want to be in your life, Brooklyn.

Please take care of yourself.

Derek.

#derek hale #derek hale x reader #derek hale fanfiction #derek hale fanfic #derek hale fic #teen wolf #teen wolf fanfiction

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reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 6 months

Note

I feel like this conversation is a bit played out, but I’m curious: do you think JK’s banking on winning a Grammy and potentially getting out of his military service? I’ve tried to take their words for what they are and I know everyone’s said that they’re all going to the military, will be back in 2025, yadda yadda, whatever. I can’t understand why, if that’s the case, they’re banking so much on his solo career if he’s just going to disappear from the scene (physically) for almost 2 years. Do you get what I mean?

My thoughts are that they are actually hoping for a Grammy and subsequent deferment of mandatory service, but then again, nobody knows so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.

As this is only speculation and might as well not happen, let me bring my own contribution. I don't think this is about Jungkook and I'll explain why.

If you look at this entire issue from the perspective of the artist/idol, you'll realize soon that you're stuck, that you can't explain why he's doing this or that. But looking at it as a business deal will shine another light on it.

Yes, Jungkook is leaving to do his military service soon and everything he said up until now points to that so why are they investing so much into making him a "global pop star"? Because Hybe and Hybe America need to show that they can do that. That their strategy is one that works for future business. Why do you think they tried it first on the most versatile of the BTS members, the one that can do any song because he has the voice needed for that? This wouldn't have worked with Taehyung or Jimin. God, I'm so happy it didn't work with Jimin because it would have been horrible to see all that unfoulding. Besides, they had projects on their own and without making any contribution to the song writing, Tae's album was still something that matched his personality, it was him with the help of MHJ.

With Jungkook, the situation is different. I wouldn't know the details, but when they announced their hiatus, it looked like everyone was set on releasing an album, including JK. And then, most likely, life happened. Because you can't plan your state of mind. And when you're under a contract, you do need to listen to other people. I know army always uses the shares in Hybe argument, but the value allocated for the members is insignificant on a larger scale. Yes, they are rich and they can do what they want and sleep on a wlive, but I don't think for one second the company would have let Jungkook do nothing and be a couch potato.

So they found this opportunity. You also have to keep in mind that Hybe paid a lot of money for Scooter's company and then what happened to him? Most of his artists left? So where is this big opportunity for collaboration and projects and all that?

This is just business. That's it. They chose the idol capable of being a blank slate and stuck the concept of global pop star on him. Because that's what it is which is incredibly funny (not). Usually that accolade comes after some time, when the results can be seen over a prolonged period of time, but in this case, that was the starting point. As much as Bang wants to get rid of the k in kpop, they're still using a kpop strategy, that of making an album based on a concept or creating a specific image for an idol.

And now they are pushing it hard. They are investing a ton of money into this in a way that makes them look desperate and I think that in the industry at large, people see it. Not the fans because they either choose to turn a blind eye or their mind doesn't go that far. There are voices which have said a thing or two lately among army, but it's an insignificant minority. The company can rely on the fandom to buy all those 284836521 versions and remixes and they will eat it up. And voila, look at how Hybe produced a global pop star in less than half a year. Quick, open the catalog for some songs that sound mediocre enough for a top 40, make the singer record them asap, fast, done in less than one week. Quickly come up with some generic argument of how this is just to show the artist's vocal range (good job PR for that one, jesus) and then also openly admit that it was made for a Western market, aka US cause the world stops there.

Jungkook had the possibility to show more personality of his own when he was with a group of six other people than with his solo album, which is so ironic. But that is because it is not his album. He's merely a vessel through which Bang and Scooter can show investors that they can invent a global pop star and fast while their pockets grow bigger and bigger.

#m thoughts #hybe #jk #bang pd #kpop

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sleeplesslionheart · 7 months

Text

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

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thestobingirlie · 11 months

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Somewhat tangentially related to that other ask but I wish fandom would just acknowledge that Eddie is also bully in his own right and just because he's antagonist towards jocks doesn't mean they deserve it by virtue of being jocks (no matter how much fandom likes to pretend it's warranted because Eddie is bullied himself- this is nowhere near canon and I'd go so far as to say it goes against canon if we're basing it off of Eddie's own behavior) and beyond all that; like the other asker and yourself said Eddie isn't just antagonizing jocks! He openly scorns band kids, geeks and pretty much everyone that isn't his specific brand of nerd which is not about academics so much as nerdy interest like fantasy and "non-conformist" music.

I put that in quotations because Eddie is actually probably the one that buys into the whole high school hierarchy spiel more than any other character on the show; by setting himself up as such an anti-establishment non conformist (all within the high school setting mind you we see nothing to make me believe his ideals go beyond that setting and it makes sense to me considering he's a Peter Pan archetype stuck in a state of arrested development- but I digress) because he sets himself up in such a way that his entire persona is built off of the abject refusal to adhere to societal expectations he's by and large helping to perpetuate them. He's cosplaying this attitude more than living by it because the societal norms still very much dictate how he views himself and how he approaches others.

Ironically Steve is the real deal in this regard by shucking what others expect from him and living his own life the way he wants it divorced from the excepted norms he used to let dictate him as late as mid s3 while changing the things he didn't like about himself behaviorally while still retaining his core personality and interests without the need to revise himself fully.

But because he doesn't have an alt style or interests that go against the mainstream, fandom refuses to see him in this light. He also doesn't let his new friends change his own interests nor expect them to change theirs for him.

I guess this rant makes me sound like I don't like Eddie but I do! I think fandom Eddie is entirely separate from canon Eddie however, to the point where his only recognizable qualities are his interests and aesthetic. Fandom really seems to martyr him in that regard and fully drink his kool-aid which is hilarious because it's largely performative with no substance lmao (even the "woe is me hunt the freak huh 🥺" falls flat narratively when a whole ass dead girl was found in his home).

I think the duplicitous nature of his personality and his hypocrisy (while still fully being a good guy! If you ignore the whole uh selling hard core drugs to a 17/18 year old girl who clearly never did them before thing) I think it's this dual nature and slightly shady actions while still having a caring heart and good intentions is what makes him a good character and we don't get to see that hardly ever with the way a laaaarge portion of fandom worships at his freak alter.

god, beautifully written. i agree with every single point. honestly, you anons just know how to word exactly what i’m feeling.

yes! eddie pretends like he rejects societal ideals, but he just reinforces them to the next generation. he’s built his life on being the freak, he plays it up to get attention, and to rile up his classmates. i honestly think eddie won’t know who he is post high school. which is, like you said, ironically the way the fandom tries to portray steve. but we see that he’s much more secure in himself and his life than eddie. does he have everything figured out? of course not, he’s 18!! but he knows a hell of a lot more than eddie.

but because he isn’t a nerdy outcast, the fandom would have us believe that he actually hates his life and who he is, and secretly doesn’t want to be a jock. fanon steve is honestly way more like canon eddie than i think the fandom wants to admit.

(and yeah, chrissy is found dead in his home. people aren’t just witch hunting eddie for no reason lmao)

all this is what makes canon eddie an actual interesting character!!! and the fact he (and steve) are entirely stripped of these characteristics is one of the reasons that i just can’t vibe with the fandoms rendition of steddie.

#steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #stranger things #asks #anon

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nhasablogg · 6 months

Text

Why do you hide?

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Characters: Reid, the BAU team

Summary: Reid avoids going to his yearly check up for the third year in a row, only this time his team members notice and try to help.

A/N: I admittedly have no idea if yearly check ups are a thing you have to do for work, but pretend it's a thing lmao.

Words: 2.1k

Reid knew what JJ had on her mind the moment he saw her crossing the office to get to where he was standing in front of the closing elevator, and because he knew what was on her mind he did the only thing his semi panicked mind could think of: he turned around and ran, if you could call walking slightly faster than usual running.

“Spence!” Her voice was muffled, which meant she was still inside the office which was good for him. He had absolutely no idea where he was going which in turn made him walk right past the most obvious escape routes (stairs, doors) and instead round the office area over and over. He could hear her behind him now, laughing because this surely looked ridiculous.

“Why are you avoiding me?” She grabbed a handful of his shirt, always stronger than you’d expect, and pulled them both to a halt. “What are you doing?”

“Oh hey.”

“Don’t ‘oh hey’ me.” She was still laughing, caught between concern and amusement and most likely stuck on incredulousness. Reid couldn’t blame her. “Why did you run?”

“No reason.”

“Oh my god, you’re not even pretending to genius your way out of this.” Her expression melted into proper concern. “What’s wrong?”

Guilt seized him, pressing into his chest. “It’s nothing, I promise, I just- Well, I know what you were coming to talk to me about.”

“How could you know that?”

Reid shifted. “Well, statistically it is around autumn time that we do our annual check ups, seeing as most people have recently come back from vacation, flu season is approaching, and the bureau wants to get all of those menial but necessary tasks out of the way before the holidays. It makes sense that you would want to talk to me about it even though that is not technically your job, but with your maternity leave getting closer and Gideon gone I think more tasks like these have ended up in both yours and Hotch’s hands and you probably realized that I-”

“Have skipped your yearly check up for the past three years? Yeah, we noticed.” She softened, something almost maternal crossing her features for just a moment. “Spencer, you know you need to do them. We all do.”

He fiddled with the hem of his sweater. Gideon had been kind about it when he’d realized Reid hadn’t gone to his appointment. He’d not asked. Had figured Reid had his reasons. In the back of his mind, overpowered by the neverending grief of Gideon’s departure, there was a small part of him which had been worried about this exact thing happening. He wasn’t sure what to even say if anyone asked.

But JJ didn’t ask. JJ was also kind about it.

“Tomorrow morning, Spence,” she was saying now, pointing at him. “Don’t let me hear you skipped it this year too.”

“I won’t let you hear it.”

“Spencer.”

He deflated. “Fine.”

“Good. Coffee?”

“Tons of it, please.”

Reid wouldn’t call it luck more than a momentary distraction that they needed to be in the air only hours later to fly to Pennsylvania, because he knew neither JJ nor Hotch would be dropping this. He avoided their eyes as if he’d committed the murder himself during the entire flight, but it was easy to have his face stuck in all the files. No one really questioned it.

“The doctor told me I have hypermobile shoulders,” Morgan was saying to Emily.

“Better than the opposite, I guess,” Emily replied. “I’ve gotten better at stretching this past year so she was very happy with me.”

“Wouldn’t want to get a bad grade on your yearly check up,” Morgan laughed. “Hey, Reid?”

Reid, who had stiffened the moment the conversation had started, jumped. “Y-yeah?”

“Sorry, did I scare you?”

“Well, I’m kind of busy.”

“Okay, testy. I was just gonna ask about your check up grade.”

“Oh, he’s not had his yet,” JJ said, sending him a look which he refused to interpret. “We’ll have to reschedule it.”

“Ah, that’s the worst. I’d be overthinking it. Like what are the chances of me developing asthma overnight or something.” Emily’s tone was light, laughter-laced, but Hotch seemed to grab onto her words much more tightly than she’d probably assumed.

“Is that something that worries you?” He was speaking to them all. “The yearly check up?”

Scratch that. His gaze was on Emily, but he was speaking only to Reid.

She shrugged. “Not really. I reckon you’d notice if something’s off before it, although I agree it’s a good system to have. You can never be sure.”

Hotch nodded, seemingly content, but when he dragged his eyes from Emily back to his own file it landed briefly on Reid, holding his gaze for a second too long.

Reid, stupidly, unnecessarily, flushed and lowered his head again, all but touching the file with his nose.

This was gonna be a long week.

“Hey kid.” He looked up from his desk to Morgan hovering over him. “JJ told me to tell you your check up’s at three today and to not be late.”

Reid shifted in his chair. They’d only been back for a few hours. He’d hoped that JJ would’ve given him another day at least. “Okay.”

“You seem nervous about it.” Morgan tilted his head, as if something clicked. “Come to think of it, you seemed tense about it earlier this week too. You okay?”

Reid waved him off. “I’m fine.”

“No, seriously. Do you have a fear of doctors?” Morgan leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Is it because of your mother?”

Reid had once confided in him that he was scared the doctors wouldn’t be able to detect it in time if his mother’s schizophrenia had been passed down to him. In retrospect it did sound as if he had a general distrust for doctors because of his mother, who’d not gotten the help she needed early enough. Maybe Reid could use that, only it didn’t feel right. He trusted medical doctors. He trusted they knew much better than him.

He shook his head. “No, no, I just-” He shrugged. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”

“I’m sure it’s not stupid.” But Morgan seemed okay about dropping it. It really wasn’t the place to push it anyway, with the office just returning to life after lunch. Reid was grateful for that, only it meant his check up was in two hours and he wasn’t sure he was ready. Felt the first surge of panic about it grip him.

And the worst part was that it really was stupid.

“I knew you’d be here.”

Reid knew Hotch would find him and so he wasn’t surprised, only a little shameful, when he looked up to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Hotch pulled a chair out, one far enough that he wasn’t in Reid’s space, and sat. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

How the hell do you talk about something like this with your boss? “I’m not sure I can.”

“Okay.” Hotch said it slowly, as if waiting for him to elaborate. “How come?”

“It’s embarrassing.”

Hotch raised an eyebrow. “Embarrassing.”

“You’ll think I’m being silly.”

“I would never think that.”

Reid looked down. Crossed something off of the note he’d been writing when Hotch had entered. “You will.”

“Reid, you’re scaring me. Should I have reason to be worried?”

Reid looked up again. Saw something terrified behind Hotch’s eyes. “I’m not using again,” he said quickly, realizing his behavior was probably alerting a whole different type of concern. “It’s not that.” Not this year. It had definitely been part of it last year, although not the main issue. Hotch didn’t seem convinced and Reid couldn’t blame him. “I will pee in any cup you want. I promise you, Hotch.”

“Okay.” Hotch leaned back. “Then what is it? Because as far as I’m aware your check up was supposed to start twenty minutes ago and you’re hiding in here.”

Reid exhaled slowly. “Like I said. Embarrassing.”

“Reid.”

“I just don’t like being touched by strangers.” It wasn’t a lie. Not the whole truth, but part of it enough that it wasn’t a lie. “It makes me feel… uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable.” Hotch tilted his head. Did his best not to profile him. “Has it always been like this?”

“Pretty much my whole life. Nothing’s happened, in case that’s what you think. Nothing I can remember at least.” He shrugged. “It probably has something to do with my undiagnosed autism.”

“Ah.”

“You’re not surprised.”

“I’m not, no.”

“Good.” Reid exhaled. “It means you understand.”

“I do to an extent, but Reid-” Hotch cut himself off, visibly trying to figure out how to approach this. “You do realize that that is no excuse to not do a mandatory check up, right? If you had talked to me I could’ve arranged some sort of accommodation. Now it just looks like you’re playing hooky.”

Reid hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

Hotch checked his watch. “There’s still time to do it. I can go with you.”

“No, no, it’s okay.”

“It would be no problem. Maybe it will help you feel calmer.”

“Garcia can go with me.” Reid had blurted it out, but the moment he said it he knew he’d said the right name. Garcia wouldn’t judge. Garcia would maybe tease, but she’d never judge. “If that’s okay?”

“Of course.” If Hotch was hurt that he was picking someone over him he didn’t show it. “I’ll let her know.”

Reid sat in front of the doctor and felt like a child. Garcia was doing her best to not squeeze his hand to death or bounce a hole on the floor, because those were the courses of action she’d decided to keep switching between. “I don’t like doctors,” she’d told him in the elevator, but she’d not protested when he’d asked, and so he’d not offered to let her off the hook.

“I hear you were trying to avoid me,” the doctor said, her tone light but firm. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to ask about before we start?”

“No.”

“Okay then. Now, this does not hurt at all and will be over quick. Sit up straighter for me. Breathe in. I need to listen to your lungs. Just like that. Well done, doctor Reid.”

Reid endured the coldness of the stethoscope on his chest and back and only tensed up a little when the doctor touched his lower back. Garcia was watching him intently, which in retrospect was his own fault and made him feel all the more tense. Maybe that was why he jumped when the doctor suddenly touched his side, briefly but softly. And Garcia, who was doing everything in her power to try to be there for him, understood.

“You’re ticklish.”

“Shh, not so loud.”

“That is adorable, boy genius.”

Reid groaned as they entered the elevator. “I don’t like that procedures like that forces you to remain still as you’re being subjected to sensations that you’re not supposed to be still while being subjected to-”

“So you’re saying you’d be fine with it if you were allowed to squirm away?”

“Well, kind of-”

“Say no more,” Garcia laughed, her index finger in Reid’s ribs, only for a quick poke, but Reid jerked away from it nonetheless. “So ribs, sides. Where else are you ticklish?”

“Nowhere.”

“Oh, don’t lie to me now. You can’t have avoided going to your check ups for years just for two spots.”

Reid held up his hands, a smile already on his face and nowhere to really run. Still better than the doctor’s office. Much much better.

“If you don’t tell me I will try them all,” she threatened, taking a step closer to him. “I’ll give you five seconds.”

Reid took a step back and found himself pressed against the wall. “Please.”

“Five.”

“Oh my god, Garcia, I beg of you-”

“Four.”

“Don’t tell Morgan about this, please don’t-”

“Three, two, one.” She stuck her hand beneath his chin. “You ramble for too long.”

Reid was too busy giggling to reply, although he could hear her cooing as well as he could hear the elevator reach their level, knowing she wasn’t done with him by any means but was probably kind enough to destroy him in private at the very least. She was laughing when she backed off, a threatening, teasing laugh, and despite his sensitivity he appreciated the playfulness much more than the concern.

“Watch your back, wonder boy,” she said, pointing at him as she walked away.

Reid exhaled, catching sight of Hotch nodding as he received a thumbs up from Garcia.

He ran a hand through his hair before entering the office with his head held high, hoping his smile had melted into a casual expression and that he wasn’t too flushed.

Much better than the doctor’s office.

#tickling #ticklish!spencer reid #criminal minds fic #criminal minds #reid x the bau #tickle fic #n writes #why do you hide?

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cafeinthemoon · 1 year

Text

King - Chapter II

Chapter 2/?

Wordcount 4,5k

Title The Day of Preparations

Fandom Shuumatsu no Valkyrie / Record of Ragnarok

Pairing Poseidon x reader

Previous chapter

Symbols ⭕ . ➕ . 🖤

Warnings: Arranged marriage; mentions of invasive medical procedures; a kinda problematic advice from Proteus; Poseidon is basically his own warning lol

Tagging @the-dumber-scaramouche @mikkies @sl33py-zer0 @cloveradora @nooneknows8976 (If you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just leave a comment on this chapter or send an ask or a message)

N. A.: So I tried to keep a wordcount similar to the one of the previous chapter, but it wasn't possible due to the quantity of info to be showed in this one lol

A few words about this chapter: I'm so excited to write about reader and Alyssa's friendship! It's been a while since I included this dynamics in a story and it's been good to work on it! Here we have more about their routine in the castle, but there are other details that will be explored in the next chapters, as well as some mysterious events...

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this chapter and tremble at its last paragraphs 🤭

Also changing the gif because... you'll see 🤣

When you stepped inside the room and heard Proteus closing the door in silence at your back, you thought your loneliness has reached the worst point: the only human in that colossal building, stuck inside a room, trapped in the deepest of the seas. However, looking at your surroundings with attention, you soon had the first good surprise since you left your father’s house.

The room, with dimensions as wide as its high door suggested, had dozens of empty beds placed side by side, from one edge to the other, all of them made with bluish sheets of something similar to satin and big, soft pillows. At your left, you saw some doors that probably led to bathing and changing rooms, while at your right there was a wall with aligned gothic windows through which a smooth light entered. In front of one of these windows, observing the outsides with her hands on the parapet in an anxious attitude, a woman in a turquoise dress and golden sandals was standing. When the door was opened, she turned to it and you noticed, with a sigh of relief, that she was a human being.

As you took a few steps to the middle of the room, the woman came to meet to you as quick as her condition allowed her: looking down to her belly, you saw the rounded salience of a pregnancy. She was a bit shorter than you and seemed to be one or two years younger, with brown curls that framed her face and fell around her shoulders and her swollen breasts, a pair of chubby cheeks and a tiny mouth that opened in a cheerful smile when she spotted you.

In the glimmer of her almond eyes, you recognized a sensation of relief similar to the one you carried in your own heart. The reason for this you could already guess, but it was good to hear it in her words.

– During this last week, I’ve heard rumors that a human girl was going to arrive this day, but I refused to believe in them until now – she spoke in a rushed, excited tone – You have no idea of how happy I am to see you here!

If the circumstances were different, you’d certainly be annoyed by this reception, but after the things you’ve been through before arriving there, you replied with equal contentment.

– And I can only say the same now that I see you here.

The girl’s smile widened and she rubbed her belly, inviting you to sit with her in one of the beds near the windows. You thought she was acting too recklessly for someone at that stage of pregnancy, but didn’t make any comments.

– So – she sat and started the conversation – What’s your name?

– Y/n. – you took the spot by her side – I came from the … region, from a family of merchants. And you?

– I’m Alyssa. I grew up without knowing who my parents were. I was actually found at the doors of a sanctuary dedicated to Poseidon-sama at my town when I was a baby. The local priests raised me to be one of them and, when I became an adult, they decided to send me here as an offer. Human offers are rarely sent to the Emperor of the Seas nowadays, but I’m glad I was accepted.

Alyssa sighed. You didn’t want to think of what could have happened in case she was rejected. Her tone was a bit lower – and sadder – when she spoke again.

– I haven’t interacted with any humans since then – she shrugged – Of course, there are people here who treat me with kindness, but it’s not the same, you understand?

You agreed without thinking twice.

– Yes, I do – and, after a pause, – So… How long you’ve been here?

– I arrived last year – she looked down to her belly – This is my second child. It’s my sixth month now.

You couldn’t help raising your eyebrows in surprise: if she was carrying her second baby, she might have conceived them shortly after giving birth to the first.

The girl seemed to guess your thoughts, but didn’t show any sign she was offended.

– If you’ve heard that things aren’t easy to Poseidon’s secondary wives, that’s absolutely true – she let out a giggle – Though there are many of us, we’re always occupied, if not carrying a child inside our wombs, then carrying them in our arms.

You replied with a worried “I see” and started looking around, at the room. You decided to change the subject.

– So… – you moved your hands to indicate your surroundings – This is quite big for a place where humans are not common.

– It’s because these rooms follow standard sizes – Alyssa explained – Maybe there was a time in the past when our kind was seen more often inside these walls, but it might have been so long ago that no one has memories of it anymore – and, after a moment looking around too, – Well, I think I’ve spoken too much now! Tell me about you. Who is your family? Who sent you here?

That wasn’t really a pleasing theme for you, but you did your best to not put your listener in a depressive mood while you told her a summarized version of your story.

– As I said before, we’re a family of merchants. My mother married my father for love when she was about my age. My father met her when he was about to replace his own father in the family’s business, so he trained her in it and they’ve worked for years together… until she passed away.

– I’m sorry – Alyssa whispered.

You smiled.

– Since I was a child, I’ve been taught about our traditional occupation and always thought I would grow up to be a merchant beside my father, to travel through exotic lands and, one day, take his place as the leader of our company. Everything in my life, in my routine indicated that this would be my fate… – you paused before your voice cracked – Until a few days ago, when I came home at an evening and saw my father alone in his office, staring at a strange document on his desk, a scroll inside a golden seashell. He showed it to me, and I couldn’t believe in what I was seeing: it was an official announcement, not from our government… but from the Empire of the Seas. I should become one of the Emperor’s secondary wives. And neither myself or my father had a say in this.

You pattered your fingers on your thighs, remembering that cursed evening.

– I don’t know what I did to deserve this, or if I’m paying for the sins of an ancestor – you continued – Our family never had any connections with the Lord of the Seas. Honestly, we never devoted ourselves to any gods at all! But suddenly, my father received a paper scroll and then all the life I knew, the whole future I’ve planned didn’t exist anymore! Me, who never had any wish of becoming a mother or even a wife, now the bride of a god who only needs me to give him children! – you sighed, covering your face in your hands – Thinking of this makes me so tired that I’m not even able to feel angry...

Alyssa put a hand on your shoulder.

– Y/n-san. I’m not in conditions to do many things for you, but I’ll help you as much as I can – she smiled – Even after your wedding, we will spend long periods in the company of each other, so if you want to understand specific things about our life here or if you just need to talk, I’ll probably be here for you.

You put your own hand over hers.

– I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me, but I want to do the same for you – and, trying to cheer yourself up, – So, do we have a deal?

– Yes!

And that was the beginning of your first friendship in that strange world, and the fastest friendship of your life.

When you arrived at that enormous, majestic building, the feeling of helplessness was inevitable, but now that you found out you wouldn’t be left alone in that cold room, you allowed yourself to believe that things could be, if not good, at least tolerable.

***

Though you could learn important things by spending your days outside the room, exploring the places you were allowed to go to, you preferred to stay most of the time in the lodge.

The main reason for this was certainly the mental exhaustion resulting from your difficulty to accept the fact that you would have to stay there for the rest of your life, but there were other things you considered, such as how you wanted to avoid the other women and their prejudice; you also weren’t at will to interact with the castle’s servants, since you still didn’t know much about them and their view on humans; finally, despite receiving the necessary assistance, Alyssa spent most of her time by herself, and you didn’t find it a good thing to leave her alone in the current situation. As expected, she ended up being your main source of information about life in Poseidon’s domain, such as the castle’s routine, their rulers, details about the marriage system that weren’t revealed by Proteus and other things you were supposed to understand in order to survive.

Still, being stuck inside that room didn’t prevent you to face mysterious, random things that, while didn’t cause you any problem, certainly awakened your curiosity.

There was this time when you were lying on your bed, close to the window and besides Alyssa’s, observing the night sky – if it was correct to call it like that – thinking of the changes in light that made it possible to separate the days from the nights despite not having celestial bodies at sight. You were looking at the dark expansions out there and waiting to fall asleep, when a small, but unexpected change caught your attention.

You had the sensation of capturing a tiny spot of light with the corner of your eye. You blinked a few times, thinking you were starting to see things because of tiredness, but the light was still there when you looked at it again, crossing the space to somewhere outside your view.

But there are no stars here. What is it, then?

You couldn’t help leaving your bed and rushing to the window to observe.

From your spot, a group of at least three high towers of white stone was visible on the horizon, distant but still a part of the castle’s structure. Considering the direction taken by the light, it might have appeared somewhere close to the highest of those towers, as if coming out of a window, and it was now floating to the black expansion above, leaving a sparkling trail behind it like a shooting star.

The entire land was quiet, except for the low roar of the waves that moved outside the domain. However, you were sure to hear a high-pitched, melodic sound that seemed to come from that tower, spreading through the air. It was like a whistle.

You kept looking until the light disappeared in the darkness. Right after that, the whistling sound ceased and everything returned to the previous silence.

You went back to your bed and couldn’t remember if you fell asleep or if you spent the rest of that night thinking of what you witnessed.

***

You would have lost the notion of time if it wasn’t for the variations in light that indicated the different periods of the day and the conversations with Alyssa, as well as the visits of the servants under Proteus’ orders, who took care of your personal needs. They would come at specific times of the day to fulfill tasks such as cleaning the room, changing the sheets and checking on Alyssa, but they were so impersonal in all of this that you never had the nerve to make them any requests, neither you tried to get information with them; still, if you were to count good things about them, it was the fact that they were never late and their work was done with perfection, so that you never lacked anything.

There was this time when, after what seemed to be weeks since your arrival, your impatience finally got the best of you, and you questioned your friend about how long a woman would usually wait for the day of her wedding.

– You know, it’s not that I’m excited for it – you shrugged – But staying here with little to do, living days that don’t differ from each other in anything and not knowing what to expect is very unpleasing, to say the least.

Alyssa, being aware of your feelings towards the wedding and such, didn’t make any inquires or judgments, limiting herself to explain the variations in the period of wait.

– Everything depends on how many women are there to marry, and how many of them will marry before you. Usually, the girls are summoned by their species, and only after an entire species went through the ceremonies, a new group is chosen. So, in the case of the girls who belong to larger groups or those ones in the last groups, the wait might extend for months. However, not many girls arrived this year, so your turn will probably come in the next days.

You opened your mouth, but no word came out of it.

– But, in my opinion, staying here in the lodge is not that bad – she commented – You know, I wish I wasn’t one of the first when I came here.

You felt a slight discomfort when you heard that, as well as a guilt. You were so focused on your own misery that you barely stopped to think about how she might have felt about her own wedding, for serving a deity as a priestess alongside your family is one thing, but leaving your people and your home behind to stay by the said deity’s side as his wife, existing only to give him children and sharing him with other women who were not exactly your friends, was something else. You never asked Alyssa to share details of her experience as a wife, neither you questioned her about how she really felt about carrying those children or even if she held some love for her husband, but in respect for what she might have endured, you decided to be more careful whenever you talked about your own discontentment to her.

***

Alyssa’s words about you being summoned to your wedding in a few days became a sort of sinister prophecy when one morning, a servant came to your door and, in fact, announced that “the time for you to become the next wife of our Lord” has come.

Your friend witnessed the scene: you were standing up beside your bed at that moment; when you turned from the servant to her, she offered you a supporting look, to which you looked back at the servant and nodded.

– Yes – you took a step a head – I’m ready.

You gave Alyssa one last look, over your shoulder. You would have preferred to exchange a few words with her before leaving, but seeing that resilient, calm smile before the door was closed between you granted you the strength you needed to follow the servant in silence through the lodge’s corridor.

***

Thanks to the information you gathered with your roomate, you already had an idea of what to expect from the period of preparations. And, also because of that, it wasn’t a surprise to see that the said preparations took that entire day.

The first stage was to take you from the tower where the girls’ lodges were located to the one where the wedding would take place, a task that was fulfilled by that one servant that came to summon you. Only this took several minutes of walking through hallways and bridges until you finally reached a room where the rituals would actually start.

You were taken to a group of doctors whose mission was to make sure you were in your best conditions, both in a physical and mental sense. Yes, it’s true that, during the weeks you’ve spent in the lodge, you were sent to the doctors from time to time, but now the procedures were more precise – not to say more invasive – in a way that even the tiniest details wouldn’t be ignored. You were impressed with the fact that none of those professionals were humans, yet their knowledge of the human physiology and psychology was such that they could easily replace a human doctor in the world of men.

After hours of evaluations and examinations, you were taken to another place where your personal hygiene and aesthetic would gain attention. Here, there were almost only females to take care of you.

First, you were sent to a bathing area where you were received by two women of rosy skin and no body hair, and who introduced themselves as Kenya and Yua. You had your clothes taken from you (and probably discarded), then were led to a bathtub with fragrant water. When you understood that they were going to bathe you, you tried to tell them that you were able to do this by yourself, but they only laughed.

– We know you are probably able to do that – said Kenya, while taking a glass full of soap and rubbing your back with it – But Poseidon-sama would just get rid of us if he hears that we’ve been allowing his brides to bathe on their own.

Yua, taking a bit of the same soap and rubbing your arms, giggled.

– And we do not want to be punished because something so silly.

You weren’t sure if they were just over enthusiastic about their own tasks or if they were provoking you, but you just let them do their work. After some time, you gathered the courage to ask about your future husband.

– May I ask something about Poseidon-sama?

A silence fell between them for a second, but curiosity took over and they were all ears.

– Of course, darling – Yua started cleaning your feet – What do you want to know?

– Yes, what do you want to know? – Kenya corroborated.

– Well... What kind of person... What kind of king is Poseidon-sama? I mean, would he really punish you for such a small thing like letting me take a bath on my own?

Kenya shrugged.

– You should not doubt that. To some, he can be a wise, righteous and reliable governor. To others, however...

– To others, “Tyrant of the Seas” makes too much sense – Yua completed – But, please, do not use this title in front of him if you want to stay alive!

Kenya chuckled.

– Yes, you better watch your mouth in front of him. Poseidon-sama is as demanding with his women as he is with any other person. You can guess that only by all the preparations you’ve been submitted to.

Nothing was said about the theme after that.

When the soap stage was finished, it was the time for exfoliation. This resulted in a slight discomfort for you: as soon as they started scrubbing your body, it burned.

They discussed it between themselves.

– Oh, we better stop now. It’s too rough for her!

– What are we going to do, then? Her skin is so fragile! We could barely clean her...

– Take the bottle we used on the other one. It’s our softest option.

The last stage of the bath was to wash and treat your hair, and thank Heavens you faced no suffering in this: your strands ended up softer and brighter, and you approved the procedure.

The next step was to take you out of the water and moisturize your body with lotions and foams with perfumes that, in your opinion, would work better if they weren’t mixed. This task was also done by Kenya and Yua, before they finally sent you to another room, where an elderly woman with physical traits that resembled Proteus received you. She took you to a bed where you had your limbs, hands, feet, belly and back massaged with non-scented oils, then had your muscles relaxed and your posture readjusted.

You then entered a smaller room where you had your hair combed and curled, your nails cut and painted. No make up was used on your face or body.

Finally, you entered one last room where another pair of female servants were in charge of your apparel. They manicured your nails, finished taking care of your hair (but left it untied) and put you in a loosen, kind of revealing dress of thin fabric... and no robe or underwear. You were really bothered by that, and this feeling only increased when you realized you weren’t going to be given any shoes.

When they started leading you to outside that room, you finally managed to question about this.

One of them giggled, but stopped when the second one reprehended her. She then turned to you and, with a glimmer of pity and embarrassment, gave you this dubious answer:

– You must not to worry about such things, young human, for soon you will understand that, in Poseidon-sama’s domain, you do not need more than what you are given.

Those women didn’t have the sympathy and playfulness of Yua and Kenya, so you didn’t ask anything else and conversation died in a strange silence after that.

The exit door was opened at last, and Proteus entered it. You were already informed that he would be the one to take you to the ceremonial room, so that there was no need of exchanging words with him: you just stepped to his side at his sign, then started following him through a corridor that resembled that one of the castle’s entry in many things, except that it was even larger.

When you reached the fateful place, he stopped in front of two great doors carved with gold and sparkling pearls that spread upon them like a constellation, and turned to you, his glare as solemn as the first time you met it.

– Your time has come. What I am going to say to you, I have said to all the previous women: trust the silence, the modesty and the compliance, and everything will be good for you. Anything that goes beyond this you will do at your own risk.

You swallowed.

Silence? Compliance? What did all that mean?

Proteus was going to turn away and leave, when you called him.

– Proteus-sama, please, wait.

He looked over his shoulder.

– With all of this, it seems that you’re telling me that the use of my voice might be my death, my Lord. Is that correct?

He replied with the same composed tone, as if that wasn’t something to be worried about – and, maybe, for him, it wasn’t.

– You will be in the presence of a god, woman. Do you understand what it means? The contrary, that is, your voice bringing death to the listeners, is something that only applies to the sirens, and you are not one of them. So, be careful.

When Proteus walked away, his steady steps echoed inside those walls for a moment until he was out of sight, and you were left alone in front of those doors.

You touched the knobs with shaking hands and pushed them, surprised that they easily obeyed your command.

***

The space for the ceremonies was wide, almost like a ballroom, and the sea life as a base for the architecture and decoration was even more present there: there were lines of marble columns on each side, with sea weed, starfishes and exotic creatures carved as if swimming around them; the walls and the ceiling were of the deepest blue, and you had the sensation that they were moving in the rhythm of the waves.

As you walked upon the black carpet that indicated the way to the altar, Proteus’ words reverberated inside your head, making more and more sense despite their absurdity: despite the dark blue of the surroundings, the lights on that room were of an uncomfortable white, increasing the feeling of oppression and anxiety, corroborating to turn you into a compliant, voiceless creature.

When you stopped in front of the altar, you noticed how simple it as compared to the luxury of the things around it and the other premises of the palace: it was a rectangular table with two long candle holders of gold on each side; between them, you saw a rounded tray of copper with a pair of pearl-shaped earrings. Nothing more was at sight.

You waited for one minute or two, but no priest or servant appeared. The silence was such that your breath was the only detectable sound around, and though you were close to a dozen burning candles, you sensed the air getting colder.

You never knew how long you stood there, alone, on barefoot and trembling, until the first change in the scenario finally happened, but all the time you’ve spent waiting was promptly forgotten after it.

The walls behind the altar, similar to the doors through which you entered that room, were actually a second pair of doors that connected it with a contiguous space behind. You discovered that at the exact moment they were opened, and someone crossed them...

And made you force your feet in place in order to not run away with his mere presence.

Walking around the altar and stopping in front of it, at least one meter apart from you, you saw the one who was probably the most beautiful man you’ve met in your life: he was taller than most of the people you knew, in a way that you barely reached his shoulders, and was dressed in nothing more than a blue robe that covered even his legs, but the fabric didn’t hide the prominent lines of his muscles; his pale skin reinforced this impression that his entire form was carved in marble, as the ancient sculptures produced in the name of perfection; his hair was like thick waves of a pale blonde, with one strand falling upon his forehead, where he had no lines of expression nor signs of age, just as the rest of his face, which traits carried a delicacy most common in females.

To be honest, he was nothing like you imagined. From the statues you used to see in temples and monuments dedicated to him, you were sure that you would meet an individual who resembled a middle-aged man with long beard and stern expression, or even someone whose traits were the combination of a man and a sea creature, but your shock to find a man who looked almost as young as yourself was immeasurable. Besides, apart from his uncommon beauty, the only things that settled him as a non-human were the pointy shape of his ears, not hidden by his hair, and his eyes, as blue as his clothing: old eyes, filled with ancient, threatening power.

Yes, remembering everything you’ve witnessed since you arrived at his domain, you thought you developed a reasonable idea of the kind of being Poseidon was. However, now you understood that no observations could have prepared you for the moment when you finally met him, for they didn’t correspond to half of the reality.

And that left you terrified.

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