#so it's a sort of. reverse tale where he travels the world in search for meaning rather than bringing meaning to the world]

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

How about 1. (Guess I’m a Parent Now) with Logan as the parent and a side of your choice as his newly adopted person for the random prompt fics :)

Title: Rest Your Head Close to My Heart

Summary: In a world where humans are the practically extinct ones and dragons freely roam and rule the skies, Logan is a young draconic adult in search of a human to decipher the knowledge lying within the books of his hoard. He just didn’t expect to find a crying human hatchling by itself all alone.

Pairings: Parental logicality

Word-Count: 1.5k

Warnings: Crying, Language Barrier, Death Mention, Blood Mention, Hurt/Comfort

Heh, this could easily be applied to the most recent fic I posted, but this sparked another idea which nearly ran away from me in the process.

-

Once upon a time, there were humans. They were small, squishy beings. Not equipped with spikes or thick-plated scales to protect them from harm. Oh, but they were magnificent, fearsome beings. In the midst of their biological shortcomings, they had intelligence that rivaled even the smartest of dragons, living or dead. They crafted their own spikes and armor out of rock. They were very good at making all sorts of things in fact. Good enough that dragons from across the lands coveted their things.

 At first, it was peaceful between both dragonkin and mankind. The dragons would trade the humans materials in exchange for their craft. But then, a war broke out. And in the billowing, heaving smoke and ash that resulted, the humans vanished completely from the world. As far as all dragonkin knew, not a single human sighting has been reported in half a millennium.

Logan thought this to be a great shame. His hatching had taken place one-hundred and seventy-nine years after the war’s end--far too late to have personally seen a human. Several elders in his clan had.

“They were dangerous, conniving vermin,” A Clan Elder scoffed, “as wondrous as their things were, it’s better they stay gone.”

Perhaps this was true, but Logan couldn’t help the ineffable curiosity that ignited his inner flame so. Humans were the creators of the things he found worthy of coveting. 

Things like rocks molded into impressions of humans, beasts and forestry. Furs and skins humans took from others and remade to fit over their own like shells. His favorite were the things called books. Rectangular objects filled with leafy material that contained black markings on them. Knowledge was stored on them, though no dragon alive could decipher its meaning.

Knowledge was what Logan coveted most. He wasn’t likely to give up easily unless another could offer something of equal or greater value for it. Knowledge rarely manifested in physical objects, thus making his hoard easily transportable. This was good, because Logan traveled aplenty in his years following maturity.

He wanted to find a human. He needed to know what his books contained and only humans held the key to the knowledge he was so close yet so far to absorbing into his hoard. Humans had to be out there somewhere. And he was determined to be the first dragon in half a millennium to see one.

He just did not expect it to be a hatchling. Or what he presumed to be a hatchling because while humans were small, this one was very much small. Only just the size of a newly hatched whereas adults were described to be three times that. And wailing. It had to be wailing, a high-pitched cry for a caretaker not present.

Logan stared at the hatchling for a long while, hidden away from its view. It’s golden floppy not-quite fur hung over its head. It strangely did not cover the rest of it’s body. Just the head. It wore a blue-and-grey covering over its skin. Its’ strange talon-less forepaws covered its head as it shook. All curled up like a hatchling trying to disguise itself like a rock. Poorly, he might add with the aforementioned shaking and wailing.

He did not know what to do. He was never one to take care of hatchlings even back when he lived with his clan. He did not covet them like his hatchmate had. He also did not dislike them. He felt very neutral towards them. But this was a human hatchling--a being that had not been sighted in so, so long. Perhaps this hatchling still knew the knowledge that laid within his books.

So very cautiously and very, very silently, he coiled himself around the human hatchling. He did not want to spook it away, as he heard tales of humans being fast when fleeing perceived danger and able to wiggle themselves into spots full-grown dragons like himself couldn’t reach. Then he let out a soothing warble, one his parents used whenever Logan or his hatchmate had a nightmare. This quieted the human hatchling. Not because it was consoled by the action; startled would be the better word for it.

The human hatchling lifted its head upwards, limbs folding away from its body in the process. It was then Logan saw it. Dark red stains soiling its skin covering. Logan leaned his head towards the hatchling to inspect it closer. His inner flame trembled at the tinge of copper that wafted into his nose. Humans’ blood was not like dragons. It didn’t glow the color of a dragon’s inner flame, boiling to the touch. Their blood was known for a bright red color that turned brown in time and its coppery scent.

The hatchling had to be injured. No wonder it was crying. Only, that in and of itself presented another complexing problem; he did not know how to care for injured humans. The knowledge out there about humans was very bare on the subject. He knew a plethora of ways to harm a human. But not a single one on how to go about caring for an injured one.

He did not have much time to ponder this. For the human did something unexplained. It latched its cold, soft forepaws to his snout. Logan’s neck frills flared out in surprise but he did not move. An incomprehensible gurgle emanated from the human hatchling. A puff of smoke exited his nostrils, intriguing the human hatchling further. It stuck a forepaw closer to the opening, as if trying to discern what caused it.

Carefully, he eased his snout away from the human hatchling. This seemed to upset the hatchling, making a distressed noise as it reached upwards for him. He hesitated, dropping his head back downwards. Instantly the human hatchling latched on, running its cold forepaws against his scales. The human hatchling’s blue eyes widened as it made an inquisitive sound.

“Curious, aren’t you?” Logan rumbled, keeping his maw closed as much as possible. The human hatchling stilled for a second. Then it squealed back in its own language, its forepaws resting on the ridge of his snout. He hadn’t quite realized that of course, if dragons hadn’t seen humans in centuries, the same in reverse had to be true for humans. Not until now, with a living human hatchling touching his scales with the same reverence he held for a book or another thing touched by humans.

“I know you can’t possibly understand me, but are you injured? There’s blood on you and unless I’ve been misinformed, that generally remains inside of humans just like it does for dragons. Also, I wonder, where are your parents? Surely humans are just as protective of their young as dragons and other species.”

The human hatchling predictably did not understand him. Or if it did, it could only respond in the lilted, melodic odd noises that made up human speech. It was fascinating to hear even if Logan couldn’t understand it. None of the stories talked about human languages and what they sounded like. It was something lost to dragonkin after the war.

The human hatchling chattered on and on as it stroked his scales. At first it started out bright and happy-sounding. But then an odd choking noise came from the human hatchling. This alarmed Logan who presumed it was a sign of the human hatchling’s injury. It alarmed him further as it continued as the human hatchling attempted to speak through it, its chatter stilted and stifled.

He pressed his snout closer to the human to reassure it. And this time, unlike before, it seemed to work. For the human flung its forelegs very clumsily around his snout. It couldn’t possibly envelope him. It tried its best though as the choking noise continued intermingled with the first cries of before.

It was then that Logan realized something. There was human blood on the human hatchling, yes, but it wasn’t their own. It belonged to a different human with a different scent. A scent nearly identical to the human hatchling but not their own. Most likely their parent’s. And if the human hatchling had been all alone, crying, with its’ parent’s blood on them...well.

A strange feeling stirred in Logan’s inner flame. As much as he previously sought after humans and their knowledge of books, all of that paled considerably to this new feeling. It wasn’t exactly a new urge to covet something but it was quite similar. It was a “Oh dear Agni, I presume that I’m a father now” feeling.

He hardly knew how to care for hatchlings, much less human ones. But this didn’t matter, for the human hatchling chose him and denying a rite of parentage would be grievous. He would care for the human hatchling to the best of his ability. Above all else, he’d see that the human hatchling would never meet the same fate as their bloodparent. 

“There, there,” He awkwardly crooned, easing gently the human hatchling underneath the protection of his wing, “for as long as I can fly swiftly and breathe fire fiercely, you will be safe.”

And while the human hatchling couldn’t possibly understand him, he almost believed they could as they clung tightly to him, their sobs dissipating at last into a few final quivering hiccups.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #kat writes #i guess logan being an inhuman entity unexpectedly becoming a father is now my brand lol

[allgirlsareprincesses]

The Death of Love and the Lonely Soul: Eros and Psyche in a Post-TROS World

This is the first of my follow-up posts to my series on Folktale Types in Star Wars, focusing on how the Sequel Trilogy retells (or fails to retell) the Eros and Psyche myth, and the potential psychological implications for our culture. This essay will frequently reference my original Reylo as Eros and Psyche post, though I will also occasionally refer to my other Search for the Lost Husband posts (2) (3) (4), so please consider reading those before diving in here.

To explain why I had a great deal of confidence in TROS being a classic happy ending to a Search for the Lost Husband tale (ATU 425), I have to share a little bit of what I learned about how folklorists view these tale types. A century ago, the popular theory about why myths and folktales were so similar all over the world was evolutionary: it assumed there was one origin tale, and that as humans traveled, they would carry the story with them and it would be retold and adapted by other cultures. This suggested there was one ancestral tale from which all the others developed, which accounted for the recurrence of the story’s basic plot and motifs.

Since then, however, advancements in anthropological research and the increasing appreciation for folklore in the study of human psychology has debunked the old evolutionary theory. It was discovered that cultures and societies existing at the same time in history, on opposite sides of the globe and which could have had no possible contact with one another, still told the same tale types with the same motifs. Details might be changed, but every culture had animal husband tales, or animal bride tales, and so on. This led to the now widely-accepted idea that universal human psychology accounts for the similarity in folktales. Basically, all humans tell each other the same stories because we all wrestle with the same fundamental truths, challenges, and transitions. This is why the swan maiden tales can be traced to male anxiety over sexual performance or the prospect of losing a wife in childbirth, or why animal husband tales can be traced to female power fantasies of taming a mate in a patriarchal society.

Based on all this, I assumed that even if Terrio and Abrams made a typically vapid modern action flick, they’d still hit all of the main beats of the Eros and Psyche myth because that’s what would come naturally to them. Obviously, Beauty’s love will return the Beast to his human form. Obviously, Psyche will complete her journey from child to adult and take her place as the true or metaphorical mother to the next generation. Obviously, they will end the story united for eternity to signify the end of the galaxy-wide conflict and the beginning of the true peace so long sought by the heroes of the Skywalker Saga.

While this was true to a limited extent in The Rise of Skywalker, several of the reveals and the final moments of the film not only departed dramatically from the structure of the Search for the Lost Husband myth, but the movie even fails to align with the commonly more sorrowful Quest for the Lost Bride. In a cruel and baffling twist, the story erases its hero and returns its heroine to childhood in a barren underworld. There is, frankly, no historical folktale I can find that matches this pattern. Even stories featuring preadolescent children are about disassociation from parental figures, not deeper dependence. (Note: Marie-Claire and Ty Black of What The Force and Wit and Folly have done some exploration of how TROS reflects the so-called “American Monomyth.” This is a valid interpretation but for the purposes of this analysis, I’m continuing to use stories more commonly recognized by the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification of folktales.)

Rey’s Regression and Psyche’s Tasks

As a quick refresher of where we stood in alignment with the myth by the end of The Last Jedi, Rey is the mortal woman Psyche, and her force powers are akin to Psyche’s beauty in the myth. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is god of desire Eros, Psyche’s husband and the son of god of war Ares and goddess of love Aphrodite. In Star Wars, it is the Dark Side and dark force users who play the part of Aphrodite herself, attempting to control Ben Solo and jealous of the powerful Rey. The symbolic marriage of the lovers has unmistakably occurred multiple times, but when Rey attempts to force Ben into the light and to accept his true identity, he recoils and they are separated. She has broken the taboo of seeing his true self, and so her animal bridegroom has fled to the safety of the Dark Side, or “his mother’s house.” Finally, all of Rey’s illusions, help, and protections have been stripped away, so she must now learn how to rely on herself to obtain what she desires. When Rey discovers her own worth, independent of anyone else, she will achieve womanhood. When Ben Solo accepts his full humanity, both dark and light, he will achieve manhood. Together, they will reach adulthood.

At the beginning of TROS, we may already suspect some trouble. Rey seems to have regressed to a childlike dependence on mentors, being trained as a Jedi by Leia in an attempt to “earn” Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, even though she has used it without permission for two movies so far. Given the saber’s symbolic role as a phallic motif, this also suggests sexual repression or another reversion to a childlike state, especially considering the sexual awakening Rey experienced in TLJ. Ben, meanwhile, has also regressed to a dogged commitment to the dark side, seeking to remove any “threat to his power.” Still, there is time for the couple to recover their lost ground and achieve maturation in the course of the film.

In Apelius’ tale, the enraged Aphrodite confronts Eros about his marriage to Psyche:

“What! Is it she - the usurper of my beauty, the vicar of my name?…. Whereas thou shouldst have vexed my enemy with loathsome love, thou hast done contrary. Being but of tender and unripe years thou hast with too licentious appetite embraced my most mortal foe, to whom I shall be made a mother, and she a daughter. Thou presumest and thinkest that thou art most worthy and excellent, and that I am not able by reason of my age to have another son; which if I might have, thou shouldst well understand that I would bear a more worthier than thee. But to work thee a greater despite, I do determine to adopt one of my servants, and to give him these wings, this fire, this bow and these arrows, and all other furniture which I gave to thee -- not for this purpose, neither is anything given thee of thy father for this intent, but thou hast been evil brought up and instructed in thy youth.”

If we are to say that Palpatine fulfills the role of Aphrodite in this story, then a few things stand out: One is that Palpatine (and Snoke, given that they are one in the same) views Kylo Ren as a failure, recognizing his feelings for Rey. Darth Sidious sees Rey as a threat, and is both jealous and fearful of her power, of being “usurped” by her. Further, though it is not immediately clear that Palpatine intends to replace Kylo with Rey as his new host, it does become evident through the course of the story that he wants only revenge on Ben Solo. This idea of replacing Ben with Rey, though characterized as a Dark Side concept at first, becomes especially tragic later in the film when it seems that the Skywalkers have done exactly that. Finally, there is the affirmation that Ben “has been evil brought up and instructed in [his] youth,” when Palpatine tells him that he has been “every voice inside [his] head.” This suggests that Ben/Eros is evil as he has been raised that way from childhood, removing a degree of culpability for his nature.

Still seeking her lost husband, Psyche seeks out Aphrodite herself, who drags her by the hair as her maidens, Sorrow and Sadness, abuse and torment Psyche with whips and rods. The cruel goddess then gives her wretched daughter-in-law the first of her impossible tasks, demanding that Psyche sort a pile of grains and seeds in a single night. Though Psyche completes this task and a further two (gathering the golden fleece from vicious rams and collecting water from the mouth of the River Styx), she often despairs of success, twice attempting to fling herself into a raging river to escape her agony.

In TROS, Rey is similarly tormented by loneliness, as she tells Finn that she fears no one knows her. Though she meets with success in most of her efforts to chase down the film’s several McGuffins, she also seems to despair and give up more than once, most notably when she flees the scene of her oceanic battle with Ben on the ruins of the Death Star.

As for the tasks themselves, these appear differently in variations of the Search for the Lost Husband, but usually involve the heroine questing for her lost love, collecting objects and accepting help from various magical figures on her journey. By contrast, Rey does not seem to really seek Ben at all throughout TROS, as she consistently rejects him and is the aggressor in all of their confrontations. Though she collects objects and accepts help from other characters, including Force Ghost Luke, this assistance is always intended to help her defeat Palpatine, not recover Ben. I could come up with some tortured analogies between Rey’s mini-quests and Psyche’s labors, but truthfully I think those would be forced as the movie departed farther and farther from the mythological framework.

The Death Star Fight and the Revival of the Prince

Still, other aspects of the ATU 425 folktale type are distinctively present. Just as the Beast repeatedly asks Beauty for her hand in marriage, so Kylo Ren repeatedly asks Rey to join him on the Dark Side. With the words “take my hand,” this is explicitly presented as a proposal of romantic union, and just like Beauty, Rey repeatedly refuses, particularly as Kylo clings to his beastly form in the repaired mask. This brings us to the sequence which is on the one hand most aligned with the myth, and on the other hand serves as the most ominous sign of the lovers’ eventual fates: the confrontation on the Death Star.

The problem with this scene is that it can be interpreted as two different pivotal moments in the folktale. Firstly, recall that the turning point in the Search for the Lost Husband is the breaking of the taboo and concurrent wounding of the enchanted husband: The heroine, armed with “flame and steel,” attempts to look upon her husband’s true form. In some variations, she intends to kill him if she discovers a monster. However, when she finds a handsome prince instead, she is stricken with love and accidentally wounds him with hot oil or wax, signifying her perceived betrayal. Though we have already seen this in the previous films (in Rey’s slashing of Kylo’s face on Starkiller and again with her calling him by his true name in the flaming throne room of the Supremacy), it seems that this event is playing itself out yet again. Using Kylo’s own lightsaber (flame and steel), Rey stabs him with a mortal wound even as she is reminded of his true identity through the sensation of Leia’s death. Not only would it be odd to repeat the breaking of the taboo yet again in this story, but instead of the husband fleeing as he typically does at this point in the Search for the Lost Husband, it is Rey, the bride, who flees.

The other event that frequently occurs in this tale type is the revival or healing of the prince. And indeed, this is exactly what happens in the Death Star scene. Rey’s stabbing of Kylo Ren, though in my opinion out of character, is consistent with the violent means some folktale heroines use to transform their beastly husbands. For example, in The Princess and the Frog, she throws her amphibian suitor against a wall, causing him to retake his princely form. Other brides burn their husbands’ beastly skins, forcing them to remain human evermore. As I’ve said before, Kylo’s lightsaber is symbolic fire in Star Wars, so Rey stabbing him with it is akin to burning his beastly skin, forcing him to again become Ben Solo. It also can be considered the moment that she makes a blood sacrifice to recover him. Then, still surrounded by water (Rey’s element throughout the trilogy and also associated with healing and cleansing), our heroine heals the prince of all his wounds, including the scar she had previously given him. This is absolutely consistent with many folktales, among them Pajaro Verde and The Ballad of Tam Lin.

Further, Rey’s healing of Ben is a callback to her healing of the alien serpent she found wounded on Pasaana, a shockingly unsubtle analogy for Ben. In Apelius’ narrative, Eros himself is sometimes referred to as a serpent, and it is very common in other animal husband tales for the prince to marry his bride in the form of a serpent, as in the Italian tale The Enchanted Snake. This is usually interpreted to be a fairly obvious phallic symbol, representing the heroine’s sexual initiation or in this instance, simply the masculine power to the heroine’s feminine. We have previously heard Rey refer to Ben as a “treacherous snake,” so it’s obvious that her healing of both the snake and Ben himself is her healing the Wounded Masculine. Finally, Rey tells him she “wanted to take [his] hand, Ben Solo’s hand,” which is again a seemingly direct reference to Beauty finally agreeing to marry the Beast in order to bring him back from death.

Despite the close alignment of this scene with the revival motif in the Search for the Lost Husband, there is one glaring issue: that event always occurs at the END of the story. The revival of the prince is the final step in the searching bride’s journey, when she claims him as her true husband by drawing him back from death or a similarly dark fate. It is a testament to her power and her love, and it demonstrates the final transformation of the prince and his worthiness of his bride. It is most definitely NOT common for the bride to again flee after reviving her lover. Again, despite the fact that Abrams and Terrio are (likely unintentionally) using many classic ATU 425 motifs, the reordering of them is disorienting and unsettling.

Rey in the Underworld

Psyche’s final task in her story is to descend to the Underworld to gather a little bit of Persephone’s beauty for the jealous Aphrodite. Despairing of any way to get there and return safely, Psyche prepares to kill herself, but Eros speaks to her through an enchanted tower, instructing her to use certain objects to pass safely. He also tells her not to eat any food of the underworld, nor to open the box of beauty Queen Persephone gives her, or else she will not return. Psyche follows all of these instructions carefully, until she has nearly completed her task, and the temptation of opening the casket is just too great. She opens it thinking to take just a little beauty to please Eros, but inside she finds only the Stygian Sleep of the dead, and she falls down lifeless. Eros immediately flies to her side and wipes the deathly sleep from her eyes, reviving her and taking her in his arms. He then appeals to Zeus, who agrees to make Psyche immortal so that she and Eros can never be separated.

In TROS, the underworld is the planet Exogol, where lurks the personification of the Dark Side, Darth Sidious. In Star Wars, power is analogous to the beauty that is so coveted in the Greek myth, so the characters are all drawn to Exogol in a final struggle for ultimate power. Like Psyche, Rey has a moment of despair when she exiles herself on Ahch-To, thinking that she cannot possibly defeat the Dark Side. Oddly, instead of Ben Solo speaking to her through the Force Bond, which would more closely follow the myth, the person encouraging Rey in this moment is Luke Skywalker, her erstwhile reluctant mentor. He does indeed give her special objects to help her pass into Exogol (the lightsabers and his miraculously-preserved X-wing) and he advises her to confront her fears.

Another way to interpret this scene is as yet another instance of the heroine returning home to her suspicious family, where they poison her mind against her beastly lover. In Eros and Psyche, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Pajaro Verde, Beauty and the Beast, and many others, there is always a moment when the heroine goes home to her family and receives dangerous advice warning her against trusting her husband, or attempting to keep her longer than she promised. I’ve argued before that this already happened in TLJ with Luke, when he repeatedly warned her away from her own dark side and from Ben Solo. Yet, it seems we again tread over familiar ground, with Rey’s flight to Ahch-To in TROS appearing as another regression of her character.

Rey flies to Exogol and attempts her final task, which is to defeat Palpatine. When he threatens her friends, she agrees to kill him in order to become empress (I really can’t type this nonsense with a straight face), which will make her the heir of death itself. Then, transformed Ben Solo comes charging in heroically to save his love, unwilling to let her face her final trial alone. Unfortunately, Palpatine sucks the life force from both lovers without much difficulty, then chucks poor Ben off a cliff. Rey is forced to defeat Sidious without her soulmate, though apparently a bunch of Jedi she doesn’t know are happy to give her a pep talk and make her “all the Jedi.” After finally destroying(?) Palpatine, she then inexplicably drops dead. Like Psyche, Rey has completed the final task but also taken the contents of the box (in this case, the power of “all the Jedi”) for herself, and as she is mortal, it is too much for her and she dies.

Just like Eros, Ben claws his way to his fallen lover’s side and gathers her in his arms, determined to retrieve her from death. Alive again, Rey calls Ben by his true name and professes her love in a passionate kiss. But whereas Eros then makes his soulmate immortal so that they can never be parted, Ben’s revival of her results in his own death, and the couple is again separated. Though redundant, it would be consistent with the folktale pattern for Rey to resurrect her prince in this moment. Instead, we see his body fade away, with no indication that our heroine clearly understands what has happened or really cares.

In each version of the Search for the Lost Husband, the heroine is a mortal woman who wins the love of a prince or even a god, and her final reward is to be elevated to royalty, or to immortality. Psyche becomes a goddess in her own right, dwells in the heavens, and gives birth to a daughter named Joy. Eros and Psyche, Desire and Soul, when united produce Joy.

But Rey is not united with Ben, in the end. In fact, with a royal heritage of her own, she doesn’t really need to be elevated any more. You could argue that she claims a more elevated title when she takes the Skywalker name as her own, but she still ends up alone, with only ghosts of someone else’s parents and her robot familiar for company. Rather than ascending to a throne or to the heavens, she literally descends into a ruin, a literal graveyard, in a barren wasteland. Her mythical husband is nowhere to be found, and there is no hope for a child. In a cruel and bizarre twist, TROS tells a fairly faithful final chapter of Eros and Psyche, only to strip its heroine of all she has sought in the last moment, leaving her bereft. And yet, the filmmakers dressed this as a happy ending.

TROS as an Allegory of the Lost Soul

Given how frequently the Eros and Psyche tale is used as a basis for psychoanalytic theory, what implications might this film have when viewed through that lens? In Jungian psychology, the human psyche can only achieve individuation - the knowing of oneself as a separate and unique person - if it can be separated and differentiated from the uroboric figures of parents, siblings, and mentors. Eventually, the repressed Shadow must be integrated into the Self in order for one to be a whole and healthy adult.

Within this framework, Psyche is a human soul trapped in a state of unconscious, lacking knowledge of her Shadow and therefore lacking agency. Eros is the Shadow, a collection of repressed desires which Psyche both fears and desires to claim. Her act of heroism is that same wielding of lamp and knife where she faces the truth, strips away her own illusions, and sees her Shadow for what he truly is. Psyche’s refusal to continue living a lie, and her subsequent pursuit of her desires leads her to achieve individuation signified in the product of alchemical union, Joy.

Up until the events of TROS, both Rey and Ben Solo were on this journey. Rey was trapped in a state of childlike unconscious in the graveyard of Jakku, having repressed the dark memories of the parents who abandoned her. In TFA, things tended to happen to her, but she rarely drove the action of the story herself. However, at the end of TLJ, she separated herself from the influence of uroboric mentor Luke and pursued Ben Solo, determined to truly see and claim her dark desires. With flame and steel, she stripped away the dark mask around him, but he also forced her to admit the truth about her parents to herself. Ben Solo, her animus, the projection of Rey’s unconscious, stood before her and forced her to bring what she had repressed into her conscious reality. Only then could Rey “let the past die,” separate herself from her parents, and “become what [she was] meant to be.”

Mirroring her journey, Ben was also trapped in a state of unconscious in the underworld of the Dark Side, having repressed his inclinations to the Light and to reconciliation with his family. His effort at separating himself from the influence of his mentors had a false start at first, as he mistakenly believed that he needed to “let the past die,” separating himself from his family and from the Light. With flame and steel, Ben killed his father, but to his horror, he realized that this did not rid him of his deepest desires. In TLJ, he got a second chance to separate himself from the controlling mentor by killing Snoke. Had he at that time faced his desire for the Light and acknowledged his true identity, he too would have been closer to individuation. Ben’s anima, Rey, stood before him calling him by the true name he had repressed and begging him not to stay in the Dark.

From this basis, we might assume that Rey, freed from illusions, would pursue her wayward Shadow in an attempt to integrate him. Ben, only a few steps behind, might finally accept his identity and his desire for love and affection, unite with Rey, and they would both achieve individuation, rewarded with Joy. In fact, for Ben Solo, most of this story does indeed occur in TROS. When Rey heals him and declares that she did want to take Ben’s hand, he is forced to finally face and accept his true identity. He then projects a memory of Han Solo, representing his repressed desire for the love of family, and he reconciles with himself. He then pursues his desires by running to Rey’s rescue, finally freed to act according to his own wishes. Does he manage to truly unite with her and achieve joy, though? More on that in a minute.

Rey, for her part, suddenly undergoes a regression into her unconscious state. Rather than becoming a unique and separate person, she again defers to mentors, training with Leia and claiming that she will “earn” Luke’s lightsaber. Consider that by the same point in his own journey, Luke was specifically defying the advice of his mentors, Yoda and Obi-Wan, who were advising him to kill his father and bury his feelings. They were of course proven wrong by the narrative, and Luke was validated. As the hero of her story and as a human psyche on its way to individuation, Rey should have separated herself from her mentors and the story should have validated her unique strengths and perspective. Instead, Rey’s success and heroism DEPEND on Luke and Leia, even to the end. In many ways, she is an avatar of her mentors more than a heroine in her own right.

The other way in which Rey regresses is in her discovery of her true parentage, as she is forced again to consider her identity as a child, an extension of the parents who (supposedly) loved her and the grandfather who might be the true source of her darkness. Recall that the action that launches Psyche’s journey into consciousness is a refusal to continue living a lie. Rey achieved this step in TLJ when Ben forced her to admit the truth to herself about her parents. Though it was painful and led to the loss of her lover just as with Psyche, it was necessary for Rey for understand that she could forge her own identity without relying on the false family she had built in her mind.

In TROS, not only is she unable to differentiate her identity from her mentors, she now has multiple new parental figures to contend with. Having accepted the truth of her deadbeat nobody parents and the losses of Han and Luke (and eventually Leia), she must now reconcile with loving somebody parents as well as having a grandfather who is basically the Satan of the Galaxy Far Far Away. Further, it seems she has been training herself to contact the spirits of many Jedi who have passed into the Force, all of whom also constitute mentors or parental figures. Rather than discovering how she is unique and what she might want in her adulthood, Rey is positively drowning in parents against whom she is derivative, still just a child.

Still, all of those parental figures are dead or die in this movie, which is traditionally one way that mythical children separate themselves from their mentors in coming-of-age tales. Theoretically, there should have been time for Rey to discover who she is apart from all these characters, decide she wanted something different out of her life, and then pursue and achieve it as heroines do. Unfortunately, we never see that happen in this film. At every point in her TROS journey, Rey is doing what a mentor instructed her to do. She’s following Leia’s guidance, or Luke’s guidance, or Palpatine’s…. In the end, it is Luke who is validated by the narrative, not Rey. She brings nothing new or unique to the galaxy, nor does she seem to have intense desires that would oppose what these mentors want for her. Yes, she did want to take Ben Solo’s hand, but she’s not on a mission to save him and she barely reacts when he gets tossed down a pit. Unlike Luke, who was determined to save Vader in spite of what everyone told him, Rey meekly follows her elders like a good girl.

In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, Otto Rank says:

"The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem."

Others have pointed out that Rey’s failure to reach full sexual maturity is also demonstrative of this problem, as evidenced by her virginal white ensemble, tight childlike buns after the soft long hair of TLJ, and loss of her intended mate at the end of the story. Rey’s journey to womanhood has been arrested in every way, but the ultimate illustration of this tragic regression is her slide down the sand when she arrives on Tatooine. To so perfectly mirror her childlike introduction on Jakku, without any reference to the later experiences that drove her toward adulthood…. It frankly suggests nothing so much as a psychotic break. In Jungian terms, Rey has been unable to break from the uroboros or collective unconscious, or to integrate her Shadow. In the loss of Ben Solo, she was unable to embrace her desires, and in taking the Skywalker name, she again lies to herself about her identity, repressing her connection to Palpatine and choosing instead a false family just as she did back on Jakku. Rather than the soul finding its way into consciousness, it is forever lost in the vast unconscious.

In a sense, Rey was not really revived after retrieving power from the Underworld after all, because she is metaphorically dead at the end of her story, just as she was metaphorically dead at its beginning. Living in the Imperial graveyard on Jakku, she had survived by remaining necessarily focused on herself. At the end of her story, she seems again focused inwardly, retreating from the galaxy and her friends, with no need to compromise or give of herself in a loving relationship with her soulmate. In Love and the Soul: Psychological Interpretations of The Eros & Psyche Myth, James Gollnick writes:

“Neumann interprets the beauty ointment which Psyche must fetch from the underworld as the eternal youth of death, the ‘barren frigid beauty of mere maidenhood, without love for a man, as exacted by the matriarchate.’ He sees in this deathlike sleep the pull of narcissism which would regress Psyche from the woman who loved Eros back to the maiden lost in the narcissistic love of herself. (Bettelheim also calls attention to the narcissistic state symbolized by Psyche alone in Eros’ magical palace, see The Uses of Enchantment.)”

This is to say that conjugal love, or a love that is physical as well as spiritual, is the ultimate form of self-gift. Though the sacrifice of one’s life is an admirable expression of love, it is inferior because it creates death, whereas the giving of self in an intimate embrace creates life. Hence, Eros and Psyche’s union created Joy. Has Rey found joy by the end of her journey? Or is she expected to be content with only power and the name that declares that power? And as for Ben, he has vanished completely. As Eros, he is dead and unable to be united with his Psyche. Though transformed from beast into man, Love is eternally separated from Soul.

When the Lost Husband Stays Lost

This might be a passable interpretation of the Sequel Trilogy, but it’s fair to ask the question: were we wrong? Was this ever a Search for the Lost Husband story, or did we simply see what we wanted to see in the tale? Indulging deeply in a Death of the Author approach to interpretation, I argue strongly that this was always a variation of ATU 425, because not only were all the pieces in place from the beginning, but the Sequel Trilogy was thematically the perfect inverse of ATU 400, the Quest for the Lost Bride, which was very clearly the story of the Prequel Trilogy. Further, many a mythical husband’s failed quest is actually the prelude to his bride’s successful search, as historical myths often start with the loss of the fairy wife only to switch perspectives to the feminine and have her successfully retrieve her lost husband. To the extent that Star Wars draws on the collective unconscious that produces these myths, I believe the parallels are unmistakable.

Still, these are films released by a corporation within a very distinct culture, the product of a particular time and place. They cannot be separated from the realities of the 21st Century America that produced them. This is why a deeper exploration of the American Monomyth is likely necessary to truly understand how TROS came to be. However, even within worldwide mythology, there are isolated examples of Lost Husband stories in which the bride does not retrieve her husband, or in which the couple remains separated by the end of the story.

One of the most notable examples of these tragedies is the Lohengrin Saga, a Germanic romance made popular by Richard Wagner’s opera. In it, Elsa, the Duchess of Brabant, is accused of murdering her brother, her case to be decided by trial by combat. When her accusers ask her who her champion will be, she tells them of a knight who has appeared to her in dreams. In answer to her prayers, her dream knight appears in a boat drawn by a swan, then agrees to be her champion under the condition that she never ask his true identity or origin. The swan knight wins the contest and marries Elsa, but before they are able to consummate their union, she asks him the forbidden question. Though he knows it will separate them forever, the knight cannot deny his love her request, and he admits to her that he is Lohengrin, Grail Knight and son of King Parzival. The laws of the Holy Grail say the Knights must remain anonymous, and if their identity is revealed, they must return home. Lohengrin leaves in the same boat in which he came, and Elsa dies of grief.

Many of the parallels should be instantly apparent: just as Kylo Ren often appears to Rey in visions, dreams, or in a dream-like state, so the Swan Knight first appeared to Elsa. As I stated in my Swan Maiden post, this means Kylo Ren is Rey’s incubus, or her dream lover and avatar of all her dark sexual fantasies. Just as the swan knight refuses to reveal his identity, so Kylo Ren declares that Ben Solo is dead and he is a monster. Further, the knight is a descendent of a powerful family, indeed one with mystical or holy origins given their association with the Grail. The last son of the Skywalker family, Ben Solo is even the great-grandson of the Force itself, with both royalty and magical power in his lineage. After several symbolic marriage encounters between Rey and her bond-mate, she insists on calling him by his true name and trying to force him to turn to the light, which constitutes the breaking of the taboo. After finally acknowledging his true identity and becoming Ben Solo once more, our hero is drawn away into death, his bride left to a sort of living death as a virgin on a dead world.

Though the story of Lohengrin predated the opera, Wagner crafted his version to explicitly reference the Greek myth of Zeus and Semele:

“Who doesn't know ‘Zeus and Semele?’ The god is in love with a human woman and approaches her in human form. The lover finds that she cannot recognize the god in this form, and demands that he should make the real sensual form of his being known. Zeus knows that she would be destroyed by the sight of his real self. He suffers in this awareness, suffers knowing that he must fulfill this demand and in doing so ruin their love. He will seal his own doom when the gleam of his godly form destroys his lover. Is the man who craves for God not destroyed?”

This too has parallels with the Sequel Trilogy couple, in particular with the woman demanding the god show himself in his “real sensual form.” As many have pointed out, Rey desired Ben completely…. His heart, mind, soul, and body. Having him with her in corporeal form mattered so much to her that the Force facilitated their touch across the galaxy, and she promptly shipped herself to him so that she could be physically with him, despite the risk to her. It is for this reason that I reject the interpretation of the ending of TROS that says because Ben and Rey are a dyad, his soul is with her when he dies. No, his loss is complete, and the fact that his body is gone is a tragedy. Were the living body not important, he would not have given his own life to save Rey’s. Absent any other visual or dialogue cues in the finale, it’s reasonable to assume that Ben’s separation from his soulmate is total.

In her book on swan maiden tales, author Barbara Fass Leavy points out that the taboos imposed on mythical husbands are different than those imposed on mythical wives. Men, for example, are most often prohibited from abusing their fairy brides, while women are prohibited from looking upon their fairy husbands or knowing their true identity. Leavy states: “In general, taboos imposed on the wife in Cupid and Psyche tales are often intended to keep her in her place, to prevent her from achieving some autonomy by knowing who her husband is, seeing him, or being able to disclose his identity to others.” Both taboos admit to an inherent imbalance in the relationship, and while husbands are instructed not to abuse their power, women are told not to challenge their husbands’ power or attempt to achieve a more balanced marriage.

Now the issue for Rey becomes clear: if she is to be her husband’s equal, then she cannot accept him as the unknowable Kylo Ren. He must become Ben Solo, fully-known and her equal in all things. This way, Rey claims her power and balance can be achieved both for the lovers and for the Force itself. Unfortunately, the creators seem to have overcorrected. They wanted Rey alone to be the ultimate hero of the Sequel Trilogy, but as long as a male Skywalker was on the board, they apparently thought he would overshadow her. It seems that the writers believed the man having power in a relationship is the natural state of heterosexual unions, a point made clear by their obsession with patriarchal lineage. So, rather than give the lovers an Eros and Psyche ending as equals, they removed the man from the equation to allow Rey to be the only hero and Skywalker, effectively punishing both of them for breaking the taboo and acknowledging Ben Solo’s true identity. When the lost husband is not found, this represents a narrative judgement on the mythical bride: she has challenged male authority, and so her heart’s desire is stripped away.

Lastly, Leavy also points out that most Beauty and the Beast tales involve a passing of the bride from father to husband, and that many animal groom stories can be interpreted as the bride learning to accept her new husband’s authority. If then the husband is eternally lost rather than found, custody of the bride logically reverts to her father. TROS contains numerous father figures for Rey: there is Luke, Palpatine’s son, and Palpatine himself. Rather than focusing on her mythical husband, our heroine seems to be questioning throughout the film to which father she truly belongs. In the end, she rejects her biological father and grandfather and loses her lover, then takes the name of her only remaining male authority figure, Luke Skywalker. Once again, Rey’s regression to a child is made clear and the myth structure utterly broken.

Conclusion: Star Wars and the Lost Children

Star Wars has always been a story of lost children. First it was Luke, then his sister Leia. Later, we learned of Anakin’s childhood, and finally Ben and Rey’s (to say nothing of other characters like Jyn, Ezra, Din Djarin….). We understood it to be a coming-of-age story in which these lonely children resolved their traumas and made adult choices. Those choices might have had sorrowful consequences, but the overall theme of the story has always been hope, so we knew there was always a chance for redemption, for the lost children to be welcomed home. Sadly, The Rise of Skywalker has deeply undermined that message. Mythologically, psychologically, and symbolically, Ben and especially Rey have reverted to childhood. They are both alone, separated from their families and prevented from forming a new family to provide hope for the future. Whereas the union of Eros and Psyche, Love and Soul, produced Joy, there is no union for Ben and Rey, and no Joy. I truly hope that in the future, Star Wars creators find a way to remedy this pandemic of lost children.

#folktale types #eros and psyche #cupid and psyche #jungian archetypes #lohengrin saga #lohengrin #zeus and semele #star wars meta #tros meta #reylo #reylo meta #the rise of skywalker #sequel trilogy #beauty and the beast #star wars #the last jedi #the force awakens #ben solo #rey #rey palpatine #psychology #romantic tragedy #atu 425 #search for the lost husband #lost husband #lost bride #star wars mythology #star wars as fairy tale #greek mythology #star wars analysis

[ibijau]

Burn it down AU // on AO3 // extras on AO3

Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen discuss everything that happened since they last met, and what they need to do in the future

In the morning, Lan Wangji had breakfast with A-Yuan, helped him get ready and took him to his class, promising that they would have dinner together in the Jingshi that night. He then returned home, and started the difficult task of waking Wei Wuxian before nine. It took some effort, but reminding him that they were set to meet Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang helped.

They arrived at the Hanshi to find it empty, though not for long. After a few moments, Lan Xichen returned, chatting quietly with Nie Huaisang. That struck Lan Wangji as odd, although he could not quite figure out why at first. It took him a moment to realise that, as a rule, his husband and brother had usually avoided being alone together before this. The only other time he could recall was right after Nie Mingjue’s death, and even then Lan Xichen had left Nie Huaisang’s side as soon as possible.

A shame since, walking together, they both looked quite happy.

That cheerfulness did not survive long. Nie Huaisang turned grim again as he greeted Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji did not blame him for it. This promised to be another unpleasant conversation for all of them. Only Wei Wuxian was still smiling as they all sat down at the table, him and Lan Wangji on one side, Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen on the other. But even that smile seemed to be more out of habit than sincere mirth, especially when he inquired how long they had until Jiang Cheng came banging on the door again to ask for his head.

"I convinced him to drop the matter," Nie Huaisang said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "We talked a long while, and he accepted that for the time being, Mo gongzi is under the care of Gusu Lan. He will come back someday to check how things are progressing, but for now he's heading back to Yunmeng." 

"Huaisang convinced him?" Lan Wangji repeated. 

His husband rolled his eyes and played with his closed fan.

"Is that so surprising? I know him better than any of you, except perhaps Wei gongzi." he paused, and gave Wei Wuxian a long look. "Actually, I probably know him better than even Wei gongzi on some topics. I failed him too as a friend, but there are shared experiences, and I was there after… certain events." 

At those words, Wei Wuxian’s smile turned sharper.

"Nie-xiong certainly thinks he knows more than anyone else on every subject," he noted. "That's good. We happen to have a few questions." 

Nie Huaisang returned his smile with just as little warmth.

"Me too. What on earth were you two doing in Qinghe? Was the arm attracted to something there? And why did you have to ruin our ancestral hall like that?" 

"Why does Qinghe Nie bury its sabres in tombs and its people in walls?" Wei Wuxian retorted. "Isn't that worse than a little property destruction?" 

Nie Huaisang pinched his lips and looked down. 

"I will explain this," Lan Xichen quickly offered. "With Huaisang's permission, of course?" 

When Nie Huaisang reluctantly nodded, Lan Xichen started explaining the story of the ancestral hall. It was a rather disturbing tale, and one that Nie Huaisang clearly disliked hearing about, fidgeting nervously with his fan the whole time. All Lan Wangji could think about was that it now made sense, in a twisted way, why Nie Huaisang had so carelessly sacrificed Mo Xuanyu. There was a family tradition of disregarding others if deemed lesser. 

Still, this made finding Nie Mingjue's legs in that place all the more concerning. 

"Nie-xiong, when was the last time new corpses were brought in?" Wei Wuxian asked after exchanging a glance with Lan Wangji. 

Nie Huaisang grimaced. 

"Not long after I became sect leader," he admitted. "Some thieves got in and… it was ugly. We had to find replacements at the last minute. At least one thing Jin Guangyo could…" 

He turned deathly pale, his eyes widening in realisation. 

"He was there!" he shouted, rising to his feet and nearly toppling the table. "He was there and he helped and I never questioned it! He… He found the corpses for me! But it can't… I saw the bodies he brought, I supervised the repairs, they were whole!” He turned to his husband, face tight. “Wangji, tell me he didn’t. He can’t have done that. He knew, he knows what the sabre spirits do, he can’t have… Tell me he didn’t!”

Wangji looked away, overcome with pity. For how much he raged against Jin Guangyao, it seemed that Nie Huaisang still held on to the hope that some of the friendship they once shared had been real.

“We found legs attached to the wrong body," Wei Wuxian explained in a kinder voice than before. "You could not have known unless you undressed it, and you would not have had cause to do that, right?." 

Nie Huaisang sighed and shook his head. Because Lan Xichen pulled on his sleeve, he finally sat down again, letting himself drop down to his cushion a little too fast. 

"Well, that explains the mess you made there," he muttered. "Nie Rongju did say you were acting very suspicious when he found you, even though you didn't seem to know about that place." 

The disciple guarding the Sword Hall that day had given them a lot of grief when he had found them, before boldly arguing that husband or not, Lan Wangji had no right to an explanation without Nie Huaisang’s permission. In the Cloud Recesses it would have marked him as insubordinate and led to punishment. In the Unclean Realm he had probably secured a future promotion. 

"There are people loyal to Huaisang in Qinghe," Lan Wangji pointed out. 

To his surprise, this remark brought on a weak smile rather than a flash of anger. 

"I suppose Jin Guangyao can't have bought all of them," Nie Huaisang conceded. "Or maybe Nie Rongju was just upset to see my villainous husband parade around his youthful lover." he sighed, deeply and dramatically. "Only a few years of marriage and it goes like this. Will I ever recover from losing your love? I don't think I shall." 

"Huaisang," Lan Wangji said, torn between scolding and amusement. 

"You're right, we'll go through that terrible betrayal later," Nie Huaisang chuckled, before turning serious once more. "We've settled the issue of the Sword Hall, and you've only spoken of… of legs. Now I'm very curious to hear about the rest of Da-ge's body, and how you brought Xue Yang back from the dead." 

Lan Wangji let Wei Wuxian handle the telling of that story. He glossed over how they had found without much problem the torso buried among the remains of the Yueyang Chang sect, then went into more details about what had happened in Yi City. 

It had started with an encounter with Song Lan. Lan Wangji had never had the chance to meet him before things took a turn for the worst for him, but he'd known his reputation and apparently, the reverse was also true. Song Lan had approached them because they happened to be staying at the same inn and he had been surprised to find a disciple of Gusu Lan in such a place. That surprise only increased when Lan Wangji had introduced himself. They had chatted, and discovered they were headed in roughly the same direction, so Song Lan had suggested travelling together. 

From anyone else, the offer would have been refused. From Song Lan, who had his griefs against Lanling Jin, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian decided that it should be quite fine. 

Their path had taken them to Yi City, a desolate, gloomy city where they had met a blind girl who, through great luck, had revealed she knew the friend Song Lan was searching for. That was how they had found Xiao Xingchen, blind but alive and well. 

That was how they had found Xue Yang who, sadly, was also alive and well. 

"He tried to put on every dirty trick he knew to get rid of us, and even blew corpse poison in Song Lan's face," Wei Wuxian recounted, turning to look at Lan Wangji with beaming pride. "Lan Zhan still made quick work of him. He just wasn't a match." 

The fight over, they had tied Xue Yang so he wouldn't flee, and gagged him so he would finally stop spouting horrors. Song Lan's corpse poisoning had been cured, and he had been able to reunite with Xiao Xingchen, finally apologising for what had gone wrong between them only to learn that his friend had never borne him any ill will. 

Lan Wangji had half envied that easy reunion, the simple joy on their faces at being together again, the way they had immediately started speaking of their old dream of creating their own sect and how A-Qing would of course be part of that. He did not regret his feelings for Wei Wuxian, nor their intensity, but he could not shake the idea that maybe they too could have had that sort of close friendship, if he had only kept some of his passion hidden. 

They had stayed a few days in Yi City. Nie Mingjue's right arm had been hidden there, after which the left arm stopped picking up on anything more even though the head was still missing. They had felt this gave them a decent excuse for a break. Wei Wuxian would anyway have been reluctant to leave Xiao Xingchen too soon. He had too many questions for him about Baoshan Sanren, and Xiao Xingchen had been so happy to find family of a sort that he had eagerly answered his questions.

This also gave them time to consider what to do with Xue Yang. Xiao Xingchen advocated for clemency since he had done no evil in their years of cohabitation, while A-Qing insisted he was the incarnation of all things evil and had to be disposed of. Song Lan argued that he needed to be brought to justice either way, but admitted that he did not know who to trust to judge him. It was the sort of case a Chief Cultivator should have handled, but since Jin Guangyao was Xue Yang's accomplice, that wasn't an option. 

"In the end, they agreed to let us bring him to the Cloud Recesses," Wei Wuxian concluded. "They understood we need him to testify, and they trust Zewu-Jun and his uncle to be fair." 

"Their trust honours me," Lan Xichen replied, "although I fear I have done little to earn it. I bear my share of responsibility in Jin Guangyao’s crimes. I will do my best to help set things right now." 

Silently, Nie Huaisang put his hand on Lan Xichen's, and they exchanged a brief look. 

"In the end, did you find out anything about Da-ge's head?" Lan Xichen asked, turning his attention back to the other two. 

Wei Wuxian shrugged with a grimace and glanced at Lan Wangji who nodded. 

"We have struck a deal of sorts with Xue Yang, Wei Wuxian explained. “Lan Zhan promised he would ask that exile be considered an option as his punishment, and in exchange he told us everything we wanted to know, and quite a few things I could have lived without hearing about. What matter is that he says there's a secret room in the Fragrant Palace. That's where Chifeng-Zun's head was brought when Lianfang-Zun became sect leader. It seems he hid many secrets of his in there, because he was confident nobody could get in without his help." 

"Xue Yang is not what one might call a reliable source," Lan Xichen cautiously noted. 

Wei Wuxian grimaced slightly, but shook his head.

"Everything else he said fit with my observations. Besides…" Wei Wuxian's grimace deepened. "In his own manner, he seemed rather excited to meet me once he guessed who I am. If he lied, it was only to make his role in those matters look more than it really was."

Silence fell for a moment as they all considered what to do next.

"We need to get my brother's head," Nie Huaisang sighed, growing pale. "We have to get him back. If we confront Jin Guangyao before, he might find ways to get rid of it, or it will remain sealed in there, or…" 

Seeing him getting anxious, Lan Xichen moved the hand that Nie Huaisang still held, so he could rub his thumb against the back of the other man’s hand, and smiled weakly. 

"We are not leaving your brother behind," he promised. "We are going to get all of him back, and we are going to bury him again with all the respect he deserves." 

“Getting back the head is our best plan anyway,” Wei Wuxian added. “His soul was fragmented along his body, it can’t be put whole away until we get every part of him back. But when that’s done, there’s a good chance that Chifeng-Zun’s spirit might be contacted through Lan techniques, and we could get him to testify, in addition to Xue Yang. He won’t exactly be objective either, but considering he was murdered, that can be excused. All we need now is to figure out a way to get into the Fragrant Palace without arousing too much suspicion.”

Faced with this problem, they found themselves stuck. Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen had been frequent visitors to Carp Towers for years, so it might not have been difficult for them to find excuses to go there. Yet even they would have found it hard to give a reason to enter Jin Guangyao’s private quarters, or to get there without his knowledge. If they went to Carp Tower, he would expect of them to spend their time with him. If Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian came along they might more easily manage to sneak around, especially if Jin Guangyao was occupied by his sworn brother and Nie Huaisang, but it would be difficult to explain why they were there. Lan Wangji had never hidden his lingering resentment against the sect that had led the attack against Wei Wuxian, and ‘Mo Xuanyu’ had been sent away in disgrace less than two years before.

As they tried to come up with ideas, there were a few moments where Nie Huaisang looked as if he had thought of something. Each time though, he would take one glance at Lan Wangji, bite his lips, and choose to remain silent.

“Nie-xiong, just tell us what you’re thinking already,” Wei Wuxian ordered when this had repeated too many times.

Nie Huaisang tensed, and opened his fan before shaking his head.

“You wouldn’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like it, and you three will like it even less. We’re not doing that.”

“But you have an idea,” Wei Wuxian insisted.

“I do. But Wei-xiong… aren’t you proof that not all my ideas are good? Efficient, sure, but… not good.”

Lan Wangji shot his husband a look. It was not quite an admission of regret, but compared to the way Nie Huaisang had spoken about what he had done to Mo Xuanyu last time they had seen each other, it was at least progress of a sort.

“I will need to excuse myself to attend my duties,” Lan Xichen cautiously announced, before looking at Nie Huaisang. “If you come with me, you can tell me your idea while I work and we will see together if it really is unsuitable.”

“I already know it is.”

“Tell me anyway,” Lan Xichen insisted. “I will not judge you, you will get it off your mind and it might be easier to think of something else.”

Nie Huaisang threw him a grateful smile as he accepted the offer, and that was that on the matter.

As they rose to their feet to leave, Lan Wangji found himself observing Nie Huaisang. He had definitely changed for the better during their weeks apart, carrying himself straighter, at least now that they were in private, and having lost the near feverish look he had sometimes. The only odd thing to his behaviour was the fact that he hadn't mentioned wanting to see A-Yuan, but even that might just have been that he assumed his request would be denied.

Progress had to be encouraged.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, turning to the other man. “Would you agree to let Nie Huaisang see A-Yuan, under supervision?”

Both Nie Huaisang and Wei Wuxian startled at the question, the first gasping softly, the second staring at Lan Wangji with wide eyes, his eyebrows rising.

“Lan Zhan, shouldn't that be your decision?”

“Wei Ying is A-Yuan's father.”

Wei Wuxian's eyes widened even more before narrowing softly as he smiled, a little huff of laughter escaping him.

“Don't say that when I'm looking like this!” he playfully scolded. “How young would I have started these things to already have a son that age! I'd have become a father when I was younger than he is now.”

“Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian's eyes fell on Nie Huaisang who was anxiously staring at him, his fingers toying with the hem of his sleeves.

“Right, right. Aside from the issues of...” Wei Wuxian gestured at himself with a grimace. “Everything else has been explained, hasn't it? These sword tombs and the presence of his brother's remains aren't Nie-xiong's fault, and that's what really worried you, right, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji nodded. After Nie Huaisang's reluctant hints that the spell he intended to use to find his brother's body had dark elements, he had feared that the Ancestral Hall was somehow linked to that. Learning that this had never been his friend's choice removed a weight from his shoulder.

“Then I don't suppose there's any reason to deny him this. A-Yuan seems to miss him anyway. Unless Lan Zhan has his own objections? He's your son as well, I won't make that choice for you.”

This, being told that he was still A-Yuan's father, that his voice had equal weight to Wei Wuxian's when it came to his, to their son, brought a faint smile to Lan Wangji's lips. Perhaps even if Wei Wuxian left and took A-Yuan with him, they would still both return to the Cloud Recesses here and there. Lan Wangji might not have to lose them.

“Under supervision,” Lan Wangji decided. “Until it is certain Huaisang can be trusted. Since Huaisang has done well with brother's help, maybe brother will agree to do this as well?”

Both Nie Huaisang and Lan Xichen scowled at him for the suggestion, their reactions so perfectly mirrored that Lan Wangji struggled to hide his amusement.

It wasn't that he thought Nie Huaisang would harm A-Yuan. As Lan Xichen had said the day before, he would rather suffer harm himself than have anything happened to the child he had helped to raise and whom he adored. Forbidding him to be alone with A-Yuan was just a way to state that all was not forgiven yet. As for the choice of asking Lan Xichen to help with this... it appeared these two already spent much of their time together now, surely they would not mind this new excuse.

Lan Wangji knew he had to restrain himself every time he saw Wei Wuxian play with A-Yuan, overcome by the need to offer again his unwanted heart. If his brother was anything like him, his self-control too would be tested, but unlike him Lan Xichen had no rejection to fear.

“I will free the necessary time,” Lan Xichen sighed. “If it can help.”

“Then Huaisang can see A-Yuan,” Lan Wangji announced, only to be nearly knocked off his feet when Nie Huaisang launched himself at him to hug him.

“Thank you!” his husband cried out, holding him too tight and too close. “I've missed him so much, thank you.”

Lan Wangji tolerated the embrace as long as he could, knowing Nie Huaisang never sought contact from him unless necessary, before pushing away his husband while Wei Wuxian watched with quizzical interest. He half expected Wei Wuxian to make a comment or a joke at either of their expenses, but the other man remained quiet for once. He also did not say much while Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang discussed at what time the latter should see A-Yuan, eventually deciding that he would pick him up at the end of his classes to surprise him. It should perhaps have alerted Lan Wangji that Wei Wuxian was suddenly so quiet, because that usually meant he was thinking of something and nothing good ever came out of that.

All he could think about, though, was how happy A-Yuan would be to have his Nie-ge back at last.

#xisang #wangxian #nie huaisang #lan xichen #lan wangji #wei wuxian #not a lot happens but it's stuff that still needed to be said/shown #slowly we are moving toward the resolution although there's still a few things needing to happen ahah #jau writes #burn it down au

[fox-moblin]

Ruins - Linked Universe FanFic

@linkeduniverse got me fucked up - let’s do this.

(Also:  IMPORTANT note at the end.  Please read)

Prologue

Pt. 1 - Temple of Time

Prologue

They travel for a good week and a half, stopping only to sleep in tight shifts and eat small meals, before Time gives them even a pinch of mercy.  

“We have to keep moving,” he’d kept saying and, though he’d agreed at the time, Twilight is swaying on his feet by the time they make it to the small clearing and Time sets down his gear.  There’s a creek babbling somewhere nearby and Wind and Four Sword are sent to find it and fill up the canteens.  It’s only when Time starts to set up camp that the rest of them realize what’s going on.  

“We’re stopping?”  Hyrule asks, hopeful.  Time nods, about to say something, but is interrupted by a ‘whoop’ from Legend, who promptly lays out his bedroll and falls face first on top of it.  The others look on as he quietly begins to snore.  Twilight notes, with a glance upwards, that it is barely past midday.  

Beside him, Wild shifts and drops his pack to the ground.  He stretches and Twilight can hear his shoulder pop.  He’s looking around the clearing, eyes wide.  Despite their many days of travel, his protege seems to be the most up and alert out of all of them.  

Warriors says as much, grimacing as Wild twists to crack his back.  

“I’m used to lots of travel,” Wild says in response.

“Even with your fancy slate?” Warriors retorts, waving his fingers.  Twilight shoots him a look, but Wild either doesn’t catch Warriors’ tone or chooses to ignore it.  “I had to travel to all the shrines first before I could warp to them.”  

“How many shrines are there,” Hyrule pipes up from where he’s sitting and sorting through some potions.

“120,” Wild says, straighten up again.  “Well,” he counts on his fingers.  “132, if you count…”  He trails off, lost in thought, before shaking his head and continuing.  “There’s a lot,” he finishes and shrugs.  “I had to walk or climb to get to most of them.”

“What about using a horse,” Twilight asks.  Wild tilts his head from one side to the other.  

“If I wanted one, I usually had to catch one wild.  Kind of a hassle.  Plus, I’d feel horrible if anything happened to one while I was in a rough area.  Lots of monsters about, ya know.”

“True,” Hyrule laughs.  “Losing your ride is pretty tough.  Not something easily reversible, right.”

Wild makes a sound in the back of his throat that Twilight can’t quite make out.  Before he can say anything, Wind and Four Sword return with their water, and even a few fish, and Wild is swept away to begin preparing lunch.  Twilight watches him go and then almost jumps when he turns to find Time standing right next to him, quiet.  The Old Man raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, which Twilight is mildly grateful for.  Instead, he hands Twilight a sword and starts to walk away.  He glances back to where Twilight is standing, confused.  Time chuckles.  

“I was thinking,” he says and hefts his own sword, imitating a swing.  He catches Twilight’s eye and smirks.  “Unless, of course, you’re too tired…?”

Twilight rolls his shoulders.

“You’re on, Old Man.”

An hour later and Twilight stumbles back to camp, bruised and more than a little humbled, just in time for Wild to shoot him a look of concern and hand him a bowl of… something.  Twilight’s not really sure what’s in it, but it smells good and everything Wild has made for them so far has been delicious, so he’s not too concerned.  Time is right behind him, taking his own bowl and giving Wild a pat on the shoulder.  Wild ducks his head, trying to hide his blush behind long locks of hair.  A few feet away, Legend is stirring, woken by the smell of good food.  

“Mrrhmmf,” he mumbles and staggers to his feet.  Twilight muffles his snort with the back of his hand as he watches Legend sway and stumble over to Wild.  Beside him, Time’s shoulders are shaking in a silent laugh, though his face betrays nothing more than a small smile.  

When all of them have had their fill, they sit around the fire.  It’s still light out, but they are full and warm and, if he’s being honest, Twilight could curl up right where he is and sleep till next morning.  Even Time looks content, the most Twilight’s seen him in a while, his eye closed and the shadow of a smile on his lips.  He’s leaned against a tree next to Sky, who’s carving something from a stray piece of firewood.  Wind, Four Sword, and Legend are sat together, talking quietly.  Legend seems to be regaling some sort of epic tale to an enraptured Wind while Four Sword looks on in amusement.  Across the clearing, Hyrule and Warriors are exchanging stories of their own.  

It’s with a bit of a start that Twilight realizes that Wild is not among them.  He sits up, looking around their camp, but his protege is nowhere to be found.  Time notices Twilight’s plight and after a moment, seems to come to the same realization.  He leans over and says something to Sky, who shrugs and points to surrounding woods.  Twilight is already standing.  Time looks at him, questioning, but nods when Twilight shakes his head.  

Twilight’s protege, Twilight’s problem.  

He leaves the camp quickly, following a deer path deeper into the forest.  The trees aren’t especially crowded and the undergrowth is all that overgrown, but Twilight still finds himself a little lost.  Wild, true to his nature, has left very little trace of himself.  Twilight sighs.  He could shift.  Change.  Track Wild by scent.  He mulls it over in his head and looks back towards where the camp is.  He doubts anybody is going to come bursting out of the trees any time soon.  Twilight sighs and again and closes his eyes.  

The transformation is quick.  Painless.  He opens his eyes to find the world sharper, brighter.  The sounds around him are clearer than ever and he shakes his head.  New scents come flooding in from all directions and he takes a moment to sort through them.  

Deer, pigeon, wild hog, hearty truffle, and ah.  Yes.  

Protege.

Twilight huffs and starts off again in the direction of Wild.  He traces him through the trees, and down another small, twisting path until, finally, he comes to the edge of a cliff.  

Wild is sitting with his back to the forest, his legs dangling in the air.

Twilight whines, eyeing how close Wild is to the edge.  Wild turns and rolls his eyes, patting the ground next to him, offering.  Twilight hesitates, but changes back and sits next to his companion, letting his feet hang after a moment.  They are high up; high enough that he instinctively places a hand on his Clawshot.  Wild gives of huff of laughter at his unease and Twilight nudges him with his shoulder.  

“Watch it, cub.”

Wild’s smile disappears as he scowls at the nickname, a blush rising to his cheeks.  Twilight grins.  The both of them are quiet for a while longer.  Twilight looks out over the land beyond the cliff; a great plain lies before them.  He can see a structure in the distance, but a storm between them and whatever it is obscures his view.

“So,” Twilight starts.  “What are you doing way out here?”

Wild doesn’t answer right away, opting instead to pick a few blades of grass and play with them in his fingers.  Twilight watches as Wild weaves the strands together into a loop, braiding them with deft fingers.  Wild finishes, a small ring of grass in the palm of his upturned hand.  He stares at it for a minute, before letting it slip from his grasp.  Twilight feels a twinge of dismay as he watches it disappear beneath them.  Finally, Wild speaks.  

“We’re on the Great Plateau.”  

The way he says it denotes a familiarity with the place that Twilight instantly recognises.  

Wild knows this place.

This is Wild’s Hyrule.  

Twilight hums in understanding and looks out over the cliff again.  Confusion sweeps through him.  If this truly is Hyrule, then he should recognise some of it at least.  Instead, he finds himself searching for familiar structures that don’t seem to be there.  

“Where…?” He questions, sweeping a hand out in front of him and looking to Wild.

“Hyrule Field,” Wild says and Twilight cannot stop the sound of disbelief that escapes him.  He turns back and lets his eyes wander the land.  It’s… barren.  Sure, Hyrule field has always been large and rather empty, but surrounding it was supposed to be towns.  Busy roads.  People.  

In the distance, the storm is clearing and Twilight watches with growing horror as a warped version of Hyrule Castle appears on the horizon.  Even from here, he can see that great destruction had befallen it.  

Wild must notice his alarm, because he leans into Twilight, concerned.  He looks confused.

“Where…” Twilight murmurs.  “Where is everyone?  The towns and the people?”

Wild points to the West, towards two great peaks.  They look like two sides of a mountain that had been split in half.

“Kakariko and Hateno are that way… and Lurelin Village is to the south,” Wild says, but nothing more.  Twilight waits, hoping he’ll continue, but Wild only stares at him with worry creeping back onto his face.  

Twilight feels lost again.  

“Ordon village,” he hears himself say, but Wild doesn’t seem to have an answer.  He only shakes his head and motions to the land in front of them.

“There are some ruins over that way,” he says, pointing and Twilight realizes with a start that what he thought had been just a field of boulders was actually the remains of houses.  He lets out a shaky breath.  The ruins aren’t where Ordon village would be, but the fact that they’re there at all is concerning.  Wild doesn’t seem as perturbed by the existence of the ruins as Twilight is though, and it’s making Twilight nervous.  

“How… many ruins like that are there…?”

Wild shrugs.

“A bunch.”

Twilight nods absently.  He looks back to where Hyrule castle sits lonely in the distance.  It looks decrepit, even from here, and he can only imagine the state of Castle Town.  Next to him, Wild is quietly watching him.  Twilight manages a small smile and stands.  He can’t think about this right now… it’s too much.  He offers a hand to Wild, who takes it, eyeing him warily.  For once it seems like their roles are reversed; Wild is watching Twilight’s every move, as if ready to catch him should he stumble and fall.  Twilight doesn’t quite know how to feel about it.  He turns back to the forest.  Behind it, he can see another cliffside, with a path leading up.  He nods towards, trying to change the subject.  

“What’s, uh.  What’s up that way?”  

Wild looks to where he is, but doesn’t answer.  He looks away, but Twilight can see the frown he’s hiding.  

“Nothing,” he says and Twilight lets it go.  He’s not in much of a mood to talk about such things either.  Instead, he places an arm around Wild’s shoulders.  He can feel his protege tense beneath him, but doesn’t say anything.  After a while, Wild relaxes and actually leans into the touch and they stand there.  

Twilight gets the distinct feeling it’s the closest Wild’s been to hugging someone since… well, for a while at least.  He doesn’t move to walk away or let go, just stands and waits for Wild.  Deep down, he thinks, he needs this too.

Finally, Wild shifts and steps away, his head down as to not make eye contact.  Twilight smiles softly and pats his shoulder before starting to walk back to the forest.

“C’mon,” he says and looks back to see Wild following him.  “Time and the others probably waiting for us.”

Behind Wild, Twilight can see the cliff edge, leading down to the vast nothing of whatever Hyrule was now.  

He swallows and keeps moving.

Uh.  So, I’m thinking of maybe doing a series of short stories based in the  Linked Universe surrounding BOTW Hyrule and how it has changed over, well, 10,000 years (+ the Calamity) and how the other Links react to it.  

So if ya’ll have suggestions/requests, please send them in.  I have a few planned already, that’ll I’ll list below, so keep a lookout.  Also, some more art for sure.  Possibly some to go along with the shorts.  Idk.  Depends on how I feel and how much Time (lol) I have.

Thesis, baby.

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #loz #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #twilight princess #tp #botw #link #link loz #hero of twilight #hero of the wild #zelda #fanfic #mobwrites #Can you tell who my favorites are yet?

[thoughts-n-paper]

It was just one of those mornings, one of those rare ones, one where she did not wake up out of place. Everything was at the right time and the right place, no confusion, no conflict, a perfect harmony. The dew from the previous night was sparkling on the green leaves as the sky filled itself with the orange morning glow, she even got to hear a bird sing. The perfect day and she ruined it by waking up.

She could have stayed in bed with him, wrapped around each other in silence, embraced in a void where nothing travels, not sound nor thoughts, not even time. She could have stayed, yet she didn't. It wouldn't be fair, she told herself, dragging up fantasies and living in fairy tales, it wouldn't be fair to stories in her head. she walked towards the outhouse, her feet against the coarse ground, she can barely tell the difference between the two now. She could picture his feet, soft and protected against the cushion of the sole of his shoes, living in his luxuries. He will grow old with a million distractions, finding someone to love, someone he will make a home with, make a family and she will be just a fading dot to him, a spot on his eye which he will eventually rub out. His world had that luxury, hers didn't. She can picture them, the tall buildings her grandfather used to tell her about, millions of tiny lamps lit up at the same time, the world glowing up, demanding attention and in one of those boxes, his face, lit up because he is happy, happy without her. That is the image she will keep in her heart, his life going on, him happy and satisfied. She will hang onto it till her last breath, she will clench her wrist tight and hold on to it, digging her nails into her skin so deep till the moment is absorbed in her blood and is running in her veins. Just the one image though, she tells herself, she cannot have too many of those flowing in her or she won't be able to lift herself.

The professor's message came early in the morning and it was clear enough that his work was done, he had perfected his experiment and this would be their last day together. A portable time machine, arrangements of magnets and wires, just iron and copper, that was all it took to shatter her. When the letter came, she didn't wake him up, she let him have his sleep, let him be restful for happiness or disappointment, whichever comes to him naturally.

"You are up early." She heard his voice coming from behind her. Without turning back she gestured to him to take the little piece of paper in her hand.

"Is this from the professor? Did he find a way out?" He asked her, confused by the message.

She turned halfway and gave him a side glance, "You should get some breakfast." And turned to stare ahead.

She could feel his stare shoving into her. She kept walking ahead, searching for a tree or a wall to hide behind. How she wished that the rubble of the old buildings would collect itself and reverse itself into the tall structured one it once was, she could disappear into one of those, lock it up and not go out for a day.

The crops in the field had grown healthy this year, pretty soon it will be time for the group to move somewhere else. A family would move into the house they built, the crops would be harvested, walls replaced and eventually, every trace of their existence would go away. The other night she had thought to ask to stay back on the farm and take care of the place, some people did that, change career paths and settle down. Laying on the bed next to him, she had created a whole life for herself. But the knock on the door broke the spell.

"So this is it huh?" His voice startled her. She did not feel him following her. She took a deep sigh and finally turned around to face him. He quickly ran up to her and wrapped his arms around her. Her face felt wet against his shirt, she did not realize she was crying or for how long she had been crying.

"Hey! It might not even work."

"Come On." she chuckled. "Don't get my hopes up."

"Maybe I don't go back."

She broke from the hug and looked at him with a quizzical look. "Can you though? Stay?" She turned away from him. "You know what happens. The plan, you go back, tell everyone and you change the future."

"I know. I know." He put his arms up in frustration. "But are we certain that it can be changed? Maybe you can't change the future." He walked close to her and took her hands in his, "Can the professor confirm that the future will change, that anyone would listen to me? First of all, we don't know the experiment would work, second, what are the rules? Can the future be changed, do we create some parallel universe? And why would anyone listen to me, I will be just some guy in a crowd of billions shouting the same thing every day? Nobody listens and nobody cares. Why would they care about me? Why would they listen to me?"

They both knew they were just excuses. Saving the world was not the reason he had to go back. He did not belong here, at this time. He grew up with a different set of rules, he was not a nomad like her, his family did not give him up and he did not give up on them either. He had to go back, no matter how much they both wanted him to stay. He was the piece that belonged to a different puzzle box, it doesn't matter how much they colored him to fit in, he would never fit in.

The walk from the farm to the building was quiet. It was as if the world around could sense it too, the wind did not ruffle any leaves and the birds did not care to sit on a branch. Nature knew to be quiet that day, mourning their story.

Hand in hand they approached their destiny. The professor was all smiles when they reached him.

"It's cliched but, EUREKA!" The professor shouted.

"Subtle." He grinned. "How did you figure it out anyway?" He asked while looking around the apparatus.

"This." The professor said while throwing a book at him. " All the answers we need. I found it in one of the abandoned libraries, thought it might come handy someday. It is a pity someone would just abandon books like this, we can learn so much about the 21st century just by reading them." The professor kept on rambling while going around the amphitheater.

The dome was one of the few big structures that survived the century. They were lucky that this village was not too much affected by disasters. The soil survived which meant that only a couple of batches of crops were ruined, and the houses were pretty intact so they didn't have to set up tents and spend their nights trying to twist in a sleeping bag. Although, moving to any place above the net survival rate was always risky, mostly the places were completely abandoned which meant days of field clean up, both wild flora and fauna and constant fear of when the old walls will give in and crumble on their heads. Or there would already be a community settled, in that scenario, they just move to the next project. Apparently, the smaller the population, the more closed off people become. They don't accept outsiders nor their ideas. It's things like these which make her glad that he will be going back, he did not have to go through the abandonment, the disappointment of this world and he would not have to go on surviving this attempt at utopia after destroying the one they already had.

She still couldn't look into his eyes. He placed his hand under her chin and lifted it, "It's okay,"

It felt more like a question than a statement, so she nodded.

"We don't have to do it right now." The professor said from behind them. "Take a day off, go have a picnic, say goodbye to each other, properly. I will still be here tomorrow."

"No." She walked away from him towards the setup. Pretending to examine it. " We shouldn't keep him long. There is a letter from The Center, they have summoned him, hearing is in a week, they want to question him, keep an eye on him. Inspection officials could show up any day. You know how they are, they don't want any locals or rebels disturbing the flow."

"Oh!" The professor sounded sad, he wanted them to have more time together, in his excitement he forgot the heartbreak he will be responsible for. " Well tonight then, we will do it tonight, after dinner."

They both nodded. "Now go!" said the professor gesturing them to get away from him. They both gave a little chuckle and started walking towards the door.

It took them five minutes to decide what direction to take after leaving the professor. The age-old question, what would you do if today was your last day alive?, everybody had some answer prepared, something to impress the person in front of them, something even to just joke about, but when the day comes, nobody wants to do the things they said, nobody can decide what they want to do, she could not decide, neither could he. They could go to the hilltop and make shapes out of clouds or go to the lake and watch ducks float away on the water. She could show him all the places around that he didn't get to see, but they are just abandoned relics now, they were much more beautiful in his time.

"Let's go to the railway station." He said breaking her chain of thought. "Jog up old memories." He smirked.

Just another abandoned symbol of an era, an earthquake had blocked all the tracks passing the station and fixing it was the least of anyone's worries, also nobody went there because it was too far from the safe zone, funny how they were yet to establish a proper lifestyle and had already got gangs trying to rip them off. She only encountered them once but pretty soon realized as long as you have something to trade your safety with, they will let you go wherever you want.

The place was quiet except for the sound of wind-fighting off the scraps of rusted tin. It was a horrific reminder to the way things were it was also one of the few places she found peace at, a place to sort out her insides. A place where they first met. He was wearing the same jacket that he wrote that day, however now it was covered in dust and torn from several places.

She remembers it like it was yesterday, he thought he was a vampire, said his skin was burning from the sun and his memory was gone, she just laughed and took him with her. They had met his kind a few times, quarantined from birth and drugged beyond tolerance and rationality, it was a wonder he escaped his parents considering the tight control they kept, saving up themselves for when the government would make everything all right again, just like old days.

Of course, he did not belong to that community, he did not belong to any community of the new world. It took her a full week and him two hours to realize that they were not from the same time. Somehow one branch of the tree had bent down to merge with its root. They didn't know-how and after a while, they didn't care.

"Now what?" She asked him.

"Nothing, we do nothing." He smiled at her and sat down beside one of the walls. He gestured her to sit next to her.

"So, going back. Do you think it will matter?"

"It should, you can't change your past, but the future is always uncertain."

"So I go back and tell everyone and you grow up with space houses and Jet packs."

"If you can save some fuel, then maybe."

He chuckled. They sat in silence for a while, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and him tracing her fingerprints in memory.

Nothing about it made sense, the beginning, the middle and the end. Their lives were ruled and consumed by the randomness of this one event, they spent weeks trying to understand and here they were, still oblivious. And was coming to an end.

They were at a waterfall, she had not been to this one before, in fact, she had never been to a waterfall before. People didn't go in untreated water unless they wanted to kill themselves or just ruin the rest of their lives. He took her hand and led her to the highest rock, she kept trying to stop him, tried to warn him about the risk of going in the water, but he wouldn't listen. She giggled when she felt the tingling in her toes as she stepped in the water, "You don't giggle much. You should do that more.", he said sitting down on the rock. He wasn't wrong, she wondered why was that, it was not like she had it especially rough. They all grew up together, facing the same hardships, some fell in love and started a family while some went on their way, exploring other worlds and some stayed, building up the new world together, still they never forgot to smile so why did she? She was lost in thought when she felt the touch of his hands and she was bought back to the physical world from nonexistence just like the fingers do not exist unless they are pressed against something, he was her surface.

"Hey wake up! It's dark already."

She opened her eyes slowly, it took her a while to make out his figure in the dark until he lit up the candle. "We should be going. Professor would be waiting for us." He was gathering up their stuff in the light of the torch. The rebels would be arriving any time to set up camp and even though wildlife was rare, it was never a good time to run into something with sharp teeth. He turned to her and came close, he placed the torch close to her so that the only thing illuminated in the vast black space was their faces and he wiped a tear from her cheek. Lately, she had been spending a lot of nights crying, the dark would trigger this storm inside her too strong to hold back. It would always leak out eventually.

When their lips finally separated, their faces were drenched and eyesight was fluid. She pressed her head against his and stood there, there were stones in their shoes and wet sand in their pockets, no matter how much they shook it off they couldn't move.

"Just give me a minute." The professor said to them while he went to work on his apparatus. She did not want to look at him and couldn't look at her either, they both stood next to each other, holding each other's hand, staring at the man running around in front of them with promises of rift and repair.

"Well, say your goodbyes now." The professor took him by his shoulders and walked him to a spot marked 'X' on the floor. "I won't bore you with details, but just stand there and in a few minutes you should be at your home running to hug your mother."

He smiled looking at her. They spent last night talking, they spent the last six months talking, narrating every story they lived and describing every scar they got, this day, their last day together and they barely said a hundred words between them. Maybe it was the word 'goodbye' or every word that came before and after that, but there was nothing to say to each other which would make them happy and so they just didn't.

"Let me know when you get home." She said with a smile on her face. He nodded back.

She closed her eyes and imagined them in the waterfall again, playing in the water, kissing as the drops ran down on the side of their faces. No worries and... A thunder-like sound broke her thought and then in a blink of an eye, he was gone. He was a distant memory now and she was too far for him to reach. She was left standing there staring at a wall, trying to conjure him in between the space. "Do you think he made it?" She asked the air which was left where he was standing.

"Maybe you should read this." the professor handed her a book, she could recognize the cover, something the professor showed them earlier, dug up from the professor's dusty collection. "Thank you, but I am not really in the mood." she replied dismissing the offer.

"Please. The first page." The professor nudged the book towards her.

"Fine." She took the book in anger and opened it in frustration, "What about it?" she asked as her eyes cruised through the page, and there in bold letters, stood the words she wanted to hear at the moment. 'As my father would say everyday growing up, "I made it home."'

#short story #climate crisis #dystopia #dystopic #romantic short story #romantic one shot #romantic #love story #doomed future #future doomed #time travel

[dhivehi]

‘A Sphere of Symbols’: Thor Heyerdahl’s Maldive Mystery

The Maldive Mystery has been heavily criticized for historical inaccuracies in its treatment of the culture and people of the Maldives. However, as Jonathan Guilford attests, Heyerdahl’s book remains acutely powerful because of its ability to meld history and legend, truth and fiction.        

‘La tua beltà – chissà averla che impegno – ardendo nell’ampolla se ne va: volevo solo dire ‘beltà’.’

‘Your beauty – who knows what duty in having it – flaring in the phial it leaves: I wanted only to say ‘beauty’.’

-Andrea Zanzotto, ‘Ampolla (cisti) e fuori’, from La Beltà

Norwegian ethnographer, Thor Heyerdahl, is not known for being a good historian. This is evident from a quick Google search; sifting through the results pulls up the words such as ‘mistakes’, ‘incorrect’ and ‘wrong’ in connection with Heyerdahl. However, these inaccuracies are irrelevant when one assesses the enjoyment his writing evokes.

To demand that the reader form their opinion of Heyerdahl’s work in line with the truth of history – did Sri Lankans arrive in the Maldives en masse? Did a sun cult precede a Buddhist population that preceded the present-day Muslim society? – is to demand that the layman subscribe to a particular specialist’s code of ethics, and shun everything that falls outside it. This is too much to ask, especially when Heyerdahl’s The Maldive Mystery is such a completely joyous experience.

Theroux compared Heyerdahl to a ‘hack writer of detective stories’. There is some truth to that, and the author revels in the cheapness of his narrative. The Maldive Mystery is a chronicle of his time spent in the Maldives, unearthing various relics and trying to piece together the islands’ pre-Muslim history. It is also patterned after clichéd detective stories; only, instead of a hysterical broad on the other end of a phone, we have a mysterious photo from a colleague appearing in the mail. Instead of a washed-up private detective narrating to us through his last few sips of bourbon, we have Heyerdahl staring at a ceiling fan and admitting his ‘embarrassment’ at being so woefully unprepared for the task ahead. Throughout the book, as in a detective novel, everything is a key to be fitted in a lock: individual elements return again and again, a distinctive type of masonry referred to as ‘fingerprint masonry’, the stupas dotted around the islands, the iconography of the sun – just as the same clues are pieced together by a brilliant investigator in a myriad of different ways as elements enter and leave his novel’s web of relationships.

Some sections of The Maldive Mystery even begin to feel like cliches from genres not yet invented: the rapid-fire coffee-table chat that closes the book, during which various members of the expedition to the islands generously explain the answer to all riddles as they complete each others’ sentences. It has the feel of a hyper-stylized, faux-nostalgic director like Quentin Tarantino.

The ready availability of this library of cliches to the reader of today, in the new millennium, makes Heyerdahl’s book all the more gratifying. This received narrative, pre-packaged, lends logic and integrity to the author’s writing which gives the reader a firm grip on it. This is utterly necessary when the reader reaches the final 100 pages, where The Maldive Mystery transforms from an amusing travelogue into something much more interesting.

To approach The Maldive Mystery from a different perspective, let us look at Jorge Luis Borges‘ essay Forms of a Legend – which explores various retellings of a story about the Buddha: ‘The chronology of India is unreliable; my erudition is even more so; Koeppen and Herman Beckh are perhaps as fallible as the compiler who has attempted this note; it would not surprise if my history of the legend was itself legendary, formed of substantial truth and accidental errors.’ It recalls a fragment of his To Leopold Lugones, published in the collection Dreamtigers, in which accidents of historical reconstruction place Borges in the same time and place as another man: a dead man. What is clear here is Borges’ sense of peace in the fluidity of history: that the legendary is not something to be judged by the historian’s ethic, exemplified by Theroux; instead it should be remarked upon, enjoyed, and, even if only privately, longed for. The legendary is the natural evolution of linguistic relationships: in that fragment, Borges references the dissolution of ‘water in water’. The reshaping of connections between linguistic objects – in these cases ‘Borges’ and ‘Leopold’ – are nothing but the rotation of a ‘sphere of symbols’.

We are treading closely here to the current of post-structuralism, of Derrida and of the myths of ‘time’ and ‘history’, and the contingency and arbitrariness of any claim to ‘truth’. We don’t have to go so far into a movement that quickly began to take itself far too seriously, however, to find an expression of the joy that one can find in Thor Heyerdahl’s book. Andrea Zanzotto, an Italian poet, who is typically considered part of the post-structuralism current – even if many of his contentions place him firmly outside it – illustrates this joy perfectly well in his collection La Beltà. Derridean deferral, in which meaning is endlessly coursing through the network of language with no clear ending point, becomes a sort of game in this collection, teasing the reader, staying always ‘più in là’ (‘further ahead’). That lightning-bolt, that is where joy is: to witness the explosion of language, to trace the currents of its flow, to dance in the sphere of symbols.

Watch a short book review on Thor Heyerdahl‘s Maldive Mystery below:

‘The last king was made a sultan by a pious foreigner who came by sea and started local history.’

Heyerdahl has incredible facility with his prose, and this sentence is as perfect as anything written by the masters. It repeats the motif of the author’s obsessions: the sea, the currents, the diaspora, the oral tradition. He sees himself as the reverse of this initial Muslim traveler who peacefully converted the Maldivian way of life and set about eradicating traces of the islands’ former society. The operation is the linguistic equivalent of Heyerdahl’s famous Kon-Tiki expedition, in which the author successfully navigated the open seas on a primitive raft to prove that humans of pre-history were capable of migrating across the oceans. In The Maldive Mystery, he is building new rafts: assertions about linguistic coincidences, tales of conversations with museum curators, explanations of ancient trade routes in precious shells. With these rafts he crosses the world, bringing influence from and to a vast number of countries, jumping through impossibly remote relationships between disparate pieces of evidence, connecting everywhere to the Maldives, a nation that becomes nothing but another realm in the sphere of symbols, while the reader, almost in stupefaction, can do nothing but sit back and laugh at the hilarious exuberance of it all.

By Jonathan Guilford

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What you should Find Out About Romance Scams

What you should Find Out About Romance Scams

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Thousands of people move to internet dating apps or social network sites to meet up someone. But rather of finding love, numerous find a scammer attempting to deceive them into delivering money. Find out about the tales relationship scammers make up and discover the no. 1 tip for avoiding a romance scam.

In 2019, individuals reported losing $201 million to romance scams. Individuals reported losing additional money to relationship scams within the past couple of years rather than every other fraudulence reported to the FTC.

Romance scammers create fake pages on online dating sites and apps, or contact their goals through popular media that are social like Instagram, Twitter, or Bing Hangouts. The otty scammers strike up a relationship using their targets to construct their trust, sometimes talking or chatting times that are several day. Then, they make-up a whole story and request money.

The Lies Romance Scammers Inform

They’ll frequently say they’re living or traveling not in the usa. We’ve found out about scammers who say they truly are:

focusing on an oil rig

within the military

a health care provider with a worldwide organization

We’ve heard of love scammers asking their goals for the money to:

pay money for an airplane ticket or any other travel costs

pay money for surgery or other expenses that are medical

spend traditions costs to recover one thing

repay gambling debts

purchase a visa or any other travel that is official

Scammers ask individuals to pay:

by wiring cash

with reload cards like MoneyPak or present cards from vendors like Amazon, Bing Enjoy, iTunes, or Steam

Scammers request you to spend by wiring cash, with reload cards, or with present cards because they can quickly get cash and remain anonymous. In addition they understand the deals are nearly impossible to reverse.

How to prevent taking a loss to a Romance Scammer

Here’s the important thing: Never deliver cash or presents up to a sweetheart you haven’t met face-to-face.

In the event that you suspect a love scam:

Stop interacting with the individual instantly.

Speak to some one you trust, and take notice in case your buddies or household say they’re worried about your love that is new interest.

Do a seek out the sort of task the individual has got to see if other folks be aware stories that are similar. For instance, a search could be done by you for “oil rig scammer” or “US Army scammer.” You can look at commentary on our blogs about relationship frauds to know other people’s stories:

Faking it – scammers’ tricks to take your heart and cash

Has an online love interest asked you for the money?

Romance scams can cost you

Do a reverse image search associated with the person’ profile image to see if it is related to another true title or with details that don’t match up – those are indications of a fraud.

It’s a scam, report it to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint if you think. Inform the website or application where you came across the scammer, too.

The company that issued the card right away if you paid a romance scammer with a gift card, contact. Inform them you paid a scammer utilizing the present card and get when they can refund your money.

You blew it, ?Ashley Madison: dating internet site slammed for safety ‘shortcomings’

A study to the Ashley Madison hack discovers that your website’s owners “fell well quick” of protecting client privacy, however the 36 million users of the dating website most likely currently knew that.

Ashley Madison nevertheless boasts about its 47 million user base.

“Life is brief. Have a devoted danger administration process set up to guard information that is personal.”

That isn’t a dating internet site that encouraged people to conduct extra-marital affairs. But it is the one that Ashley Madison may be wishing it adopted after it absolutely was hacked year that is last.

Now, the Canadian business behind Ashley Madison, Avid lifestyle Media (ALM), happens to be the main topic of a scathing report from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and also the Australian Privacy Commissioner, criticising ALM’s actions after the massive data breach. (In July this present year, ALM rebranded as Ruby, although the report relates to the business by its previous title).

Ashley Madison, which goaded more prudish corners of this internet with all the tagline “Life is short. Have an event,” was hacked in July 2015 by an organization calling it self The Impact Team. The hackers warned ALM so it would leak personal statistics of 36 million users unless ALM changed its policies — especially around permitting users forever delete their accounts.

ALM declined, the hackers leaked the data and scandal ensued as users panicked about their personal everyday lives as well as the internet raked through the dirty washing.

Now, the joint Australian-Canadian investigation into the hack has found ALM “fell well quick” of the duty to customers.

Private or insecure? Ashley Madison has veered far from its previous branding because the hack.

The report discovered that ALM “did not have appropriate safeguards in position thinking about the sensitiveness for the information that is personal” it held. This included the not enough “documented information security policies. and a risk that is explicit procedure” and that it neglected to adequately train staff after all amounts on their safety and privacy responsibilities.

The Privacy Commissioners additionally slammed ALM for the training of keeping client information, even with users had deleted or deactivated their records, some having taken care of the privilege to do therefore.

“Though ALM had some protection safeguards set up, those safeguards seemed to have now been adopted without due consideration of this risks faced,” the report discovered.

The report figured this is “an unsatisfactory shortcoming” considering Ashley Madison’s high-profile as a grown-up dating internet site trading in delicate information.

ALM has decided to lots of treatments, such as the vow to conduct a review that is comprehensive of, to cease indefinite retention of data from deleted profiles and also to supply a “no-cost choice” for users who wish to withdraw consent with regards to their information being held by your website.

The CEO of Ruby (formerly ALM) who took the reins in April this season, Rob Segal, claims the business voluntarily entered the compliance that is new.

“the business will continue to help make significant, ongoing opportunities in privacy and protection to deal with the constantly evolving threats facing internet businesses,” he stated in a declaration in the Ashley Madison site. “These assets will be the foundation of rebuilding consumer trust within the long-lasting.”

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