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galaxiasgreen · 5 months ago

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🍭☀️ A Cruelty Vivid and Sweet

Slow burn angsty Ominis x F!Reader [T-Rated, 9.4k words]

And truthfully, if you'd have let him, if the entire pure-blood community weren't watching, he would've pulled you into his arms and held you for as long as you desired. Instead, you stood rigid before him, and he motionless before you. Neither moving to touch the other. It was a unique form of torment, to have the person he wanted to hold in arm's reach, but bound never to close the gap. "I'm sorry," he said instead. There was warmth in your sadness, like a gleam of sunshine in rain. "I know."

In which, with the curse's effects destroying your relationship together, Ominis attends the trial of his best friend.

Tropes: angst/ romance/ drama, slow burn, black cat x golden retriever, opposites attract, forbidden love, pure-blood culture, canon rewrite, book!canon compliant, comas, coarse language, Wizengamot, Learning Confringo, banter, sad pining.

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7. The Trial

Ominis knew, when he got the owl post, he would not be the same person entering the courtroom as he would be when leaving it.

On behalf of Minister for Magic Faris Spavin and the Winzengamot of Great Britain and Ireland, Senior Undersecretary Carsten Bristlecone requests the presence of Ominis Aloysius Gaunt, of Little Hangleton, for the trial of Sebastian Albert Sallow on the 7th August 1891, to give testimony on the events of the murder of Solomon Sallow.

He slid his thumb over it again, just to be sure of its contents, but there was no denying it. The trial was here, and Ominis was required to be present. In fact, he imagined many of his classmates would be there to give their own indication as to Sebastian's character. Missy, for example.

And you.

The thought fractured him as he wordlessly handed the scroll to his mother. It must've also been written in English alphabet, for his mother scoffed almost instantly.

"The boy was a menace. We'll have our solicitors prepare you a statement."

"Am I not supposed to prepare my own?"

"No. Ours will ensure you had no responsibility in these wretched events."

After so long in this household, such a thing shouldn't have shocked him, but of course it did. "You want me to deny everything?"

"Unfortunately you cannot deny your involvement in this scandal. You and he were friends at school, I know." Disdain dripped from her. "But we can at least mitigate the disgrace this will bring upon the family."

The disgrace. These people he was unfortunate enough to call family were so mighty in their disposition, so highbrow, that their idea of disgrace contrasted entirely with his own. Disgrace, to him, came that next day when his father handed him a small roll of parchment – the prepared testimony to recite to the Wizengamot. He skimmed over it, first displeased, then practically volcanic, about how far he was to distance himself from Sebastian and his actions.

Sebastian Sallow was a friend of convenience, and naught else, read the closing statement. He is a blight in my life.

"Say it line-for-line, boy," his father muttered, reading Ominis' furious expression. "Any deviation will cost us, and anything that costs us, costs you."

Life at Gaunt manor was all a chessboard on which to move the pieces, a political dance of what to say, when to say it, if to say anything at all. Even something as simple as dinner was a strategic affair. When the entire family gathered together, a rarity now that his siblings were older and preferred their own company, Ominis was an unwitting player on the board – he'd learnt very early on not to voice opinions too radical. His father didn't like anyone straying too far off the beaten path.

Or, in the case of a dinner during the summer after his fourth year, the dark one.

"Obliviated a Muggle today," his second-eldest brother, Grimsley, was saying in Parseltongue. Supposedly he and Ominis looked most alike – swept back wheat-brown hair and permanently disdained expressions, although Ominis suspected Grimsley's was deliberate. "No one saw me. So funny – their faces turn blank. They look so helpless. Might've taken off too many memories of this one. Didn't even remember her own name."

"And you weren't caught?" asked his eldest sister, Raven. "Right fool, you could've been clapped in Ministry chains!"

"They all agree we're better than the mud. Just won't say it aloud." He sipped noisily at his goblet. "Cowards."

The house-elf, Gobble, lifted a tray to Ominis' side, drawing his attentions away. "More buttered peas, master?"

"Please," and Gobble waved a hand. The peas rolled onto his plate like strings of pearl – the dinner of rosemary-stuffed hen tartlet and potatoes glazed in honey and lard smelt divine, and yet he desperately wished he was at Feldcroft with Sebastian and Anne. It didn't matter that there were creature comforts here: he didn't have to wash his own clothes, and the house was always the perfect temperature. Nor did it matter that Sebastian fancied himself a great cook, though he burnt often his stews and overwatered the broths. The company was different there. Dinners were full of laughter and memories, and even Solomon didn't bother him like his brothers and sisters did.

Just a few more days. He could endure a few more days, and then he could leave until next summer.

His second sister Lenore had a booming laugh. "You see that Gertie Pendragon made it into the Wizengamot? Disgusting blood traitor, thinks she can order us around."

"Wretched witch always had it out for us. Lives in Hogsmeade, don't she?" Grimsley let out a sinister laugh. "Maybe we should pay her a visit."

"You'll do no such thing," Marvolo commanded. "You wouldn't get away with this one. Magical Law Enforcement is full of half-breeds – and worse, Mudbloods."

"Disgusting Mudbloods." Grimsley banged his fork against his plate – the sound rang out. "No longer affiliating with that dirt, brother?"

Ominis didn't realise Grimsley was addressing him until the table went silent, and his father coughed into his napkin. "Answer him, Ominis."

Mudblood. You. His heart lurched suddenly, but he sliced into his tartlet, trying to appear nonchalant. "No, I'm not," he said in English. True – he'd not spoken to you since the winter.

"I never understood why you would deign to spend time with a Mudblood in the first place," murmured his second-eldest sister, Lenore, opposite. "Using him for something, were you?"

"Her," corrected his father.

"Even worse. A silly Mudblood girl! You ought to be grateful the Malfoys didn't think you were whoring yourself with that filth."

That really dug under his skin, and he clenched his knife desperately. Play their game. He'd done this for years and years and yet this was the moment his willpower was tested.

Something clattered – a brief reprieve from answering. Thimble, his mother's house-elf, let out a little yelp. There was a slap, then, "Stupid creature!" his mother growled. "If you cannot hold a simple tray, what purpose do you serve?"

"T-Thimble is sorry, mistress—"

"I don't want your pathetic apologies. Clean this mess up and get out."

As Grimsley and Lenore sniggered, Thimble fell to her knees to clean, then left, taking the tray. Ominis heard it banging against her head all down the hallway.

"Well, Ominis?" asked Raven. "Why you and the Mudblood? There must be a reason."

He scrambled to think, but as the pause dragged, he eventually blurted the first thing that came to mind. "She happened to be going to the same classes as me most of the time. She— was my eyes."

Laughter burst from the table at once, and heat seared through him. If death came to take him at that moment, he would've welcomed it.

"Ooooo, Mudblood, be my eyes!" cried Grimsley, switching back to Parseltongue. "Ooooo, Mudblood filth, what's going on?"

"What's the point of having a wand?" Lenore spat. "You have magic, stupid!"

"Because," he hissed in deliberate English, the lie bubbling forth, "it's difficult to identify ingredients on a table or find the right passage in a textbook—"

"Enough," his father snapped. The siblings went quiet. "I want to hear no more of this."

"Can't we bring her here, Father?" whined Grimsley. "Give her a little taste of our superior magic?"

Unbridled terror flashed in Ominis' chest.

"Oh yeah," sniggered Lenore. "Bet I could make her piss herself."

"Bet I could make her vomit."

"You are all foolish," Marvolo barked, and his brother and sister went silent. "If you think the Wizengamot is protective of Mudbloods, you've got another thing coming with that damn school."

His father dismissed the conversation again, and the rest of the dinner passed without interest. Ominis tried to reel in his emotions, but it was near impossible. The Cruciatus Curse incident certainly wasn't the last time he'd known his siblings to take glee in causing Muggles pain – and it frightened him to think you might be next.

Only one thing gave him some measure of peace. Hogwarts. It was safe for you. A fortress. As long as you were there, you were okay.

"Ominis," and Marvolo's voice cracked through his thoughts. "Come. I want to show you something."

He thought about declining. The dinner wasn't over – but being amongst his horrid brothers and sisters, boasting about ruining Muggle lives, mocking you, was better than being alone a single moment with Marvolo. He conjured too many memories of that horrid cellar. But Marvolo's chair scraped back, and he was at the door before Ominis even moved, brooking no discussion or debate. Reluctantly Ominis followed him down the hallway to Marvolo's study.

"What do you want?"

Marvolo shut the door behind him. "I thought it best to remind you who we are, why we are."

There was something rustling, a collar popping, the rapid scritch of a chain being rubbed against buttons.

"Open your hand."

Something hard landed in Ominis' palm. A locket of some sort, and weighty – gold. He traced the S on the front, curled like a serpent. Simple jewellery, yet it spat shivers down Ominis' spine. Merely holding it made him uneasy, like teetering close to a cliff edge.

"A necklace," he said, masking his disquiet.

"Not just any necklace," said Marvolo. "This locket was worn by Salazar Slytherin himself. Only a Parselmouth can open it." He switched to the language so easily. "Open."

The locket bloomed in Ominis' hand, sending needles of magic through his skin. His disquiet turned acidic.

"It grants heightened ability to use Dark Magic. My power is unfathomable when I wear it."

"Is that so?" Ominis rasped, resisting the urge to fling it away.

Marvolo mistook his aloofness for interest, and chuckled softly as he took the locket back, replacing it over his heart under his waistcoat. "I'm afraid it only passes to the eldest male, so this has been mine since I was seventeen. Now..."

He swerved to his desk then. A key clicked, a drawer scraped. The next object he placed in Ominis' hand was a velvet box. Ominis opened the lid and felt a hard, engraved stone attached to a ring. If the locket brought him unease, the ring pricked like a thousand whetted needles on bruised flesh.

"It's very— nice," he managed to say through gritted teeth.

"You mock it," said Marvolo, "but that is one of our rarest possessions. Can you feel the coat of arms?"

"I can feel an engraving, yes, but I do not know what it is."

"It's for the Peverells, another ancient and powerful wizarding line. I had the stone fashioned into a ring, a ceremonial piece."

That couldn't be true. If it was only ceremonial, why did it raise all the hairs on his back? Why did it radiate something awful and strange? Why did he feel as if the essence of life was trapped within, squirming to break free?

Again he veiled his alarm, this time with a scoff. "What use does it have, then, if only to look pretty on a finger?"

"You misunderstand, little brother," said Marvolo, "Slytherin's locket and the Peverell ring are proof of our connection to two of the most ancient and powerful wizarding bloodlines in history. It is proof of your connection. You are but one branch of our tree. This," he spoke frenetically, "is your legacy."

He took the ring back, and Ominis was grateful. He had the sudden urge to wash his hands.

"Do not forget who we are, what we represent, what our ancestors before us sought to uphold." Reverence oozed from him. "You've learnt your lesson with the Mudblood girl, and now you will understand the history behind it: that her ancestors murdered our kind. They forced us into hiding, when they feared our power. They would try to kill us again, if they knew."

He couldn't imagine that though. You always talked so warmly of your family, and they certainly hadn't disowned you for what you discovered you could do, at eleven years old. He couldn't reconcile the image – you, bouncy and joyous – with Marvolo's cold warnings.

Your ancestors had discriminated against magical kind, that much was certain, but his ancestor was Salazar Slytherin. The scales were practically even.

"There are already those who would turn their back on their own. I'm surprised people like the Pendragons and the Weasleys still have pure blood, for all their cluck about loving thy Muggle neighbour." He gripped Ominis' shoulder. "They are blood traitors, Ominis. They are a disgrace. You, on the other hand, are a Gaunt. And you do not bow to the whims of those weaker than you."

Blood traitor. Peregrine Malfoy had said that to him at your bedside before they'd broken up for summer, and now the night before the trial, at the Gaunt's London residence, he was turning the word in his head, wondering what it would be like to embrace it in earnest. A traitor to his pure blood, to his family, his ancestors, to Slytherin.

Why was it a disgrace to long for the companionship of a Muggle-born? For you?

Your peals of laughter filled his head again, and he thrust the pillow over his ears, hoping to drown it out. You didn't sound like that anymore. That part of you was gone – a nostalgic lie, conjured by his fragile, pathetic heart to offer him some measure of kindness.

Still, when he slumbered, he dreamt of you.

The trial began that next day with the usual opening fanfare. Faris Spavin's stentorian voice, pompous in its highest notes, echoed in the high-ceilinged courtroom tiered like a coliseum. Somewhere in here, watching with equal anticipation, were his classmates, like Garreth and Leander, like Imelda and Missy. Like you.

Even if he wanted to talk to you, he wouldn't. Not squeezed between his parents as he was, their moods drawn and irritated.

"Bring in Sebastian Sallow!"

Shackled in chains and guarded by two stoic Aurors, Sebastian was greeted by a humdrum of whispers. It was impossible to identify him between the din, and Ominis could only hope he hadn't been treated too badly, waiting for today.

"We'll start with the obvious question," called Spavin, to open the interrogation. "Mr Sallow, did you, knowingly and willingly, commit the Killing Curse on your uncle at approximately 9:22pm on the 4th of January, 1891?"

Sebastian hesitated. This was a moment that would define his guilt.

"Yes, I did."

Ominis shuddered. His voice – it had been stripped bare.

"Then what more is there to this trial?" scoffed Carsten Bristlecone, sitting to Spavin's right. "The boy admits it! Really, that we have dragged our heels for so long on this case—"

"Let's not be too hasty, Senior Undersecretary," said another terrifying voice – Gertie Pendragon. "We have yet to hear his side of the story or what any of the involved parties have to say."

So the interrogation continued. Ominis was motionless and aloof – he had to be, knowing scrutiny was coming his way. There were many wizarding families in attendance today – Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges, Notts, all of whom with vetted interest in whether Sebastian would be condemned or not.

If he could commit to the Dark Arts, there was precedent for them to commit as well.

"Thank you, Mr Sallow," Spavin said, when the interrogation was complete. "Let's call the first witness!"

Your name rang out then, and Ominis stiffened. So soon? Your steps pattered like spitting rain to the seat in the centre of the courtroom, and he studied it, trying to pick apart your mood, your state of mind, your health. When he could sense nothing, his awareness shifted to his parents – breath whistled from their noses, indignant. Their minds were already made up; they didn't care what a Muggle-born had to say.

"H-Hello, Minister and the Wizengamot Court." He could hear the after-effects of the curse still wallowing in your voice, cracked like bone porcelain. It was distracting even as you recalled your friendship with Sebastian, your years together, and the night he used the relic.

"You were cursed, correct?" Spavin asked.

"Yes, sir."

"A... torture curse?"

"Y-Yes."

"Shame," his mother muttered. "Would've been better with one less Mudblood to think about."

Ominis had to physically grip his thighs – feel the pain of his nails – to stop lashing out.

Still, he noticed you were... relentlessly positive. You refused to say more than a disappointed word about Sebastian, you focused only on his good qualities, you even offered forgiveness for your cursing. Hearing you so poised, after how you'd been in the infirmary, injected hope directly into Ominis' veins.

"Any last words you wish to add?" asked Spavin.

You drew yourself up. "Sebastian Sallow has a good heart, and despite what happened, I-I believe in that goodness."

It was all you needed to say. You melted back into the courtroom then, and Ominis felt gratified – that you could be cursed and shamed and destroyed in ways he couldn't imagine, and still find something noble to say. You found it in you to help.

You were always framed by positivity, though. Uncompromisingly. It didn't matter what had happened, how or why, you simply looked towards the light and let it guide you.

"In trouble already, Ominis? Even I didn't beat that record."

After your first Charms class together, when you sent his bag to the ceiling with an erratic cast of Wingardium Leviosa, Professor Ronen asked Ominis to stay behind a moment – with you.

Ominis scowled as Sebastian nudged him. "I'm not in trouble," he said. "I'm certain there's been a misunderstanding. It's just a Muggle-born being... a Muggle-born."

Now such callous use of your blood-status makes him wince. It may have even made Sebastian wince, because he said, "You can't blame her for that. First day and all."

Ominis didn't respond, and when Sebastian left, promising to see one another next class, Ominis headed to you and Ronen, hands clutched tightly around his satchel. You were shy and restless – bouncing between your feet, rubbing your hands together, hair swishing. That saccharine scent, like a flower blooming. Professor Ronen gave a magnanimous laugh.

"Neither of you are in trouble," he opened. "But I thought we should clear the air after the unfortunate incident earlier."

"I-I really am sorry," you peddled at once – and not for the first time. Ominis had lost count after your sixth apology. "I— I didn't mean to make your bag fly, honest—"

"It's fine."

"— and I must've mistook you saying this end of my wand was the right end, but now that the handle has been marked with chalk—"

"Now, now, slow down!" Ronen laughed. "I didn't keep you back to ask you to apologise to Master Gaunt, either. You see, I placed you two together quite deliberately."

So this unique form of torture, bottled into a naïve Muggle-born girl, was pre-ordained? Ominis resisted the urge to cringe.

"You are new to the magical world," he said to you, then to him, "and you are intimately acquainted with it! I arranged the seats in such a way in hopes that you will learn from one another, share your knowledge, and broaden your horizons."

He wasn't sure what there was to learn from you. Certainly you had a lot to learn from him, though. Like how to hold a wand.

You, it seemed, had the same thought. "I'm not sure I have anything to teach Ominis, Mister— erm, I mean, Professor."

"But of course you do! Everyone does. You just might not see what it is yet. Pardon the turn of phrasing, Master Gaunt." He chuckled to himself. "Give it time. I think you will both benefit from one another greatly. Now, I've kept you for too long, don't want you to be late for your next class. Go now, and don't forget to have fun! That is the most important part of education."

Herbology was next. He hitched his bag and turned, pointing his wand outwards to find the stairs.

"Wait, Ominis!"

He halted at the door's threshold, schooling his churlishness. You caught up to him unfolding the parchment map.

"Are you going to, erm, Gardening next?"

"Herbology," he corrected, "and yes."

"Brilliant! Let me come with you! Please? So I can make it up to you? Promise my map-reading is much better than my wand-swishing. I won't levitate your bag this time. Sorry again."

"It's fine."

"I mean, unless, you know, your wand, erm, points you in the right direction? I don't know how it works."

Truthfully he wasn't entirely sure either. "It uses some sort of echolocation." At your unsure pause, he sighed. "It's... like using sound to detect where objects are."

"Oh! Like a dolphin?"

"... What?"

"Like a dolphin! That's how they know where to swim."

"... Right." There was no point asking you to elaborate. "Yes, then. Like a dolphin."

"Wow, that's really cool! So you already know the way?"

Only he realised he, in fact, did not. He'd been relying heavily on Sebastian and Anne – and his classmates in general – to steer him along the right course from place to place. They had maps, but such visual information was difficult to translate into braille, and Ominis didn't want the fuss of it. His wand only showed him his surroundings, but it couldn't tell him the way to places he'd never been.

That meant, after everything, he had to rely on you.

"No," he said through a clenched jaw. "No, I don't know the way."

"Don't worry! I can figure this out! Oh." You laughed sheepishly. "I made a thumbs-up but then I remembered you can't see it. Sorry. Down the stairs!"

With you leading the charge, he wouldn't be surprised if his bones were discovered in some lost hallway. Despite the rocky start, you were chatty and marched with purpose, like you were determined to give this Hogwarts place a true go. He trailed behind you, sullen.

"Now, do we go along this hallway? Or keep going down the stairs?"

"It doesn't matter. The Defence Against the Dark Arts stairwell leads to the same place." When you eventually squeaked in agreement, his brow tightened. "I thought you said you could read a map?"

"I mean, I can read a good ol' regular map. Like a street map. My papa taught me how on all our trips to Wales. But this school is fifteen puzzle."

What in Merlin's name is fifteen puzzle?

"Doesn't the map have a guide?" He tapped the parchment with his wand. "Show us the way to Herbology."

"Oh!" Something flitted by his ear. "A little gold line flew out!"

"Follow it then, quickly."

You hurried forwards, and he after you. You went down the stairs, into a courtyard, along some hallways... across a stone bridge? It was windy out, a breeze casting across the lake that teased out strands of his hair.

"This is the definitely the right way?" he called after you.

You stopped. "I mean, I lost track of the little gold thing, but I'm almost certain it went this way."

"You lost it? Why didn't you just ask the map again?"

"You can do that?"

"Of course you can!"

He realised he'd been too harsh when you made a hurt, flinching noise. "I-I'm sorry. Really. I-I thought it was a one-and-done sort of magical spell..."

Not a spell, an enchantment. But how were you to know that? How were you to know any of this? He rubbed his temple. Muggle-born. He was being unfair, and should offer you grace.

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... snap. We're just going to be so late to our second class on the first day." He didn't want a reputation as a rapscallion.

"Should I use the spell again?" you asked timidly, which made guilt bury beneath his collarbone.

"Where are we?"

"On the bridge leading to the Great Hall."

That bridge? Central Hall was back the other way! "No, I think we can go from here. Just— give me the map."

You handed it over, no questions asked.

"If the tracking enchantment fades, you need only ask it again. Tap your wand on the parchment and—"

But a particularly playful gust of wind swooped low for them then, and he was so unprepared for it, more focused on keeping hold on his wand and his bag, more focused on explaining how the enchanted map worked, that the parchment simply slipped from his fingers, buoyed into the sky.

"No!" he cried.

But then.

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

The spell made that hssssh noise he was now too familiar with. He stiffened.

"I-I did it!" You were so high-pitched in your elation. "I— I got it!"

"Then—" He was shocked you managed to do it so fast, so expertly, after only one class. "Then bring it back down, quickly."

And it landed in his waiting palm.

His shock moulded into clarity. He was so certain your magic was— not weaker, that wasn't the right word, but... different, at the very least. His parents and brothers and sisters made it sound like Muggle-born magic was lesser, pure-blood magic superior. They said it with so much conviction, after all, how could he believe otherwise? Then Aunt Noctua had taken all those ideas and deconstructed them over the years to products of simple misunderstanding and prejudice. In the end, he'd resolved to wait and see what the truth was, wait until he met a real Muggle-born who could show him.

Now the proof was nestled safely in his hands.

"Tuck it away, quick!" you said anxiously. "We'll be right poked up if it flies away again!"

Poked up. He slid it into his bag, the realisation burdening him. He had every opportunity to call the map back himself – but he'd frozen. You, on the other hand, acted immediately and executed the Levitation charm to perfection. If your magic was lesser, how could you have done it so well?

"That was close. Maybe we should wait until we're inside before we do anything?"

"No," he said gruffly, trying to reconcile what just happened into his bank of thoughts. "No. I said I knew the way from here." He turned back towards the door, sticking out his wand. "Let's go."

"But we walked all this way!"

"Whose fault is that?"

"... Fair point."

You both did, eventually, make it to Herbology – ten minutes late. Luckily Professor Garlick had been your guide before you'd started at Hogwarts, identical to you in many ways, a Muggle-born Hufflepuff raised in London. She understood the plight about getting terribly lost in this vast and strange castle.

"Ominis was really helpful, Professor Garlick, and I would've been even later without him, so if you want to blame anyone—"

"I'll not be blaming anyone today!" Garlick trilled. "You are new here, both of you, and lateness is to be expected. It sounds like you had quite the adventure, in fact, and I commend you for helping one another! That builds the foundations of great comradery."

Ominis was assigned a seat next to Sebastian for this class, who was sniggering as he sat down.

"She could talk for England. You two bond during your adventure?"

Bond seemed too strong a word. "We're acquaintances, really."

Though it was nice how you sang his praises so easily – actually, you were quite a nice person overall, even if you were terribly naïve. Perhaps, then, there was truth to Ronen's words: he did have something to learn from you. Whether that was about Muggle-borns and the Muggle world, or perhaps simply patience and compassion, he would yet discover... and he was rather intrigued to find out.

After Herbology you had Transfiguration, and he caught up to you outside the greenhouse, listening to you unfold the map and mumble for guidance once more.

"Hello," he said, catching your attention. "Do you want to go with my friend Sebastian and I?"

And your smile was distinct.

He missed that smile. He couldn't see it, of course, but always it came with your voice, propelled with an unmatched sense of joy and resilience. He missed the thought of your lips, curled upwards in ebullience, in mischief.

Terribly he was thinking about your lips as Spavin called up others. Garreth, who gave testimony on Sebastian's general character. Professors Hecat and Weasley as well, who thought Sebastian to be wayward and needing proper adult guidance, but not terrible enough to warrant Azkaban. Even some of the Feldcroft villagers, who had more mixed reactions to Solomon's death. Peregrine Malfoy also gave testimony – a damning one, naturally, though he made no mention about Sebastian's threats.

"We call to the stand," Spavin boomed, "Anne Sallow!"

Silence. She wouldn't appear today. A very telling fact that worked against Sebastian's favour. Even under the noise, Ominis could swear he heard him crying.

Recess was called then. Ominis found himself leaning back against the bench, eyes closed. You had given a sparkling testimony in his favour, yes, but was it enough? When Sebastian himself had admitted what he'd done?

"Let's take a turn of the hall," said his mother suddenly, standing. "We ought to appear contrite to the other pure-blood families."

He'd about stepped down from the seats when someone came up to him from behind.

"Excuse me."

Fear shot through him, churning through his general anxiety like a tornado.

You.

No, no, no. He hadn't spoken to you in months. Hadn't spoken to you since you confessed the truth about the Amortentia – that you found him attractive, and upsetting. Hadn't spoken to you since you revealed that you saw him in your cursed nightmares, every day, for weeks, torturing you, laughing at you, relishing your pain and suffering. He'd wanted to give you space – it was what you asked for, what you deserved after your ordeal.

So why did you speak to him now?

He turned at the same time as his parents did, and there you were before him, close enough to smell your signature strawberry laces, sweet and lovely and heart-racing. He schooled his face into something neutral, but panic was laying waste to him already. Go, please. Apologise for speaking to the wrong person, and go.

But you cleared your throat.

"You must be Mr and Mrs Gaunt."

Up close, you sounded... healthier, more like yourself. Yet he wished you weren't here. Ominis felt his father go rigid as he recognised you.

"What do you want?" he asked coldly. His tone bit at Ominis' temper.

"I... was wondering if I could speak with Ominis, please. I want to ask him about the trial proceedings."

His mother's pitch rendered a harsh sneer. "You came with Professor Hecat, didn't you? Ask her your questions."

He bared his teeth in a grimace, a very clear, please stop grimace. You were meant to fear these people he'd told you about. You were meant to be humbled by the curse, afraid to speak to him... and yet you barrelled on, undeterred.

"Please, Mrs Gaunt. I know we don't talk anymore, but Ominis is— is so knowledgeable. You must have taught him so well." You poured on admiration like chocolate sauce on ice cream. "I just get so frazzled and confused by all these wizard terms. I can't keep it all straight, magic and Muggle. Like chalk and cheese."

Chalk and cheese? His grimace deepened.

"Ominis is... he's easily the smartest person here," you continued. "I'm just so, erm, helpless trying to follow what's going on. Professor Hecat suggested I ask someone my age. And my friend, too— you know, the Hero of Hogwarts? She recommended I talk to him."

His father wasn't stirred. "Come, Ominis—"

"No," said his mother quickly. He could hear her cogs turning. "No, help the poor girl. It would be... unkind to leave her in such state. We wouldn't want to be unkind, would we?"

They didn't want to look unkind, was the truth of her words – and you knew it. Image was everything, and the Gaunts had some level of charitability to live up to, especially in the presence of so many other wizarding families, families who didn't necessarily subscribe to the same supremacist beliefs. Even for those they thought didn't deserve it – the frazzled, confused Muggle-borns.

Your acting was mad. Though blind, Ominis could see straight through your parchment-thin façade. It was an absurd idea that your sweet-talking actually worked.

Then again, sweet had always been your forte.

"You're right, of course, Mother," Ominis replied stiffly. "I won't be long."

He followed your footsteps, careful to remain disinterested, to keep space between you, to one of the empty seating wings. The chatter from the benches was loud enough to disguise your conversation.

He turned to you, quelling his frantic expression. "Gibby, are you insane?"

"I... I wanted to talk to you."

It should've filled him with delight to hear you say that, but it only filled him with dread.

"Here? Now?"

"I know it's been a while since we talked..."

"It's not that," he said, frustrated. "Don't you remember why I said horrible things to you in fourth year? You are risking becoming a target for my parents."

Up reared your indignity. "I don't care about them. They think I'm stupid. That's good."

It wasn't good. They knew your face, your voice – and that you sought him for wisdom and guidance after he claimed to have broken your friendship. All things they could use against him, against you.

He ran a hand over his combed hair, realising there was nothing he could say to make you regret it. After all, you were right – his parents gobbled up the stupid Muggle-born act.

"It was clever, but they won't be fooled every time."

"Just for now is good enough."

"You seem... better, since we last spoke." He spoke as if tiptoeing over eggshells. "Are you still at Hogwarts?"

"No, I've been back home for a week. The first month was... the most difficult, but Madam Blainey has been helping me separate the curse and— and reality. And Professor Hecat suggested I put some of my— help, to use."

"Did you... have a question about the trial, then?"

"No, I... just wanted to give you some comfort."

The trial was wearing him down to grit, it was true, and he longed for companionship, for any friendly voice, at his side. Just not yours. Because he wasn't stupid enough to believe you wanted to talk to him now, after the curse. His yearning fluttered awake, an unwelcome reminder of what he truly wanted deep inside.

Foolish, traitorous heart.

"You shouldn't have," he said hoarsely.

"Of course I should. All the mean pure-bloods are here, and I know that mustn't be nice. Peregrine Malfoy looks really smug for someone in a ridiculous hat. You know he's wearing a fedora? And your parents... I can see why you went to Feldcroft every summer."

He huffed a brief laugh at that. "What you said to the court... it was good."

"Think so? I was practicing really hard in front of my bedroom mirror. I just— I really hope they don't send him to Azkaban." A shudder rattled through you. "Missy has yet to speak. And you."

The parchment, tucked in his pocket, seemed to burn a hole. He almost broke then and there, confessed his parents were forcing him to denounce his best friend.

But he bit his tongue. "You really don't want to convict him? Even after... what he did to you?"

"He did the wrong thing, to me and Mr Sallow," and some of that tenacious, stubborn loyalty was on display, "but... I think the punishment is unjustly cruel. He never meant to hurt me at least, and I believe him. He fixed that mistake."

When Ominis didn't reply, muddling on what to think, you spoke quietly.

"I... miss us."

His heart gave another treacherous leap.

"I... I thought..."

"I miss— what we had. Before. Before everything."

It stung for some reason.

"The memories are less bad, now that I've spent some time away. But they're there." An audible swallow. "I just... miss you."

And truthfully, if you'd have let him, if the entire pure-blood community weren't watching, he would've pulled you into his arms and held you for as long as you desired.

Instead, you stood rigid before him, and he motionless before you. Neither moving to touch the other. It was a unique form of torment, to have the person he wanted to hold in arm's reach, but bound never to close the gap.

"I'm sorry," he said instead.

There was warmth in your sadness, like a gleam of sunshine in rain.

"I know."

You couldn't handle much more than that. He traipsed back to his parents, who were snivelling and sneering about Mudbloods under their breath.

"I cannot believe you would ever associate with that filth, boy," his father muttered as they sat back down. "Are Muggle spawn really so dim-witted?"

Ominis clenched his jaw. You had proven from first year to now, time and time again, that though you were naïve and silly, you were never incompetent.

"Why do you think I broke off our companionship?" he lied.

But his mother scoffed. "It sounded like only one of you broke it off."

With the words came another lurch of terror, but the trial restarted again, leaving the hint of a threat in the air. When Missy was called to testify, Ominis let himself exhale – she, of everyone, was going to have the most sway with the Wizengamot, as the key player against Ranrok's defeat. She, of everyone, would have the most power to turn the trial in their favour.

"So you don't believe," Spavin was asking, "that sending Mr Sallow to Azkaban is a good idea?"

"No," she said, no hesitation. "Azkaban is a punishment, not a deterrent. It will not steer him on the path of good. Look at Anne Thisbe – look at what it being convicted so young did to her."

"Who is Anne Thisbe?"

Another Senior Undersecretary, Gwydion Thornhill, to Spavin's left, rattled off details. "Sir, she refers to the trial of Richard Jackdaw, who went missing in the 1793. Anne Thisbe was accused of his murder. Jackdaw's ghost recently returned to acquit Anne of her crime."

"I see. But then, the accused was innocent, yes?" Spavin asked Missy. "Mr Sallow is not."

"I do not deny Sebastian's actions," said Missy. "But to sentence him to imprisonment is to sentence him to years of torture, which is damaging to his health and wellbeing. It will ruin him, like it ruined Thisbe."

"You know this?"

"I met her."

The court rumbled. Ominis stiffened.

"In Azkaban?" someone questioned.

"Yes," said Missy. "I travelled there with Auror Helen Thistlewood. I was chasing after—" an untimely pause, "— after a lead on the goblins. It inadvertently led me to solving Richard Jackdaw's murder, and helped me follow the lead that Ranrok would, eventually, attack Hogwarts via the caverns below the school."

Goodness, Missy had been busy. He didn't even know this.

"I've seen what it does to people. It is a cruel, cruel place. You cannot seriously suggest he will find any sort of remorse in there." She rose from her chair, projecting that unerring quality of leadership he could note in rare few people. "When Fig died to save everyone, he gave me this warning: darkness surrounds my past, but I must not let it define my future. These words can easily be applied to Sebastian, to a sixteen-year-old boy who was drawn into the Dark Arts when no one else sought to support him. He doesn't need Azkaban, he needs help."

Spavin cleared his throat. "Thank you, you may return to your seat. Finally, I would like to call Ominis Gaunt to testify."

Ominis became lightning-aware of the eyes like daggers poised at him. Aware of the parchment, flaring in his pocket. His father seized his arm when he stood.

"Remember your duty, boy."

Ominis pulled out his wand to make his way down to the lone chair. From below, the hall echoed – each movement, mutter and puff of breath was like a tree branch, reaching downwards into his space.

"State your name and residency for the record?" called Spavin.

Read the statements. Be neutral. Never impress your involvement.

Distance yourself from Sebastian Sallow.

"Ominis Aloysius Gaunt, of Little Hangleton."

"You met the accused at Hogwarts, correct?"

The accused. Like Sebastian wasn't even a person. "No. At a party, at Malfoy Manor. Him and Anne alike."

"Did this solidify your friendship?"

"Yes."

Then came more questions. What was he like in his formative years? Why Sebastian, of all people? Did Ominis notice his draw to the Dark Arts?

"You did?" Spavin's chair croaked. "Why did you not report it to your teachers?"

His solicitor had prepared him for this. "I did not think he would take it so far. The Dark Arts is an intensely personal choice. Sebastian's choices was not my business."

Of course it was his business. Of course this statement was written for him. What did you think right now, with this clearly rehearsed nonsense?

"Rather ironic coming from you, isn't it?" called Pendragon. "The House of Gaunt is quite infamous for its... shall we say, taste, for the Dark Arts. You are Slytherin's descendant, after all. How do we know you didn't encourage him?"

No wonder his family loathed her. She didn't hide behind propriety.

"My family's tastes are irrelevant," he said smoothly. Another statement. "I did not commit the Killing Curse. Sebastian was capable of making that decision himself."

"Can you describe the events of the murder?"

He did in the most clinical way possible, forgoing the emotions, the terror when the Inferi appeared, when Solomon was murdered, when you were caught in the aftermath.

"So after everything you admit no fault of your own in these turn of events?" Pendragon scoffed. "Typical Gaunt bluster, that's what this is, and you, Master Gaunt... you are an enabler."

Ominis stilled.

"No, you may not have cast the curse yourself. No, you may not have killed or hurt anyone. But you were complicit, make no mistake. You had many opportunities, again and again, to stop him. You didn't."

Enabler, complicit. There was no statement prepared for that.

"It's— not that simple—"

"I think it is."

"Minister," warned Spavin.

"Apologies, sir," she said coolly. "Only an observation."

Ominis' fingers glided over the parchment. The final statement was there, ready to be said to wash his hands of this mess. A friend of convenience. A blight.

But he couldn't speak. Pendragon was right. He had enabled him, had let his oldest friend slip into bewitching arms of Dark Magic – and though he couldn't entirely shoulder the blame, as Sebastian was independent, wild and able to decide his own fate, he certainly could do to burden some of it. Did Ominis want to condemn his oldest, closest friend? To know that he would read these false words and turn his back on him, when Sebastian would have followed him to hell?

Things would never be the same between the two of them. That trust was gone.

But Ominis did care for him, and always would.

"The Dark Arts are notoriously alluring. We have all felt its potency, one time or another. More than most people, I would know, and it is clear Sebastian was drawn to it through desperation and grief. You are correct, Minister Pendragon: if I am reason to his action, then I failed him as much as he failed me. But what my friend said is also correct: Azkaban will not absolve him of his crimes. He needs a steadying hand to guide him from the darkness. One that can offer him a chance, better than I ever could.

"Sebastian has made mistakes – I was the first to call him out on it, and I always will be. But that does not discount all the good he has done, and will no doubt continue to do. Without him, Hogwarts would not stand today. We would not stand – Ranrok would've succeeded. Without him, I would not be the same man. He showed me friendship, he showed me the goodness of the world. If given the chance of forgiveness, and an opportunity to right his wrongs, he could be great, and he could contribute his steadfast mind, unerring kindness, and passion."

He is a blight in my life.

The last line beheld him.

"He is a light in my life." Then, with a smile, "Symbolically, of course."

He had no idea what Sebastian thought, whether he believed him. There was no way to tell, not when his friend was seated so far away. He heard no noise, no sound.

There was a short pause, then Spavin cleared his throat.

"Thank you, that will be all. You may return to your seat."

The trial rounded to a close after that. Ominis went back with his head high. He knew he was in trouble – beyond trouble – but didn't care. His father was predictably enraged and cold all at once, like fire and ice, when Ominis took his seat.

"Why did you completely ignore the speech?"

Ominis sat straight. "He does not deserve condemnation."

"Condemnation? He killed a man," his mother muttered, fury a whispering maelstrom. "You have solidified our reputation as—"

"As people who will offer mercy to those who deserve it," he snapped back. He'd never talked back to his mother, and the sensation of fear that battled against his pride was unwanted. "Have some damn compassion, for once."

That would've earnt him worse than a cuffing. Here, it only added roiling displeasure, and the threatening promise to satisfy that displeasure later, in private.

The Wizengamot's recess to deliberate didn't last long, and that either was a great thing, or a very, very bad thing. Ominis squeezed his hands together as Spavin took back to the lectern.

"The Wizengamot has come to a unanimous agreement," he rang, "that Sebastian Albert Sallow is guilty of the murder of Solomon Sallow, and will face a sentence in Azkaban—"

"No!" yelled Missy.

"— of five years." Spavin ruffled at the interruption. "Which, this court wishes to stress, is a reduced period of imprisonment for murder, with considerations made towards Mr Sallow's age, his efforts against Ranrok and his loyalists in the summer term, and the positive testimonies given today."

Five years... not life.

"After this," Spavin continued, "Mr Sallow must serve a further two years of community service. The Wizengamot decrees this."

He banged the gavel.

Back in third year, during an energetic Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Ominis lost a duel. It was close, mind, but Andrew Larson had seized victory with a clever use of the Tripping jinx, which toppled Ominis off the platform. Resentment had roiled in him for the rest of the day as he replayed the mistake over and over, choosing the moments he could've done differently or changed the outcome of the match. When he went to the dorms that evening, still surly about it, he was barely responsive to Sebastian's chatter.

He didn't realise he'd fallen asleep until someone shook him. Roughly.

"There he is. Merlin, you sleep like a dead troll."

Ominis opened his eyes blearily. Crust had formed in the corners. "Sebastian? What do you want? What time is it?"

"It's one o'clock." He could feel Sebastian's grin. "And I learnt a new spell."

"Well done, you're a big wizard now. Now go back to bed."

"Nope, not tonight. Come on, I'll teach you. And hurry, before Augustus wakes up and whinges about missing beauty sleep."

Ominis sighed and got out of bed. Even back then, he enabled.

Narrowly missing an encounter with Peeves, they snuck to the Undercroft under the cover of Disillusionment. So late, Ominis could detect every sound, loud as a heartbeat in his ears, the sniffles of the paintings in slumber, the hum of the pipes in the walls, the dim outside world, never truly asleep. But the Undercroft, no matter what time of day, always sounded the same. Always bone-quiet and peaceful. Always, he relied on it to be a place of solitude.

When the grille closed behind them, the boys threw off Disillusionment, and Sebastian tossed his robe aside. How could anyone be so enthusiastic at this hour?

"What exactly am I learning then?" Ominis asked.

Sebastian let out a breathy chuckle. "The Blasting curse."

"How in Merlin's name did you learn the Blasting curse?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"... Yes, that's why I asked."

"It was in a spell book I found in— the library."

"So the Restricted Section?"

"Still the library," Sebastian said lightly. "We have to learn it. For prosperity's sake."

So Ominis allowed Professor Sallow to instruct him on the wand movement, the intentions, and the incantation – Confringo. He allowed Sebastian to test it himself, inconsistent but powerful, on the braziers chained to the ceiling, and eventually the dummies too. He tried it himself, and after a few fails, took a chunk out of the dummy's shoulder.

"Good," said Sebastian. "Now we test it on each other."

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

"All the best ideas start as terrible ideas."

"I should think all the best ideas start as the best ideas, Sebastian."

"Afraid of a spot of duelling, is that it?" Sebastian taunted. "Afraid I'll kick your arse?"

Which clued Ominis in. That duel in Defence Against the Dark Arts – Sebastian had learnt this spell so Ominis could learn it, too. To win.

Sly bastard.

"Only afraid I'll damage you so badly not even Madam Blainey will be able to save you."

"Oh, my friend, you'll be eating those words. From a straw."

He backed away, and they both bowed before assuming offensive stances.

Sebastian got off the first spell. "Confringo!"

"Protego!"

The spell zinged off the shield, causing a crater in the ground, so tremulous Ominis felt it in his feet.

"Merlin's beard," Sebastian laughed. "That was epic."

"Again," said Ominis. "Confringo!"

"Protego!"

This spell devoured half a pillar. It cracked – and panicked, Sebastian cast the Repairing charm, and the debris reversed back into place.

"Explosive," he said.

"That's why it's called the Blasting curse, is it not?" Ominis pointed his wand. "Confringo!"

Sebastian launched out of the way of this one, and it took a chunk from the back wall. They traded the curse back and forth, nearly destroying the place in their eagerness to win.

"Anne is going to kill us," said Sebastian, still laughing. "Confringo!"

"Protego!"

But the spell burst the dummy to Ominis' right, exploding flaming shards outwards. They sliced his face, his clothes, and he yelped.

"Ack, careful, Sebast—" He became suddenly aware something was very hot on his face. "What the— ah! I'm on fire!"

"Oh shit!" Sebastian ran to him, agitated. "Hold still! Aqua Eructo!"

The water jet blasted Ominis off his feet, and his shoulder met the ground, lancing a quick stab of pain up his side. He stuck out his hand to brace himself – slapping a puddle – and sat up, then plucked a wet strand from his face.

"Well, at least I'm not on fire anymore."

Sebastian was silent.

"What? What is it?"

"Nothing." His pitch was squealing. A lie.

"It's not nothing. Are you— laughing?"

Sebastian let out a funny noise. "Your— your eyebrow is singed clean off."

"What?"

He pressed where his eyebrow should've been... but only met naked, puckered skin. His best friend couldn't take it anymore, laughing so hard he fell back against the pillar.

"Oh yeah?" Ominis stood, pointed his wand. "Confringo!"

The curse burst near Sebastian's head, cratering the stone, causing him to flail. "Oi, you— shit!" The flames licked. "Put it out! Put it out!"

And when Ominis sprayed him with water, his friend was also soaking wet, swearing.

"Bastard! Now my eyebrow's gone too!"

"Well then, we must match."

"Now we've got a pair between us."

That sent them both into hysterics.

And the next morning, in History of Magic, when tiredness threatened to consume them both, you skipped up to the boys with your usual cheer – and then asked, with a note of confusion:

"Erm, Sebastian, Ominis... why are you missing half your eyebrows?"

It was important to remember those good times. To cling to them, when the future seemed hopeless. It was the only thing keeping Ominis afloat, when he stepped into the cell before they were to take Sebastian away to Azkaban.

The low temperature raised gooseflesh along his arms. Ominis tugged his jacket closer around him as the door shut, with a short, "Five minutes."

Five minutes, before five years.

He didn't know what emotion churned through him then. Regret, mostly, that he hadn't been strong enough to put his foot down sooner, regret that he couldn't have prevented everything – Solomon's death, your curse, Sebastian's sentence. It was too late for such sentiments, of course, and he knew it was irrational to blame himself for things he could not possibly control.

Enabler, complicit.

And yet.

Sebastian's chains rattled against iron bars. It was criminal in and of itself to hold him in such a way, as if he was a danger. Without his wand, without his anger, he was just a boy, lost in the mistakes of his past. He let out a mirthless chuckle.

"Look at us, the best Slytherin duo that's ever been, back together again."

Ominis scoffed. "A joke, now? Really?"

"Hardly going to have the time for them in the next five years, will I?" He chastened. "Thank you, about what you said to the council. Are we all right? I mean, really?"

That was a difficult question to ask, with an equally tangled web of an answer.

"It'll never be like what it was before," Ominis admitted quietly. "You killed your uncle. You, and you alone, have to live with that decision."

"I— I know." And there was grief there, genuine remorse. "I— was angry, I wasn't thinking... all just poor excuses now, I realise."

"You can regret only your actions, not your feelings," Ominis said, corralling the thought. "A wise person once told me that."

"Gibby's hardly full of dispensable wisdom, so I'm going to guess it was Missy." When Ominis smiled, Sebastian said, "I know her so well. She wants to appeal the trial, did you know?"

Already? "Sounds like her."

"Can you make sure she, you know, doesn't spend the next five years gnawing at her fingertips about this? Make sure she does other things. Goes out there and lives. Then at least I can live vicariously through her. And Anne, will you keep in touch with her? I know she's out doing her own thing now, and she doesn't want to know about me anymore, but... it would make me happy to know she's happy."

"She is happy," said Ominis, throat swelling. "She's much happier."

"Good. And Gibby too, keep her out of trouble. And for Merlin's sake, all your pining is old at this point, so just tell her how you feel. It would make you less miserable."

"Your wisdom is noted," Ominis said, not without sarcasm.

"Hey, it worked for me. I got to kiss Missy. That'll keep me going for five years."

"Sap."

"For her, yeah. I'm a big ol' sap."

It was sickening how easily he expressed his affections.

Sebastian's mirth whistled out of him. "Take care of each other, all of you. Please. That's my only request."

"I will, and I'm sorry," Ominis said. "That I... didn't stop you sooner."

"I'm sorry that you felt like you had to stop me at all." It came out as a sober admission, but his voice broke. "I don't know what sort of world I'll come back to after five years, but... I just want you to know, Ominis, you were one of the best parts of Hogwarts for me. Your family – they don't know the real you, that you're loyal and kind and wise and great. Don't ever let them make you think otherwise. Thank you for putting up with me."

Ominis laughed, and the burning in his eyes released with the tears. "Thank you for being there for me whenever I needed you. You will survive Azkaban, because you're a survivor, and... you're my brother, too. More than my family. More than anyone else I know."

The door swung open. "Five minutes up. Out you get, Mr Gaunt."

When Ominis headed back to his parents, frantically drying his face, it only hit him then that it would be the last time he'd see his best friend in five years.

And the Sebastian that would come out the other side would not be the same ever again.

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henrysglock · 2 years ago

Text

Local Man Uses The Cyclical 27-Year Torment Nexus To Try And Change His Fate [EPIC FAIL COMPILATION]

You probably guessed that this is the time-travel post I've been slaving over. You'd be right. This is the newest and most formal iteration of my long-standing time loop theory (I have drafted flowcharts back from February that actually predicted a dimension/time fuckery event in 1943 in relation to Brenner, which was made canon by TFS). So...Let's just dive right in. Note: I'm planning to keep calling TFS Henry "Henry" here just for simplicity's sake.

Now, fair warning: There are a few big "bear with me"s in this post. I promise they make sense, I just need you to hear me out.

It all started with Henry's self-proclaimed superhero name: The Stardust Spider.

Some of you may have seen my original post about The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars (here).

Before anyone says "Oh, but that album didn't exist yet", a reference in 1959 about a Bowie album that wouldn't be recorded until November of 1971 is in keeping with TFS's habit of directly referencing things from the '70s that "don't exist yet".

However, all that aside, there's a specific piece I want to return to, because it bugs the living daylights out of me.

There was a cut song that was meant to go on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars titled "Shadow Man":

For obvious reasons in relation to Henry in The First Shadow, this song already stuck out.

Specifically, though, these few stanzas hit me weirdly:

You should call and see who answers For he promises to come running Guided by the truth For the Shadow Man is really You Look in his eyes and see your reflection Look to the stars and see his eyes He'll show you tomorrow, he'll show you the sorrows Of what you did today You can call him foe, you can call him friend You should call and see who answers (see who answers) For he knows your eyes are drawn to the road ahead And the Shadow man is waiting 'round the bend ('round the bend) Shadow man is waiting up ahead

The Shadow Man is you from the future. He's waiting up ahead to show you the the truth/the consequences of your actions.

Considering that the TFS version of Young "Henry" has a direct connection to both the Shadow and Dimension X from a young age, and he also experiences what seem to be Vecna-type visions, this becomes particularly interesting to me...Especially seeing as said fates are not only possible for future "Henry", but also canon for future "Henry". (See: Vecna guy vs Mindflayer guy)

So, when I see an almost comical number of lines in TFS relating to rewriting known, undesirable endings (here are a few of my favorites):

And when we revisit some of the on-film classics:

I start to think it's time we revisit the concept of time-travel and trying to change your own fate.

It's always hard to know where to start with posts like these, so I'm going to kick things off with the technical aspect: The Cycle.

Something I've talked about in the past year, mostly on Discord, is this concept of a time loop. Not just any old time loop, though. A 27 year cycle, specifically.

Not 20, not 30...

Now, we all know the TFS timeline is messy as hell and doesn't actually align with anything that's possible in filmed canon...or within its own time span, even.

For example, the attack on Mr. Newby happens both some point after October 1st, 1959 and before November 20th, 1959...but the papers for the incident report it on March 20th, 1958:

The timeline we're given also largely fabricated, as I pointed out in relation to the newspapers with dates that don't actually exist.

However, much like NINA, the sequence itself being fake doesn't mean the events didn't happen. It's just not happening in the time frame we're told it's happening in:

It's a set of real events, just portrayed on a different time scale.

So, with all that in mind, I want to lay out a timeline, starting from Season 4 and moving backwards in time:

— Vecna opens the rifts, and El opens a gate to Dimension X in NINA, both in 1986. The March 1959 Creel Murders occur exactly 27 years before the Rifts and NINA's Dimension X gate open in 1986...at which point the Mindflayer is shown to be active.

— Mothergate opens through to Dimension X at some point between November 1983 and October 1984, this being somewhere between 16-28 months prior the Rifts opening. The paper about the attack on Mr. Newby, dated March 20th, 1958, is released exactly 610 days, or 20 months, prior to the Creel murders on November 20th, 1959. It's not necessarily the exact dates that are important here (again, these dates are relatively unreliable), but the gap between the dates.

When put in accordance with filmed dates (i.e. setting the release of this paper exactly 610 days prior to March 22nd of 1959), the paper for the attack on Mr. Newby would have been released on July 20th, 1957. This would be in line with Edward Creel's move to Hawkins in the spring of 1957...while also occurring 27 years before July of 1984, at which point Mothergate is open, and the Mindflayer is active.

This July date is especially funny to me considering we get "throwaway" lines like this...with shots in filmed canon from summertime:

Top: Joyce and Jim beginning their investigation into the attic attack. Hopper Sr. is questioning why Joyce and Jim are investigating, rather than attending school. Bottom: Alice and Henry with the rabbit death scenes in filmed canon, the setting showing full foliage and both children in summer clothing. "Is it summer break?" I don't know. You tell me, Chief.

Per TFS, Henry went missing in a cave system near his home town of Rachel, Nevada (hold that thought) at some point in the year prior to the attack on Mr. Newby. We've been told that Dimension X was involved in this event in Nevada, something happened there that left "Henry" altered physically. He was also flayed at some point around this time.

This all coincides with Henry's dramatic mood shift from a "normal and good" boy to one suffering from Mindflayer-induced psychosis. This change happened in tandem with the Nevada incident, dating back 10 months prior to the attack on Mr. Newby:

If we set Henry's initial disappearance in line with filmed canon like before, it becomes September of 1956, which is just over 27 years before Will's disappearance in November of 1983, at which point we know at least one gate is open.

We also have 1952, at which point TFS Henry would be 7 per his age as a 14 year old/freshman in play canon. This exists in a 27 year interval against 1979, when El opens the original gate that sends One to Dimension X, where he subsequently shapes the Shadow into the Mindflayer.

Here comes the first "hear me out".

My questions are:

Since Henry/Vecna/The Mindflayer/etc. in general don't show any capability for opening gates before 1986, then how the hell is the Mindflayer possessing anyone in 1959?

How did "Henry" get involved with Dimension X in Nevada in the 1950s?

Unless, by some chance:

Dimension X exists all the time simultaneously (i.e. it's a space outside time)

The gates exist simultaneously across time and space in the Right Side Up in 27 year intervals. By which I mean: A gate that opens in, say, 1983 would exist simultaneously in 1956, so on an so forth.

There's the disappearance of Captain Brenner and the USS Eldridge in 1943, which would, interestingly enough, align with 1970, the supposed year of El's conception.

Then, 1952. Now, I'm not sure what's special about 1952, when TFS "Henry" was 7, because they don't actually say what happened to make that year important! They make a point to show it to us, though, meaning something happened...we just don't know what. All I can say is that 1952 does exist in a 27 year interval against El's 1979 gate. Hold that thought.

Those addressed, let's fast-forward 4 years: 1956/1983.

Now, to be fair, there is some uncertainty in my mind about whether this specific gate incident stems from Brenner's involvement with Project Rainbow in Nevada pre-1957*, or if it stems from Mothergate in 1983, or if they created some kind of wormhole between the two locations 27 years apart...but that's a concept I need to explore more thoroughly in a another post.

In short, though: Did a singular El open a singular Mothergate? Did El open mothergate? Did Mothergate actually open on November 6th, 1983...or are we just supposed to assume it opened the same night Will went missing/the demogorgon came through? We're never given a concrete date for when Mothergate actually opened.

* In TFS, Brenner claims he's dedicated his life post-1943 to Project Rainbow with the goal of finding Dimension X, and that he's doing so in pursuit of knowledge regarding the circumstances of his father's death in connection with the Philadelphia Experiment. The USS Eldridge, Brenner Sr.'s ship, disappeared into Dimension X briefly on October 28th, 1943. "Brenner Sr." was the sole survivor. "He" returned to the Right Side Up with a completely unique blood type, supposedly altered by his travels into Dimension X. This is what ultimately led to him succumbing to his injuries, due to his body rejecting all forms of blood transfusion. Brenner Jr. tells us that about 10 months prior to Henry's first stay in HNL, a scientist from Project Rainbow escaped Brenner's lab carrying a container of a dangerous material, and ended up near the same Nevada cave system Henry disappeared into. We don't know how or when this material was collected, or what it was, but we know they found Henry's Captain Midnight spyglass next to a body (identity unspecified) with no trace of that dangerous material. We get no further detail about the Nevada Disappearance.

Anyway, someone opens a gate in the fall of 1956 and/or 1983 (my money's on it being directly linked to an El in 1983 either way). No matter who did it, though, someone opened a gate at both time points, showing us this 27 year link between the 2 dates, 2 key locations.

"Henry" goes missing in Nevada in 1956, and ends up involved with Dimension X...Which aligns with the choice of song surrounding this version of the Creel family while they move into their new home:

Coincidentally, 27 years in the future, so does Will, in Indiana. Their experiences are linked across those two spaces via that 27 year period.

We know that regardless of the gate in Nevada...Mothergate, at least, stays open until from fall 1956/1983 to fall 1957/1984. That covers exact time frame that the adjusted dates for both Henry's accident with the boy in Nevada and his accident with Mr. Newby fall in (as well as Will's time between his disappearance and his flaying).

The closer we get to Will's flaying in 1984, and the closer the Mindflayer gets to crossing through Mothergate, the more TFS Henry sounds like One (post-1979) while he's possessed in 1957, the more strangely he behaves in general (almost as though the Mindflayer is more enmeshed in his everyday life/closer to the surface), and the stronger the possession attempts seem to become overall. He begins giving nightmare visions to other people, namely tormenting Virginia with spiders and her past. He has his final and most powerful "Vecna" vision on the night of the attack on Mr. Newby.

Any kind of reciprocal gate irt Mothergate in the '50s would have gone unnoticed, since the papers in TFS indicate that HNL wasn't established until Brenner showed up to take Henry in.

Mothergate closes briefly, only for a gate to open in July 1958/1985 in the underground location of the future Starcourt Mall. This, in 1958, is during our unaccounted-for 20 months between the attack on Mr. Newby and the Creel murders. (Something rattles about this and the scene where Henry nearly makes full contact with the Mindflayer, when he has a handful of duplicate lines re: his 4.07 monologue self, but I don't have sufficient evidence to make that claim with any certainty.)

That gate closes, until Vecna opens gates in Hawkins in March of 1986, and El opens a Dimension X gate briefly and simultaneously in both Hawkins/Nevada in September of 1979 (September of 1952) and Hawkins/Nevada in March of 1986 (March of 1959) during NINA, concurrently...at least one of which may have gone unnoticed, since the Rainbow Room and the surrounding labs seems to have been abandoned entirely after 1979, and HNL as a whole has once again been abandoned after the events of 1984 ("unnoticed" and "abandoned", I say as if the building isn't still being surveilled by Brenner/Owens et. al...I just mean that the building isn't in use by the government at that point in time.)

We're shown the Shadow activating all the way in Russia due to one or multiple of these events. 27 years earlier, in March of 1959, the Mindflayer once again becomes active, per TFS's adjusted dates. Chaos ensues.

At this point, "Henry" starts swapping between sounding like his young self and sounding like his 4.07 Monologuing Adult self again, doing that kind of "I've seen the future" foreshadowing talk with Joyce that his visions did with him:

Here, he also sounds distinctly like ST3 flayed Billy, specifically in the way of the scene with El in the cabin when "Billy" outlines the Mindflayer's plans for her, her friends, and all of Hawkins while crying.

The rest is, well...history. Whatever fuckery went on, it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. After all, TFS is a "canon event", meaning it had to end the way it did.

Remember those thoughts I asked you to hold?

TFS being a "canon event" means it had to end with Henry in the lab alongside baby El...thus completing our loop, which starts again with the events of 1979/1952. A 27 year loop. TFS may be indicative of a time loop.

Hence:

Out of place dates from the 1970s start to bleed into the 1950s: - A town like Rachel, Nevada, which wasn't established until 1978, now exists circa 1952-1959 after El opens a gate to Dimension X circa 1979 in Nevada circa 1986 via NINA, which exists...about 40-50 miles from Rachel.

- An album like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (November, 1971) or a song like "Chuck E's In Love" (April, 1979) gets referenced circa 1957-1959. - An article about a "younger, more handsome" alien clone of Elvis appears in a 1959 Weekly Watcher paper about the Creel murders, despite Elvis having been 24 at the time...making this an article more likely to have appeared in the '70s or later, likely sometime around Elvis' death in 1977.

2. The Shadow is always depicted as the fully formed Mindflayer circa 1956-1959, despite the shaping event happening in the 4 years between 1979-1983:

3. Henry has Vecna-type visions, despite being the only vision-giver we know of circa 1957-1959.

4. 6 different guys later in the HNL massacre: 2 with the original baby El, 2 with teen El via NINA, and 2 in an as-of-yet unseen product of NINA's Loop (see: the final scene of TFS).

All this laid out, some questions remain:

Why do Henry's visions show him the genuine, terrifying reality of his future?

Why are these visions generally lacking in coercion?

Why are Vecna chime sounds heard before the major supernatural events that deal with visions, even though we never actually see the clock? (They're heard before Virginia in the attic, before the attack on Mr. Newby, before the Creel murders, and in the basement when Henry monologues at Joyce while viewing the corpses of his family.)

Why don't these chimes play when the Mindflayer alone is present, e.g. when no visions occur? (See: Henry contacting the Mindflayer in the lab)

And we don't really get an answer to any of these. Not an easily spotted outright answer, anyway.

But what's really fascinating, which I mentioned just a second ago and takes me back to the top of this post, back to the "Stardust Spider" and Shadow Man, is the fact that despite occurring concurrently with the possession attempts...none of these visions contain an ultimatum. There's no "If you don't obey me, I'll hurt someone you love", no "I'm showing you what's going to happen if you don't obey me", nothing of the sort.

The closest we get to coercion is the bathroom vision, when Henry fights off a possession attempt in the school bathroom and ends up in a vision regarding Patty. When "Patty" starts to talk to him about his future, about how Henry's going to kill her and so many others, Henry says "you're not Patty...what are you?" Then he gets into a physical brawl with her, which is surprisingly well matched. Vision Patty encourages him during that fight, saying things like "That's it!", "We want the same thing!", and "We can have her!"

Those seem like pretty straightforward "the Mindflayer's encouraging Henry to kill" encouragements, right?

Yeah, at first glance. However...lets read that back right quick, but with Moral Objectivity Goggles on this time. Henry openly, verbally identifies that Vision Patty is "not her, not Patty", but is, in fact, something else. He does this multiple times before he lunges at "not Patty", and he is subsequently encouraged by not-Patty...who tells him they want the same thing. That's not suspicious at all. The motives here are definitely crystal clear and totally aren't conflicting in any way.

There's the straightforward surface aspect, and then something else piggybacking on it, complicating it. Hold that thought.

Other than that instance, the negative parts of Henry's visions are all just...information. They're showing him what will come to pass...almost like they're motivating him to fight the Mindflayer. Hold onto that thought too, it buddies with the previous one.

Henry's freaking out about Prancer because he's getting close with Patty, and he's worried he'll hurt her?

His vision informs him that he's going to kill more, that he's going to hurt things, that he's going to kill Patty if he stays around her and/or gives into the Mindflayer's desires. And then it happens. All of it. He kills more animals. He hurts things and people, the pets and lab animals, Mr. Newby, and Inmate 58361 being prime examples. He gives in to the Mindflayer's desire to kill and kills Virginia. He does, by the extent of his perception, kill Patty in the accident.

The same goes for his vision in the attic. Henry's up in the attic using his powers to find someone/snoop on them, fearful of opening himself up for a possession attempt?

The vision version of Patty's mother catches Henry and tells him she "wants to tell him a secret" while his body is being puppeted to attack Mr. Newby. The next time the curtain rises to show us the inside of Henry's mind, he's seeing himself as Vecna, strung up on the tentacles and strangling people with them...just like the end of Season 4. Once again, he's seeing the future that will come to pass...should he fail to fight the Mindflayer off.

We can tell it's a vision, not what's physically happening in reality, because: a) Henry's watching himself in the attic from the stage below. b) It's got the messed up red lighting c) They show us reality just moments before, not a tentacle in sight and without Henry on the stage there observing:

d) The ending of the vision doesn't match with reality:

At the end of this vision, Henry passes out both in the void and IRL, while the vision version of Henry remains crouching. That is a different guy, entirely separate from IRL/Void Henry. There is at least one other person in the visions who is not a product of the vision itself.

Remember those thoughts from a bit ago that I asked you to hold?

Well. This also happens to be the sequence where we not only get Vision-Patty repeating Henry's own words from just after Prancer's death ("It's not real. It's not real. It's a nightmare") back to him, a phrase IRL Patty has never heard, but we also get:

Visions Patty telling Henry how to fight and evade the possession, as if she knows what she's doing ("It's your dream, remember? Anything is possible").

Vision Patty telling Henry she loves him as the last-ditch effort when his "good dream" memory of the real Patty fails to save him from the possession.

These are both things IRL Patty wouldn't know or think to say, since IRL Patty fully believed that Henry attacked her of his own volition out of malice, and she needed to be shown a drawing of the Mindflayer by Mr. Newby in order to abandon that belief.

IRL Patty's behavior is not the behavior of someone who a) knows the ins and outs of Henry's situation with the Mindflayer, and b) coached him through overcoming a possession attempt a little while earlier. It's just not.

Just like before, we're seeing contradictions and complications between vision-selves and IRL selves, along with a sense of piggybacking within possession attempts, wherein the vision serves as motivation for Henry to fight harder in resistance to the Mindflayer...while the Mindflayer is possessing him.

It's starting to become my favorite thing in the world: A pattern of behavior.

In summary:

Henry's are visions are visions of his future, and they're being shown to him by someone.

They are separate from, but piggybacking on, the Mindflayer's possession attempts.

The purpose of the visions isn't solely to torment Henry or coerce him into doing the Mindflayer's bidding. In fact, the content of the visions seems curated to make Henry fight harder in resistance to the Mindflayer.

So if, for example, Vision Patty ≠ IRL Patty, but she's acting against the Mindflayer's best interest/in support of Henry...then...

I think my answer to the questions of "who", "when", and "how" should be at least somewhat clear by this point:

Someone...from the future.

Specifically, someone from 1979-1986 who has access to the gates from the Dimension X side, someone with both vision-giving and time-related abilities who's directly connected to the Mindflayer/the Hive Mind, but who has a vested interest in countering the Mindflayer, saving Henry Creel, and trying to change the course of the future.

A traitor. A spy, if you will.

"A spy...from the future?"

[gestures at the Signs] Yeah, you heard me.

A spy from the future.

So, on that note: The point in this section wherein I ask you to hear me out.

I get the feeling TFS Henry is being told and/or shown what will come to pass in the future by himself...the Mindflayer.

And you're probably going "How do you figure that one, James? Isn't the Mindflayer a villainous force?"

I mean, yeah. Of course it is. However...

There are clearly multiple forces at play within the Mindflayer (hive mind!), and TFS shows us that Henry Creel wouldn't choose to be a villain.

Thus I think the visions in TFS are situations where, as in the 4.07 rabbit scene, things look really damning on first view. They play on our empathy using small, visibly-frightened, helpless victims and shocking, violent circumstances to guide us into making the assumption that everything about the situation is inherently malicious.

We're shown this poor little guy, "Henry". He's 14 years old, he clocks in at 5'5", he's skittish/scared of (ha) his own shadow, and he's geeky to the nth degree about comic books (just LOOK at that Captain Midnight salute? What an cute little nerd). He's immediately lovable. He's also, we find out rather abruptly, plagued by horrific visions and murderous fits of possession.

The immediate response is to go "He's being psionically tortured by some sick, sadistic son of a bitch who hungers for nothing but blood and control", just like Nancy and the ST fandom collectively did with Young Henry's rabbit scene...only to be proven wrong about Henry's intentions via TFS.

I mean, does anyone (anyone who's able to read this post, anyway 🤭) look at TFS Henry, filmed Young Henry, or even Orderly Henry and go "Yeah. He totally wanted what he got, and if he had the chance, he definitely wouldn't try to save himself from that fate"?

No.

TFS Shows us that "Henry" was a terrified, traumatized boy who wanted it all to stop. He's kind, brave, and stronger than he seems. We're also shown that he's capable of overcoming the Mindflayer to issue warnings to people he cared about (i.e. telling people to run, or prophesying dangers he'd seen via the visions). He was trying to survive with next to no help while causing as little harm as possible. He was a good kid, and he certainly wasn't evil.

So, all that said...I think that, via the Shadow's hive-mind capabilities, Henry's "fronting", in a manner of speaking, in order to show this version of himself the future. Probably as a warning, probably as motivation to fight the Mindflayer, and all with a nice side-dish of "here's how you fight this thing off so that my current future doesn't become our future" before someone else tapes over the figurative laptop camera.

[coughs, drops this Brenner-Mindflayer collage on the table in front of you, and then scurries away]

With that said, I'd like to loop all the way back to the top of this post: The "Shadow Man" may be Henry from the future. He's waiting up ahead to show his younger self the true outcome of his choices.

We all know how TFS ends, though. Hence:

[EPIC FAIL COMPILATION]

This brings me to my final "bear with me" point: The matter of the strange double-agent vibes from the UD in every season.

I'm not sure if anyone else outside the unholycule has noticed this, but in every season there's at least one instance of the UD just...offering up information.

"It does?"

Yup! Let me explain.

On first glance, we look at things like Nancy's vision and even El's vision with Billy in the cabin, and we go "Oh, it's because [insert "the bad guy's cruel/he wants to scare her/his hubris will be his downfall/all serial killers want to be known for their crimes" etc here]"...but maybe that's not the case.

For example: Vecna told Nancy his backstory, and then he immediately went

"Oh hey, so not only am I revealing my identity (Which may help you find out more about me via lab records later on, things like...maybe a list of my abilities, or my weaknesses, like the fact that I have a nut allegry. Allegedly.), but I'm also gonna give you a sneak peek of my apocalypse plans. For free. As a treat. Don't use these to prepare or anything. I'm totally not giving you a head start".

Terrifying, yes. A taunt and a threat on surface view, yes...but also showing his hand. "I want you to tell Eleven everything you see" Why. Why would he want that. He may be confident in his plans, arrogant, even...but he's not that stupid.

I'm serious, though. Check it out in comparison to Henrys visions of the future. The pattern is patterning:

We can track that back to El's cabin scene with Billy, wherein he tells her she shouldn't have looked for him, warns her that they all can see her, and that they're going to be coming after her...and he cries about it. That's vision Billy. That's someone else who piggybacked into El's mind from Billy's mind. That's not real Billy, just like how Billy in Max's vision wasn't the real Billy. The person giving El that vision warns her. Why on earth would he tell her that they can see her, that they're coming for her? That's sensitive information! It would be smarter to let her think she's safe and use that false sense of security to catch her off guard.

In fact, this pattern patterns so well that I'd like to argue this: Henry's TFS visions, Nancy's vision, and El's vision are all the same type of behavior displayed in NINA's chess scene, just in different contexts.

Henry ("Henry") gives some kind of scary prophetic information ("He and the others are going to attempt to kill you", "I would very much like to show you where I am going", "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"), and then we're left to question if it's a scare tactic, manipulative misinformation, or helpful inside information.

It's not that the Mindflayer or Vecna can't hide things from people (see: "Somewhere he didn't want me to see")...like, say, the fact that the Mindflayer is now able to see El, or that Vecna's planning to open 4 gates with his 4 kills.

It's always this miraculous "Huh! Weird info-dropping behavior from the UD's side. Shouldn't look that gift-horse in the mouth though. It's probably just a writing oversight or a shoehorned exposé, so really there's no need to question it." situation where it's just...information that's offered up with no real explanation.

Some of my favorite examples:

...and it's all topped off with Max's line:

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time".

That is to say...You're telling me:

The first message from the Upside Down isn't any of the messages that are concretely Will's, but instead it's the one that's a repetitive Henry line...and it's conveyed in a distinctly not-Will style? A message that saves Joyce, something that's definitely not in the UD's best interest given her tenacity in finding her boy...but is definitely coming from the UD nonetheless?

Will, who fell total prey to the Mindflayer in less than 3 days, was not only able to figure out how to defeat the Mindflayer, but was also strong enough to convey it in Morse code? The Mindflayer, who is able to keep secrets (see below), just...let that information slip?

El, who acknowledges that the Mindflayer is more than able to hide things from her, is suddenly released into Billy's memories and allowed to find the source unimpeded?

The Mindflayer, as Billy (Remember: not actually Billy, because Billy can't give visions or invade minds), is telling El that because he's able to see her now, she shouldn't have looked for him? The Mindflayer, which was supposedly building the Fleshflayer to track El down and kill her? Suddenly he's telling her she shouldn't have done the thing that allowed him to find her more easily?

Vecna's giving up all the information about himself and his plans before he's even gotten the 4th gate open, despite him being so secretive about it up until that point?

Henry's visions in TFS are going to scare him into resisting the Mindflayer, making it less likely that he's going to upgrade to killing humans, i.e. the very thing the Mindflayer wants him to do?

None of that makes any damn sense...until we hit this last point:

Orderly Henry is known for giving inside information about "Papa" to El with no clear motive other than getting her to leave the lab.

Now, if you know my page then you know Em's been talking about double meanings in phrasing recently (see: this post about "who"s and "what"s).

So, with that in mind, I'd like you to chew on this:

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time." vs "He's been telling us His plan this whole time."

By which I mean: "He's been telling us some other man's plan this whole time."

[Mike voice] Superspy.

As a parting thought, I made it all into a nice, neat set of collages:

Not to mention this final, parting bit:

#henry creel #time loop theory #st: tfs

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moonlightazriel · 10 months ago

Text

Writing tag game by @bonecarversbestie

Thank you for tagging me darlings @sunshinebingo @thelov3lybookworm

Describe your writing process from idea to posting/publishing?

I like to sit down on my computer and stare at the screen for a few seconds while i gather the courage to actully write, the hardest part is to get something done, because the ideas are always there, but put it into the paper? Yeah that's the worst.

So I really like to just let things flow in their own time, sometimes takes me weeks to write a line, but when i get the creativity booster randomly, i pretty much write the whole story without stopping until I'm done.

Then i send a message to @fieldofdaisiies asking if she wants to beta for me, which helps me a lot cuz i leave so many dumb mistakes behind and she always catches them for me, i rely on her feedback and change what we both agree should be changed and then I scan it one more time over translator to see if I haven't wrote any incorrect words and then i go to post.

I like to leave some of my banners for fics ready, as you guys know, my fics are posted in the exact same format every time, so i leave some of these posts ready to be filled, with tags and everything, fill it all out, think about a name, pray a few seconds that everyone won't hate it, then i post.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I really only plot and plan a story when i'm writing a longer st ory, like SOD or Worlds Apart, these kind of stories need planning and plotting and they usually take a long while to get those going, but overall I just write what gets the louder in my head and i just go with it to see where it gets me.

What do you listen to when you are writing?

Yeah, that's a hard one cuz i literally listen to anything, but i really like ambient music from video games to get everything smooth and calm for my frantic thoughts.

One of my favs is this one.

What’s your drink of choice (while writing)?

I really like to have some coffee while i write, but i usually ends up with a bottle of water. Stay hydrated guys, drink your water.

Promote yourself! What’s your favourite thing you’ve written?

I can't promote myself without mentioning Son of the Darkness , my first long fic and i adore it with all my heart, the plot, the idea, the building made me grow a lot as a writer and believe in myself more, one day i plan to rewrite it to see what it would look like when i'm older.

Share a fic of yours that you think is underrated/deserves more love.

When no one hears your calls it's one of my favorite things that i ever wrote and Eris deserves all the love after what he been through.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

Don't be afraid to try, writing is supposed to be fun, post what you would like to read, writing something you don't like just cuz it's popular and will get you more notes is not the way to go with this, you will end up unhappy, trust me. Don't be afraid to be creative an dmess up with the fan favorites, as long as you're being respectful, you should try everything. And most importantly, don't listen to that nagging voice that insists you're not good enough, you are and you're brilliant, kep writing, be amazed by what you write, this is such a fun and nice hobby, enjoy it.

What is a writing style/technique that others do really well that you'd like to get better at?

Somthing that really bothers me is smut, i feel like mine is very vague sometimes, but i just can't write it in details for some reason, i have read storiese where smut is so well written, and i know it can be beautiful, i just wish i could get mine to be a little bit better, but don't matter how much i try, it never seems good enough.

Is there a character you were surprised you enjoyed writing as much as you did?

Aemond Targeryen, he's such a nice character to write about, cuz he can range from a scared little boy to a mass murderer and theres so many possibilities with that, i wrote for him just for fun and i enjoyed so much, i always have an idea or two for him in my head.

Tagging: @fieldofdaisiies @lees-chaotic-brain

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fandomfluffandfuck · 2 months ago

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mackie anon here!! i continue to be thinking and the thots are thotting fr 🥴 you mentioned choking on his dick and suffocating in his thighs and my brain made an immediate ascent into the atmosphere. who needs air anyways? not fuckin me!! also imagining him pulling my mouth off his cock by my hair just to blow cigar smoke directly into my face and???? this fantasy is NOT looking good for my lungs 💔

GODDD the bulk is really rewriting my brain chemistry here. the things i would let this man do to me 🤐 he can disrespect me any day ngl. and fuck, i havent even mentioned his chest yet!! his tits are truly amazing and i need them in my mouth. NOW. i swear if i ever got my hands on him.... well, we'd both be limping by the end of the night if i had my druthers.

and his ass holy shittt. he deserves to have his hole eaten for hours on end fr. like, can you imagine mackie with finger-shaped bruises all over his hips, thighs, and ass??? just from being handled and fondled all night .... 🤤 god, someone PLEASE give him the bj and rimjob he deserves!!!

*sebastian comes racing past both of us*

related to this

T h o t t i n g

(I definitely didn't read "thotting" as knotting the first time, no, no, subconscious omegaverse thoughts in my head, lmao, not at all)

Oh my god, can you imagine how dizzy that'd make you, anon? You would be straight up fucking woozy, stumbling and falling forward into his lap, deprived of oxygen from choking on his cock and being crushed by his thighs only then to be hit with the buzz of tobacco. You'd be on fucking cloud nine.

Oh hell yeah, the bulk will STAY crazy. It's too much. He should take a page out of Sebastian's book and post some gym thirst trap shit. C'mon, Mackie, you know you want to 👀

YES!

HIS ASS!

He's gotta have it ate

*insert that thirst tweet that was about eating Anthony's ass like a fudge brownie and he wanted them to send a ticket and do it*

#asks #anthony mackie #mackie anon

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flayedprideparade · 5 months ago

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Man, the new chapter is H-O-T. Like burning. I reread it like a hundred times already. But can I ask for Billy's POV? I'm dying to know what he's thinking. About Steve, about Arnie, about Max, anything really. Also, I would love at some point, if let's say they had an argument or something and Billy finds out that they had slept together one extra time than he knows and he doesn't remember. But Billy's POV would be awesome. It could be on here, I'm not picky but I'm desperate. Please

Thank you so much!! Ahhh I'm super flattered! I'm glad it's holding up after rereading it, too! 😳

By Billy's POV, do you mean a version of the latest chapter written from his point of view? Or are you saying you'd like a little window into his psyche? I can definitely do the latter, lol. I could write whole essays on what he's thinking, but it'd be a LONG answer to your ask.

As for a full rewrite of chapter 15 from his POV, I'm not sure when I'd get around to doing that, but it does sound fun! I do try to hold off on writing anything that takes place during the timeline of the fic so I don't get off track, but I'm always game to discuss things, or perhaps write a drabble or snippet for a similar AU.

I also have a fic written from his perspective that takes place years after the conclusion of YGCTW! I know some people wanted me to hold off on posting supplementary fics, but perhaps I could post it here on tumblr if you're interested?

Thanks so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! Always super excited to get asks and comments!

#suzie i do copy

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usmsgutterson · 2 years ago

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Cal, my love, how are you???

If heard your call for Kaz x Reader requests. If LOVE to see what you come up with for Kaz x Grisha!Reader (I'm feeling inferno, squaller, or Durant, but obviously it's up to you!) where the reader gets sicker and sicker from not using their small science! It's such a fascinating concept to me and hardly ever explored!

Back To Normal- K.B x gn! Squaller! Reader

Okay, hi! It's been nearly two weeks since you sent this in and I did write it! Editing it just took me longer than I expected and I woke up after a nap last night to discover that I have a bit of a cold developing so I couldn't edit the remainder of it and post it like I'd hoped, but I got it done today so yay, I hope you like this one!

This concept is one I've never seen a fic for but one I've debated writing a fic around in the past because the concept in and of itself is a really intriguing idea to me, and this gives me an excuse to write it and also an excuse to write a squaller! reader, which I've thought about doing but have never actually done, so I was really excited when I saw this in my inbox! Thank you so much for sending this in, and if it's not exactly what you had in mind, feel free to reach out and let me know, I'll totally rewrite if you'd like lol.

Fic type- hurt/comfort with moments of angst

Warnings- mentions of sickness, frailness, feelings of weakness, heart palpitations, loss of appetite, and there's reference to the second chapter of Six of Crows so slight spoiler warning too for people haven't read the books

As a Grisha, once your abilities to summon the small science were discovered, there were consequences for not summoning. You grew sick, your body grew weak, your bones fragile and you felt frail, even the smallest actions leaving you winded.

It was the universes way of punishing you for not using the gift you'd been given, another show of like calls to like. Refraining from summoning calls to sickness, and summoning calls to health.

You'd read Grisha theory, both in your time at the Little Palace before you left in the last few months before the war and in the time since, in the times wherein you needed something to read and happened upon a book containing Grisha theory and figured it would be good to pass the time.

You knew that you wouldn't last if you didn't summon, but you eventually stopped finding reason to. Nobody in the Dregs knew you were a squaller, and what good did wind do, anyway, unless it was summer and grossly humid as Ketterdam always got when the weather warmed up? You saw no point in using your small science, so eventually, you just stopped.

For a while, the differences weren't really noticeable. You didn't notice them, nobody in the Dregs noticed them, none of the crows did. You hadn't relied on your abilities as a Squaller since you'd lived in Ravka, and before you'd decided to stop, you mostly used them in summer or when Kaz needed a distraction in the middle of a negotiation in the rarer times they'd taken place outdoors, something to put the opposition a little on edge.

But then, they became noticeable. You stopped sleeping quite as comfortably as you used to, spending hours trying to get comfortable, trying to will your mind to quiet. You woke up and took to coffee to keep you awake, often running on between two and four hours to boot.

Because of your tiredness, dark circles developed under your eyes. Your appetite lessened and you grew to be tired all the time, even on a rarer night where your body rested for seven or eight hours. You still relied on the coffee even then, and Nina was beginning to take notice of the fact that you hardly ate.

Kaz had long taken notice of the exhaustion you exhibited even after jobs that you'd always considered pretty easy, ones that didn't require as much effort, as much physical strain, as the bigger heists always tended to.

Jesper had long taken notice of how much coffee you drank, the fact that you always seemed to have jurda on you even in the middle of the day, and Inej noticed it when your pace began to slow, afraid to walk at the pace you normally did because you didn't want to risk heart palpitations.

Wylan was beginning to notice when those heart palpitations kicked in, was the one to grab your hand and look at you, brown eyes silently trying to ask if something was wrong only to receive nothing in response.

One by one, each of the crows noticed something, and still, none of them said a word. They could've been wrong, they knew. All of them acknowledged that they could've been dramatizing things, making things out to be worse than they actually were.

The only one who was sure of the things they'd noticed was Kaz. You were someone who mattered to him. Of course he was going to notice if you were out of sorts. Observance was his pedigree.

So, one day, Kaz showed up at your door. "What's wrong?" He'd asked. "What is wrong with you, Y/N?"

You'd laughed, a lame, tired laugh. You'd barely slept three hours, and the long-term exhaustion was starting to finally have an impact. Kaz's tone was humorless, blunt like the edge of a knife gone too long without being run across a sharpening block.

It was normally gravel, normally coffee grounds being poured into a coffee press, but it was not that, not that day. It was the unsharpened edge of a knife, the voice that did not belong to the man you loved but rather to one they called Dirtyhands.

"What's wrong with me?" You asked. "Nothing, Kaz. Nothing is wrong with me."

"Exhaustion," Kaz said. "You drink coffee and chew jurda near constantly. You sleep hours after jobs that aren't even tiring. You are constantly tired because you can't sleep unless you are at the point wherein your body will die without resting. You get two hours most nights, four, six, on luckier ones. Nina has also noticed that you eat less lately. Wylan says you've been having heart palpitations and Matthias has noticed you zoning out. Why?"

"Why do I feel like that's a rhetorical question?"

"It's not. Stop trying to flirt."

"I'm not trying to flirt," you laughed again, a shallow, hollowed out version of the laugh Kaz recognized. "If I were trying to flirt, you'd know. I would know it was working because your cheeks would be tinged pink, which, of course, is something you'd deny."

Kaz laughed humorlessly once more. "What, are you sick?"

You paused. Some part of you had known he'd guess at that. With that realization came the one that he already knew why you were sick. Inej must've known, must've snooped for Kaz when the trust you shared was still developing. He was Kaz Brekker, and he had to know somehow, didn't he?

"You're a Squaller," he said, the words falling from his lips like they were something he'd forgotten, like the fact that you could summon the wind was something he'd merely heard and disregarded after having deemed it unimportant. "You're a Squaller, and you're one who hasn't summoned for at least six months. Why not?"

"I saw no point," you said. "Let me guess, though, you've known since I came in, since I joined up?"

"I've known since the night we confronted Bolliger about double dealing," Kaz said. "Geels, the negotiations. It was the day before--"

"The day before you came to me with the Ice Court proposition," you said with a nod. "I remember. What tipped you off?"

"The breeze," Kaz said. "It was late winter, and breezes like that are commonplace, sure, but after a bout of rain? Wind like that doesn't just happen. Especially not considering the fact that it nearly tipped Geels over, and Geels was nearly seven feet tall. It gave me something to use in the moment, and I just kind of noticed whenever you'd do it while I was falling short from then on. Nobody else knows."

"Well you'll need to grant me some leniency, Brekker. I stopped summoning because I didn't see a point."

"if the point of summoning is to keep you alive and healthy, I have to say, I see no sensible reason that one would stop," Kaz said. "You're deteriorating. I know you think it can't get any worse, but it can, and it will."

"I know," you said. "Relax. Let me find the proper time, when it doesn't feel like it'll be an inconvenience, and I'll give it a go."

Kaz looked at you solemnly for a minute before he nodded.

"Right, then," he said. "Work needs doing." He turned to go, and you watched him leave, not saying a word as he left, only closing your eyes and hoping for even another few moments of rest.

The next time you summoned, it was June and you hadn't summoned in a year. You were sitting in Kaz's office, the window open as you discussed heist plans with him, Jesper, Inej, and the rest of the crows.

The heat was growing unbearable, so you willed a strong breeze to flow gently through the room, making the area feel a bit colder, much to everyones delight. Kaz shot you a look because Ketterdam in the summer was not prone to breezes on humid days like that one, and you felt some of the energy that was long gone move back into your system, a spark of joy and pride at your small science lighting up in your chest.

You allowed yourself a small smile as you leaned back in the chair you'd occupied.

You were still sick, still frail and tired and coffee-reliant, but you were getting back to normal. You decided, in the moment, that that was what mattered.

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #six of crows #shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix

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jerzwriter · 2 years ago

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What's happening...

So, the fandom is very small, and demand for content is extremely low, but I still wanted to put this together... perhaps it's more to wrap my own head around future projects. But in case anyone is interested, I figured I'd share.

Open Heart: Ethan World

I'm wrapping up A Different Fate and What Happened in Vegas. The former will be done very soon (I hope this week), and I intend for Vegas to be completed no later than August.

I'll be focusing on getting Ethan & Kaycee hitched this summer. They'll be having a "surprise wedding" and some other exploits along the way.

Dr. Eva Mendez (F!OC) will finally be introduced as an LI for Ethan in my Tobias x Casey world. I plan on concentrating more on that universe, so we'll be seeing more of her and Ethan there.

Open Heart: Tobias x Casey World

I've long wanted to close the gaps in their story and haven't been able to do it. So I plotted a way. This will be a series of stories that will fill in the gaps, starting with the end of the chemical attack, bringing us to how they finally ended up together (after all this time, I can't believe y'all still don't know how that happened! lol). This will be in sequential order, but since it's filling "gaps" it will be a little... unique.

Once this is completed, I'm wrapping up their long-abandoned wedding (and Ethan and Eva fit into that). Then we'll see a little more of their future.

My secondary focus for T/C will be the angsty alternate universe What's Forever For? There, they are recently divorced, even though neither truly wants to be. What obstacles will they face as they try to co-parent their son? Can they transition from husband and wife to friends? Will others step in to complicate things between them? Will they ever find their way back to each other, or will they determine love doesn't always mean you end up together?

Oh, nearly forgot! @choicesprompts is running a rewrite challenge to place our characters into scenes from other movies/books, etc. Well, I have a little something planned for Tobias & Casey, and it will be based on this...

Wake the Dead:

The conclusion of Eli's past story will be up within the week. It should have been done, but warning, it's sad... and I have had too much sad things going on IRL to concentrate on this, but now I want to wrap it up.

Once that's completed, I will focus more on Eli x Zoe, as opposed to Eli alone. There will also be more appearances from the other friends at Olympus. I know it's not a terribly popular pairing, but I adore them and these days, that's good enough!

Crimes of Passion:

I don't know exactly what lies ahead for Trystan & Carolina, but I assure you... there are things ahead for Trystan & Carolina. I adore these two and am having so much fun learning more about them. As CoP2 continues, I'll see where my HC for this dynamic duo goes.

One thing you may notice is missing is Reset. I've been back and forth on that, and honestly, I don't know where that stands right now. It would be a huge effort, and motivation is lacking. The most I can say is I'll keep you posted.

In lieu of what used to be Six Sentence Sunday - if you'd like to see snippets for any of the above, let me know via comment, reblog or ask, and I'll hook you up!

I know we're much smaller, and this is all fun and self-indulgent at his point - but for those of you who are still here and still support my work - I want to let you know just how much it means. Thank you... from the bottom of my heart.

Tagging all my lists separately. If you wish to be added/removed/or put on a different list - reach out to me via DM or comment here. Thank you!

#open heart #choices open heart #open heart coices #ethan ramsey #tobias carrick #wake the dead #wake the dead choices #eli sipes #crimes of passion #crimes of passion 2 #trystan thorne #choices fanfic #playchoices fanfic #playchoices #choices the storires you play

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yanderu-deredere · 2 years ago

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hello! i love your blog so much! can i ask how your ocs (pls include liam aaa) would react to a darling that only wants to be fuck buddies? and like what if it was specifically becos they've had bad romantic experiences before?

a/n: ohhh! very fun! i included the ocs i thought would have the most interesting reactions to this but i didn't include all my ocs! if you'd like specific ocs to react to this ask, please send another request and id love to answer it! thank you so much!

i also imply that reader's ex-partner used to mentally and physically abuse that and that's what i thought you meant as 'bad romantic experience'! hope i got that right! if not let me know and id love to rewrite this for you!

also wanted to preface this post with the fact that i think they would all kind of try to convince their darling to be with them and, if that doesn't work, it's kidnapping time. below, i've listed these pathetic bastards' different attempts at wooing this poor darling.

warning: mentions of current and past toxic relationships, mentions of reader being in a past abusive relationship, themes of sex but no explicit sex happens, still put it all under a cut just in case!

liam arieh ★ profile

definitely 'tries to get to the bottom of it' loool

he thinks that there must be some deep and psychological meaning as to why you only want to be friends with benefits and why you don't want to commit

which is hypocritical becos he's been in his own fair share of flings with no rhyme or reason as to why

but eventually, he'll find out why

while he's finding out, he'll definitely 'pretend' to go along with your offer of just being fuck buddies because ofc he wants to fuck you

the entire time, his idea of pillow talk is him subtly trying to figure out who the fuck hurt you and how he can reverse it so that you'll settle down with him

he's not the most firm believer in romance either until you came into his life and he'll damn well try his hardest to be the same for you! he'll make you fall in love with him! there's nothing liam isn't able to have if he puts his mind to it

also, once you admit that the reason you don't believe in romance anymore is because of an abusive ex boyfriend, your ex-boyfriend suddenly disappears for some reason. just poof off the face of the earth. dunno why. interesting, huh?

ayaka yamato ★ profile

another hypocrite!

but, unlike liam, she won't do it! she won't! she'll say no to your little fuck buddies thing and she'll woo you off your feet! yes, she understands that this means that the two of you can't fuck but she's thinking big picture here!

would try to entice you with her riches, tries to convince you that she can take care of you, that you'll never have to go hungry or want for anything ever again!

unlike liam who kind of just slowly lets you open up, ayaka kind of annoys you to the point where you just blurt out what's wrong

which is that your shitty ex girlfriend ruined you for the rest of the world and you don't believe in love

this is kind of a little bit where ayaka would pivot. she's emotionally intelligent enough to understand that riches aren';t everything, yknow?

anyway, she'll give you some heartfelt speech about how she's not your ex girlfriend and about how she loves you with all of her heart, that she truly cares about you, that she won't hurt you, she's here to take care of you

hook, line, sinker, baby. nobody can ever say no to ayaka's beautiful brown eyes.

anyway, she can't do anything illegal to your ex girlfriend but she definitely could pay someone to make sure she was suddenly ostracized by society for the rest of her life. it's the least she deserves right?

soren kumar ★ profile

mr. hypocrite number 3 himself!

definitely kicks his own ass like a hundred times because he knows his own reputation is not helping him at all and he wishes he could go back in time and stop himself

unlike dumb and dumber one and two above, soren kind of knows a little bit already the main reasons why someone would be hesitant to commit

either they really just aren't that interested, there's already someone they're interested in or they've been hurt before

he can't do anything about one and two right now so he immediately remedies number three

if he asks you out and you immediately tell him, no and offer a fuck buddy-ship, he immediately goes into the most heart-rending speech about how much he loves you

he'll tell you about how willing he is to be with you, about how he'll be your fuck buddy if that's how you want him but that he has feelings for you and that he won't deny them and that he thinks you're it for him and that he wants to take care of you for the rest of your lives, etc

if you confess about your ex boyfriend, soren will memorise every single detail you tell him. and then he'll pass all those details to someone very important who will make sure that your ex boyfriend would never find a job anywhere ever again

fujio watanabe ★ profile

oh, he doesn't care

don't be fooled, i say this in his profile but what he feels for you isn't love, it's obsession driven by the way you make him feel. and, maybe, if you dig deep enough, it could be love in some sense of the word but, to him, it's not

and, in any case, fujio doesn't have a romantic bone in his body

so, if you don't want to be 'romantically involved' that's fine with him

the thing is though, you have to acknowledge that you belong to him and that he belongs to you and that you're not allowed to touch anybody else. that's all he asks for

i think being fuck buddies actually would be a pretty optimum relationship type for fujio as long as it's like exclusive

#yandere oc x reader #yandere x reader #female yandere #male yandere #yandere #oc x reader #female oc #male oc #fujio #liam #soren #ayaka

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cobaltfaith-blog · 8 years ago

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@fidcliitas || liked.

uh-oh. franziska incoming. phoenix stiffens, bracing himself for the inevitable whip that is to come his way. he’s no glutton for punishment-- far from it, in fact, but he’s come to realize that making a fuss about it is just a way to get more pain than necessary. “h-hey... ms. von karma... how’s it g-going?” he is afraid.

#fidcliitas #◦ ━━› ❀┊IC. ( ʷᵃʳʳᶤᵒʳ ᵒᶠ ʲᵘˢᵗᶤᶜᵉ )#◦ ━━› ❀┊VERSE 03. ( ᶤᵐ ᶰᵒᵗ ᵇʳᵉᵃᵏᶤᶰᵍ ᵈᵒʷᶰ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵇʳᵉᵃᵏᶤᶰᵍ ᵒᵘᵗ )#(( let me know if you'd like a rewrite! this is post-t&t

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baltears · 3 years ago

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hello spookyshai!! its cool if u dont want to, but i was wonderin if you'd elaborate on what you like about william? i just like thinking about/mentally rewriting westworld and its characters in my free time, and your fascination with william's got me fascinated, mostly bc i see him as a stinky bastard. so obvs you'd definitely have a more nuanced take on him, which i'd also like to develop for the imaginary westworld rewrite fic that i'm never going to write ;)) regardless if u answer or not, just wanted to say i'm a fan of your blog and i hope you're havin a good day!!

omg so first of all thank you so so much for sending this, especially asking unprompted about a character you don't even like and giving me a chance to explain my feelings about him which is just incredibly cool of you. i love and am obsessed with william so giving me any excuse to talk about him at length is like gifting me $1000. if you want to know more about my meta thoughts about him after reading this, (I'm gonna talk A Lot – sorry – but i can't possibly get through everything because he's just a very complicated guy and it's a very dense show), you can always look in my william tag. I have a lot of text posts about him, but I also often talk a lot in the tags of my own posts as well as reblogs. This is gonna be a lot of totally disorganized and unedited infodumping of a lot of different meta, but i've talked about all of it at length elsewhere too and I can also totally elaborate more if you have any specific questions (you could send another ask if you wanted, but also feel free to just message me about it anytime). I'll do my best not to get too emotional (lol) but it'll be tough because this character is so close to my heart. but I'll try!

this is a huge wall of text lol so i'll also be adding more bold and italics than i normally would just to make it a little easier to read.

so first of all let's be clear, he completely is a stinky bastard. he is a horrible, awful, faithless, pathetic specimen of a man. not liking him is totally justified. just wanted to get that out of the way. personally I think not liking anything for any reason is totally valid and justified, but there are certainly good reasons why a lot of people don't like william. he is not a good dude, at least not after a certain point. No one is obligated to relate to him, empathize with him, feel bad for him, whatever... like, no one's obligated to like anything, but especially this guy. sometimes people can get a little shirty about the fact that i do, like me liking him means i think they have to. I don't think that. I do love finding other william stans, and i am very unapologetic and open about my love for him, but him being widely hated makes complete sense to me.

sigh like why i love him so much though… it's kind of hard to even put into words. on one level it's just extremely personal, like, there are a lot of things about him that i really resonate with and identify with, although I know that sounds weird (it's definitely gotten some very shocked reactions before, lol). i'm a villain liker in general, i tend to be able to relate to those types of characters easily and it kind of takes a lot for me to really dislike one on a personal level (though that's true of any sort of character, i just tend to like the majority of the characters in any work that i genuinely enjoy regardless of how shitty they are – to me the only truly bad thing a character can be is annoying, like, the kind of annoying where you just want them off your screen). Characters being any degree of evil or shitty or problematic doesn't bug me at all, personally, I tend to feel no deep internal urge to have them 'held accountable' for the things they do, unless they exist in a narrative that genuinely doesn't seem to understand that they are in the wrong, which does irritate me when it happens. But anyway, I don't want to get too oversharey but there's definitely a very high level of just personal resonance to the character for me in terms of the kinds of conflicts he has, the things he struggles with, the dominant emotions of his life, etc. so that's part of it. also though he's just… a very complex and beautifully constructed piece of character work, so I also love him just on a technical level as a writer.

He has such incredible significance in the story too, being the thematic representative of humanity, both to dolores and to the wider narrative – his capabilities for good and evil are humanity's capabilities for good and evil, right. Dolores' opinion of humanity and feelings towards humanity are very colored by her opinion of him and her feelings towards him, and thematically their relationship is sort of a microcosm of the broader relationship between hosts and humanity and very much a central piece of the narrative. Even when it's out of direct focus it's being constantly referenced and pointed back to, such as with the caleb storyline in season 3 – caleb himself is basically one big callback to william in s3, parallels out the wazoo, and his function of turning around dolores' opinion on humans is very much related to him reminding her of william – hence why her storyline in season 3 ends with her remarking on how her memories of william as a young man indicate to her that humanity is capable of goodness, because caleb's capacity to choose echoes william's capacity to choose, caleb's goodness echoes william's goodness, it all goes back to that, etc.

So… I guess I'll just jump in lol. William's Thing, the fulcrum of his character, the main feeling or sentiment that underlies all of his evil actions and kind of his general turn away from the kind and gentle person he used to be, is alienation, right. He lives his whole life (as he tells dolores in 1x07) not fitting in anywhere, not making connections anywhere, not having any sort of community or any experience with love or companionship of any kind… he's just been totally alone and alienated his entire life. like, the closest thing he had to a friend was logan, and he hates logan. I think this is the major thing people miss about him – there's this perception that his turning evil was out of some form of entitlement, that he was just angry that this woman he liked didn't like him back and it's just an issue of wounded masculinity, but to me that completely misses the mark. Like yes wounded masculinity is a piece of his character (the way he performs and weaponizes masculinity in general is… really fascinating, I'll go into a bit more detail about it, but the kind of showy machismo that he displays is definitely a tool that he intentionally developed for his own use rather than a really integral part of who he is) but it's not at all the core emotion happening there.

To William, Dolores was not only a person he was in love with or a person he was attracted to. She was also his first and only genuine human connection ever. She was his first true friend, she was his first love, she was the first suggestion anywhere in his life that it was even possible at all for him to experience a sort of deep mutual understanding and care, that somebody could actually genuinely see him and let him see them. He literally just had not ever experienced any level of real emotional intimacy before, which is a feeling i actually think a lot of people relate to if they grew up feeling very lonely. And then ultimately not only was that relationship taken away, but it was kind of retroactively deleted. When he saw her again back in sweetwater, his thought was not, "i don't have this relationship anymore," but "i never had this relationship," and further, "the single person i've ever thought i could have this kind of relationship with is actually not capable of having any kind of relationship with anyone, including me, and i literally just made all of this up in my head." After losing Dolores he is not just sad and lonely – he literally comes to the conclusion that he can never have any kind of intimate human connection or be genuinely loved, ever, because the one person in his entire life he thought he connected with is not even a person at all, but just a thing. It's very much a rug pull moment on a level that's hard to describe, it kind of takes some thought-experimenting to get to that emotional place because it's a level of shock and hurt and betrayal and like, paradigm-shifting that most of us don't regularly experience (which I think might be part of the reason why a lot of people don't seem to really understand his character or be able to parse what's going on with him emotionally). Suffice it to say it's a wound deep enough that he was pretty much never going to recover from it.

After that happens he is completely destabilized, he loses all sense of meaning and self, and he never gets a grip on it again. He had totally reconstructed his idea of his life to include the genuine possibility of meaning, and meaningful relationships, when he met Dolores. And with the loss of her, all of that suddenly went away and he basically was just left with nothing. So that alienation that he grew up with is now not just a part of his life, not just a thing that he suffers from, but he starts to feel that it's inherent to him and that it comes from him, which is partly why we start getting all the anti-social behavior he displays later in life. He develops and kind of fosters that lack of empathy in himself not because he's truly incapable of empathy (as we see when he's a young man and at a couple of later points here and there, he is in fact very capable of it) but because he feels fundamentally cut off from other people – he can't reach them and they can't reach him.

So that fundamental sense of alienation is really what informs 90% of the things he does after that point. He starts building this persona, inside and outside the park. The real world feels meaningless to him at this point because the only hint of meaning he's ever had in his life was in the park, so he buys the park, and simultaneously starts trying to "win" at life in the real world like he would in the park. The real world honestly doesn't feel any more real to him than the park does, he just knows rationally that it's different and so he behaves differently outside the park… he builds all this wealth and power for himself, he becomes a famous philanthropist. Inside the park he starts creating this character for himself, this sort of hyper-masculine, hyper-competent, totally emotionally composed, merciless, badass villain. And he makes a very concerted effort to stay in this persona as often as he can.

It's all a performance, though, right. As early as 1x05 we have Ford pointing out (to his face! legend) that his barely-hidden desperation to find meaning in the park is giving the game away. In that flashback near the end of 2x02 we get a glimpse of what's underneath, because he's performing this cold, heartless persona in front of Dolores literally while his voice is shaking because he's having to try hard not to start crying as he's talking to her. Deep down he is still very wounded, he still loves her, he still desperately wishes deep down (as jimmi simpson explained) for her to just tell him that all of it was real, for her to be real and truly be a person the way he thought she was. When he's an older man that wish is still in there, it's just been buried very deep, covered up with a lot of other things, twisted. But it's always there, it's his most closely held desire, the only thing he truly wants, and it comes out all the time in the things he does. All his tormenting of dolores, and especially his desire to make the park "real" in order to find meaning – that's that. That sense of deep confusion that's always there in his character too, the constant inner monologue of "who am I, what does this mean, does anything mean anything, what is real or not real, what is going on," that's that too, that's his destabilized sense of self and reality and meaning that came out of losing Dolores. And by this point he has also come to feel, as he says in 2x09 to his wife, that there is something very fundamentally wrong with him, in a way that's kind of at odds with how we as the audience have historically understood him.

The thing is, we saw him be a kind, loving, gentle, thoughtful person. He certainly was not perfect, for instance his later narcissism started out as a sort of basic self-centeredness, but he was a fundamentally good-hearted person who put most of his energy into trying to do the right thing. But he starts saying that he feels like that wasn't the real him, that he thinks deep down he was evil and poisonous all along, that his turn to darkness was inevitable, and that there's a sort of helplessness to his evil. There's this deep sense of shame that permeates his character along with his loneliness and alienation and resentment. He hates everything, he hates the world, but above all he hates himself – kind of amusing considering the god complex he's developed over time. But that really does seem to be the underlying emotion, that he truly thinks that deep down he was always bad. It's very heavily implied that his philanthropy outside the park and his attention to his family, his kind of good-guy persona, is something that he constructed to try and make up for his true nature, and all but stated that he doesn't feel like he's succeeded. To him, no amount of good he does will ever balance his level of evil, evil that as he says doesn't come from anything he's done but something deeper than that, something immutable, something he is. So that's why we eventually have him getting to the point of going "I might as well not bother with this anymore. I might as well just be evil, because I can't change what I am."

I've also said in other posts that the things Juliet says to him come off as obviously abusive. Like, she's technically correct that there's some sinister things going on with his private life, but listen to how she says it. You're a virus, not a person, a thing that mindlessly infects and destroys and has no other purpose. And he agrees with her! He doesn't question it at all, he just says, yes, you're exactly right, I'm not a human being with good and bad attributes, or potential to do both right and wrong. I'm a virus. Like, again, I know people get weird about having empathy for villain characters, there's the whole "cool motive, still murder," thing, because we don't want to be excusing anyone's bad actions with a sad backstory (personally I don't really care, but I understand where the concern comes from). But when he said that to Juliet it just… like I don't know how else to put it, it broke my heart. He really believes that about himself. And later he starts to question it because he's not sure anymore if he actually chose to do any of the things he did… but the way his hallucination of Emily puts it, these are his two options: you are evil, or you had no choice. One or the other. He never puts aside the idea that he is a monster that does not deserve to live, and his suicidality persists from season one (when he encourages Dolores to shoot him in the head and reacts with honest disappointment when she can't) to the end of season four when he actually does manage to engineer his own death. He is deeply, agonizingly, pathetically miserable existing the way that he is, he seems to see his even being allowed to live at all as some sort of cosmic injustice. But he doesn't know how to change back to the way he was.

All that having happened, though, we also keep getting these repeated suggestions in the story that he actually is still capable of goodness somewhere in there. The narrative keeps asking what William is exactly, what his fundamental nature is, and keeps refusing to land on one answer, instead choosing to keep things ambiguous in a way that would be sort of odd for your garden variety villain. In 2x04 we see him experiencing regret, feeling empathy and pain on behalf of others, and acting genuinely heroic, only to later backtrack and say it didn't mean anything. In 2x09 Emily tells him he is in his essence "a lie" but makes no attempt to locate what the "truth" of him would then be. In 3x06 he tries to figure out the answer to what's going on with him again only to decide he still doesn't really know, in 3x08 we get this reminder that he still stands for Dolores as a representation of both humanity's evil and its goodness, in 4x05 when his host duplicate asks him what he is, he says "Jury's still out." He is too far down his current path to turn back, but he still does not and cannot definitively and finally choose evil, because despite his self-loathing it seems like he senses deep down that his other side is still in there. All that to say I think he's getting a redemption arc in season 5, if we get a season 5 – season 5 is supposed to be the do-over season, and the character who most desperately needs and could most benefit from a do-over is William.

Um, closing thoughts… I think he's really funny. Sometimes intentionally, like, I do laugh at his little quippy comments, but I also just think it's really funny how pathetic he is and what a mess he is and how he basically imploded his entire life on accident. I do feel a lot of very genuine care and empathy for him (obviously), but he's also such a garbage fire of a human being that you sometimes just have to laugh. He's just my funny little guy, also he sucks, also I love him and he's my lil angel, also he's the worst man ever in history and deserves to be drawn and quartered (said with love). You get it. :) There's dimensions.

Trying to think of other characterization notes for your imaginary fic… oh, did you notice he puts on an accent in the park? He does this fake Southern drawl when he's playing his park character, but it's not his real accent and he drops it at other times, kind of like how Dolores sometimes does or doesn't use her "rancher's daughter" accent when she's being Wyatt in season 2. Uh… Total nerd, at heart, seeing as "all he had as a kid were books." (I kind of suspect that childhood memory might not have been totally real, by the way… made a post about that recently that's a little ways down in my tag if you're interested.)

There are more things I could say, but I think I've probably gone on long enough for the one ask lol so I'll cut it off here. Thank you again, so much, for sending this. I hope you enjoyed and got something out of this response, but if not I still do very much appreciate you asking and being curious. I hope you had a great day too!

#westworld #his brain is a conference call #william westworld

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zellie-pdf · 3 years ago

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How to Improve Your Vocabulary

Word of the Week: Assiduous: (adj.) hard-working, diligent

I believe that artists (writers, musicians, illustrators, etc) are the most self-destructive people in the world. As a writer, I'm forced to battle myself. When I use apps such as Hemingway Editor (an amazing app/website that helps you write clearer, more concise sentences (The website is linked here!)), I realize that a lot of my writing is at a "fourth-grade reading level". Fourth Grade? You're joking, right? The years I've spent writing and rewriting my book, editing, and polishing—all of that amounts to something a fourth-grader would read? Not that I'm bashing younger people and/or people with lower reading levels, but I wanted to at least make it to a middle schooler's reading level.