#each chapter is given a chapter title that does not exist in the original

[nostalgebraist]

notes on ada or ardor, from the "summer of ardor 2013" reading group

This post contains my notes on the novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov, which I wrote in 2013 in connection with a small reading group for the book that I hosted for a few of my friends.

I've posted these notes online before, in several places. However, I recently discovered that all of its incarnations had disappeared, lost in the devouring maw of Web 2.0 you-are-the-product enshittification. (It was originally posted through "Facebook Notes," a feature that doesn't exist anymore; I also put it up as a series of "Goodreads Stories," a feature that also doesn't exist anymore.)

So, I'm putting them up again here, on tumblr.

I'm not under any illusions that tumblr will be around forever, and eventually I expect this copy to go the way of the others. Maybe when it does, I'll finally do the right thing and put it up on my (currently unused) personal website. But pasting it into the tumblr box is slightly easier, so here we are.

Looking back over these notes, I feel quite proud of them. I think I was underselling them in the original intro to the Goodreads edition, which (for the record) said the following:

These notes are certain [sic] inferior in comprehensiveness and erudition to, say, Brian Boyd's notes on Ada Online, or the Kyoto Reading Circle notes. In place of those qualities they mostly substitute bad jokes and webcomic references. The reasons you might, however, want to read this notes in addition to the existing sources are as follows: 1) Unlike everyone else, I try to avoid spoilers 2) I'm just a regular guy writing notes for his friends to read, which may be a good thing if you're an ordinary reader who doesn't want their face blasted off by endless scholarly discussions of minutiae

In fact, I actually went much further into "scholarly discussions of minutiae" than this would seem to suggest – with extensive citations of Boyd and others as needed – and I think I did a pretty good job of it, while not losing sight of bigger themes and stuff.

More generally, I feel like these notes really showcase my love and enthusiasm for the book.

----

The notes are divided into 11 sections, each of which covers a block of chapters we read in a particular week of the reading group. The goofy thematic titles for each of the weekly chapter blocks (e.g. "Oh, Inverted World" for the first one) are my inventions, part of my notes rather than the book itself.

I tried to avoid spoilers for later chapters when writing about earlier ones, though of course if you read the notes all the way through, you'll eventually get fully spoiled.

Except for one small added note (clearly signposted), these are given in their original 2013 form without any edits.

1. Oh, Inverted World (Part 1, Chapters 1-8)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chapters 1-8)

Let's review what we know so far. The story is apparently set on another planet (called "Demonia" or "Antiterra" -- I don't think these terms have come up yet, but I'm mentioning them for the sake of ease of reference). Its history and geography are quite similar to those of earth, although names are often different, and the dates of historical events can vary by up to 100 years. On Antiterra the northern reaches of North America have a mild, warm climate and, politically, form not an independent country (Canada) but a subsection of the U.S. called "Canady," which contains a "province" called "Estoty" which is inhabited largely by Russian-speakers in the west ("Russian Estoty") and Francophones in the east ("French Estoty"). What we call Russia on earth is called "Tartary" on Antiterra, and was settled by Tartars after the Russians were expelled to North America. (If you want some clarification on all of this, there is a very nerdy page about it called "The Geography of Antiterra" at http://www.dezimmer.net/ReAda/AntiterraGeography.htm .)

The mentally ill on Antiterra often have hallucinatory visions of our earth, which they call "Terra." This tendency began in a sort of fad in the Antiterran 1860s. A mysterious event called the "L disaster," which caused electricity to be banned, was responsible in some unspecified way for caused the Terra mania. At the time our protagonist, Van Veen, is writing, electricity has been made legal again, but in the story so far (covering the 1860s and 1880s) it is illegal and electrical devices have been replaced with hydrodynamic equivalents, such as the "dorophone" (hydrodynamic telephone). On the other hand, on the evidence of Ch. 6 at least, Antiterrans in 1884 (the date of Van and Ada's first meeting) have flying carpets and household robots. What little we see of conventional religion on Antiterra is peculiar: people say "thank Log" (short for "logos," maybe?) rather than "thank God," mention is made of "Faragod" ("the god of electricity"), and demons are seen as good rather than evil figures.

That's the setting; what about the story? The first three chapters are a convoluted and uninviting description of Van and Ada's ancestry, as well as (in Ch. 3) an account of the Terra mania and some of the differences between Antiterra and Terra. These three chapters make numerous but oblique references to the fact that Van and Ada, the two romantic leads, are not actually cousins -- as the family tree at the start of the book says -- but brother and sister: they are both actually the children of Demon and Marina, not of Demon and Aqua (Van's putative parents) and Dan and Marina (Ada's putative parents). After a description of Van's first amorous and sexual experiences in Ch. 4, we finally get some narrative traction in Ch. 5, where we start following 14-year-old Van in 1884 as he visits his relatives in Ardis Hall and meets his "cousin"/sister Ada -- who's a pedantic weirdo, but Van's, like, totally into it. That's pretty much it so far.

All of this is being described retrospectively, in the third person, by a very (implausibly?) old Van (he was born in 1870 and Ch. 4 says he "started to reconstruct his deepest past" in "the middle of the twentieth century"), with some notes in the margin by a similarly old Ada. The notes have been preserved in the text we're reading, which is curious in itself (an unedited, or partially edited, manuscript?).

One big question this book presents to the reader is whether Antiterra is real or whether it's something Van (who, in this latter conception, actually lives on our earth) has made up. When I first read the book, I thought "Antiterra is fake" was a plausible theory but by no means certain. Now, upon re-reading, it seems more and more obvious to me that Antiterra is just clearly fake -- the alternate Antiterran names are constantly shifting, for instance. So some of my notes below will talk about why I think Antiterra isn't real. (There is no critical consensus on this point, but that may just be because not enough people are paying attention.)

SOME RELEVANT TEXTS

As you probably know, Brian Boyd has been annotating Ada on his website. The annotations aren't done, and may never be -- he's up to Chapter 34 now, which is only a few chapters further than he'd gotten to when I first read the book two years ago. I will quote from these annotations often, but if you're worried about spoilers (for plot or for discoverable secrets) I don't recommend looking at them (although I used them heavily on my first read-through).

Boyd has also written a critical monograph called "Ada: The Place of Consciousness." I don't strongly recommend it, as it has the typical Boyd faults (justifies inherently implausible theories with over-complicated webs of evidence, expects first-time readers to have super-naive responses that no first-time readers actually have in practice, etc.) and in terms of the Boyd virtues (e.g. obsessive attention to detail) it has nothing to recommend it over the annotations. A better, and shorter, book is "Nabokov's Garden" by Bobbie Ann Mason (published -- really -- by Ardis Press in Ann Arbor), which gets closer to the heart of what Nabokov is doing than Boyd ever seems to.

There is also a set of annotations that Nabokov prepared himself to aid translators, called "Notes to Ada, by Vivian Darkbloom." Your copy may include them at the back. These are pretty sparse and pedestrian, but they are worth mentioning from time to time.

Ada makes a whole bunch of references to books and to visual art. According to Boyd and Mason, some of the more important textual reference points are:

Pushkin (Eugene Onegin) Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Childhood/Boyhood/Youth) Chateaubriand (Atala/Rene)

Of these I have only read Anna Karenina.

NOTES

A note on pronunciation: "Ada," as Chapter 5 indicates, is pronounced "ahh-dahh," so that it sounds like "ardor" spoken in a non-rhotic accent. "Van" has the same type of "a" sound, since it is an abbreviation of "Ivan." "Veen" is, I think, pronounced like "vain," both for resonance with the word "vain" and because that's how it's pronounced in the Dutch surname "van Veen," which Van's name is supposed to remind us of. I've heard some people pronounce it like the first syllable of "Venus," though, and "Venus" is another intended resonance of the name.

" 'All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,' says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor 3.05 Ltd., 1880)." (1) -- this inversion of the opening sentence of Anna Karenina (which Nabokov, incidentally, insisted should be called Anna Karenin in English) is many things. It's Nabokov making fun of bad translations. It is our narrator, Van Veen, declaring that his family, although sui generis (so to speak), is a happy one. It is an indication that we are entering a mirrored world in which some things may be different from what we're used to -- indeed, may take precisely the opposite form. It's an indication that this book will be (among other things) a parody of 19th century novels. Above all, it is a bizarre opening line that sets the tone for this bizarre book.

"Demon's twofold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged puns." (4) -- now that's my kind of 19th-century libertine! (Note, incidentally, that since Antiterra is also known as Demonia, Demon is effectively named after the earth [or the version of the earth he lives on], which is a good match for names like Marina and Aqua.)

" 'I deduce,' said the boy, 'three main facts . . . " (8) -- this first (textually, not chronologically) conversation between Van and Ada is wonderfully and implausibly dense. The upshot here is that the two have discovered the secret of Van's birth: Marina substituted her baby, whom Demon fathered, for Aqua's dead son, and the mentally impaired Aqua believed that the baby really was her child. This makes Van the son of Marina and Demon (rather than Aqua and Demon), and since the pair already knows that Ada's true father is Demon rather than Dan, this means they are both children of Marina and Demon -- full siblings. (This contradicts the family tree printed at the beginning, and -- despite numerous hints in the coming pages -- was actually missed by some early reviewers of the novel, who went through the whole thing believing that Van and Ada were cousins. Martin Amis, writing in 2009, thinks they are "half-siblings." My nerdrage knows no bounds.)

"by the sea, his dark-blue great-grandmother" (8) -- here's Boyd with the genealogy of this phrase: "Van says 'the sea, his dark-blue great-grandmother' in allusion to the opening chapter of another famous novel, Ulysses (pub. 1922), by James Joyce (1882-1941). In the opening chapter Buck Mulligan, looking seaward, and like Van and Ada also showing off in the first conversation in the novel, exclaims: 'Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton' ([Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986], 4; 1.77-78). 'Algy' here is Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909): 'I will go back to the great sweet mother, / Mother and lover of men, the sea' ('The Triumph of Time,' pub. 1866, ll. 257-58). 'Epi oinopa ponton' means 'over the wine-dark sea,' a Homeric formula recurring throughout the Odyssey. Notice that Nabokov's 'dark-blue great-grandmother' wittily combines the 'grey' color term in Joyce's recycling of Swinburne's phrase and the 'great sweet mother' in Swinburne, with the 'great' again wittily given an improbable new value in 'great-grandmother.' "

Chapter 2 -- according to Boyd, the bad play Marina acts in here is a parody of bad translations/adaptations of Eugene Onegin. Unlike some of you, I haven't read Eugene Onegin, so the jokes are lost on me.

"the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone over to Japan forever" (14) -- for some reason I can't stop laughing over the weird, unexpected use of the word "Samurai" here. (It seems ripe for being turned into some sort of surrealist compliment/insult, e.g. "Rob, you are a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai!")

"Van, I trust your taste and your talent but are we quite sure we should keep reverting so zestfully to that wicked world which after all may have existed only oneirologically, Van? marginal jotting in Ada's 1965 hand; crossed out lightly in her latest wavering one." (15) -- this is the first of what I think of as "moments of instability," moments when the book suggests that there is some crucial secret of its nature that we are not privy to. What is it that "may have existed only oneirologically"? Van and Ada's highly detailed ideas about what their parents' courtship was like? Antiterra as a whole? (If the latter, this would explain why Ada later crossed out the comment, since Chapter 3 makes it clear that Van is determined to stick with the Antiterra idea.) "Reverting" suggests regression (towards something worse, more immature) as well as turning something over (from the root "vert") as images are turned over by a mirror.

"The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated)" (17) -- strange that he would have to point the latter out in a world in which the L disaster is "well-known historically." "L" can stand for "electricity" (the L disaster has caused electricity to be banned) -- also "Ladore"? (Or Lenin. Or other, more spoilery options.)

"1869 (by no means a mirabilic year)" (19) -- Boyd's annotation for this reads as follows: "a pun on annus mirabilis (Latin, 'wonderful year,' applied especially to 1666, the year of London's Great Fire, in John Dryden's 'Annus Mirabilis,' 1667); on aqua mirabilis, sometimes shortened simply to mirabilis, 'a distilled cordial made of spirits, sage, betony, balm and other aromatic ingredients' (W2), since Aqua is about to be introduced; and as Proffer suggests on Russian mir, 'peace,' and Latin bellum, 'war,' since 1869 was the year Tolstoy's War and Peace was completed." Now that's a pun!

"Marina, with perverse vainglory, used to affirm in bed that Demon's senses must have been influenced by a queer sort of 'incestuous' (whatever that term means) pleasure (in the sense of the French /plaisir/, which works up a lot of supplementary spinal vibrato), when he fondled, and savored, and delicately parted and defiled, in unmentionable but fascinating ways, flesh (/une chair/) that was both that of his wife and that of his mistress, the blended and brightened charms of twin peris, an Aquamarina both single and double, a mirage in an emirate, a geminate gem, an orgy of epithelial alliterations." (19) -- And that is a sentence!

"Demon Veen married Aqua Durmanov -- out of spite and pity, a not unusual blend." (19) -- Karkat would be proud!

"Abraham Milton" on p. 18 becomes "Milton Abraham" on p. 21. Curiouser and curiouser.

"this our sufficient world. . . . Sufficient for your purpose, Van, entendons-nous. (Note in the margin.)" (21) -- second moment of instability. What is Van's "purpose"? This one is easier to make sense of under an "Antiterra isn't real" theory, since in that case Antiterra is sufficient for Van's purposes (i.e. for the reasons that led him to invent it), but not, e.g., for the purposes of other people whose real actions might be misrepresented there. If Antiterra is real, then Ada is either reminding Van of the general fact that some people are less satisfied with the world than he is, or reminding him in particular of people who hope their souls will transmigrate to Terra after death.

With its mystical manias and its college students dropping out to join 'fashionable' social causes, the Antiterran 1860s seem to imitate the Terran 1960s, in which Nabokov was writing.

Strange to have "Anna Karenin, a novel" (25), with that helpful explanatory clause, when on the first page the same novel (with a less accurate name) was "famous." "Manipulate each other" sounds more sexual than what actually happens in A.K., fitting for Ada's combination of 19th century stylings and sexual frankness.

" ' . . . it would have been so much more plausible, esthetically, ecstatically, Estotially speaking -- if she were really my mother.' " (30) -- an enigmatic outburst. Boyd's annotation for "Estotially" says "given the incest laws in Estoty?"

"such details of his infancy as really mattered (for the special purpose the reconstruction pursued)" (31) -- third moment of instability. (What is this "special purpose"? Is is the same as "your purpose" on p. 21?)

"He knew she was nothing but a fubsy pig-pink whorelet and would elbow her face away when she attempted to kiss him after he had finished" (33) -- this will turn out to be pretty representative of how Van sees women.

Chapters 5 and 6 -- we are now past the abstruse genealogical/scene-setting chapters, and, suddenly and somewhat incongruously, we're dropped into a Wes Anderson movie or something. Everything is visually lush and sort of cutesy. Something like this tone will persist, with various interruptions, for quite a while, but don't be fooled into thinking this is all the book has to offer.

"Ardelia" (36) -- Van's misremembering of "Adelaida" (Ada).

"the tiny, tremulous poodlet" (37) -- I present this phrase without comment.

" 'I used to love history,' said Marina. 'I loved to identify myself with famous women. There's a ladybird on your plate, Van. Especially with famous beauties -- Lincoln's second wife or Queen Josephine.' " (38) -- that's Marina for you. Also we can now add "Lincoln" to the two variants of "Abraham Milton."

" . . . jikkers were banned by the airpatrol; but four years later Van who loved that sport bribed a local mechanic to clean the thing, reload its hawking-tubes, and generally bring it back into magic order . . . " (44) -- I'm 99% sure the jikkers with their "hawking-tubes" were the inspiration for the flying carpets called "Hawking mats" that appear in the Hyperion series by science fiction writer Dan Simmons, which I coincidentally happened to be reading concurrently with Ada in summer 2011. (Simmons is a Nabokov fan and uses the name "Ardis" in the series as well. Of course when he uses "Hawking" it's also a reference to Stephen Hawking.)

"Owing to a mixture of overlapping styles and tiles (not easily explainable in non-technical terms to non-roof-lovers)" (45) -- "non-roof-lovers" is certainly not a category that enters my mind very often.

"le Docteur Chronique, I mean Crolique" (49) -- [insert weed joke here]

"Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago" (53) -- Vivian Darkbloom explains: "play on 'Zhivago' ('zhiv' in Russian means alive and 'mertv' dead)."

"Did he like elms? Did he know Joyce’s poem about the two washerwomen? He did, indeed. Did he like it? He did." (54) -- Apparently Finnegans Wake existed in 1884 on Antiterra. Boyd says: "The famous lyrical prose passage involving two washerwomen by the Liffey, at the end of the 'Anna Livia Plurabelle' chapter (I.viii) of Finnegans Wake (1938) -- a passage Joyce recorded in his own voice -- includes the refrain 'Tell me,' which in its last transformation becomes 'Tell me, tell me, tell me elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone.' (216.03-04). Though a great admirer of Ulysses, Nabokov thought Finnegans Wake 'a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room. . . . Finnegans Wake’s façade disguises a very conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity.' (Strong Opinions 71)"

"The retractile head and diabolical anal appendages of the garish monster that produces the modest Puss Moth" (55) -- "Diabolical Anal Appendages" is a great band name.

"Les Malheurs de Swann" (55) -- Vivian Darkbloom: "cross between Les malheurs de Sophie by Mme de Ségur (née Countess Rostopchin) and Proust’s Un amour de Swann."

2. Youth in Revolt (Part 1, Chapters 9-16)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chs. 9-16)

So, starting around Ch. 10 or so, we find ourselves REALLY CLEARLY situated inside the mind of a teenage boy. Everything is openly sexualized, even the food ("enormous purple pink plums, one with a wet yellow burst-split" [62] -- eww). Nabokov usually isn't this overt about this kind of stuff (if he includes it at all), and it was pretty startling to me the first time I read this book.

Back then these chapters startled me in a number of ways, really -- most of them having to do with the way they realistically, perhaps too realistically, take us into the world of adolescents with all their horniness and haughtiness. Van and Ada, who were likable enough in the previous section, begin to grate in this one. Take, for instance, the way their sense of superiority to Mlle Larivière infects not only their own dialogue but also the narration:

". . . the story lacked 'realism' within its own terms . . . That was the fatal flaw in the Larivière pathos-piece, but at the time young Van and younger Ada could not quite grope for that point although they felt instinctively the falsity of the whole affair." (87)

If we take this as an editorial comment from Nabokov himself (rather than just from old Van), it seems pretty self-indulgent: he has created a character who is an incompetent writer, has attack her writing in the voices of his other characters, and now attacks her in the narration itself -- pointing out flaws that he created to begin with! What's even worse is how close Van, and especially Ada, are to Nabokov in various ways -- e.g. Ada's interest in botany and entomology and her distaste for bad translations -- which makes this close to self-congratulatory self-insert 19th-century-novel fanfiction.

Is this interpretation false? Well, I think so, but for reasons that only become clear later on. For the moment, I'll just say that if your reaction to these chapters is "get off my lawn, you damn kids," your reaction is valid, and probably what Nabokov intended. (I mean, not to say their romance doesn't have some appeal; of course it does.)

NOTES

"punctuating Ada’s discourse with little ejaculations" (62) -- see what I mean about sexualizing everything?

" 'It was sort of long, long. I mean (interrupting herself)… like a tentacle… no, let me see' " (62) -- I rest my case.

Chapter 12 is beautiful and odd in its own unique way.

"among the instruments in the horsecart" (72) -- "horsecart" is an anagram for "orchestra." Darkbloom: "horsecart: an old anagram. It leads here to a skit on Freudian dream charades ('symbols in an orchal orchestra')."

"Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: 'real things' which were unfrequent and priceless, simply 'things' which formed the routine stuff of life; and 'ghost things,' also called 'fogs,' such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a 'tower,' or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a 'bridge.' 'Real towers' and 'real bridges' were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral 'thing' might look or even actually become 'real' or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid 'fog.' When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with 'ruined towers' and 'broken bridges.' " (74) -- I like this passage, and this system. I've forgotten a lot of stuff from this book but this has always stuck in my mind.

"The wasp was investigating her plate. Its body was throbbing. 'We shall try to eat one later,' she observed . . . " (75) -- Ada, you are so WEIRD.

" . . . the child was permitted to wear her lolita . . . a rather long, but very airy and ample, black skirt" (77) -- how Japanese of her. Seriously, though, this is one of the many throwaway references to Lolita in Nabokov's later work, which have always gotten on my nerves for some reason. I guess it's poking fun at the public's perception of him as primarily "the guy who wrote Lolita," but it also seems like more fuel for that very perception? I dunno.

" . . . thus dubbed after the little Andalusian gipsy of that name in Osberg’s novel" (77) -- Osberg is an anagram of Borges, to whom Nabokov has often been compared.

"with red poppies or peonies, 'deficient in botanical reality,' as she grandly expressed it, not yet knowing that reality and natural science are synonymous in the terms of this, and only this, dream. (Nor did you, wise Van. Her note.)" (77) -- another moment of instability at which I can only smile and nod. No clue what this means.

"[thus in the MS. Ed.]" (79) -- so the manuscript has been edited, but in a hands-off way, preserving errors and marginal notes rather than removing them or smoothing them out.

"'But, my poor Mathilde, the necklace was false: it cost only five hundred francs!' " (83) -- this story is the Antiterran equivalent of Maupassant's La Parure (thanks, Boyd). I do wonder if there's any intended parallel here to Van being substituted for Aqua's child.

"Being unfamiliar with the itinerary of sun and shade in the clearing, he had left his bicycle to endure the blazing beams for at least three hours." (86) -- even the most trivial details in this book are just so entertainingly described.

Chapter 15 -- I really like the way this chapter seems to be a parody of "loss of innocence" scenes, complete with the heavy-handed Tree of Knowledge symbolism. Since it rings true that Van and Ada might retrospectively view their lives in parodic terms, the scene also works "normally," as characterization, even while it also works as a parody.

"to snatch, as they say, a first shy kiss" (95) -- the innuendo pile doesn't stop from getting taller, if you believe Boyd: "Pun. Cf. Boyd 1985/2001: 243: 'seems to allude to a stock expression -- but the actual idiom is "steal a kiss." Why then that "as they say" just after snatch? Because, of course, there is one colloquial use of "snatch" ': vulva." (On the other hand, I remember the phrase "snatch a kiss" appearing in the romance-novelly chapter of Ulysses, so unless that was the same joke, it may just be an antiquated idiom . . . )

"with only that stray ardilla daintily leavesdropping" (98) -- hard to read even a few words of this book without encountering some sort of mischief. "Ardilla" means squirrel in Spanish, FYI.

3. And I'll Bury My Soul in a Scrapbook (Part 1, Chapters 17-24)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chs. 17-24)

Van and Ada's romance begins in earnest with an appropriately pyrotechnic backdrop; DIY sex ed is facilitated by the vast Ardis library; poems are transmogrified and crossbred; Lucette gets in the way; the style is sometimes gorgeous and sometimes playful or jokey to the point of tedium. The attic scene at the end of Ch. 1 fits somewhere in here, chronologically speaking. Meanwhile, the density of references has gone up precipitously, so I've written a lot more notes, most of which are quoted or cribbed from Boyd. There is the feeling of a steady rise in difficulty after the easy early Ardis chapters, like a musical piece that slowly builds in complexity.

If you're up to date, can you leave a comment saying whether you like the book so far? Just curious. I know this book is polarizing, and I don't want to feel like I'm leading you down a very long blind alley.

NOTES

Compared the leering and arch chapters directly preceding it, Chapter 17 is rather lovely. The tone in much of Part 1 seems to waver between romantic and satiric, with one of the two dominating the other in each chapter (speaking roughly).

"Their lips were absurdly similar in style, tint and tissue. Van's upper one resembled in shape a long-winged sea bird coming directly at you, while the nether lip, fat and sullen, gave a touch of brutality to his usual expression. Nothing of that brutality existed in the case of Ada's lips, but the bow shape of the upper one and the largeness of the lower one with its disdainful prominence and opaque pink repeated Van's mouth in a feminine key." (102) -- just felt like noting this down because it's an example of this book's excellent descriptions of sensory detail. Note the motif of Van's "brutality" (Ada's reaction to Van's hand-walking performance in Ch. 13: "I felt there was something dreadful, brutal, dark, and, yes, dreadful, about the whole thing" [86]).

"Nose, cheek, chin -- all possessed such a softness of outline (associated retrospectively with keepsakes, and picture hats, and frightfully expensive little courtesans in Wicklow)" (103) -- unsubtle foreshadowing: apparently Van will be soliciting courtesans later on.

"pascaltrezza" (103) -- Darkbloom: "pascaltrezza: in this pun, which combines Pascal with scaltrezza (Ital., 'sharp wit') and treza (a Provençal word for 'tressed stalks'), the French 'pas' negates the 'pensant' of the ‘roseau’ in his famous phrase 'man is a thinking reed.' " Sick pun, bro!

"Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive." (103) -- okay, I'm going to have to stop noting down every cool or cute line in this chapter or else I'll just be noting down the whole thing. Boyd quibbles: "Rembrandt . . . is generally much less festive than such compatriots and contemporaries as Franz Hals (c.1581-1665) and Jan Steen (1625/6-1679). Van may particularly have in mind the decidedly festive 'Self-portrait with Saskia' . . . "

"What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word 'deified'?" (104) -- my quote moratorium has lasted less than a page, it seems.

" . . . the most tragic and almost fatal point of my life . . . How I used to seek, with what tenacious anguish, traces and tokens of my unforgettable love in all the brothels of the world!" (104) -- this chapter seems intent on briefing us about the shape of the overall plot. Note that a moment ago we got a reminder that Lucette died young ("at eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-five, finis" [104]), though technically that could be deduced from the family tree at the beginning.

" 'I am sentimental,' she said. 'I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.' " (105) -- Boyd: "Damozel is an archaic variant of 'damsel,' revived by Sir Walter Scott and other romantics after him 'to express a more stately notion than is now conveyed by damsel' (OED). Eglantine, especially [sic? -Rob] the sweetbriar (Rosa eglantera). Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599) in The Faerie Queene (1590-96) uses both words toward the end of Book III, Canto VI (The Garden of Adonis), 'eglantine' in stanza 44, 'damozel' in stanza 54."

"a cad" (105) -- presumably Demon.

"after Mlle Larivière had threatened to smear poor Ada's fingertips with French mustard and tie green, yellow, orange, red, pink riding hoods of wool around them" (106) -- Boyd cites Jay Alan Edelnant's Ph.D. thesis, which notes that "this sequence implies 'green thumb' and 'pinkie.' ".

"born between Paris and Tagne (as he'd better, said Ada, who liked crossing orchids)." (106) -- Boyd notes that "Tagne" is not a real place and "seems a back formation from 'montagne' in the poem (106.25), as if it were 'mon Tagne,' 'my Tagne.' " The poem that follows is a hybrid ("crossing orchids") between the most famous poems of Baudelaire and (the actual) Chateaubriand (the latter poem will show up again in Ch. 22, where V&A will play with various phrases of the form "mon [X]"). Darkbloom translates it as "my child, my sister, think of the thickness of the big oak at Tagne, think of the mountain, think of the tenderness -- "

"Lucette’s and Lucile’s" (106) -- "Lucille, incidentally, was the true name of Chateaubriand’s sister, with whom he was in love" (Vera Nabokov).

" . . . and briefly attaining a drugged beatitude into which, as into a vacuum, the ferocity of the itch would rush with renewed strength." (107) -- a good description of this familiar experience.

"Nowadays it seems to be getting extinct, what with the cooler climate" (108) -- apparently the Antiterran climate has been growing closer to the Terran one?

"Suddenly Van heard her lovely dark voice on the staircase saying in an upward direction, 'Je l’ai vu dans une des corbeilles de la bibliothèque' -- presumably in reference to some geranium or violet or slipper orchid." (125) -- Ada's utterance, "I saw it in one of the wastepaper-baskets of the library," is actually (presumably) a response to Blanche asking about the location of her slipper, which she lost at the start of Ch. 19 ("Yes, she rushed down the corridor and lost a miniver-trimmed slipper on the grand staircase." [114]).

"She wore -- though not in collusion with him" (126) -- Boyd's annotation reads: "Why might we have thought that Ada had donned her black shorts and white jersey in collusion with Van?" I dunno, man.

From Boyd's Forenote to Ch. 21: "The prohibition against knowing about sex matches the Edenic prohibition against tasting of the Tree of Knowledge, and the theme of Ardis as Garden of Eden somehow resounds even amid the hush of the library. Just as the solitary couple in the left panel of Bosch’s Garden of Delights gives way to the throngs of sensualists, fructivores and sexual acrobats in the triptych’s central panel, in an endless slow merry-go-round of desire, so Van and Ada returning now as lovers to the library sample sex as something endlessly repeated through time: in evolutionary terms, from Serromyia flies and the lowliest farm animals to geishas and Casanovas; in cultural terms, from Oriental erotica, Shastras and Nefzawis, to litterateurs and sexologists."

"May 1, 1884 . . . 14,841 items" (130) -- I quote Boyd's annotation here because it's the kind of hyper-minute and hyper-trivial analysis only Boyd, for better or for worse, can provide: "The echo of the date ('1, 1884') in the number of items in the library (which would have been even closer had Nabokov chosen April 1, 1884: 1-4-1884: why did he choose 'Mayday' rather than April Fool’s Day?; and see 133.01 and n.) and the palindromic quality of '14841' (which also happens to be the sum of the squares of 120 and 21, the latter the number of the chapter -- is this significant, in this self-referential section? -- and the former a near palindrome of it, with 'nothing' added -- was that intended?) reflect Nabokov’s abilities as mathematical prodigy in his infant years, and his preoccupation with pattern in both nature (butterfly wing-markings, for instance) and art (versification, for instance)."

"A bawdy critic in a collection of articles which she now could gleefully consult (Les muses s'amusent)" (133) -- Nabokov's invention, title means "The Muses Have Fun." (Boyd)

"Ivan Ivanov" (134) -- sounds like a reference to Van, but Boyd notes also: " 'Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov' is the archetypal Russian; see for instance Bernard Guilbert Guerney’s translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls (but not in Gogol himself), ch. 11: 'why, on several occasions caricatures had actually been put out depicting Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov talking with John Bull' (1942; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 252.)"

"Kapuskan patois" (136) -- Boyd: "Kapuskan patois: Which, judging by the sample, seems to consists of a mix of French, American and Spanish, the European languages (except for Portuguese) of Earth’s Americas. Kapuskasing is a town in northern Ontario (49.25N, 82.26W), in an area of Ontario where French and English are both widely spoken." As for the "Kapuskan" quote itself: "This comically transparent macaronic passage yields: 'The only sure method of deceiving nature is for a strong-guy to continue-continue-continue until the pleasure brims; and then, at the last moment, to switch to the other groove; but because an ardent or a heavy woman cannot turn over quick enough, the transition is helped by the position of torovago.' "

"Heinrich Müller" (136) -- Darkbloom: "author of Poxus, etc." Of course this is Henry Miller, author (on Terra many decades later) of Sexus, etc. (For a good time, check out Gore Vidal's review of Sexus.)

"My sister . . . " (138) -- for the song by Chateaubriand on which this is based (which was crossbred with Baudelaire back in Ch. 17), see here. (If you want to avoid a quotation from a later chapter of Ada, stop reading at the sentence beginning "The poem, with score and tune . . . ")

"Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore / Du château que baignait la Dore?" (138) -- straight from the Chateaubriand: "My sister, do you still remember / The castle bathed by the Dore?"

"Sestra moya, tï pomnish' goru / I dub vïsokiy, i Ladoru?" (138) -- Darkbloom's trans.: "my sister, do you remember the mountain, and the tall oak, and the Ladore?"

"Oh! qui me rendra mon Aline / Et le grand chêne et ma colline?" (138) -- Darkbloom's trans.: "oh who will give me back my Aline, and the big oak, and my hill?" Slight alteration of the final sestet of the Chateaubriand: "mountain" has been changed to "hill" and "Helene" has become "Aline," the name of Chateaubriand's elder brother's wife (significance?). Darkbloom on the original: "The final (fifth) sestet begins with 'Oh! qui me rendra mon Hélène, Et ma montagne et le grand chêne' -- one of the leitmotivs of the present novel."

"Oh! qui me rendra, mon Adèle / Et ma montagne et l'hirondelle?" (138) -- now the name is "Adele" (now the addressee rather than the object) and the "great oak" is the "swallow." Adele brings "Adelaida" (Ada's real name) to mind just as "Lucile" below does for Lucette/Lucinda.

"Oh! qui me rendra ma Lucile, / La Dore et l'hirondelle agile?" (139) -- now it's "the Dore" and "the agile swallow." Lucile is the real name of Chateaubriand's sister. "Agile swallow" comes from an utterance of Mlle Lariviere's ("And see that agile swallow!" [87]), as do some other bits here.

"Oh, who will render in our tongue" (139) -- pun on earlier "rendra" ("give back").

"say 'chort' (devil) . . . which he had never heard her do before" (139) -- Van's forgetting that he had her say "chort" on p. 96. Speaking of devils, note that "Ada" means "of hell" (i.e. it's the genitive of "hell") in Russian.

"To the average physiologist, the energy of those two youngsters might have seemed abnormal" (139) -- part of a motif about Van and Ada's exceptional nature; cf. the earlier mention of the "demon blood" (20) they inherited from their father (which brings us back, thematically, to hell).

"yclept" (141) -- "Meaning 'called,' 'named,' this word, elsewhere obsolete, survived as an allowable archaism in poetry." (Boyd)

" 'I kept for years -- it must be in my Ardis nursery -- the anthology you once gave me; and the little poem you wanted me to learn by heart is still word-perfect in a safe place of my jumbled mind, with the packers trampling on my things, and upsetting crates, and voices calling: time to go, time to go. Find it in Brown and praise me again for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did that distant day, that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little bottle. . . . ' " (146) -- well, that's heartbreaking. Note that Van, typically (as we shall see), does not comment on the pathos of the situation.

"Here, said the guide . . . " (146): Nabokov wrote, in third person, to Bobbie Ann Mason: "The poem Peter and Margaret is of course Nabokov’s own composition. Not a single reader (as far as he knows) has understood that it is a stylized glimpse of a mysterious person visiting the place, open to tourists, where in legendary times ('legendary' in Antiterra terms) a certain Peter T. had his last interview with the Queen’s sister. Although he accuses the old guide of being a 'ghost,' it is he, in the reversal of time, who is a ghostly tourist, the ghost of Peter T. himself. It is a very beautiful little poem, it should send a tingle down the spine of the reader." For a full report on the reference here and the way this poem by the fictional "Robert Brown" emulates Tennyson and Browning, see here.

"But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years -- problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space -- and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die" (153) -- death has poked its head into the frame a number of times in these chapters ("the most tragic and almost fatal point of my life" [104], "a fatidic shiver" [146], " their . . . in many ways fatal romance" [148]), and it does so again in this remarkable sentence. Et in Arcadia ego?

"just finished reading her new story" (154) -- this one is based on Maupassant's "La Petite Roque" (AKA "Little Louise Roque"). There's a summary here.

4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (Part 1, Chapters 25-34)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chs. 25-34)

In which Van learns you can never really recapture your childhood.

The story now shifts into a new phase: where Van's preoccupying monomania used to be his attraction to Ada, it is now his jealousy of anyone who might, conceivably, have designs on her. There is a newly neurotic tone to many of these chapters, and Van's characteristic allusiveness starts to seem defensive rather than expressive or simply playful. Meanwhile, Lucette herself has become infatuated with Van. (What is it with this family?)

NOTES

"kitchen Kim with his camera" (156) -- pay close attention to Kim and his camera.

"Tel un lis sauvage confiant au désert" (157) -- "Thus a wild lily entrusting the wilderness" (Darkbloom). A quote from Les Trois Règnes de la Nature by Abbé Jacques Delille (in context: "Thus a wild lily / Entrusting to the wilderness the perfume it exhales, / Hides its virginal beauty from the indiscreet winds"). Delille seems to have been one of the many, many authors on Nabokov's shit list.

" . . . and this attire was hardly convenient for making klv zdB AoyvBno wkh gwzxm dqg kzwAAqvo a gwttp vq wjfhm Ada in a natural bower of aspens; xliC mujzikml, after which she said: . . ." (157) -- just when you thought this book couldn't get any weirder, it just starts throwing glitchy gibberish at you with no warning whatsoever. Of course, all is explained in the next chapter, but I really like the audacity of it. (The joke here is that if you actually decode the text, it's completely tame, at least on a surface level: "making his way through the brush and crossing a brook to reach Ada in a natural bower of aspens; they embraced.")

"the letter scene in Tschaikow’s opera Onegin and Olga" (158) -- Boyd: "Nabokov mocks here the inaccuracies of theatrical adaptations of literary texts, including the Chaikovsky adaptation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (see 10.11-12.20 and nn. and 511.34: 'the preposterous libretto'). The letter scene, itself specifically parodied at 11.02-20 (and nn.), of course focuses on Tatiana as letter-writer. A version that had misconstrued Pushkin’s story enough to have her sister Olga share the title with Onegin might even omit Tatiana altogether. In Pt. 1 Ch. 2 the show in which Marina plays the letter-writing role seems to be called Eugene and Lara (13.22), which at least preserves as well as distorts some of Tatiana’s surname (Larina); but by now, the disintegration has become even more complete, as the other Larina girl takes over the title role."

"I don't know. I adore you. I shall never love anybody in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go." (158) -- "adore"/"Ladore" here resonates nicely with the unspoken (but, in this book, always present) "ardor."

"Stumbling on melons, fiercely beheading the tall arrogant fennels with his riding crop" (159) -- Darkbloom: "allusions to passages in Marvell’s 'Garden' and Rimbaud’s 'Mémoire.'" (From Marvell's Garden: "Stumbling on melons, as I pass, / Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.") [TV narrator voice] "Previously on Ada or Ardor": Rimbaud's poem was referenced a number of times in Van and Ada's esoteric lunch-table conversation in Ch. 10.

In Chapter 27 we begin to get a sense of Van's conventionally masculine double standard about infidelity.

"Villa Armina: Marina never realized it was an anagram of the sea, not of her." (163) -- Ouch!

"garbotosh" (165) -- reference to a famous poster for the film Anna Christie, which pictures Greta Garbo wearing a macintosh. As it happens, all of the physical characteristics listed later in this passage are consistent with the idea that Cordula is supposed to look like Garbo. Garbo was rumored to have had affairs with women. (She also -- perhaps relevantly? -- played the title character in the 1935 adaptation of Anna Karenina.)

"ambivert" (165) -- apparently this means "a type of person intermediate between the introvert and the extrovert," though of course it sounds as though it means "bisexual."

"by his amour-propre, not by their sale amour" (168) -- "amour-propre" can mean either "self-love" or "clean love"; the former appears to be the actual meaning here, but the latter allows the phrase to appear to contrast more directly with "sale amour" ("dirty love"). Darkbloom: "pun borrowed from Tolstoy's 'Resurrection.'"

"On the contrary: a private picture of their fondling each other kept pricking him with perverse gratification." (168) -- another "yep, Van sure is a teenage boy" moment. (It wasn't until I copied this quote down here that I noticed the retrospectively obvious innuendo in "pricking." Maybe it's best to assume that every word of this book is some sort of innuendo until proven otherwise . . . )

"Adula" (168) -- resonates of course with "adulation."

"the entire treatment of the Marcel and Albertine affair" (169) -- Van refers to the theory that the character Albertine in In Search of Lost Time is really a gender-swapped male, i.e., that her affair with Marcel is actually a veiled depiction of a male homosexual affair.

"(On fait son grand Joyce after doing one's petit Proust. In Ada's lovely hand.)" -- the previous sentence links up to Joyce's Ulysses in several difficult-to-catch ways, described by Boyd here. Note that Van's monologue about Proust was itself in the style of Proustian dialogue.

"He could solve an Euler-type problem" (171) -- an insignificant detail, but as a math guy I'm of course curious what exactly is meant by this phrase. There are many problems associated with Euler, who was one of the most prolific mathematicians ever. In the French translation of Ada this becomes "a problem in Euler integrals." Euler integrals are certain special mathematical functions, which doesn't nail down what the problems in question are, but gives us a general idea of what sort of knowledge is involved -- calculus, probably. (Van is 10!)

"I have often wondered why the Russian for it" (175) -- by "it" he means "cheating."

"Van worked under Tyomkin, at the Chose famous clinic, on an ambitious dissertation he never completed, 'Terra: Eremitic Reality or Collective Dream?' " (182) -- the nature of the Terra pathology, along with the nature of time and space, will be one of Van's major interests as an adult.

"a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time" (185) -- "ardis" means "point of an arrow" in Greek, so this is a modification of the conventional phrase "the arrow of time."

"Thus the rapture young Mascodagama derived from overcoming gravity was akin to that of artistic revelation in the sense utterly and naturally unknown to the innocents of critical appraisal, the social-scene commentators, the moralists, the idea-mongers and so forth." (185) -- yep, we're definitely reading a Nabokov book here.

"Van on the stage was performing organically what his figures of speech were to perform later in life -- acrobatic wonders that had never been expected from them and which frightened children." (185) -- this makes explicit what might already have been clear: the connection between Van's interest in card tricks, acrobatic feats, etc. and his penchant for playing tricks with words.

"and (I have a note here, for the ghost of a novel) 'the low cut of her black dress allowed the establishment of a sharp contrast between the familiar mat whiteness of her skin and the brutal black horsetail of her new hair-do.'" (188) -- a vertical A-B-A (or, equivalently, A-D-A) pattern. The novel in question here is presumably Ada itself, which apparently means that this bit is some earlier note or thought that has been incorporated into the text. Note that the dramatic arc of Ada follows something like an A-D-A pattern, and that the title itself contains more than one such pattern (the word "Ada" is one, and the fact that "Ada" sounds like "Ardor" makes the phrase "Ada or Ardor" another).

"'My teacher,' she said, 'at the Drama School thinks I'm better in farces than in tragedy. If they only knew!'" (191) -- a self-conscious nod to the tension between comedy and drama in this novel?

"her only true love, the head of the arrow" (192) -- another ardis.

"I'll have them reassembled in Ladore when I motor there one of these days." (193-4) -- and here's another attempt to triumph over the ardis of time, this one much closer to the sort of examples found in introductory physics textbooks. The collecting of the necklace pieces seems like a pretty transparent metaphor for the lovers' attempt in this scene to recapture what they had in 1884.

Note that Ada has become less interested in biology (nature) and more interested in acting (artifice). Bobbie Ann Mason sees this as an effect of the corrupting influence of her "unnatural" affair with Van.

"Her director, G.A. Vronsky" (197) -- Vronsky is Anna's lover in Anna Karenina. His name is combined here with "the 'common Russian-Jewish name' Gavronsky" (Boyd citing Alfred Appel). Cf. Marina's lover "Baron d’Onsky" (13).

"what begins with a 'de' and rhymes more or less with a Silesian river ant" (199) -- "Since the Oder is the main river of Silesia, a historical region of eastern Europe now mostly in Poland although with small portions in Germany and the Czech Republic, the riddle spells the hint: 'deodorant.'" (Boyd).

"She smelled of damp cotton, axillary tufts, and nenuphars, like mad Ophelia." (199) -- cool sentence. Nenuphars are water lilies.

"The indecent 'telegraph'" (201) -- the banning of electricity has had amusing consequences for Antiterran profanity.

"(reversing the action of Dr. Ero, pursued by the Invisible Albino in one of the greatest novels of English literature)" (203) -- Darkbloom: "thus the h-dropping policeman in Wells’s Invisible Man defined the latter’s treacherous friend." Could additionally be a reference to Ellison's Invisible Man. (In an interview, Nabokov discusses the notion of meeting literary figures in heaven: "It would be fun to hear Shakespeare roar with ribald laughter on being told what Freud (roasting in the other place) made of his plays. It would satisfy one's sense of justice to see H. G. Wells invited to more parties under the cypresses than slightly bogus Conrad.")

"the sunglasses of much-sung lasses" (203) -- that's a pretty good one.

"two black and one golden-red head" (204) -- a possible A-D-A, although it seems more likely that Van is in the middle (in which case it's an A-D-A by gender, I guess).

5. Father Lucifer (Part 1, Chapters 35-38)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chs. 35-38)

The Ardis of 1888 continues to be awkward. Scrabble is played. Demon stops by and wants to ask whether Van and Ada are involved, but never manages to.

To be honest, with the exception of the Scrabble scene, I'm not that fond of these chapters -- the plot has been lagging lately and the reader could be forgiven for wondering whether any of this is going anywhere or whether the rest of the book will be comprised of minor, unpleasant Veen family interactions described at great length. Mark my words, though: the next section (the rest of Part 1) is utter gold, and is what convinced me I loved the book the first time around.

And as always, no matter how slow the plot is, there's plenty of trivia to note! Speaking of which, Boyd's online notes end at Ch. 34, although note that there are some interesting notes (composed with Boyd's help) here that go up through Ch. 38. After this, we're flying blind.

NOTES

"the oars crippled by refraction" (217) -- nice metaphor.

"my acarpous destiny" (219) -- "acarpous" means "fruitless."

"A diligent student of case histories, Dr. Van Veen never quite managed to match ardent twelve-year-old Ada with a non-delinquent, non-nymphomaniac, mentally highly developed, spiritually happy and normal English child in his files, although many similar little girls had bloomed -- and run to seed -- in the old châteaux of France and Estotiland as portrayed in extravagant romances and senile memoirs." (219) -- a self-conscious nod to the implausibility of Ada the character. Minor evidence for theories of the "Van invented Ada" variety (of which I am fond).

"Captain Grant's Microgalaxies" (220) -- Darkbloom: "known on Terra as Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant, by Jules Verne."

"ailleurs" (220) -- "go away" (?), lit. "elsewhere."

The ending of Ch. 35 has been "scrawled on a separate writing-pad page" and is apparently by a very old Van, possibly on his last night before death. It is appropriately (?) strange. Mentions of the process of composition sometimes coincide with especially abstruse and odd passages (cf. the sections alternately written by Van and Ada in Ch. 12). Is this an indication that these were written last, by an older senile Van / Ada, who either wrote strangely because they were senile or simply died before having the chance to revise this material (or both)?

"and now a century later seems to be again in vogue, so I am told, under the name of 'Scrabble,' invented by some genius quite independently from its original form or forms." (222-3) -- cf. earlier " 'We [Van and Ada in 1884] played mostly Scrabble and Snap,' said Van." (163)

"Lucette would later recall how her sister's triumphs in doubling, tripling, and even nonupling (when passing through two red squares) the numerical value of words evolved monstrous forms in her delirium during a severe streptococcal ague in September, 1888, in California." (223) -- like the Noodle Incident, this is all the more hilarious for its lack of specificity. ("Evolved monstrous forms"?)

"Baron Klim Avidov" (223) -- anagram for "Vladimir Nabokov" (Kyoto Reading Circle notes).

"Avidov . . . at a particule" (223-4) -- "The gist of this short incident is that Avidov was accused by the Englishman Keyway of his pretentions to aristocratic lineage by using the French 'de' before his name (d’Avidov)." (Kyoto Reading Circle notes)

"By July the ten A's had dwindled to nine, and the four D's to three. The missing A eventually turned up under an Aproned Armchair, but the D was lost" (224) -- A-D-A reference, of course, and maybe another arrow of time / entropy thing? (The "A" of paradisiacal Ardis lost and then regained.)

"it was pitiful to see Lucette cling to her last five letters (with none left in the box) forming the beautiful ARDIS which her governess had told her meant 'the point of an arrow' -- but only in Greek, alas." (225) -- I'm sure you could do some "clinging to Ardis" / "arrow of time" thematic stuff with this. (I have kind of a one-track mind today, it seems.)

"the amusing VANIADA" (226) -- this coinage will turn up again.

"TORFYaNUYu" (227) -- there is a peat motif (yes, you heard me, a peat motif) in this book: "Veen" for instance means "peat bog" in Dutch. (Boyd has written an article called "Ada, the Bog and the Garden: or, Straw, Fluff, and Peat: Sources and Places in Ada.")

V&A's virtuosic triumphs over Lucette in Ch. 36 leave me wondering exactly what they feel they have to prove (numerous decades later!).

"some 'blue' (peat-bog) land" (236) -- peat again.

"his "prebrandial" brandy (an ancient quip)" (238) -- cf. "he liked . . . middle-aged puns" (4).

"You look quite satanically fit, Dad." (239) -- I wonder what exactly "satanically" means on Antiterra, where religion seems to have been tweaked somewhat, and demons are benign figures. (Note the reference to the Eden story later in this chapter, and the Eden reference that dominates Ch. 15.)

" 'You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man' " (241) -- this may be fortune-teller frivolity, but it is interesting to wonder whether it has any deeper meaning in the context of the plot.

"the sweetest word in the language rhymes with 'billiard' " -- Kyoto Reading Circle: "The word is 'milliard,' thousand million, that is, billion."

"That’s very black of you" (241) -- Kyoto Reading Circle: "Converted 'white of you,' a Southern racist compliment which means 'good of you.' "

"Filius aquae" (243) -- Darkbloom: " 'son of water,' bad pun on filum aquae, the middle way, 'the thread of the stream'." But, as the Kyoto Reading Circle observes, this is also a reference to Van's parentage (he is not "filius aquae," "son of Aqua"). This chapter is packed with hints about Van and Ada's parentage, particularly to the fact that Ada is Demon's daughter.

"Tell him I’m the youngest Venutian? Does he belong, too? Show the sign? Better not. Invent." (244) -- in Ch. 28, Dick offered Van a membership to the "Villa Venus Club." Apparently Van is now a member.

"Old Demon, iridescent wings humped" (245) -- one of several references so far to Demon's "wings." Presumably a flight of fancy rather than a literal description, but then so much of Van's tale is difficult to believe that a literally winged father might not be so out of place. (But if the wings really existed we might expect some remark about how he had been named for them, when in fact we just hear that Demon is "a form of Demian or Dementius" [4].)

"which Ada de Grandfief here has twisted into English" (246) -- yet another colorful version of "translate."

" 'Which is amply sufficient," said Demon, "for my little needs, and those of my little friends.' " (247) -- cf. "Sufficient for your purpose, Van" (21).

"the unfortunate plant used to be considered by the ancient inhabitants of the Ladore region not so much as a remedy for the bite of a reptile, as the token of a very young woman’s easy delivery" (247) -- the reference to the pains of childbirth here continues the Adam and Eve reference begun in Ada's preceding line, in which she links snakes and "corruption."

" 'I'm Fanny Price, actually' . . . 'In the staircase scene' " (249) -- not having read Mansfield Park, I can't divine the significance of either of these statements. Google leads me to this: "The stairs leading to the attic also have significance in the novel. A week after Fanny’s arrival at Mansfield Park, Edmund finds his cousin sitting on the stairs that lead to the attic. Her placement on the stairs reinforces the view of Fanny as a person between two worlds. She can no longer live with her family in Portsmouth and does not feel that the Bertram house is her home either. She is never completely part of the Bertram family until later in the novel; and in her first years with the family, Fanny does not feel fully accepted as a member of the household."

"this gemel planet" (256) -- "gemel" is a heraldic term meaning "coupled" or "paired."

"the young hospital nurse Dan had been monkeying with ever since his last illness (it was, by the way, she, busybody Bess, whom Dan had asked on a memorable occasion to help him get 'something nice for a half-Russian child interested in biology')" (256) -- the 12th birthday gift Ada received and hated back in Ch. 13 ("a huge beautiful doll -- unfortunately, and strangely, more or less naked; still more strangely, with a braced right leg and a bandaged left arm, and a boxful of plaster jackets and rubber accessories, instead of the usual frocks and frills" [84]).

"certicle storms" (258) -- Darkbloom: "certicle: anagram of 'electric.' " Electricity may be taboo, but Antiterrans still need a way to refer to natural electrical phenomena. (Also brings "cervical" to mind?)

"Antiamberians" (258) -- apparently some sort of anti-electricity group. The word "electricity" itself comes from the Greek word for "amber." Philip Pullman, thinking along the same lines, had his otherworldly characters in the His Dark Materials trilogy use "anbaric" (from the Arabic for "amber") energy.

"young Bout hurried in dragging the long green cord (visibly palpitating in a series of swells and contractions rather like a serpent ingesting a field mouse) of the ornate, brass-and-nacre receiver" (260) -- a hydrodynamic telephone sure is a funny image.

"his key: 221" (262) -- Demon is linked a number of times in this Chapter to Sherlock Holmes, who lived on 221 Baker Street (Kyoto Reading Circle).

"till dee do us part" (263) -- "dee" is the first letter in Demon's name: when Demon finally discovers their affair, Ada expects him to order them to stop. Also, possibly, a reference to the negative associations of the "D" segment of the A-D-A sequence (if this book is about paradises lost and then regained, "A" is the paradise while "D" is its absence).

6. Van/Ada, Blanche/Van, Rack/Ada, Percy/Ada, Van/Cordula, Hurt/Comfort, Mpreg (Part 1, Chapters 39-43)

GENERAL REMARKS (Chs. 39-43)

Shit just got real.

NOTES

"Speaking as a character in an old novel" (266) -- this "old novel" motif is starting to get a bit worn out.

"One of your aunt's servants is the sister of one of our servants and two pretty gossips form a dangerous team" (271) -- the former servant is Blanche. (Cf. "better than waste them on her, let him give them, she said, to Blanche's lovely sister" [277].)

"Percy, you were to die very soon -- and not from that pellet in your fat leg, on the turf of a Crimean ravine, but a couple of minutes later when you opened your eyes and felt relieved and secure in the shelter of the macchie; you were to die very soon, Percy; but that July day in Ladore County, lolling under the pines, royally drunk after some earlier festivity, with lust in your heart and a sticky glass in your strong blond-haired hand, listening to a literary bore, chatting with an aging actress and ogling her sullen daughter, you reveled in the spicy situation, old sport, chin-chin, and no wonder. Burly, handsome, indolent and ferocious, a crack Rugger player, a cracker of country girls, you combined the charm of the off-duty athlete with the engaging drawl of a fashionable ass. I think what I hated most about your handsome moon face was that baby complexion, the smooth-skinned jaws of the easy shaver. I had begun to bleed every time, and was going to do so for seven decades." (273) -- enjoyably spiteful paragraph. Strange to think of Van, over ninety, having lived with Ada for decades, writing this as though still angry at Percy. (I always tend to assume that Van's uses of the first person indicate heights of emotional intensity or involvement, though that may be too simple.)

"It was, he understood, a collation of shepherds." (274) -- no idea what to make of the shepherds. Suggestions welcome.

"Ada strolled up. 'My hero,' she said, hardly looking at him, with that inscrutable air she had that let one guess whether she expressed sarcasm or ecstasy, or a parody of one or the other." (278) -- doubles, of course, as a description of Ada the book.

"We do not care to follow the thoughts troubling Ada, whose attention to her book was far shallower than might seem; we will not, nay, cannot follow them with any success, for thoughts are much more faintly remembered than shadows or colors, or the throbs of young lust, or a green snake in a dark paradise." (280-1) -- strange to point this out when the book almost never follows Ada's thoughts, and the excuse rings hollow since Van's thoughts are, by contrast, followed relentlessly. I wonder what that "green snake in a dark paradise" means. There have been various Eden references (Shattal tree, dinner party), but none that seem to match up satisfactorily with that phrase.

"Therefore we find ourselves more comfortably sitting within Van while his Ada sits within Lucette, and both sit within Van (and all three in me, adds Ada)." (281) -- all three are in Ada the book, of course . . . "and all three in me" also makes me think of the Trinity. (If older Ada is incarnating in younger Lucette, then Ada is the Father and Lucette is the Son, which would make Van the Holy Spirit, which is funny since the Holy Spirit, unlike the other two, is believed by some to be female. [Is this my silliest line of speculation yet?])

"Van was lying in his netted nest under the liriodendrons, reading Antiterrenus on Rattner." (283) -- cf. p. 230: "Van lay reading Rattner on Terra, a difficult and depressing work." Mirror-reflection motif, of course.

"I've seen him in Sexico" (286) -- now that is a good bad movie title.

"It was not the sly demon smile of remembered or promised ardor, but the exquisite human glow of happiness and helplessness. . . . They stood brow to brow, brown to white, black to black, he supporting her elbows, she playing her limp light fingers over his collarbone, and how he 'ladored,' he said, the dark aroma of her hair blending with crushed lily stalks, Turkish cigarettes and the lassitude that comes from 'lass.' " (286-7) -- the writing has returned to romantic gorgeousness; it's been a long time since we've been here. Note that the style of this passage, and the use of the adore/Ladore pun, recalls the passage on p. 158-9 when Van and Ada part for the first time. Van seems to view his relationship with Ada in the most idealized terms at moments that directly precede their partings.

"That's a beautiful passage, Van. I shall cry all night (late interpolation)." (287) -- not sure what to make of this, but it seems significant.

"she was wearing his diamonds for the first time" (288) -- apparently Van did repair the diamond necklace after all?

I love Chapter 41. Nabokov is very good at rendering the moment when it all comes crashing down, and much of Ch. 41 is a wonderfully well-written, aching and hilarious depiction of what it feels like when your brain hits a fact it just can't deal with. In a lot of Nabokov's novels, though, this moment happens at the end, while here it's right in the middle: the demonic D of the A-D-A pattern ("till Dee do us part"). An A-D-A dramatic arc, if plotted with something like "happiness" on the vertical axis, would form a "V" shape (or, if mirror-inverted -- with both paradises exposed as false? -- an "A" shape).

"her quaint English, elegiac and stilted, as spoken only in obsolete novels" (292) -- this has the form of a diss towards Blanche, but its impact is kind of distorted by the fact that all sorts of things in Ada, including Ardis Hall itself, are describes as reminiscent of "old novels." "Obsolete novels" is kind of a strange notion in the context of this book, which is itself written in an archaic mode.

" 'Van,' she said, 'I must tell you my dream before I forget. You and I were high up in the Alps . . . ' " (296) -- the coincidence of Van and Ada's dreams here recalls dream coincidences in Anna Karenina and Ulysses. (Nabokov, in this interview: "Activist, demonstration-struck students of the present decade would, I suppose, either drop my course after a couple of lectures or end by getting a fat F if they could not answer such exam questions as: Discuss the twinned-dream theme in the case of two teams of dreamers, Stephen D.-Bloom, and Vronski-Anna.")

"Aqua used to say that only a very cruel or very stupid person, or innocent infants, could be happy on Demonia, our splendid planet. Van felt that for him to survive on this terrible Antiterra, in the multicolored and evil world into which he was born, he had to destroy, or at least to maim for life, two men." (301) -- unless I'm forgetting something, this is the first appearance of either of the names of Van's planet. Given that they will appear frequently from here on out, this seems statistically unlikely to be a coincidence. It's as if Van has invented these nasty-sounding terms to express his despair at this particular moment, and only later retconned them in as "official" names for his (fantasy) planet.

I remember reading somewhere that the duel in Ch. 42 is heavily derivative of Eugene Onegin. The author I was reading claimed this as reason to doubt the duel ever actually happened. (Which makes sense if, and only if, you're working in a general framework that says Van has access to something like western literature as it exists on earth.)

"In 1884, during my first summer at Ardis, I seduced your daughter" (309) -- clarifies that Ada is Demon's daughter, in case the reader still hasn't picked up on it.

"Van noticed a speckled movement on his right: two little spectators -- a fat girl and a boy in a sailorsuit, wearing glasses, with a basket of mushrooms between them. It was not the chocolate-muncher in Cordula's compartment, but a boy very much like him, and as this flashed through Van's mind he felt the jolt of the bullet ripping off, or so it felt, the entire left side of his torso" (310-11) -- I feel like this is significant (either Cordula and the boy or their doppelgängers appear as here like angels of [near-]death?), but I have no idea where to go with it.

Van's prepared monologue to Rack (314-15) is so weird I almost want to call it another "moment of instability." Death has been an important motif up until this point; now Van meditates, seemingly without prompting, on the afterlife. The futility of this magisterial proclamation (which Rack doesn't even appear to hear) is hilarious, but the passage is unnerving in a way that goes beyond that comedic function. There is a feeling that the book is going off the rails, that we and Van, not Rack, are in fact plummeting into "the panic and pain of infinite night" (315).

"kissing her rosy hot face and kneading her soft catlike body through her black silk dress" (318) -- to contrast with the swoonyspoony purple prose in the highest-pitch V&A encounters, Van's exciting moments with other women get assigned this down-to-earth porn-novel style. (I may be imagining this contrast -- I'll have to see whether it persists in the rest of the book.)

"But, of course, an invaluable detail in that strip of thought would have been -- perhaps, next to the pitcher peri -- a glint, a shadow, a stab of Ardis." (320) -- of course Van is trying to link the death of Percy -- far away, having nothing to do with him or Ada -- with his own desire to kill Percy and its motivation. Is that all that's going on here, though? Another odd, extended passage which, like the earlier monologue, serves to remind us that we're not in Kansas/Ardis anymore. (Incidentally, in this passage two open parentheses are closed with only one close parenthesis -- this is the case both in my edition and on Ada Online. Is this meant to be unsettling? Stop me before I read into trivial details again!)

"anxious to enjoy Cordula as soon as humanly and humanely possible" (320) -- nice turn of phrase.

"When in early September Van Veen left Manhattan for Lute, he was pregnant." (325) -- a funny piece of trivia: some early editions (including some of the copies at the NYU library) have "he was pregnant" idiotically "corrected" to "she was pregnant." Anyway, this parting shot for Part 1 is a anticlimactic parody of the climactic important of pregnancy in 19th-century fiction. (In the Darkbloom notes, VN says it's specifically a reference to Kitty Levin's pregnancy in Anna Karenina.) The genesis of a creative work is a poor substitute for a real pregnancy as a culmination to a story so concerned with sex and romance -- a fact only accentuated by the relatively minor status of the creative work in question (which we'll learn about in the next section).

7. L. Van Hubbard and the Modern Science of Mental Health (Part 2, Chapters 1-5)

GENERAL REMARKS (Part 2, Chs. 1-5)

This week's section is more varied than some. Van reads letters from Ada; writes a science fiction novel based on his patients' experiences; visits a chain of high-class brothels whose origins and peculiarities are described in more detail than we really need, thank you very much; riffs on dreams; and has an incredibly awkward reunion with Lucette.

NOTES

"I implore you for breath [sic! Ed.] of understanding" (332) -- there are several editor's notes in Ada's letters here (from the fictional, Nabokov-created editor). They call into question turns of phrase that seem like deliberate wordplay, which makes one wonder just who this editor is and whether their competence can be trusted. It also raises the question of why these particular instances of wordplay are being singled out in this wordplay-heavy book. Does the editor, for instance, have some grudge against Ada's (the character's) writing style?

"[Los Angeles, mid-September, 1888]" (332) -- Ada's "severe streptococcal ague," which made her delirious, occurred "in September, 1888, in California" (223). But if this has had any influence upon this letter, I can't discern it.

"He and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town" (333) -- apparently either Vegas or Reno has been replaced with a city called "Nevada" on Antiterra. Similarly, the use of the word "Manhattan" in the book seems to indicate that instead of a New York City, Antiterra just has a city called Manhattan.

"Van, you are responsible (or Fate through you is responsible, ce qui revient au même) for having let loose something mad in me when we were only children" (334) -- the idea that Van has somehow corrupted Ada will recur.

"in early Thargelion, 1888" (335) -- Thargelion is . . . apparently the second month of spring in the Attic Greek calendar? Maybe Sam can explain this reference to me.

"as they were bound to be in the long ruin [sic! "run" in her blue stocking. Ed.]" (335) -- another problematic "sic." Also, I confess I don't know what the editor means by "in her blue stocking." Has Ada herself has made this correction in blue pen? [2024 edit: huh, apparently I didn't know the term "bluestocking" (meaning "feminist") back in 2013.]

"When Van retrieved in 1940 this thin batch of five letters, each in its VPL pink silk-paper case, from the safe in his Swiss bank where they had been preserved for exactly one half of a century, he was baffled by their small number. The expansion of the past, the luxuriant growth of memory had magnified that number to at least fifty." (336) -- this seems to call into question much of the book so far, since if Van can misremember a simple fact this severely, how the hell did he remember all of the little novelistic details he's included? Van does provide an excuse for this particular case a moment later, but this is a strong reminder that we aren't supposed to take Ada as a purely factual account.

"the impeccable paranymph" (337) -- a paranymph is an attendant in a ceremony, originally an attendant to the bridge and groom in an ancient Greek wedding.

I really like Chapter 2, mostly for the fact that it sheds light on Terra, one of this book's enduring mysteries.

"In his struggle to keep the writer of the letters from Terra strictly separate from the image of Ada, he gilt and carmined Theresa until she became a paragon of banality." (339-40) -- "carmined" here could indicate that Theresa is an analogue of Lucette, a redhead.

"his anagram-looking name, Sig Leymanksi, had been partly derived by Van from that of Aqua’s last doctor" (340) -- the doctor was "Sig Heiler" (28). Darkbloom on Sig Leymanksi: "anagram of the name of a waggish British novelist keenly interested in physics fiction." The novelist in question is Kingsley Amis.

"with Theresa swimming inside like a micromermaid" (340) -- Michael Maar in his book "Speak, Nabokov" links Lucette with the Little Mermaid of the classic fairy tale. I remember very little of his discussion, but I imagine this was part of the evidence. (The Little Mermaid of the Disney movie, which long postdates Ada, was a redhead, but I can't find any indication that this was a traditional feature.)

"a sumptuously fripped up, trite, tedious and obscure fable, with a few absolutely marvelous metaphors marring the otherwise total ineptitude of the tale." (344) -- anticipates, of course, one subset of the Terran reactions to Van's later work "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle."

"Osberg (Spanish writer of pretentious fairy tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes, highly esteemed by short-shift thesialists)" (344) -- remember that "Osberg" is an anagram of "Borges." Ouch!

"The Perfumed Garden" (344) -- this book, a "fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature" (Wikipedia), actually exists, and according to Bobbie Ann Mason is a significant source for Ada. I don't remember much about Mason's appendix on the subject, though.

Chapter 3 is something else, that's for sure. The best interpretation I can come up with is that it, or some subset of it, is an erotic dream of Van's that has been incorporated into the text. He is clearly half-asleep as he writes the end of Chapter 2. Van's sleepy state of mind may explain the sudden mentions of Eric van Veen and his dream in that section, which at that point have never been mentioned and are a mystery to the reader. If Van falls asleep with thoughts of Eric van Veen in his mind, it makes sense that he would dream of floramors. The narrative action in Ch. 3 (what little of it there is) has the sudden shifts and strangeness of dreams, and the exposition has the implausibility of the sort of "backstory" that dreams often present as given knowledge, as well as the extravagant elaborations often characteristic of sexual fantasies. Having awoken, Van recounts his dream (Ch. 3) and then, inspired, proceeds to riff on dreams in general, and erotic dreams in particular, in an imagined psychology lecture (Ch. 4).

There are problems with this. The most obvious is, of course, that if Van is doing this, why doesn't he tell us? It seems especially perverse to spend a brief paragraph on erotic dreams -- beginning with "Van's sexual dreams are embarrassing to describe" -- if in fact the previous chapter was an extended description of one. There's also the fact that the Venus club has been mentioned before, so we're clearly supposed to believe it exists, even if we don't believe every detail from Ch. 3. And although much of the design of the Villa Venus club resembles a sexual fantasy, there's actually a pre-existing justification for this in the idea that it was the sexual fantasy of a horny teenager, realized in reality after his death.

"David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction (in no way related to the Veens of our rambling romance)" (347) -- a reminder that "van Veen" is, in the real world, usually encountered as a Dutch surname. So if we want to play the plausibility game, it seems more likely that David and Eric van Veen were real names, and "Ivan Veen" a pseudonym inspired by them, than vice versa. (But since so many Nabokov characters have zany names, this is probably a pointless exercise, unless we want to call into doubt absolutely everything.)

"a chain of palatial brothels that his inheritance would allow him to establish all over 'both hemispheres of our callipygian globe' " (348) -- that's definitely the best use of the word "callipygian" I've ever seen. (Not that it has much competition.)

Note that, according to Nabokov in an interview, the image of Van holding a young prostitute in a ruined villa was the first seed of Ada the novel in his mind, and he was pleased with himself for managing to work it into the finished product.

"impeccable buttocks" (351) -- a funny phrase given the etymologically literal meaning of "impeccable": "unable to sin."

"a well-known oneirotic device" (354) -- a hint that this a dream.

"subsidunt montes et juga celsa ruunt" (355) -- "mountains subside and heights deteriorate."

"was not sure if her name was really Adora, as everybody maintained" (357) -- compare to earlier "Adula" (168), formed by merging the names of Ada and Cordula.

"but the soft little creature in Van's desperate grasp was Ada" (358) -- this could mean several things. Most conservatively, Van is trying to recapture Ardis by imagining that prostitutes like this one are Ada. But it is also possible that this is a literal description of a dream shift: a stranger in his dream has just turned into Ada. This seems especially plausible given the way the word "Ada" comes at the end of the sentence, forming the "punchline" of the sentence and perhaps of the whole chapter. This kind of ambiguity is characteristic of Van's style (remember Demon's "wings" -- and there will be more examples).

"Van Veen [as also, in his small way, the editor of Ada]" (365) -- the brackets seem to indicate that this comment is from the editor, but then the lack of an "Ed." seems to indicate otherwise. Maybe Van is imitating the editor.

"At sixteen she looked considerably more dissolute than her sister had seemed at that fatal age." (367) -- the use of the word "fatal" in this book is very odd (see e.g. Ada as "pale fatal sister" [307]). How is sixteen a "fatal" age? "Fatal" can mean something like "fateful" and I assume that's the primary meaning in most of these cases. That the word has another, more common meaning provides resonance with the death motif and a link between death and fate.

"Two ideas were locked up in a slow dance, a mechanical menuet, with bows and curtseys: one was "We-have-so-much-to say"; the other was 'We have absolutely nothing to say.' " (370) -- that's a good way of putting it.

"ejaculated Lucette" (370) -- the beginning (I think) of a series of silly sexual innuendoes in this scene, similar to those in the early Ardis sections. Intuitively enough, this tendency toward innuendo seems to be a hallmark of scenes in which Van is in the presence of an attractive woman and doesn't have a steady girlfriend.

"[thus in the MS. Ed.]" -- we saw this phrase once before, in Part 1 Ch. 13 (p. 79). There, too, Van wrote the start of a paragraph twice. I would conjecture that this mistake reflects the feverish anxiety that characterizes the present chapter -- which Van may be reliving as he writes -- except I don't think anything similar can be said of Ch. 13. (This could also be an indication that these chapters were written late, and thus revised relatively little before Van's death.)

"It certainly came from Lucette's sister. He knew that shade and that shape. "That shade of blue, that shape of you" (corny song on the Sonorola)." (372) -- indication that Ada writes in blue pen? (See earlier "blue stocking.")

"The mental in Van always rimmed the sensuous: unforgettable, roughish, villous, Villaviciosa velour." (373) -- sensuous words for a sensuous sensation. "Villous": "(of a structure, esp. the epithelium) Covered with villi." ("Villi": "small, finger-like projections that protrude from the epithelial lining of the intestinal wall.") "Villaviciosa" is the name of several places in Spain and the Philippines. "Velour": "A plush woven fabric resembling velvet, chiefly used for soft furnishings, clothing, and hats."

"[quite possibly, this is not remembered speech but an extract from her letter or letters. Ed.]" (374) -- this could probably be said about almost any of the speech in this book, couldn't it?

"We were Mongolian tumblers, monograms, anagrams, adalucindas." (375) -- cf. the description of Marina as experienced by Demon: "an Aquamarina both single and double, a mirage in an emirate, a geminate gem, an orgy of epithelial alliterations." (19)

"campophone" (376) -- could be from Latin "campus" (field) or the Greek root "kamp-" meaning "bend." The latter seems more likely, especially since "phone" is Greek and we've seen "dorophone" from Greek "hydro." It's unclear what a "campophone" is, and since it affects the radiators, it seems to be a type of dorophone.

"polliphone" (376) -- could be from Latin "pollex" (thumb) or Greek "polloi" (many, majority). (I don't actually know Greek so I could be screwing up these Greek roots.) Might also be a reference to Pollux, one of two famous twins? The phones are morphing, like Abraham Milton / Milton Abraham / Abraham Lincoln.

"Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse." (377) -- as I mentioned a while ago, Bergson seems to have been a source for Van's, and Nabokov's, views of time. (From this interview: "At a later period, in Western Europe, between the ages of 20 and 40, my favorites were Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin.")

"Vandemonian" (377) -- "a white inhabitant of Tasmania," according to Merriam-Webster.

"A ribald contemporary of Justinus, the Roman scholar." (384) -- at least on Terra, this is false, as Herodas and Justin were separated by several centuries. (That's one thing that's nice about the alternate world: it gives Van an alibi for each lapse in his erudition.)

"campophoned" (385) -- back to "campophone" from "polliphone."

" 'I also know,' said Lucette as if continuing their recent exchange, 'who he is.' She pointed to the inscription 'Voltemand Hall' on the brow of the building from which they now emerged. Van gave her a quick glance -- but she simply meant the courtier in Hamlet." (386) -- Voltemand was the pseudonym under which Letters From Terra was published, hence Van's misinterpretation.

8. Cameras and Obscurities (Part 2, Chapters 6-9)

GENERAL REMARKS (Part 2, Chs. 6-9)

Ardis regained? Peeping Kim. Two sisters and a brother. Three sisters.

NOTES

"He . . . had a structurally perfect stool (its cruciform symmetry reminding him of the morning before his duel)" (389) -- Van has aesthetic standards for everything, it seems. As it turns out, if we go back to Part 1 Ch. 42 -- the morning before Van's duel -- we find the very same phrase ("He shaved, disposed of two blood-stained safety blades by leaving them in a massive bronze ashtray, had a structurally perfect stool" [309-10]). I remember Boyd pointing this out in The Place of Consciousness. Apparently some reviewers complained about the repetition, but Boyd claims that they don't appreciate the "structural perfection" of the whole book, in which repetitions have some special role. (I don't remember this part of Boyd's argument very well -- it struck me as pretty silly and hence I have retained only this, its silliest detail.)

"libellula" (390) -- "a genus of dragonflies, commonly called Skimmers" (Wikipedia). Since Van "broke down on '…ulla,' " what he's actually said is "I saw you circling above me on libel," but I dunno if that has any significance.

"denunciation of demoniac life" (391) -- presumably "demoniac life" means "life on Demonia" (similar to e.g. "earthly existence"), but the associations of the word "demon" in this book are complex and I don't really know what to make of them. There's the planet Demonia (Antiterra), V&A's father Demon, incidental uses of words like "demoniac" and "satanic," and the fact that demons are good rather than evil figures in Antiterran religion. As Maar has noted, there's a longstanding association between demons/hell and pedophilia in Nabokov, perhaps indicating that N identifies pedophilia as some sort of ultimate or absolute evil -- e.g. Humbert Humbert says that the girls to whom he is attracted have a "not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac)" nature, and in Nabokov's early poem "Lilith," the pedophilic narrator realizes in the last line that he is in hell.

"Veen and Dean" (393) -- this seems to encourage us to pronounce "Veen" to rhyme with "Dean," for symmetry -- but then see e.g. "Vain Van Veen" (299), which gives an identical push in the opposite direction.

"He was omniscient. Better say, omni-incest" (394) -- someone should write an article called "The Omni-Incest Narrator in Ada."

"mossio votre cossin" (396) -- "monsieur your cousin" (Darkbloom).

"Mademoiselle n'aurait jamais dû recevoir ce gredin" (397) -- "should have never received that scoundrel" (Darkbloom).

"Sumerechnikov! He took sumerographs of Uncle Vanya years ago." (399) -- Darkbloom: "His name comes from Russ. sumerki, twilight; see also p. 43." The Darkbloom annotation for p. 43 identifies sumerki as "dusk" rather than "twilight." On p. 43 itself, we find "The late Sumerechnikov, American precursor of the Lumière brothers, had taken Ada’s maternal uncle in profile with upcheeked violin, a doomed youth, after his farewell concert." The Lumiere brothers were real people, the inventors of the earliest motion-picture equipment in history. This all sheds some light on Van's quip "The Twilight before the Lumières" (399).

The density of unusual words ("leering caruncula in the unreticent reticulation" [401]), and of multilingual wordplay, has increased in this chapter, possibly to accompany Ada's return to the frame.

"it was Mr Ben Wright's last petard at Ardis" (401) -- Darkbloom: "Mr Ben Wright, a poet in his own right, is associated throughout with pets (farts)." Wright was "fired after letting winds go free while driving Marina and Mlle Larivière home" (140), and in 1888 he has been replaced as coachman by a guy named . . . Trofim Fartukov (actually from Russ. fartuk, apron). This also (see p. 418) appears to be the true origin of "pet" as V&A's pet name for Lucette. It is perhaps a sign of the basic goodness of our blessed Terra that no scholar, to my knowledge, has written at any length about the intricacies of farting in Ada.

"Bright derision can easily grade, through a cline of glee, into a look of rapture" (402) -- good sentence.

"this Love under the Lindens by one Eelmann transported into English by Thomas Gladstone" (403) -- Darkbloom: "O'Neil, Thomas Mann, and his translator tangle in this paragraph." We can add "transport" to the stack of derisive replacements for "translate."

"But, in the sudden storm, calculations went to the canicular devils." (403) -- cf. "l’ardeur de la canicule" and "the ardor of your little canicule" (95). "Canicule" refers to the "dog days" of summer ("the hot period between early July and early September").

"Art my foute. This is the hearse of ars, a toilet roll of the Carte du Tendre!" (406) -- Darkbloom explains all. "Foute: French swear word made to sound 'foot.' " "Ars: Lat., art." "Carte du Tendre: 'Map of Tender Love,' sentimental allegory of the seventeenth century." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_of_Tendre )

"I will either horsewhip his eyes out or redeem our childhood by making a book of it: Ardis, a family chronicle." (406) -- trivia note: in Nabokov's last novel, Look At The Harlequins!, the protagonist, an alternate universe version of Nabokov, writes a body of work that strongly resembles Nabokov's own. His equivalent of Ada is titled "Ardis." (The actual book "was entitled at first Villa Venus, then The Veens, then Ardor, and finally Ada," according to this essay.)

"Knabenkräuter" (408) -- Darkbloom: "Germ., orchids (and testacles)."

"She married our Russian coachman . . . Oh she did? That's delicious. Madame Trofim Fartukov. I would never have thought it." (408) -- why doesn't Van remember this from Ada's letter? (" . . . as your sweet Cinderella de Torf (now Madame Trofim Fartukov) used to say . . . " [334].)

"She had never realized, she said again and again (as if intent to reclaim the past from the matter-of-fact triviality of the album), that their first summer in the orchards and orchidariums of Ardis had become a sacred secret and creed, throughout the countryside. Romantically inclined handmaids, whose reading consisted of Gwen de Vere and Klara Mertvago, adored Van, adored Ada, adored Ardis's ardors in arbors. Their swains, plucking ballads on their seven-stringed Russian lyres under the racemosa in bloom or in old rose gardens (while the windows went out one by one in the castle), added freshly composed lines -- naive, lackey-daisical, but heartfelt -- to cyclic folk songs. Eccentric police officers grew enamored with the glamour of incest. Gardeners paraphrased iridescent Persian poems about irrigation and the Four Arrows of Love. Nightwatchmen fought insomnia and the fire of the clap with the weapons of Vaniada's Adventures. Herdsmen, spared by thunderbolts on remote hill-sides, used their huge "moaning horns" as ear trumpets to catch the lilts of Ladore. Virgin chatelaines in marble-floored manors fondled their lone flames fanned by Van's romance. And another century would pass, and the painted word would be retouched by the still richer brush of time." (409) -- this delightful paragraph seems like a particularly overt and silly instance of the kind of tall-tale embellishment that we are supposed to imagine Van and Ada have applied to most parts of their story (to one extent or another).

Chapter 8 starts off with lots of long jeweled sentences, then descends into obscure weirdness after the Veens get drunk.

" 'Van, too, was upset,' replied Ada cryptically and grazed with freshly rouged lips tipsy Lucette's fanciest freckle." (413) -- notice how the sound echoes here (cr[yptically]/gr[azed]/fr[eshly]/fr[eckle], [graz]ed/[roug]ed, lips/tips[y], f[anciest]/f[reckle]) create the sensory impression of the words "grazing" one another.

"Nikak-s net" (415) -- Darkbloom: "Russ., certainly not."

"vorschmacks" (416) -- Darkbloom: "Germ., hors-d'oeuvres."

"in a nulliverse, in Rattner's 'menald world' where the only principle is random variation" (416) -- "menald": "speckled, variegated." Not sure what Lucette is getting at here.

"you cannot demand pudicity on the part of a delphinet!" (416) -- "delphinet" appears to be a Nabokovian coinage. It seems to be a diminutive of some "delph-" word . . . the flower genus "Delphinium"? The name "Delphine"? Suggestions welcome.

"the flat palpitating belly of a seasand nymph" (418) -- Lucette/mermaid connection.

"Thus seen from above" (418) -- the long, elaborate visual description here is the opposite of the quickly escalating action one might expect from an erotic scene like this. The joke is how far this passage is from ordinary sex writing; it's hard to imagine anyone getting turned on by it. (Which recalls the debate over whether Lolita was pornographic.)

". . . but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky." (420) -- huh??? Google searching for "polecat slang" reveals only that in the South it means "skunk," and a "perwitsky" is apparently a "tiger weasel." No idea what she means here.

"After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes" (420) -- OK, the editor has a point here. If this is wordplay on "ordered," it's pretty feeble. There may be an element of self-parody here -- after all this isn't too far from some of the more frivolous of Van's/Nabokov's clearly intentional jokes.

"Esmeralda and mermaid" (421) -- Lucette/mermaid.

"for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for 'life.' Ed.]" (421) -- similar to the case just mentioned. I wonder what we're meant to make of the varying frequency of editorial comments -- most chapters have none, but (e.g.) Chs. 1, 5, and 8 of Part 2 have several. Maybe this is an indication of compositional order.

"The whole matter secretly nauseated Van (so that, by contrast, her Natural History passion acquired a nostalgic splendor)." (425) -- there's a wry nod to the nature of adolescent love in the fact that Van, though obsessed with Ada, never actually shares her central passions. First he's bored with her interest in natural history, then he's so bored with her interest in acting that he looks back fondly on the natural history phase.

"I seem to have always felt, for example, that acting should be focused not on 'characters,' not on 'types' of something or other, not on the fokus-pokus of a social theme, but exclusively on the subjective and unique poetry of the author" (246) -- Reminder Number (n+1) That We Are Reading A Vladimir Nabokov Novel

"In 'real' life we are creatures of chance in an absolute void" (426) -- cf. Lucette's "in a nulliverse, in Rattner's 'menald world' where the only principle is random variation" (416). As before, I'm not sure what we are supposed to make of this idea. There's a recurring idea, I think, that Antiterra is variegated/motley/diverse, perhaps in a "random" way ("the multicolored and evil world into which he was born" [301]). Rattner's "menald world" is presumably Antiterra. Does Terra, by contrast, possess some sort of unity or harmony?

"so that the title of the play might have been The Three Sisters" -- this (technically just "Three Sisters") is in fact the title of the real play on Terra. Much of the rest of this chapter probably makes more sense if you've read the play . . .

"We all know those old wardrobes in old hotels in the Old World subalpine zone." (430) -- but of course!

"the rose sore of Eros alone" (431) -- oh my god, this is a double anagram and a really good phrase in its own right. Picture me as Sweet Bro stricken with awe.

9. The Many-Worlds Interpretation (Part 2, Chapter 10 to Part 3, Chapter 4)

GENERAL REMARKS (Part 2, Ch. 10 to Part 3, Ch. 4)

Where Part 1 ended with a parody climax, Part 2 ends with a real climax -- in fact two real climaxes, the latter of which is suddenly defused in one of this weird book's weirdest moments.

Then, after a lurching fast-forward through many Ada-less years, we get yet another cringe-inducing encounter with desperate Lucette in Part 3 Ch. 3. At this point, Van's refusal to indulge Lucette's desires is beginning to seem almost perverse; it's understandable that he doesn't want to lead her on when he doesn't love her, but that kind of consideration hasn't stopped him from becoming involved with other women. For much of the book Van has come off simply as an amoral aesthete, but as we near the end, he is -- between the blinding of Kim and his conduct with Lucette -- starting to seem like something much worse.

This raises a number of questions: how are we supposed to feel about the coming Van-Ada reunion (which we know is happening because of Ada's annotations to the manuscript) if Van is such a bastard? And why, when Van makes up numerous details (e.g. in the Ardis chapters) that he couldn't possibly have remembered, does he allow himself to come off so badly in the latter parts of the book? If he has no commitment to strict factual accuracy, why not just twist the facts to make himself look better in the Lucette scenes? It would be one thing if Van's guilt over his own mistakes were a major theme of his book (and it may in fact be, in some hidden sense), but Van is curiously silent on these issues, as though expecting the reader to take his bad behavior in stride. Issues like these make this book (to me) both fascinating and intensely creepy in a way that would not be possible if Van's flaws were dealt with more overtly.

NOTES

"He set off at once for Manhattan, eyes blazing, wings whistling." -- Demon's wings again.

"The only personage they had not reckoned with was the old scoundrel usually portrayed as a skeleton or an angel" (433) -- so Antiterrans depict Death roughly the same way Terrans do, despite the differences in religion.

"but [Dan's] death had shown an artistic streak because of its reflecting (as his cousin, not his doctor, instantly perceived) the man’s latterly conceived passion for the paintings, and faked paintings, associated with the name of Hieronymus Bosch." (433) -- Dan, like Aqua, has descended into madness before dying. There is a symmetry to this: each of V&A's parents has a sibling (of the same gender) who has died in this way, and madness is now attested to on both the Durmanov and Veen sides of the family. There is an antisymmetry in the content of the madness -- Aqua dies dreaming of heaven-like Terra, while Dan dies haunted by visions out of Bosch's depiction of hell. (According to Boyd the reference here is to Bosch's triptych The Last Judgment. Demon brings up "that other triptych," the Garden of Earthly Delights; Mason's book contains some discussion of The Garden of Earthly Delights as a broader influence upon Ada.) Have Van or Ada inherited the mental illness that plagued their aunt and uncle? (Who are their putative mother and putative father -- and what's the significant of that?) It's interesting that Nabokov encourages us to think about this possibility just before the bizarre ending of Part 3.

"might still be living with dull little Cordula de Prey . . . but Cordula was not dull and had not been present" (434) -- Van invents a thought process for Demon, then disputes it. The point of contention is odd, since Cordula has come off as pretty "dull" in all of Van's own accounts of her thus far.

"looking forward to another day of increasing happiness (with yet another uncomfortable little edge smoothed away, another raw kink in the past so refashioned as to fit into the new pattern of radiance)" (434) -- a nice statement of Van's broader MO.

"According to Bess (which is 'fiend' in Russian)" (435) -- actually, it means "demon" (e.g. Dostoyevsky's novel "Bésy," usually translated "Demons").

"how incestuously -- c’est le mot -- art and science meet in an insect, in a thrush, in a thistle of that ducal bosquet" (436) -- this remark of Demon's calls back to the peculiar phrase " 'incestuous' (whatever that term means) pleasure" (19) used to describe Demon's enjoyment of his mistress Marina's similarity to his wife Aqua.

"what we have to study [in Bosch], as I was telling your cousins, is the joy of the eye, the feel and taste of the woman-sized strawberry that you embrace with him, or the exquisite surprise of an unusual orifice" (437) -- hilarious.

"Jeroen Anthniszoon van Äken" (438) -- the real name of Hieronymus Bosch.

"hell curs, k chertyam sobach’im" (438) -- the Russian is "to hell's hounds" or "to the canine devils" (so roughly the equivalent of "hell curs"). "Canicule" may be relevant here (Ada/hell connection)? The Russian phrase appears two other times in Ada, translated differently each time: "hydrodynamic telephones and miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam sobach'im (Russian 'to the devil')" (23), and "But, added Ada, just before being whisked away and deprived of her crayon (tossed out by Marina k chertyam sobach'im, to hell's hounds" (151).

"Norbert von Miller" (440) -- mentioned earlier by Marina on p. 261.

"Kim who would have bothered Ada again had he not been carried out of his cottage with one eye hanging on a red thread and the other drowned in its blood" (441) -- so Van did blind Kim after all. (That Van actively did this -- that Kim wasn't just a casualty of coincidence like Percy and Rack -- is confirmed at the end of the chapter.) Boyd, in The Place of Consciousness, makes much of the fact that this gruesome detail is mentioned almost in passing and could easily be overlooked in a book with so many lurid incidental details. To fully grasp the nastiness of Van's character, we must pay attention.

"his father had made himself up as Boris Godunov" (443) -- an play by Pushkin titled "Boris Godunov" was adapted by Mussorgsky into an opera, so this calls back to the bad Eugene Onegin adaptation Demon watches in Part 1 Ch. 2.

"My first is a vehicle that twists dead daisies around its spokes; my second is Oldmanhattan slang for 'money' " (444) -- a "van" is certainly a vehicle, though I can't find anything online about "veen" as slang for money.

"My second is also the meeting place of two steep slopes." (444) -- "ravine"?

"Right-hand lower drawer of my practically unused new desk -- which is quite as big as Dad’s, with Sig’s compliments." (444) -- this Freud joke is one of the several details in this passage that remind us of Aqua's suicide.

"Then, standing before a closet mirror, he put the automatic to his head, at the point of the pterion, and pressed the comfortably concaved trigger. Nothing happened -- or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind. Anyway, what he held in his right hand was no longer a pistol but a pocket comb which he passed through his hair at the temples." (445) -- moment of instability! In the poem Pale Fire, the phrase "[And here time forked.]" appears shortly before Hazel Shade's suicide. In this passage the idea of forking time is used to illustrate a suicide attempt that Van doesn't go through with. But is that all? The idea of changing to a different time track, in which Van is holding a comb rather than a gun, could just be a colorful way of saying that Van putting down the gun. But given the resonances of madness that have build up in the course of this chapter -- and Van's enduring interest in the nature of time -- this could well be more literal than that. One interpretation is that the rest of the book from hereon out is fantasy, and the novel is an elaborate suicide note.

"There are other possible forkings and continuations that occur to the dream-mind, but these will do." (446) -- elaboration of the earlier moment of instability, and a return of the "dream" motif that taunts the reader throughout Ada. On one level, this could be a simple statement that Van is ready to end the chapter (and Part 2) rather than ramble about further in an effectively inexhaustible trove of relevant memories. If we want to adopt something like the "suicide note" theory, this is instead a statement that other alternative futures -- in which Van does not commit suicide -- can be imagined, but the one he has started to sketch here (in which he blinds Kim, is reunited with Ada, etc.) "will do" -- and indeed it forms the basis of the remainder of the novel.

Time has moved more quickly in each successive section of Ada. Part 1 covers four years and takes up half the book. Part 2 does five years in half that length. Now Part 3 Ch. 1 fast-forwards through seven years of Van's life in a few pages. As a reader, it's easy to forget just how much time is elapsing here, and it can be illuminating to remind oneself of it. For instance, the meeting with Greg and Cordula in Ch. 2 seems like a relatively minor scene, not too different from many of the earlier scenes involving secondary characters -- but it is only the second event (after Marina's death) in seven years that Van has deemed worthy of relating in any detail! The most obvious explanation for this is that Greg and Cordula are people he remembers from his Ardis days, and so they are important to him -- and to the central story of this book -- in a way that many of the events of this period were not. (Moreover, it is Greg who tells Van that Lucette is in town, and thus precipitates his much more significant meeting with her.) I also wonder, though, whether Van's feelings for Cordula aren't deeper than he has let on (which would explain that defensive [?] "Cordula was not dull" earlier).

"Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited." (450) -- another suggestion that Van and/or Ada are destined to end up on Terra ("You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man" [241]).

"She rode it twice. Their brisk nub and its repetition lasted fifteen minutes in all, not five." (457) -- as before with Cordula, the language here is blunt and unromantic.

"Invitation to a Climax" (459) -- this parody of the title of another VN novel invites one to think about "beheading" as a metaphor for male orgasm.

"For a minute he stood behind her, sideways to remembrance and reader (as she, too, was in regard to us and the bar), the crook of his silk-swathed cane lifted in profile almost up to his mouth. . . . a natural masterpiece incomparably finer and younger than the portrait of the similarily [sic] postured lousy jade with her Parisian gueule de guenon on the vile poster painted by that wreck of an artist for Ovenman" (460-1) -- this description of Van standing behind Lucette is meant to remind us of a famous Toulouse-Lautrec poster.

" ' . . I’m like Dolores—when she says she’s "only a picture painted on air." ' 'Never could finish that novel -- much too pretentious.' " (464) -- a joke about Lolita, of course. The phrase "only a picture painted on air" doesn't get any Google hits that aren't related to Ada, incidentally.

"It’s safer and faster by plane" (465) -- as far as I can tell, this is the first mention of planes on Antiterra. (Flight of some sort has always been possible there, however, by means of the "jikkers.") Planes appeared earlier in Aqua's visions of Terra: "she saw giant flying sharks with lateral eyes taking barely one night to carry pilgrims through black ether across an entire continent from dark to shining sea" (21), so this is one indication that (because of the temporal discrepancy between the two worlds) Terran visions can actually foretell what will happen on Antiterra. Several details in this chapter and the next seem to indicate that electricity has recently been unbanned (another noted feature of Terra was that electricity was used freely).

"I have an important, important telephone call to make, but I don’t want you to listen" (466) -- "telephone," not "dorophone," since they're using electricity now.

" 'That’s rich,' said Lucette, 'you’ve gone far enough with me on several occasions, even when I was a kid; your refusing to go further is a mere quibble on your part; and besides, besides you’ve been unfaithful to her with a thousand girls, you dirty cheat!' " (467) -- this all seems pretty undeniable . . . indeed, as I said above, Van's refusal to become involved with Lucette has grown to seem almost perverse given the rest of his personality.

"What was he? Who was he? Why was he? He thought of his slackness, clumsiness, dereliction of spirit." (471) -- both the introspection and the self-criticism in this chapter are utterly atypical of Van, though it wasn't until I encountered them here that I realized just how absent they've been from the preceding 470 pages.

"In his sadder moments, as now, he attributed at least part of his 'success' to his rank, to his wealth, to the numerous donations, which (in a kind of extension of his overtipping the haggard beggars who cleaned rooms, manned lifts, smiled in hotel corridors) he kept showering upon worthwhile institutions and students." (471-2) -- this, for instance, is startling. Until this point, money has very rarely entered Van's thinking (except when e.g. he tells Demon that he isn't financially dependent on him because of his inheritance from Aqua), and his judgments of value have tended to align frictionlessly with the striations of aristocratic rank (e.g. Cordula, whom he doesn't much respect, is "quite a notch below our set" [330], to say nothing of the way he treats various servants, maids, etc). It's hard to imagine the entitled, amoral Van we know agonizing over whether he really deserves his success (if that is indeed what is happening here).

10. Rolling in the Deep (Part 3, Chapters 5-8)

GENERAL REMARKS (Part 3, Chs. 5-8)

Interviewer: There seem to be similarities in the rhythm and tone of Speak, Memory and Ada, and in the way you and Van retrieve the past in images. Do you both work along similar lines?

Nabokov: The more gifted and talkative one's characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind. It is a familiar embarrassment that I face with very faint qualms, particularly since I am not really aware of any special similarities -- just as one is not aware of sharing mannerisms with a detestable kinsman. I loathe Van Veen.

(Source: 1969 interview with Time magazine)

Things are starting to become clear -- at least in a sense.

Lucette's death in Part 3 Ch. 5 is arguably the central scene of the book, and it rearranges our conception of everything around it. Lucette begins to seem more important than she had originally seemed (in this book entitled "Ada" -- not "The Veens," which was one of Nabokov's working titles). There is a reality to her plight and Van's shame in that chapter that is lacking in many of the Ada scenes, particularly in the unconvincing and artificial reunion with Ada that follows in Part 3 Ch. 8. Moreover, much of the book's thematic skeleton seems to have radiated outward from Lucette's death rather than from anything having to do with Ada.

Consider, for instance, the influence of Lucette's watery death on Part 1 Chapter 3, in which Van first begins to explicitly lay out the nature of Antiterra. Van's putative mother, really his aunt (just as Lucette is merely a half-sister), named Aqua, encounters a series of comedically negligent psychologists and kills herself by taking an overdose of pills. In Aqua's vision of Terra, people freely use electricity, but on Antiterra electricity is banned, and the only consequence that is mentioned with any frequency over the course of the book is the banning of telephones -- such as the electric telephone on which Van has his shameful conversation with Lucette just before her death. (They have been replaced with devices that use water.) The chapter opens with the sentence:

"The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of 'Terra,' are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans -- and not to grave men or gravemen." (17)

Electricity is banned (which pretty much means "telephones are banned") because of "the L disaster" -- and now we can be pretty sure what that "L" really stands for! The book is addressed to "lemans" (lovers) rather than "gravemen": Van is saying that he plans to write about the love between him and Ada, not the grave matter of Lucette's death. But as we know, Van can't seem to keep either death or Lucette from intruding into his chronicle. By Part 3 the original plan seems to have derailed, and in Part 3 Ch. 5 the book reaches its climax in, yes, a "treatment at length" of "the details of the L disaster."

"Gravemen" brings Hamlet to mind, which in turn brings to mind Van's comparison of Lucette to Ophelia. Van's refusal to sleep with Lucette is indeed kind of Hamlet-like. Van explains his behavior not as assumed madness but as a supposed concern for Lucette's own well-being. But this concern clashes with the amoral and sexually uninhibited nature of the Van Veen we have known so far, and ends up seeming as strange as Hamlet's behavior. One could say that Van's interactions with Ada are over-analyzed, and his interactions with Lucette are under-analyzed. My hunch is that the latter are more true to life, and that Van's relentless "concern" for Lucette makes more sense in some real context which he does not deign to give us, instead turning away from Lucette again and again to focus on Ada.

Compared to the intensity and reality of the Tobakoff chapter, the scenes with Ada that close out Part 3 are thin, dull, and artificial. The sense of unreality is heightened by the mentions of "life forking" and Van's fake death. Even by the rather unreal standards set up in earlier V&A scenes, these interactions feel out-of-character: Ada is saddled with some very un-Ada-esque lines ("The poor, poor little man! How dare you sneer?" [530]), while Van's lines are jarringly corny ("Castle True, Castle Bright! Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!" [ibid]). Plausibility -- even plausibility of Van Veen's peculiar sort -- is fraying at the seams; Van's heart just doesn't seem to be in this anymore. The book is almost over, and we know that Van and Ada will (at last!) be reunited by the end . . . but with so little of the book left, there is no hope that this reunion will be a romantic triumph rather than a shambling, perfunctory stumble across the finish line.

Given the significance of telephones in Ada, I'm inclined to think that Van's phone conversation with Lucette might be the very center of the book:

"No doubt he was morally right in using the first pretext at hand to keep her away from his bed; but he also knew, as a gentleman and an artist, that the lump of words he brought up was trite and cruel, and it was only because she could not accept him as being either, that she believed him: 'Mozhno pridti teper' (can I come now)?” asked Lucette. 'Ya ne odin (I’m not alone),' answered Van. A small pause followed; then she hung up." (491)

"I'm not alone" -- the lie that is at the root of all of Van's shame? It's this kind of thinking that leads me to my favorite theory of Ada: that Van only had one sister, who was basically Lucette. Ada Veen, Van's perfect double, is an invention made to justify statements like that "I'm not alone," when in reality Van is alone with only his shame over Lucette's death as company. ("Lucette" comes from "Lucile," the name of Chateaubriand's beloved sister. "Ada" is a palindrome, a mathematical contrivance, a mere mirror-flipping of the Vs in "Van Veen" -- and born from Van's torment ["of hell"].)

NOTES

"Professor Counterstone" (474) -- play on "Antiterra" (stone/earth).

"His gaze, traveling on, tripped over Dr. Ivan Veen and pulled up at the next name. What constricted his heart? Why did he pass his tongue over his thick lips? Empty formulas befitting the solemn novelists of former days who thought they could explain everything." (475) -- an interesting twist on the "old novels" motif. Ada as a whole presents itself as a man's self-conscious attempt to cram his life story into the conventions of "old novels," and now here is a detail that he feels he can't fit into the mold.

"Van interrupted Lucette’s nervous patter by asking her if her bath taps bore the same inscriptions as his: Hot Domestic, Cold Salt. Yes, she cried, Old Salt, Old Salzman, Ardent Chambermaid, Comatose Captain!" (477) -- huh?

"To most of the Tobakoff’s first-class passengers the afternoon of June 4, 1901, in the Atlantic, on the meridian of Iceland and the latitude of Ardis, seemed little conducive to open-air frolics: the fervor of its cobalt sky kept being cut by glacial gusts" (477) -- could be a reflection of the Antiterran climate getting colder at the latitude of Ardis. Then again, it could just be a cold day.

"Spring in Fialta and a torrid May on Minataor, the famous artificial island, had given a nectarine hue to her limbs" (477) -- "Spring in Fialta" is the title of a famous Nabokov story. Note also "Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up" (477).

"Van peeled off his jersey and stayed on for a while, brooding, fingering the little green-gemmed case with five Rosepetal cigarettes, trying to enjoy the heat of the platinum sun in its aura of “film-color” but only managing to fan, with every shiver and heave of the ship, the fire of evil temptation." (482) -- temptation here is "evil" . . . strange how normally dissolute Van hews to something like a moral principle in this one case, with no clear motivation and with disastrous consequences. Why?

"He discovered an insidious omission in his galleys where an entire line was wanting, with the vitiated paragraph looking, however, quite plausible -- to an automatic reader -- since the truncated end of one sentence, and the lower-case beginning of the other, now adjacent, fitted to form a syntactically correct passage" (484) -- since the book we are reading is an incompletely edited manuscript, the suggestion seems to be that this sort of insidious error might also be present in it. Maddening!

"had he not recollected (a recollection confirmed by his typescript) that at this point should have come a rather apt, all things considered, quotation: Insiste, anime meus, et adtende fortiter (courage, my soul and press on strongly)." (484) -- from Augustine's Confessions. Seems to underscore how out-of-character Van's stoicism is, since Van and Augustine are normally polar opposites in many respects (e.g. self-esteem).

"It’s crowded and gay down there, with a masturbating jazzband." (484) -- amusing nod to the origins of the word "jazz."

"As he gloomily looked at her thin bare shoulders, so mobile and tensile that one wondered if she could not cross them in front of her like stylized angel wings" (485) -- interesting parallel to Demon's wings. Remember that Lucette, unlike Van and Ada, doesn't have "demon blood."

"He could describe her dress only as struthious (if there existed copper-curled ostriches)" (486) -- struthious: "of or relating to the ostriches and related birds." You learn something new every day.

"Dolores, a dancing girl (lifted from Osberg’s novella, as was to be proved in the ensuing lawsuit)" (488) -- recall that on Antiterra, Osberg (anagram of Borges) is the author of a book that resembles Lolita.

One can probably a lot of interpretive mileage out of "Don Juan's Last Fling," the movie that Van and Lucette watch. Low-hanging fruit: is Van (rhymes with Don) himself sort of a combination of Don Juan and Don Quixote, like the protagonist of DJLF?

"In a series of sixty-year-old actions which now I can grind into extinction only by working on a succession of words until the rhythm is right, I, Van, retired to my bathroom, shut the door (it swung open at once, but then closed of its own accord)and using a temporary expedient less far-fetched than that hit upon by Father Sergius (who chops off the wrong member in Count Tolstoy’s famous anecdote), vigorously got rid of the prurient pressure as he had done the last time seventeen years ago." (490) -- both first and third person appear here in the same sentence, perhaps a sign of Van's state of agitation while writing this passage. I'm not sure what "succession of words" he's referring to. Is there a rhyme in this sentence or somewhere in the surrounding passages?

"He welcomed the thought which suddenly seemed so absolutely true, and new, and as lividly real as the slowly widening gap of the sitting room’s doorway, namely, that on the morrow (which was at least, and at best, seventy years away) he would explain to Lucette, as a philosopher and another girl’s brother, that he knew how agonizing and how absurd it was to put all one’s spiritual fortune on one physical fancy and that his plight closely resembled hers, but that he managed, after all, to live, to work, and not pine away because he refused to wreck her life with a brief affair and because Ada was still a child." (491) -- the similarity of Van and Lucette's situations is interesting. As an excuse for not becoming involved with Lucette, this is pretty transparently feeble, since Van is still so clearly invested in getting back together with Ada.

"At that point the surface of logic began to be affected by a ripple of sleep, but he sprang back into full consciousness at the sound of the telephone." (491) -- if Van invented Antiterra, then it's possible that stye presence of telephones (not dorophones!) at several important moments late in the book, such as this one, gave Van the idea that telephones should be banned in the earlier parts of the story. (Remember that telephones were banned on account of something called "the L disaster." It's now becoming quite clear what that "L" probably stands for.)

"No doubt he was morally right in using the first pretext at hand to keep her away from his bed; but he also knew, as a gentleman and an artist, that the lump of words he brought up was trite and cruel, and it was only because she could not accept him as being either, that she believed him: 'Mozhno pridti teper’ (can I come now)?' asked Lucette. 'Ya ne odin (I’m not alone),' answered Van." (491) -- seems like a crucial moment, perhaps the seed of the many earlier descriptions of Van and Ada's unique similarity, symmetry, etc. This shameful statement can perhaps be vindicated if Van is somehow always not alone, because of the very existence of his double/twin/soul mate.

"Dimanche. Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Tout le monde pue. Ma belle-mère avale son râtelier. Sa petite chienne" (493) -- Darkbloom: "Sunday. Lunch on thé grass. Everybody sticks. My mother-in-law swallows her dentures. Her little bitch, etc. After which, etc. (see p. 375, a painter's diary Lucette has been reading)" [my copy says 375, which by our pagination here should be around 479-80, but I'm not sure if that's right?]

"Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet" (493) -- "Violet" appears to be Van's typist. Their interactions have been typed verbatim in this passage -- why?

"As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude." (494) -- good sentence; cf. Van's "I'm not alone." Interesting and unnerving that Van has made up the experiences related here, since he can't possibly know Lucette's actual final thoughts.

"She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an unanalyzable brook" (494) -- reference to the brook scene in Part 1 Ch. 23. Of course the doll swept away by the current foreshadows the means of Lucette's death. Boyd, who seems to have taken that "unanalyzable" as a challenge, devotes much of The Place of Consciousness to the doll scene and its echoes.

"As a psychologist, I know the unsoundness of speculations as to whether Ophelia would not have drowned herself after all, without the help of a treacherous sliver, even if she had married her Voltemand." (497) -- the replacement of Hamlet by Voltemand (an ambassador and very minor character in Hamlet) is a reference to Van's use of Voltemand as a pseudonym.

"In other more deeply moral worlds than this pellet of muck, there might exist restraints, principles, transcendental consolations, and even a certain pride in making happy someone one does not really love; but on this planet Lucettes are doomed." (498) -- important for the Terra/Antiterra divide.

"Cher ami [etc.]" (499) -- the Darkbloom notes translate Cordula's entire letter (which is in French -- why?): "Dear friend, my husband and I, were deeply upset by the frightful news. It was to me - and this I'll always remember - that practically on the eve of her death the poor girl addressed herself to arrange things on the Tobakoff, which is always crowded and which from now on I'll never take again, slightly out of superstition and very much out of sympathy for gentle, tender Lucette. I had been so happy to do all I could, as somebody had told me that you would be there too. Actually, she said so herself; she seemed so joyful to spend a few days on the upper deck with her dear cousin! The psychology of suicide is a mystery that no scientist can explain. I have never shed so many tears, it almost makes me drop my pen. We return to Malbrook around mid-August. Yours ever." There is a very Nabokovian twist to the statement "the psychology of suicide is a mystery that no scientist can explain" -- it sounds like a banal commonplace at first, but in fact Van's inability to foresee Lucette's suicide is a major source of shame.

"[This letter] would not have been written at all if your last line, your cry of unhappiness, were not my cry of triumph." (500) -- the "last line" in question is "I cannot express, dear Van, how unhappy I am, the more so as we never learned in the arbors of Ardis that such unhappiness could exist." Why is this a "triumph" for Van? Simply because it is a restatement of the supposed Edenic innocence of Ardis?

"Artistically, and ardisiacally, the best moment is one of the last" (500) -- cf. the much more opaque "esthetically, ecstatically, Estotially speaking" (30).

"And o’er the summits of the Tacit / He, banned from Paradise, flew on: / Beneath him, like a brilliant’s facet, / Mount Peck with snows eternal shone." (502) -- Darkbloom: "parody of four lines in Lermontov's The Demon."

No clue what to make of the strange "Andrey Vaynlender" letter.

"Mont Roux" (508) -- a version of Montreux, the region of Switzerland where Nabokov lived while writing this novel. "Roux" means red, so this might be a Lucette reference?

"Vrubel’s wonderful picture of Father, those demented diamonds staring at me, painted into me." (509) -- refers to Vrubel's paintings of the titular figure from Lermontov's poem "Demon." (See e.g. "Demon Seated in a Garden.".) "Demented" resonates with the early identification of "Demon" as "a form of Demian or Dementius" (4).

"and on the opposite shore of Leman, Leman meaning Lover, loomed the crest of Sex (Scex) Noir, Black Rock." (509) -- cf. the first sentence of Part 1 Ch. 3: "The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of 'Terra,' are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans -- and not to grave men or gravemen." (17)

"A dead and dry hummingbird moth lay on the window ledge of the lavatory. Thank goodness, symbols did not exist either in dreams or in the life in between." (510) -- cf. "You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!" (530)

"His reply was inept, and the whole episode had a faint paramnesic tang—and next instant Van was shot dead from behind (such things happen, some tourists are very unbalanced) and stepped into his next phase of existence." (510) -- what the fuck? Perhaps Van is simply contending, in jest, that another meeting with Ada could not happen except in heaven and thus that he must be dead. But this is also another intimation of unreality, or potential reality, like the mention of "life forking" at the end of Part 2 and at the end of this chapter.

"cygneous" (511) -- "curved like the neck of a swan." Cf. Lucette's "struthious" dress.

"As Andrey’s crumpled forlorn face came closer, one could distinguish various wartlets and lumps, none of them, however, placed in the one-sided jaunty position of his kid sister’s naric codicil." (513) -- "naric": "of or relating to the nares [the pair of openings of the nose or nasal cavity]." So a "naric codicil" would be a sort of "supplement" to the nasal openings.

"During that dismal dinner (enlivened only by the sharlott and five bottles of Moët, out of which Van consumed more than three) he avoided looking at that part of Ada which is called “the face”—a vivid, divine, mysteriously shocking part, which, in that essential form, is rarely met with among human beings (pasty and warty marks do not count)." (516) -- good sentence.

"(A pause.)" (517) -- Darkbloom: "This and the whole conversation parody Chekhov's mannerisms."

"in my works, I try not to ‘explain’ anything, I merely describe." (519) -- perhaps applicable to Ada itself, Van's final "work."

"and then he pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the evening." (520) -- Darkbloom: "Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda's lover)."

"Somebody said, wheeling a table nearby: “It’s one of the Vane sisters,” and he awoke murmuring with professional appreciation the oneiric word-play combining his name and surname" (521) -- reference to "The Vane Sisters," a famous Nabokov story in which the first letters of the words in the final paragraph carry an acrostic message from the beyond.

"Rufomonticulus" (522) -- presumably the Latin name of Mont Roux.

"Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon." (523) -- cool sentence.

" 'Ne ricane pas!' exclaimed Ada. 'The poor, poor little man! How dare you sneer?' " (530) -- this whole exchange, though presented as a kind of tragic culmination of Van-Ada exchanges (e.g. with the recapitulation of the "Qui me rendra" stuff), seems oddly out-of-character: Van's lines are self-parodically Romantic while Ada's are unusually simple and banal.

"As had been peculiar to his nature even in the days of his youth, Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell." (530) -- good sentence!

" 'Castle True, Castle Bright!' he now cried, 'Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!' " (531) -- the Tree might be the Shattal Tree, or perhaps the tree that Ada stands with her back to in Part 1 Ch. 39 (p. 272), and which later forms an integral part of the agonizing image of her that Van carries away with him when he leaves Ardis in 1888. The Moth could be one of the various moths Ada enthuses about at Ardis in 1884, or the dead moth mentioned earlier in this chapter?

"Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet" (530) -- V&A's two summers in Ardis (1884 and 1888), their time in Manhattan, and now their rendezvous in Mont Roux.

"Ach, perestagne!" (530) -- intentionally or not, this provides a new variant: "Ach, perestagne" replaces "Et ma montagne" (138).

"Life forked and reforked." (531) -- this again.

11. And Much, Much More (Part 4 to Part 5, Chapter 6)

GENERAL REMARKS (Part 4 to Part 5, Ch. 6)

If Van Veen were to record a hip-hop album -- under the name "Mascodegama," of course -- it would be titled "The Texture of Rhyme." Possible subject matter: being the youngest Venutian, blinding Kim Beauharnais, the important difference between his own sick flow and the non-passage of Pure Time . . .

So now we've come to the end. There is all kinds of weird stuff going on Part 4 and Part 5. First we have Van's philosophical treatise (which espouses views very close to Nabokov's own and seems to have been intended as an attempt at serious philosophical writing, however silly much of it may strike me and various other readers). Then we have Part 6: a bizarre, at times rapturous but just as often petty and underwhelming account of Van and Ada's last years together.

What should we make of the fact that, faced with decades of romantic satisfaction to describe, Van tells us about the bodily annoyances of old age and the charms of his cute typist (and the "gipsy girl" next door)? Is he simply asserting that his and Ada's connection is ineffable, mystical, impossible to explain to non-Vaniadans? (Whereof Van cannot speak, thereof he must be silent? Ada's final line in Part 4 supports this interpretation, if we take the entirety of Part 5 to be the completion of her sentence "It is like -- ": Vaniadan experience is as ineffable as Time.) Or is Van giving up, pencilling in the very crudest sketch of a "happily ever after" ending that he knows is totally unconvincing? His suggestion that he has regained the earliest days of Ardis -- "Their life together responded antiphonally to their first summer in 1884" (574) -- is belied by the formal design of the novel, as Part 5 is the shortest of the Parts, the most sparing with detail. Time's arrow remains undefeated. How can he be so vague when describing recent months when he was so fantastically precise about stuff that happened when he was 14? Is this how memory really works? Surely not.

We are adrift. What on (anti-)earth did we just read? The hilarious ending, in which Van (?) imagines a blurb that sells Ada as a work of grand entertainment, simply underscores how far we are from anything resembling an ordinary novel. The text seems to be Van's attempt to squeeze his life story into the novel format (specifically, into the form of a big, dramatic Russian classic like Anna Karenina). There are numerous indications that he is willing to go to great lengths of invention. It is pretty much impossible to take the story straight; it continually pokes and prods the reader with its own implausibility, instability, inconsistency ("Abraham Milton / Milton Abraham / Lincoln"). In some tricky novels there is a clear "standard model" from which one can defiantly deviate (e.g., in Pale Fire, the various "Shade invented Kinbote or vice versa" theories are replacements for the basic interpretation of the book that any ordinary reader comes to, in which S and K are real, distinct people). Ada, by contrast, has no stable top layer -- and perhaps no bottom. As readers we have to figure out what in Van's story is real and what is invented. But to do so, we must speculate about the psychology of the "real Van" -- and that psychology will depend on our opinions about what is real and what is invented!

An ideal start for someone contemplating these problems is David Auerbach's blog post "Kinbote Triumphant in Hell: The Riddle of Nabokov’s Ada." It's where I've gotten a lot of my own ideas about the book, like the significance of Lucette's last call. I'll just quote a few paragraphs here:

I won’t attempt to figure out precisely what is real and what is not in the book because I don’t think I stand much of a chance, but I will make some broad guesses. I am inclined to be extremely skeptical of the mostly unchronicled decades of happiness with Ada, as well as of the success of Van’s book. The happier the events, the more dubious I am. The tragic events–Lucette’s death being the central one–most likely hold greater reality. Ada’s intrusions throughout, but especially at the end of the book, seem more likely to be a voice within Van, not an actual person. I think it highly unlikely that Van and Ada are ever happily reunited. Nabokov did not intend to redeem Van Veen through suffering, but particularly in the later novels, Nabokov’s rotten characters do tend to be spared any real happiness. I strongly suspect that to be the case here. The idyllic, hermetic, and very long Part 1 is a pastiche or a parody of the 19th century Russian novel. Inverting Tolstoy’s maxim turns it into a joke. Hence from the beginning Van is protecting himself and not being straight, and the offputting nature of the whole text is a reflection of Van’s solipsism. He is building a sealed coffin for himself that he intends no one to penetrate. He will avoid unpleasantness as much as possible, even at the cost of making himself unpleasant. With each subsequent section things get more miserable, the length gets shorter, and different strategies of avoidance are invoked. The late years of happiness with Ada are more likely years of self-torture, any success in love or life a delusion on Van’s part. By Part 4, he has abandoned plot in favor of mere allusions to wish-fulfillment and philosophical self-indulgence. At his supposed happiest he is least able to describe anything that happened to him.

(Auerbach ends up speculating that the text might actually have been written by Andrey Vinelander, which strikes me as almost uniquely unlikely . . . )

Ada is my favorite Nabokov novel, and probably tied for my favorite novel overall. In the end, it's one of the darkest and creepiest novels I've ever read, precisely because of the bottomlessness of its potential horror. Other books tell us about nasty characters and nasty situations; this one merely shows us a bunch of fanciful wishful thinking and leaves us to guess the real situation from which it is as escape (with plenty of suggestive references to hell, in case we need some general pointers). It is a closed system, standing securely upon its own head, self-contained, self-referential, self-possessed. There is a risk in this. The book is purely itself, and Van is purely himself, from the first page to the last. It does not provide a convenient ledge on which the author and reader can congregate and snicker at the far-off characters. It's written in third person (because that's how Van wrote it); there is no voice there untouched by Van's, no world untainted by Antiterra. As Auerbach puts it:

. . . we don’t see anything pushing back against Van Veen. All opposing forces tend to dissolve away sooner or later. The marshaling of fantasy to defy reality becomes a structuring principle of the book even to the point of alienating readers from it, lest they crack open Van’s coffin and discover his secrets. Where there is little reality, there is little sympathy to be had, hence the uninvolving nature of so many of the characters, not least Van himself. While Van puts up a good front to a point, ultimately he knows he’s not fooling anyone with his “happy family chronicle.” What starts off in Part 5 as the joyous introduction ends with solipsistic torment in a self-fashioned hell. And what better analogy for a solipsistic world than incest?

Or, as Martin Amis puts it, under the impression that he is criticizing the book rather than pointing out one of its design features:

And then, too, with Ada, there is something altogether alien – a sense of monstrous entitlement, of unbridled, head-in-air seigneurism. Morally, this is the world for which the twisted Humbert thirsts: a world where "nothing matters", and "everything is allowed".

But I love the closed system of Ada because it feels real, in the sense that it feels psychologically authentic. People really do create great systems of private associations like this; people really do neurotically rearrange and sanitize their memories like this. We all have it within us to fetishize the past like this, to take a few key moments and make of them an Ardis that exerts a grotesque influence on our lives -- one which ends up having less and less to do with real arbors or Adas. And when we do this it is not simple or straightforward; it is not pleasant to read about; it is the kind of convoluted, obsessive, opaque, obscure personal mythology that Auerbach calls "uninviting" and that we find all throughout Ada.

And of course the book is gorgeously written -- in a way that is often obscure but never feels obscurantist. I remember one reviewer saying that they enjoyed every sentence in Ada, even the ones they didn't understand; this seems to apply more generally to every aspect of the book. Even when I have no clue what he's doing, I never feel like Nabokov is just trying to fuck with me. Every element of the closed system is authentic, on the unique terms of that system.

The final words of the book are a characteristically brilliant flourish: Nabokov finishes off his hilarious parody of ad copy by repurposing an advertising cliche -- "and much, much more" -- so as to lend it a new meaning that is stunning, moving, and even terrifying in a sort of Lovecraft way. How many strange and unsettling details this book contains! How many the reader must undoubtedly have missed! (The blurb encourages the reader to go back and re-read.) This book teems. "And much, much more" -- too much! Too much!

To remind us that there's always (much, much) more to discover, I'll let the master have the final word -- and in the process claim "loathed" Van Veen as one of his "favorites" (?):

I wonder if there is really so much doom and "frustration" in my fiction? Humbert is frustrated, that’s obvious; some of my other villains are frustrated; police states are horribly frustrated in my novels and stories; but my favorite creatures, my resplendent characters -- in The Gift, in Invitation to a Beheading, in Ada, in Glory, et cetera– are victors in the long run. In fact I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel -- and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride.

(Nabokov, interviewed for Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1971)

(Okay, okay. One last thing from me. The book opens with the following note: "With the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Oranger, a few incidental figures, and some non-American citizens, all the persons mentioned by name in this book are dead. [Ed.]" Who are these "non-American citizens"? The phrasing seems to imply that they are not "incidental figures," yet I can't think of any characters of any importance, besides the Orangers, who might have outlived the Veens.)

NOTES

"novo-sapiens" (536) -- seems like it should be "novus-sapiens," but I guess Nabokov/Van wanted the similarity in sound.

"Man, in that sense, will never die, because there may never be a taxonomical point in his evolutionary progress that could be determined as the last stage of man in the cline turning him into Neohomo, or some horrible, throbbing slime." (536) -- reminiscent of the speculations about quasi-mystical future forms of mankind that were popular in science fiction at the time (e.g. in Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End").

"One can be a lover of Space and its possibilities: take, for example, speed, the smoothness and sword-swish of speed; the aquiline glory of ruling velocity; the joy cry of the curve; and one can be an amateur of Time, an epicure of duration. I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the very impalpability of its grayish gauze, in the coolness of its continuum." (537) -- nice passage.

"Aurelius Augustinus" (537) -- Saint Augustine, whose discussions of the conscious experience of time are similar to Van's.

"The direction of Time, the ardis of Time, one-way Time, here is something that looks useful to me one moment, but dwindles the next to the level of an illusion obscurely related to the mysteries of growth and gravitation." (538) -- and yet the directionality of time has been one of the main themes of the whole book. Van gives up the game when he uses the word "ardis." Maybe he doesn't intend irreversibility to fall within the scope of this treatise, but when that treatise is written as an account of his journey toward his final and lasting reunion with Ada, surely irreversibility can't be truly irrelevant . . . ?

"The irreversibility of Time (which is not heading anywhere in the first place) is a very parochial affair: had our organs and orgitrons not been asymmetrical, our view of Time might have been amphitheatric and altogether grand, like ragged night and jagged mountains around a small, twinkling, satisfied hamlet." (538-9) -- or, in cross-section, something like a "V" shape.

"But beware, anime meus, of the marcel wave of fashionable art; avoid the Proustian bed and the assassin pun (itself a suicide -- as those who know their Verlaine will note)." (540) -- a flurry of spurious references (Augustine, Proust, Procrustes, Verlaine) that seems intended to warn by example: puns and allusions will get you nowhere in this business, no matter how fun they are. Darkbloom: "assassin pun: a pun on pointe assassine (from a poem by Verlaine)."

"We, poor Spatians, are better adapted, in our three-dimensional Lacrimaval" (541) -- for "Lacrimaval" Google only turns up full text versions of Ada. Presumably it's a version of "Vale of Tears."

" 'Space is a swarming in the eyes, and Time a singing in the ears,' says John Shade, a modern poet, as quoted by an invented philosopher ('Martin Gardiner') in The Ambidextrous Universe, page 165." (542) -- an Antiterran reversal of the real fact that, on Terra, Martin Gardner (not "Gardiner" as in the text) quoted John Shade in his book The Ambidextrous Universe. The appearance of John Shade (invented poet from Pale Fire) as a real person in Antiterra is Nabokovian fan service along the same lines as Professor Pnin's cameo appearance at at the university in Pale Fire.

"Minkowski" (542) -- mathematician who contributed to special relativity and first introduced the modern/relativistic version of four-dimensional space-time.

"At this point, I suspect, I should say something about my attitude to 'Relativity.' It is not sympathetic. What many cosmogonists tend to accept as an objective truth is really the flaw inherent in mathematics which parades as truth." (543) -- astonishingly, Nabokov himself actually believed this. ("While not having much physics, I reject Einstein's slick formulae; but then one need not know theology to be an atheist." [1968 BBC interview]) Since he loved mimicry and other trickery in biology, it's surprising that he didn't see the same appeal in the way that the strangeness of relativistic space-time hides behind a nicely intuitive Newtonian veil until one gets close to light speed.

"Alice in the Camera Obscura" (547) -- seems to be a mixture of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Camera Obscura," the original title of the Nabokov novel usually called "Laughter in the Dark." Also an allusion to Kim taking pictures of Ada? Another example of shifting Antiterran names, since on p. 53 the Antiterran equivalent of Carroll's book was "Palace in Wonderland." (See also "Ada in Wonderland" [127], "Ada's Adventures in Adaland" [568] -- which leads us to conclude that Van is working from something like the actual earthly title, since where else could he have gotten that "Adventures" from?)

"Dr. Froid of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu" (549) -- compare to this from Ch. 3: "A Dr Froid, one of the administerial centaurs, who may have been an émigré brother with a passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes" (27).

"Now blows the wind of the Present at the top of the Past -- at the top of the passes I have been proud to reach in my life, the Umbrail, the Fluela, the Furka, of my clearest consciousness!" (549) -- as one might expect from context, these are all passes in Switzerland.

"Here they are, the two rocky ruin-crowned hills that I have retained for seventeen years in my mind with decalcomaniac romantic vividness" (551) -- "Decalcomania, from the French décalcomanie, is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. Today the shortened version is 'Decal'. " (Wikipedia)

"He transmitted by the new 'instantogram,' flashed to the Geneva airport, a message ending in the last word of her 1905 cable" (552) -- unless I'm missing something, the word is "rainbows"? (508)

"Now it so happened that she had never -- never, at least, in adult life -- spoken to him by phone; hence the phone had preserved the very essence, the bright vibration, of her vocal cords, the little 'leap' in her larynx, the laugh clinging to the contour of the phrase, as if afraid in girlish glee to slip off the quick words it rode." (555) -- another significant telephone call, and another possible source for the banning of telephones -- although this one isn't connected with the "L disaster" in any way I can discern, and the psychological motivation for inventing a ban on telephones would be less clear here.

"lucubratiuncula" (559) -- "The act of working by night; lucubration, nocturnal study, night work." (Wiktionary). Apparently it's a diminutive of another Latin word meaning the same thing? "A little night work"?

" 'To be' means to know one 'has been.' 'Not to be' implies the only 'new' kind of (sham) time: the future. I dismiss it. Life, love, libraries, have no future." (559) -- more Hamlet. Also, I wonder what Van's denial of the existence of the future (expressed here and earlier) has to do with the themes of the novel? Perhaps nothing: at various points in Parts 4 (like the irreversibility comments mentioned above), Van dismisses as irrelevant certain issues that are very relevant to the novel's story, as though Nabokov is trying to tell us that we're supposed to read this as an actual, serious philosophical treatise rather than a thinly veiled expression of personal anxieties. But then it's hard not to deem it significant that these thoughts about the future come right after Ada's departure . . .

"But the future remains aloof from our fancies and feelings. At every moment it is an infinity of branching possibilities." (560-1) -- more of the "forking" motif, though it's not clear to me what this claim has to do with Van's deadpan (though presumably? non-literal) descriptions of branching possibilities earlier in the book.

" 'I told him to turn,' she said, 'somewhere near Morzhey ('morses' or 'walruses,' a Russian pun on 'Morges' -- maybe a mermaid’s message). And you slept, you could sleep!' " (562) -- Darkbloom, uncharacteristically, points out something that should already be clear: "mermaid: allusion to Lucette." Boyd, in The Place of Consciousness, goes wild with this idea and claims that Lucette, acting from beyond the grave, actually told Ada to turn back. He would later espouse an analogous theory of Pale Fire. Yes, according to Brian Boyd that is the secret of both these books: when women commit suicide they come back as ghosts who send the protagonists helpful messages. I'm sorry, but I don't exactly find this kind of thing adds much to the books . . .

"My aim was to compose a kind of novella in the form of a treatise on the Texture of Time, an investigation of its veily substance, with illustrative metaphors gradually increasing, very gradually building up a logical love story, going from past to present, blossoming as a concrete story, and just as gradually reversing analogies and disintegrating again into bland abstraction." (563) -- I might be reckoning this wrong, but my impression is that Part 4 begins the process of "disintegrating again into bland abstraction" after Ada leaves, and the only thing that prevents Van's original plan from running to completion is the eucatastrophic final reunion.

"I wonder if the attempt to discover those things is worth the stained glass. We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time. Our senses are simply not meant to perceive it. It is like -- " (563) -- what is the significance of this? Is Ada completing the "reversal of analogies" by supplying her own analogy, hence completing Van's original plan after all (and thus reconfirming the fundamental unity between Van and Ada)? Is Nabokov inviting us to consider the whole of the following Part 5 as an account of something unknowable? ("It is like [Part 5]"? Or perhaps "it is like [the many years skipped between Parts 4 and 5]"?) IIRC, Look At The Harlequins! ends, with a dash, in the middle of a sentence of dialogue; I wonder if the same is true of some of the Nabokov novels or stories I haven't read.

"This Part Five is not meant as an epilogue; it is the true introduction of my ninety-seven percent true, and three percent likely, Ada or Ardor, a family chronicle." (567) -- interesting choice of proportions. Note how the notion of Part 5 as the "true introduction" works as an instance of the time-reversal motif, and also as a nod to Nabokov's idea that books can only be truly appreciated upon re-reading. Having reached the final Part of Ada or Ardor, the reader is finally ready to be "introduced" to it.

" 'matches the highest forms of human thought—pure mathematics & decipherment' (unpublished ad)." (567) -- though diminished by that "(unpublished ad)," this is an uncharacteristically -- and pleasingly -- positive reference to the pleasures of mathematics, about which Nabokov otherwise had little good to say.

"a spoonful of sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water that was sure to release three or four belches as big as the speech balloons in the “funnies” of his boyhood" (570) -- perhaps meant to recall "the Sunday supplement of a newspaper that had just begun to feature on its funnies page the now long defunct Goodnight Kids, Nicky and Pimpernella (sweet siblings who shared a narrow bed)" (5-6). There are a number of references in Part 5 to the very early sections of the book. The beginning and the end are one: the tips of the "V" or "A."

"the bedside light (a gurgling new surrogate -- real lammer having been forbidden again by 1930)" (572) -- another callback to the beginning: " the extremely elaborate and still very expensive hydrodynamic telephones and miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam sobach'im (Russian 'to the devil') with the banning of an unmentionable "lammer." (There Darkbloom glosses "lammer" as "allusion to electricity.") The re-banning of electricity is produces an A-D-A. (And now that the two significant telephones calls had passed, what purpose could it serve on Antiterra / in Van's story?)

"Their life together responded antiphonally to their first summer in 1884" (574) -- confirms what had been implicitly made clear.

"An overwhelming tenderness impelled him to kneel suddenly at her feet in dramatic yet utterly sincere attitudes, puzzling to anyone who might enter with a vacuum cleaner." (574) -- another instance of overly romantic corniness. These seem to cluster near the end of the book; it's hard to imagine young Van doing anything like this, even in his imagination.

"She was (and still is -- ten years later) an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump […..]" (576) -- it's not clear to me whether the editor has omitted something or is merely expressing, through indicated silence, his offense at this comment about his wife.

"she had supported for ten years her mother’s children from two marriages, besides laying aside [something]" (576) -- but apparently Ronald Oranger doesn't want us to know what. (What does this mean? Am I just being dense?)

"this strange, friendless, rather repulsive nonagenarian (cries of “no, no!” in lectorial, sororial, editorial brackets)." (577) -- strange: who did write this? And hasn't it been quite a long time since we saw a note from Ada? (If I'm not mistaken it was back in Part 2 Ch. 2, p. 338, about Letters From Terra: "I disagree, it’s a nice, nice little book! Ada’s note.")

"one of his last papers (1959) entitled The Farce of Group Therapy in Sexual Maladjustment" (577) -- a joke about the threesome scene.

"Ada, who amused herself by translating . . . John Shade into Russian and French" (577) -- John Shade on Antiterra again.

"E, p, i -- why 'y,' my dear?" (578) -- Darkbloom explains that this is Violet trying to spell the word "epistemic," which occurs earlier on this page.

"That work [The Texture of Time], she said, always reminded her, in some odd, delicate way, of the sun-and-shade games she used to play as a child in the secluded avenues of Ardis Park." (579) -- another callback to the beginning. Suggests that a certain appreciation for the subtle "texture" of conscious experience is a key part of V&A's connection to one another. (Remember Ada's towers/bridges system?)

"They found the historical background absurdly farfetched and considered starting legal proceedings against Vitry—not for having stolen the L.F.T. idea, but for having distorted Terrestrial politics as obtained by Van with such diligence and skill from extrasensorial sources and manic dreams." (581) -- and yet the account of earth history given here is much more accurate than the one that Van gives in LFT (described in Part 2 Ch. 2).

"in a flashback to a revolution in former France, an unfortunate extra, who played one of the under-executioners, got accidentally decapitated while pulling the comedian Steller, who played a reluctant king, into a guillotinable position" (581) -- this death, along with the scope of the project ("some said more than a million, others, half a million men and as many mirrors") link the LFT film with the real-life film Ben Hur.

"From the tremendous correspondence that piled up on Van’s desk during a few years of world fame, one gathered that thousands of more or less unbalanced people believed (so striking was the visual impact of the Vitry-Veen film) in the secret Government-concealed identity of Terra and Antiterra. Demonian reality dwindled to a casual illusion. Actually, we had passed through all that. Politicians, dubbed Old Felt and Uncle Joe in forgotten comics, had really existed. Tropical countries meant, not only Wild Nature Reserves but famine, and death, and ignorance, and shamans, and agents from distant Atomsk. Our world was, in fact, mid-twentieth-century. Terra convalesced after enduring the rack and the stake, the bullies and beasts that Germany inevitably generates when fulfilling her dreams of glory. Russian peasants and poets had not been transported to Estotiland, and the Barren Grounds, ages ago -- they were dying, at this very moment, in the slave camps of Tartary. Even the governor of France was not Charlie Chose, the suave nephew of Lord Goal, but a bad-tempered French general." (582) -- I'm sure CML would take me to task if I didn't point out that this is reminiscent of the Borges story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." It's also a huge moment of instability, and perhaps the most frustrating instance of the ambiguity between literal and figurative in Van's style (e.g. Demon's wings, forking time). Is Van merely saying that the dreams of Terra were surprisingly prophetic, and that Antiterra as of the 1960s is surprisingly similar to the Terra envisioned by patients in the late 19th century? Or is he simply giving up the whole game and declaring, with infuriating insouciance, that the whole story took place in the real world after all? (Incidentally, the period on Terra corresponding to V&A's last years on Antiterra would be . . . the 2010s, i.e., now. To channel C again: "Far out, man, far fuckin' out.")

"Recorded and replayed in their joint memory was their early preoccupation with the strange idea of death. . . . The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first amorous scenes. Hard but not insurmountable (I can do anything, I can tango and tap-dance on my fantastic hands)." (583-4) -- the presence of the concept of death even in the earliest parts of the book is here confirmed. (Compare to Van's attempt to disclaim this side of the story: "a book addressed to young laymen and lemans -- and not to grave men or gravemen" [17]).

" 'As lovers and siblings,' she cried, 'we have a double chance of being together in eternity, in terrarity' " (583) -- cf. this from p. 158: "I shall never love anybody in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go." "Terrenity" (unlike "terrarity") is a real word, meaning "Earthiness; worldliness."

"And I knew a girl called Adora, little thing in my last floramor. What makes me see that bit as the purest sanglot in the book?" (584) -- perhaps the fact that that scene was the first one Nabokov came up with for the book, as he revealed in an interview.

"And finally, there is the featureless pseudo-future, blank and black, an everlasting nonlastingness, the crowning paradox of our boxed brain’s eschatologies!" (585) -- good sentence!

"And if you land then on Terra Caelestis" (585) -- "caelestis" means "heavenly" or "celestial" in Latin. May be a reference to "Harmonia Caelestis" ("a cycle of 55 sacred cantatas attributed to the Hungarian composer Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha (1635–1713)" [Wikipedia])?

"She insisted that if there were no future, then one had the right of making up a future, and in that case one’s very own future did exist, insofar as one existed oneself. Eighty years quickly passed—a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern." (585) -- seems like a strong suggestion that Van's happy life with Ada is invented? (But of course Ada is saying this as a 12-year-old, and the "eighty years" here are the whole rest of the story.)

The lines given on p. 585 are indeed lines 569-572 of the poem "Pale Fire" (from the novel Pale Fire). I don't know what non-metrical significance the omission of the "boths" could have (claimed by imagined Freudians on p. 586).

"Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. That’s whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all right -- I would have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!" (586) -- what should we make of this acknowledgement? If V&A acknowledge their responsibility in Lucette's death, then why hasn't it had more of a footprint in the book? (Of course, it probably has, just covertly.)

"whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America -- for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams?" (588) -- a possible justification for the invention of Antiterra. Note the double meaning of "principle part" (also a grammatical term) -- part of a motif about how textual/verbal the Ada world is ("old novels," etc).

"Nothing in world literature, save maybe Count Tolstoy’s reminiscences, can vie in pure joyousness and Arcadian innocence with the 'Ardis' part of the book." (588) -- the reminiscences in question are presumably Tolstoy's "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth." Also, "innocence" is (at least in one sense) a hilarious word to use for the randy Veens.

"That the relationship is not simply dangerous cousinage, but possesses an aspect prohibited by law, is hinted in the very first pages." (588) -- I love the awkward, ugly language here: "possesses an aspect prohibited by law."

"Her tragic destiny constitutes one of the highlights of this delightful book." (588) -- the cloying cliche "tragic fate" seems to mock the intuitively appealing interpretation that Lucette's death is supposed to be the emotional climax of the book. This sentence itself parodies the awkwardness of trying to hawk fictional tragedy as an appealing experience -- "tragic" clashes with "highlights" and "delightful."

"It is interrupted by her marriage to an Arizonian cattle-breeder whose fabulous ancestor discovered our country." (588) -- more hilariously awkward/platitudinous language.

"They spend their old age traveling together and dwelling in the various villas, one lovelier than another, that Van has erected all over the Western Hemisphere." (588) -- the word "villa" and the innuendo in "erected" remind us of a different set of villas, the Villa Venus club.

"Not the least adornment of the chronicle is the delicacy of pictorial detail" (589) -- you can say that again.

"a pretty plaything stranded among the forget-me-nots of a brook" (589) -- Lucette's doll lost in the brook again ("the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an unanalyzable brook" [494]).

"and much, much more" (589) -- see above (in every sense!).

[keirmoonrock]

Top Five Behind the Scenes: The Name of the Shinigami King

Hey, so after drinking too much coffee and wondering whether or not it would make sense, I’ve decided to scream into the void purely for my own amusement and break down the given name of the Shinigami King I use in my Death Note fanfiction, Top Five! 

Full disclosure: I do not speak Japanese, my only experience is a year’s worth of Duolingo and listening to subbed anime... though I am going to start classes later this year. I am also no linguistic expert, and cite all of my sources from Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google... this isn’t meant to be super serious, just a look into one of the more interesting characters in my fanfic and how I named him/how his name would evolve linguistically.

So in Top Five, the Shinigami King or King of Death is only referred to in those titles, or otherwise by the direct integration of them into speech (ex. Your Majesty, His Majesty). However, it’s revealed during The Search in To The Generosity of Mr. Higuchi! that he does have a given name, the same way Rem is called Rem and not The Executioner, her official court title. His name is Siuja, though it enrages him to hear it outside of the play preformed by the other shinigami in that chapter, because it is associated with his inferiority under Izanami, who cursed him.

Real talk... my beta reader and I came up with a random string of syllables for his name after looking on FantasyNameGenerator.com, and that’s how I decided on Siuja, thinking it was at least adaptable to Japanese, and could pay homage to Siuja’s origin as a mythological creature, whose origin would have first been recorded using Chinese characters. From an uninformed, non-Chinese speaking American perspective, Siuja sounds like it could be pronounced in some dialect of Chinese, or otherwise grounded in an older dialect. 

So in modern day Japanese, the name Siuja would most likely be written and pronounced as シュジャ (Shu-ja), spelled in katakana... for now. The syllables shu and ja, however, are unique in katakana, because they require two symbols each. Shu is first written with the character shi ( シ) and then a smaller yu ( ュ ) to represent it is read as one syllable. The same is true of Ja, with a larger ji and smaller ya. Hold onto that! It comes back later! 

Why do I write it as Siuja, then? The real answer is, I didn’t start learning Japanese until after he was introduced... But my god-given talent is to take my mistakes and turn them into Top Five lore, so let’s go! 

Izanami no Mikoto’s exile of the shinigami from Yomi--the event recounted during the Search--is dated around 1000 A.D. in my Top Five timeline. I don’t quite remember why, but I’m sure at some point I did come up with an explanation for that year specifically... but Siuja was still pretty old when that happened, having been created early on in the Shinto canon, soon after Izanagi failed to rescue Izanami from Yomi. If the earliest recorded period of Japanese history, the Jomon Period, is considered to begin around 13,000 B.C., this means that Siuja was also created around this time. Today, it is unknown what language the people of the Jomon Period would have spoken, so unfortunately, I can’t seem to piece together what his original name might have been. 

Scholars believe, though, that the Japonic language family began to spread through Japan in the next period, the Yayoi Period, primarily dated from 300 B.C. - 300 A.D. The first attestation of what would become modern day Japanese, however, occurs in the 700s and 800s (both AD) with Old Japanese, so now I can try to construct my first iteration of the Shinigami King’s name.

In Old Japanese, some of the characters used for the modern day pronunciation of Shuja do not exist. For that reason, we’ll have to replace it with sounds that would have existed in Old Japanese. Remember how you held onto the unique spellings of shu and ja in katakana? Here’s where they come back: My guess from a solid 20 minutes of research is that the syllable si in Old Japanese later morphed into the modern shi, which is the basis of shu. Since no shi-based syllables existed in Old Japanese, we’ll start by splitting shu into the Old Japanese si and yu. For the ja syllable, however, we have a bigger problem: the j sound did not exist in old Japanese. Of the sounds that did, za probably sounds the most similar to ja, although it seems like this syllable was somewhat rare in the language, so I won’t use it. Again, based on ~no linguistic scholarship or knowledge~, I will therefore guess that the next closest usable sound would be ya... because in Early Middle Japanese ya seems to change to ja. This gives us the first iteration of Siuja’s name: Siyuya. 

Old Japanese was also written using Chinese characters, and so using the most common depictions of those syllables (according to the Wikipedia Page Old Japanese) , we can write it out as  斯 由 夜 . (fun fact, that ya character is the same used in Yagami in the series!) 

Without going through the intense linguistic guessing we did with Old Japanese, in Early Middle Japanese (app. 794-1185 AD) Siyuya actually changes to Si-u-ja! That’s right, for some reason it seems like the y syllables have disappeared, and j sounds have now taken root, which for some reason makes my made up name historically accurate to his period???? Katakana and Hiragana are invented in this time period, and Chinese character usage has changed, so it can now be spelled in one of three ways:  之 宇 也 (kanji),  し う や (hiragana), or  シ ウ ヤ (katakana).  The modern kana for y-sounds are also used to write j-sounds like ja, so it actually works out perfectly from Siyuya!

So this raises an interesting question: is the spelling of Siuja’s name in Top Five derived from this Early Middle Japanese pronunciation? I say... probably! By the time of the shinigami exile in 1000, these linguistic changes seem mostly possible! In the chapter Hearsay, Aiber mentions reading the Fuso Ryakuki, an account of Japanese history written in the 1100s. It mentions a plague spreading through Japan in the year 1002, implied to be the plague Siuja, Nu, and Armonia created to try to impress Izanami, which ultimately led to their exile. Much of the Fuso Ryakuki is lost, especially a section chronicling the Age of the Gods in Shintoism... I say it’s possible Siuja’s name may have first been written in those lost sections as Siuja, using one of the spellings above. 

Shinigami stories mostly appear during the 18th century in Japan, however, which is how I landed on 1600-1850 as the Golden Age of the Shinigami within the Shinigami Realm. Here, Siuja’s name may have been written much more frequently, influenced by the earlier spelling of Siuja to later become pronounced as Shuja. 

In short, because Siuja was first referred to in writing as Siuja, although to shinigami he is more likely known as Siyuya, his original name, this is the way it’s written in Top Five. 

Uhhhh what did we learn from this??? Sometimes you come up with something that manages to work out perfectly for the linguistics of your Death Note fanfiction without knowing it! I am genuinely baffled by this, I just wondered and ended up on a 2 hour rabbit hole finding this all out. 

There’s our next lesson... Keir is positively obsessed with their funny little Death Note AU and headcanons. 

If anyone is interested in more Top Five Behind the Scenes (which would genuinely be impressive, because this was a doozy that even I barely understand... and I’m the author), feel free to drop questions into my ask box, labelled Beseech Mine Humble Heart... I might also just make another post about random Top Five shit, if I think of fun stuff to share! Of course, I can’t spoil anything... but you can try ;)

[rappaccini]

arachnophobia ch4 notes

title

from "nobody's daughter", by hole

hole: another great grunge band of the 90s, fronted by courtney love, who is often remembered not for her achievements as an artist, but for being kurt cobain's wife. and is often blamed for his death.

nobody's daughter: this chapter's about gwen finally being fully disillusioned with the society and the man leading it, wanting out, and deciding to own her consequences. and, you know, rejecting miguel for trying to make her the replacement for his daughter.

rot is a bit of a motif for the gwens in this fic. so's drowning at the bottom of a body of water.

opening quote

from everything everywhere all at once, directed by daniels

this is the mentor-confrontation chapter. jess is aware that she's failing gwen, and has chosen to keep doing so and justify it. miguel has no fucking clue. and peter actually recognizes that he fucked up. the former two are the ones to watch out for.

jess

gwen is now a spider-gwen. we're halfway through the story, so it's time for her to embrace that distinction. and to use it to break apart her sense of closeness with jess.

we're at the bargaining stage of the seven stages of grief. this chapter is about gwen talking to three mentors who essentially hold her life in her hands, trying to see if she can come to terms with them, and concluding it isn't possible.

pav called jess. he's a nice kid who trusts the society, and being a friend of gwen's, he's probably had a lot of interactions with her. when he gets worried about gwen, he calls her foster mom.

and jess called miguel.

gwen saw jess as a mother from the moment she blurted out 'can you adopt me' in the guggenheim. she's a teenage girl whose own mother died when she was young, who's constantly searching for specifically female role models.

i've always really wondered about how nueva york feels about the tower of dimension-hopping spiders downtown. probably a lot of conspiracy theories.

gwen's spider-sense is reminding her of earth-65a's cindy moon and sue storm. more on this later.

jess is capable of genuine maternal concern towards gwen. she's just also capable of shutting it down.

jess did the bare minimum of not leaving a teenager alone with her dad while he's pointing a gun at her, and then proceeded to do nothing but neglect her after the fact. gwen has to sleep over at hobie's, so she hasn't even found this girl a place to stay.

in the comics, roxxon is the slimy energy corporation responsible for the spider that bit gwen. she was at a political protest against them when it happened.

timeline note: gwen's been at the society for seven-going-on-eight months, to atsv's five.

'the wrong spider-woman' ... subconsciously, gwen wants to speak to earth-8 gwen.

some jessicas do have pheromones. no clue if 332 jess does.

another important lesson for gwen to learn: not all women support each other simply on the basis of their gender.

jess's origin here is mostly fabrication. comics-jess's origin is honestly so convoluted it was difficult to make sense of. i kept the bit about her father experimenting on her to save her from an illness-- felt like a girl who spent her whole childhood in and out of hospitals would turn into a thrill-seeker once she's finally healthy. so in my mind, jess got the bike and put on the mask to make up for lost time.

and jess is often a spy or agent in her depictions; 332-jess still has those positive associations with the government, given how one of their projects saved her life.

332-gwen's the girl with cancer glimpsed in chapter 1.

jessica drew in the comics doesn't have a gwen; her existence here is all made up for the fic. the death needed to fit jess's hospital backstory, give her some level of agency in causing it, while still making it ultimately out of her control. ergo, jess gets the serum, gwen does not. and like any gwen death: jess does feel responsible, and gwen isn't even given any say in it.

"it was a mercy" girl no the fuck it wasn't.

jess is like any other spider-man, making her gwen's death the most important thing about her.

and jess's issues with gwen are also personal. she isn't the girl jess was best friends with, and she's not happy about it.

every time a gwen is saved by her spider, the narrative tends to sling some bullshit about how ~we would have been better off if she died~ -- so jess very much regrets taking gwen out of 65b.

there are so many different jessica drews. she's a difficult character to pin down because of it. makes you wonder what made miguel want a jess as his right hand, and what made this jess accept.

in my mind, it's that, apart from her preexisting sense of loyalty to shady government/policing structures, she wants that consistency he provides. she wants to be the definitive jess, so if she's in his inner circle, he'll be persuaded to adjust the narrative in her favor.

and jess can't see eye to eye with gwen. all jess wants is what gwen technically has-- a clear-cut purpose in the story that everyone agrees on and finds important. she can't relate to gwen resenting that purpose.

another callback to gwen's best female villains: they're women who want what she has. cindy moon in earth-65 created the radioactive spider and is angry that gwen got powers instead of her, and considers her unworthy of it. sue storm wants the fame and acclaim ghost-spider has as the biggest hero in nyc, and believes she's too ugly and problematic to have such a platform, so she blackmails her into fleeing the universe (... not that the comics ever follow up on that).

65b gwen's three and a half years into being spider-woman, yet she hasn't even had her identity revealed to her dad yet. by that time, 65a gwen had not only revealed it to her father, but been depowered, venomized, exposed, arrested and been to prison. gwen b's taking an oddly long time to meet her canon events.

her supporting cast is also smaller-- there's no harry osborn, for one. and there's no murdock to send the rhino to attack her dad, which is how her identity's exposed to him in the comics. had to point that out.

gwen b is much more... palatable than gwen a. she's a graceful dancer, not a clumsy bruiser. she's sixteen, not nineteen. she's level-headed, not temperamental. she loved her peter back and he died as a mistake; he wasn't a borderline incel who she beat to death. she's capable of infiltrating visions academy and fucking alchemax. she's strategic and level-headed, and doesn't go cracking nearly as many puns and burns or giving emotional speeches.

all of which probably make her more appealing to the society than her comics-alternative.

jess's goal was keeping gwen from slipping off that pedestal. she failed.

the captain gwen stacy is an invention for the fic. just felt like a permutation that'd show up.

jess's method of catching gwen is all in her words.

jess cares, but not enough. she'll tell gwen there are others like her, but won't protect her from miguel.... but she'll still act like she will to save face.

gwen needed a little closure with pav, even if it's just asking jess to let him know she's okay with him.

peter b

the society's fucking giant. probably an intimidation tactic.

peter b also knows-- i imagine the inner circle are all aware gwen's being sent home. he is not okay with it, and wants to get gwen's side of things.

he's also trying to be a dad here.

in the comics, gwen and peter-616 go for hot dogs. little nod to that too.

you really do have to wonder how pete responded to learning that all his exes formed a band and are dating each other.

and a hint of that spider-man entitlement bubbles up, assuming all the girls do is talk and write about him.

i assume peter b's dealt with clones in his world already.

i'm also guessing he's a stay at home dad, simply bc of how complicated having a baby who can wallcrawl would be.

peter b has to be the halfway point in this fic. he's the original peter who dropped gwen, the source of this death curse. and he's the first spider-man to acknowledge that he does not have the answers as to how to deal with this problem.

peter and miles are still in contact. so everything gwen says here WILL get back to him.

one of the central problems with miles and gwen as a couple in the comics is that the relationship is based on the idea of gwen avoiding her problems by attaching herself to a guy, and miles pursuing gwen because she's a way to assimilate into respectable spider-man-ness. their awful date issue happened during a time where marvel was just throwing peter's leftovers at miles to try and make him stick. his leftover villains and rewarmed plotlines. and his old girlfriend.

recontextualized here: miles's crush was genuine to start, but it was still shallow. he barely knows her! he had a year and a half to project anything he wanted onto her, so what IS left at this point except for the aesthetic of her, in his mind? and then when he gets to the society, all he hears is 'you have to be just like peter', so he puts two and two together, and decides that he should get with gwen simply because it'll make him a more legitimate spider-man.

1048 miles is from the insomniac games. that uncanny valley video game model style would undoubtedly creep the spiderverse-animation-style characters out.

another mention of venom: he's one of the central antagonists of the upcoming ps5 game, and venom's going to show up in this fic soon, so you need to keep being reminded of that name.

interesting that miguel centers his canon theory on peter parker's history. one has to wonder what motivated it-- my guess, there are more peter-spider-men than anyone else, so he assumes they're closer to the ideal.

and miles, in the movies, in the game, in the comics, is always held up in comparison to peter. one would think 1610b miles would learn that if he hung out with his alt selves.

gwen very much is peter's sloppy seconds. that's the whole problem with gwiles. it only exists to shove miles's story full of elements that are unique to peter, rather than letting him find his own. if miles and gwen get together, he's still trying to be like peter.

siat salt: the basis of comics-miles's attraction to gwen is that he thinks she's hot, he likes that she has powers, and he enjoys the way his friends react to him overselling their tepid romance. literally, comics-miles sees gwen as a prize.

movie miles at least has an emotional connection with her... but that's not enough to overcome the lack of time spent together, or all the pressure on him to be like peter. his feelings for her are sincere, but the relationship would always be poisoned by those external factors.

itsv salt: gwen, peter b and miles aren't an equal trio. it's miles, his mentor, and the girl who will be his love interest. it's a ninety degree angle, not a triangle. gwen and peter b do not have a deep connection. they behave like coworkers, not friends.

during itsv, why is peter treating a 15-year-old girl like she's an adult when he's mentoring a 14-year-old boy so carefully?

and since gwen landed 'last week' how exactly was she not glitching harder than peter, who was only there for a few days?

... and where was she sleeping during that time? visions is a boarding school so crowded miles had to win a lottery to get in-- there aren't any beds available.

and why was she even at visions? miles wasn't even bitten yet. and there was a spider-hero with her exact powers, who she had days to reach out to, and didn't. because she was just hanging around a middle school for no reason.

(the reason: the writers wanted to set her up as miles's love interest. that's the entire purpose of her presence in itsv.)

and how does gwen not mention or seem affected by ripeter's death? he's a second peter parker who died on her watch, and this one was a spider like her, who she had all the time to reach out to.

it'd have made far more sense if gwen is introduced at the collider, collaborating with spider-man and trying to get home, but failing.

anyway. peter b absolutely failed gwen. he did not protect or mentor her in itsv, or after she joined the society. he's complicit in all the shit miguel and jess were doing to her. it had to be brought up.

and here, peter b realizes he fucked up.

the first gwen stacy hated spider-man. spider-gwen deserves that too.

peter ii

(general salt about spider-gwen in general: literally the moment she was created-- the second gwen stacy was alive, had powers and her own world and story-- all the writers and fandom could imagine for her was "which man can she belong to" and they got to work throwing versions of spider-man at her. the one that stuck was miles, not because they were a good match, but because he was the one who babytrapped her in an alternate future. so from day 1, people still saw spider-gwen's 'purpose' as 'spider-man's future babymaker.' they never changed their view of gwen stacy, or questioned what harm that perception of her did to the original. imagine sexism rotting your brain that much. imagine being that fucking stupid.)

(imagine being one of the spiderverse writers, reading the earth-8 shipping episode, and thinking "what if you fall in love with boy #2 instead of boy #1, and if you're really loyal to him, then we won't kill you!" is a stunning twist instead of an insulting step backwards for a character who'd already escaped her narrative.)

(gwen, miles and peter are a trio in the comics, in large part because of synergy with these movies. it never made sense that spider-gwen wanted to be their friend, when all they fucking do is objectify and hit on her. the comic hierarchy will never let her call them on their shit or be angry at them. at least in this fic, she gets to say she hates it.)

"it's okay to be selfish" is right out of the comics. issue 4 of seanan mcguire's ghost-spider run. one of the most touching modern peter parker moments in years.

applied here to a peter who's been spider-man for almost thirty years, who has a family now, it's even more crucial. finding that balance is why he was able to last.

movie salt: a girl who keeps being ordered to give up her life and autonomy to serve the story of a guy discovering that she deserves to be selfish is essential. it's far more revolutionary and genre-busting than 'i should continue to be selfless, but this time For Miles instead of For Peter'

spider-man blue is an amazing comic about peter's connection to gwen. i read it to prep for this section and can't recommend it enough. that's where peter having a box of her stuff in his attic comes from.

it was the consensus of the writers of the original comics that mary jane was the better love interest than gwen. the plan was originally for peter and gwen to remain together, but the second mj appeared, they knew it was over and needed an excuse to get rid of her. her personality was a bigger hit with readers.

the tragedy of peter and gwen isn't that they didn't end up together-- it's that they didn't get to drift apart on their own terms.

peter b tells the truth: in chapter 1, he lied about his gwen being passed out to shield gwen from the uglier details. here, he's finally ready to admit what actually happened.

and he's the first spider-man (apart from hobie) who understands that gwen wants to know who his gwen was while she was alive.

616 gwen's defining feature isn't that she's pretty, though she is. it's that she's smart. she was as smart as peter, and she was a deeply kind girl who cared deeply about her friends and family. (she was also slightly bitchy at times, fwiw) and she was the one who decided to return to new york; peter didn't make her.

65 gwen IS a lot like her-- but here peter stops himself. because it shouldn't matter if they're similar. 65 gwen should be her own person too.

peter b's dad instincts finally function, and recognize gwen as one of His Kids. however, if he prevents gwen from going into this confrontation or tries to go in with her, then it's about him redeeming himself as a father figure and not her growing. it had to be shut down.

everything gwen tells peter will get back to miles.

peter b's hug is another bookend on chapter 1. now he actually holds her like she's alive, and like she's his kid.

in general, during this chapter, i was trying to walk the line of gwen being on the verge of turning into a supervillain, and being pulled back from the edge by this conversation with peter. if he had not been here, if he had not figured his shit out and therefore shown her it's possible for spider-people to change, she would probably have fully disowned all the other spiders. she would never give miles the chance to apologize to her. the eventual council of spider-women would have become the isolationist group it is in the comics, she would not help miles save 1610 from the spot, and she would never have answered pav's call.

(and while we're on that topic, there's a version of this fic where gwen went full villain in chapter 3. she fully snapped and killed pav, snatched a watch from hq on her own, and made the council an organization who actively kill other spider-people to protect their dimensions' gwen stacys. i almost wrote that fic instead, but it ended up being this instead. i didn't end up writing it because it was too depressing, and because after further thinking, i figured hobie's relationship with gwen is what stopped that future from happening: she had someone taking care of her, giving her somewhere semi-stable to stay, and validating all her anger-- and therefore gwen goes into her breakdown with an understanding that it IS possible for spiders to do better.)

miguel

gwen knows she's getting sent home. she just wants to see if she can get the spider-gwen info out of him and get him to let gayatri live.

she accidentally gave him the idea to use alternate gwens as placeholders. that's coming back.

gwen's death is the backbone of the multiverse. so many alternates and what-ifs exist around her death.

the first thing miguel does in atsv is fuck up a canon event scenario-- the captain's death.

how isn't gwen the original anomaly. if gwen's death is a canon event, and there's a spider-gwen running around two years before the collider exploded, something's fishy.

fandom salt: gwen is capable of thinking and feeling and doing things that don't involve miles

offscreen miles activity: his dad's captain, and projected to die soon. he's flipping his shit. someone told him about his anomaly status and earth-42, and he's catching on that this is bullshit too.

miles's arc in atsv is perfect. i wanted to preserve it, even if it's happening offscreen and slower, and without gwen.

margo and peter b are taking on that role here.

sorry movies, but gwen and miles's relationship can't break canon. it reinforces the idea that gwen can only be spider-man's girlfriend, and that miles has to be like peter parker.

hence why miguel's invested in it. the two loose ends are tied up.

on gwen's end, if she marries miles and has kids with him, the subversiveness of her story dies. she'll never be allowed to leave his shadow again and any attempt to do so will be demonized.

the married-with-kids ending for gwiles turns her into an object to make a man more impressive. the spider-man who saves his gwen, keeps her alive and reproduces with her is the most special one, after all. it's not about her. it's about him and his legacy. anyone who wants that ending for gwen is either naive to its consequences for her, totally indifferent to it, or they DO know, and part of the appeal of this outcome is taking an independent woman, clipping her wings, and turning her into a trophy.

(miles is the first. miguel is the latter.)

earth-8 gwen is presented in canon as one of the Best Outcomes for gwen. which, to the men who wrote that storyline, no. gwen's a queer punk girl who wants to play the drums, not get married, pump out a nuclear family and become a supercop. she loves her world so much that abandoning it would break her heart. it's not a perfect future for 65 gwen, it's a miserable one.

fic-gwen has just put that together. her first impulse was to hate gwen-8 because she assumed she's complicit in trying to force gwen to be like her. now she's putting together that she's also a victim to this larger system.

there are plenty of alt-spider gwens, but not very many with any distinguishing features. five were chosen to be featured here:

trn457: ultimate cartoon-- this gwen's a young teen who makes herself a hero with tech from her dad's robocop line, choosing to be a hero even when miles already is one, and not doing so to be his sidekick or partner.

trn684: marvel rising cartoon. a diet comics gwen, aged down for the grade schoolers her show is aimed at. she's a drummer, with a skimpier design, bolder hair, and this gwen, like movies-gwen didn't kill her male best friend (a... kevin), but is assumed to by the cops. she also has gliders!

trn-18157: the marvel action comics, aimed at younger readers, where gwen is one of a plucky reporter trio trio with miles and peter. just friends! imagine that!

trn-17628, marvel spider-man 2017 cartoon. peter, miles, gwen and anya are classmates at a school for genius teens who become spiders together. gwen and anya have a gay vibe here.

earth-8311. spider-guin. the pun is great. gwen still being flightless is hilarious.

atsv gwen's penguin stuffed animal is a reference to her. and that her pink hair's a nod to her marvel rising counterpart.

all the spider-gwens, despite being from separate canons, affect each other. gwen has pink hair because marvel rising gwen did. gwen's a drummer from e65 who lost peter because comics gwen is.... and because movie-gwen is being made into miles's girlfriend, other versions of spider-gwen will probably follow suit. synergy.

which is why the girlfriendification of gwen in these movies is so awful. it's going to spread.

marvel action and msm17 gwen were chosen specifically to show that it isn't required for gwen to be spider-man's girlfriend. it was always possible for her to be just friends with miles and peter.

gwen is a symbol to the society. look at how great we are, we even raised gwen from the dead and made her one of us. and her presence makes miguel seem all the more special for being the one who did it.

the vibe between gwen and miguel is murky and fascinating. he keeps her close but treats her poorly. her father was redesigned for the movie to look more like miguel, whose defining death is now his daughter, whose name starts with a g. he is very much her father figure.

yet there are also miguels who are romantically involved with their gwens. earth-187319 is real. points for gwen for literally choosing to incinerate herself instead of date him.

like peter b, gwen exists for miguel in this gray area between daughter and girlfriend. unlike peter b, miguel can't or won't recognize gwen as her own unique entity. i think even he isn't totally sure what to do with gwen; he's using her as a gabi-replacement goldfish, but he's also very aware of other miguels whose gwens served a different role... and that dating gwen is considered superior to being her dad in canon. and he wants to be the best.

in my mind, he's on the verge of crossing that line. makes for eerier interactions.

at the end of the day, miguel's not a father, he's a patriarch. total control over young women's intimate autonomy is the name of the game. and choosing a mate for her that reminds him of himself... yeah there's a lot of emotional incest there to unpack.

miguel's fixation on forcing gwiles is also a dig at the writers/fandom. you want gwen to fuck the guy that reminds you of you so bad.

adherence to canon is slowly wrecking miguel too. everyone is a victim.

perfect gwen of earth-8 is what a male writer would think is the ideal future for gwen stacy. it's what a father would want for his daughter: for her to grow up pretty, smart, polite, enter a respectable job and surround herself with respectable people. for her to marry and have the right number of kids with the safe boy he approves of, who won't challenge the status quo.

so though perfect gwen has a lot to offer the society, she's really here to be an ideal for gwen to strive towards. there's nothing scarier for a father than watching his daughter grow up and become a complicated, flawed adult. or for a man who thinks he owns his girlfriend to watch her move on without him.

especially watching her seek out romantic and sexual connections he doesn't approve of.

being the daughter archetype doesn't give you any more freedom or protection than being the lover.

miguel only thinks gwen's special because he's the one that protected her. it's still all about him.

and of COURSE the way gwen's punished in atsv is being sent to another male figure for punishment. it's always about which man is currently in control of gwen.

comic-gwen's most effective male villains are men who want to control, influence and own her or punish her for not using her power (... her body) in ways they approve of. just like in the comics, gwen is pressed into joining a shady organization led by a man whose name starts with the letter m (miguel, murdock) who holds her power at arms length unless she performs services for him, and has a skeevy vibe with her.

and yes, comics gwen beat the shit out of him.

'gwen yeets miguel' was the only note i had for this section in my outline.

the one person who'll do something about gwen's death is hobie.

bringing back the red. and a mention of something dangerous. that's coming back too.

punching up is the answer. she's finally figured that out.

she's on her way to hobie.

another serendipitous moment: if 616 gwen stayed in london, she'd have survived. and look at that, along comes a londoner spider-man who's the only one working to secure her freedom, and who wants her to have self-definition and agency. it's too perfect.

closer quote

from jason latour's radioactive spider-gwen. this is the moment gwen-617 calls the watcher on his shit for trying to force 65 gwen to be with miles to produce the earth-8 timeline, for mocking her female supporting cast, for being angry that getting venomized didn't turn gwen into a villain. in short, for demanding she fit into a neat little box instead of become her own character.

and in context here, it refers to miguel, not being able to handle the thought of a gwen not fitting into her preconceived box.

[davidmann95]

Shared on Twitter, sharing here too: a compilation I put together of nearly 100 sketches from the abandoned Alan Moore/Rick Veitch project Superverse that the latter posted to Facebook.

Background for those who didn't hear anything about it: Alan Moore has a collection of short stories titled Illuminations releasing later this year, with one chapter apparently constituting a novella in itself called What We Can Know About Thunderman, which "charts the surreal and Kafkaesque history of the comics industry over the last seventy-five years through several sometimes-naive and sometimes-maniacal people rising and falling on its career ladders...Moore reveals the dark, beating heart of the superhero business".

This called attention to a sketch Rick Veitch had posted last year without much notice of a character named Thunderman, perhaps a notion carried over into Illuminations, from the scrapped project titled Superverse. It turns out he spoke quite a bit about it: it was a project he described as covering the whole of superheroic history, "like 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' but with long underwear guys," with Thunderman and his counterpart Thundergirl meant to be siblings sent from their presumably-doomed world to parallel Earths and unaware of one another's existence.

It was of all things meant to tie into Moore's film The Show, with in-universe comics appearing in it (probably somehow via the film's 'superhero' supporting character The Flash Avenger) which Veitch and Moore would have actually made, each essentially promoting the other. This was conceived of roughly 8-9 years before Veitch originally decided to start rounding up his assorted character designs and posting them to Facebook, and he alluded to part of why it fell through being due to some outside funding being cut off. There were no formal scripts or plot outlines, these sketches were purely spawned from conversations between Moore and Veitch and apparently there were ideas for a couple hundred more characters before the plug was pulled.

A loss for the medium for sure, as evidenced by the remarkable flair and cleverness on display in the linked album above, but keep in mind two things to ease your soul:

* Moore would have been forced to give even more interviews about superheroes than he already does, and the man's miserable enough having to talk about them once or twice a year.

* Given Moore's notorious apparent fondness for Superfolks, the imagery of the two evoking the Silver Age Superman/Supergirl with all the memetic weirdness their relationship occasionally brought about, and that it's specifically noted they didn't know they were siblings, Thundergirl and Thunderman absolutely would have fucked, so we dodged that bullet.

[stillness-in-green]

No, Re-Destro Is Not Destro’s Literal Son

and

Yes, I Will Die On This Hill

I have a number of small, persistent quibbles with some of the widespread misapprehensions I see included in BNHA fanfic, quoted as fact in meta posts, even cited on the wiki. Quirk cancellation restraints, what the 20% quirklessness data point means in practice, when Kurogiri comes into existence relative to the time of the Shimura Family Massacre, things like that. My biggest one, though, is as the title suggests: the idea that Yotsubashi Rikiya is Yotsubashi Chikara’s son.

I don’t entirely know where this confusion comes from. As far as I can tell, the early scanlations didn’t get it wrong—one rendered the line in Chapter 218 about Destro having a child he didn’t know about as being children, plural, but otherwise, they were all accurate enough. It seems people just assumed that the child mentioned in 218 must be Re-Destro, who was, after all, right there on the panel. Even though the scanlations never said it, even though the official translation never said it, even though ample evidence in the manga disproves it, the idea still got around that Rikiya is Chikara’s son.

I have and will maintain that this is obviously wrong if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but unfortunately, most people don’t. The error can be found on less well-tended parts of the fandom wiki[1]; it’s in tumblr meta posts about the villains; it’s in fanfic.

And now, god help me, it is on the official anime website, too.

“Stillness-in-green, maybe you should consider that you might just be wro—”

I will face BONES and walk backwards into hell.

But if you want, you can come with me, and I’ll explain on the way. Hit the jump.

Dialogue + Narration

There are two places where the relationship between Chikara and Rikiya is explicitly addressed—the lead-in to the dinner scene in Chapter 218 and the fight between Clone!Shigaraki and RD in Chapter 232. If you include the Ultra Analysis databook, the number goes up to four: once each in Re-Destro and Destro Classic’s character blurbs.

Let’s take a look at each of those places, shall we?

The relevant Japanese text here is in the first narration box: 子ども, kodomo.

Kodomo is not gendered. It literally just means child. The key kanji is 子, ko. Like most kanji, it has a lot of potential readings, and you can add other kanji to it to modify it. Add 息 and you get musuko, son. Pronounce 子 as shi instead of ko, and you get a term that is frequently, though not exclusively, used to refer to boys. Add 女 to that reading and you get joshi, woman/girl. 子 is in a lot of words, many of them gendered! Used for kodomo as Hori does here, though, it does nothing to indicate a gender one way or the other.

Also too, it does nothing to indicate that Rikiya is the child in question; it simply states that there was such a child, somewhere in the world. Now, the natural assumption for anyone who knows how the graphic novel medium works and who understands basic literary analysis would be that the significant character we just met is, in fact, the child in question—except that everything else we learn about Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army here makes it entirely impossible.

I’ll do a full breakdown on why that is in the next section. In the meantime, here’s the next reference:

Here, we’re looking at the phrase the Viz translation renders as, “His blood runs through these veins.” The literal Japanese there is, Desutoro no matsuei chi o tsugu mono! In a literal translation, chi o tsugu mono means, “one who inherits the blood,” or, more loosely, “blood successor.” It’s matsuei—末裔—that’s the key word here.

Japanese has several words to express the concept of “descendant.” Matsuei is one word; the data book uses shison. So what’s the difference? Well, I’ll talk about shison in a moment, but I had an inkling of it just from looking at the kanji in matsuei—“end” and “descendant” respectively, leaving me with an impression of something like a final descendant or the terminus of the bloodline. Further research confirmed it: shison can refer to any lineal blood tie, but matsuei refers to a bloodline’s final inheritor, the person at the end of a long line of many, or even countless, generations. It’s the difference between being able to point to a grandparent and the kind of painstaking genealogical research that lets you[2] point to a famous royal from eight hundred years ago—matsuei is a word that very much assumes the existence of those countless generations.

So not only does Rikiya’s line there not imply that he’s Chikara’s son, but his specific word choice also tells us that he cannot be Chikara’s son. That’s, uh. Pretty conclusive, I would say.

Lastly, though, there’s also the data book. This is, perhaps, the actual closest you’re going to get to a manga equivalent of those character blurbs on the anime website, at least until such time as Hori deigns to give the MLA types character profile pages. (I live ever in hope.)

There are two relevant bits of text, one in Re-Destro’s entry, and the other in Destro Classic’s. The first describes how Re-Destro organizes the MLA as Desutoro no chi o tsugu mono: the same phrase he uses for himself in the manga, minus the matsuei. @codenamesazanka (the one who told me about the databook references among other citations, bless) rendered it as “Destro’s blood successor”; I have also seen it given as “the successor of Destro’s bloodline.” Note again, the lack of reference to a father/son bond.

Chikara’s entry uses that other descendant word I mentioned before, 子孫, shison. Notice that the term uses that ko kanji from kodomo before? As it does in joshi, 子 here reads shi. The other kanji, 孫, means grandchild. Thus, literally, grandchild-child—or, in the vernacular, simply descendant.

And then we have the anime website.

So, for comparison’s sake, the anime website uses 息子—the same combination of kanji that I said earlier gives you musuko, son. Heck, it even uses 父, chichi, for Destro—father. It’s as explicit as it’s possible to be, and I just don’t know why or how the anime website could fuck that up so bad when absolutely nothing in the manga describes the two Yotsubashis that way, and, indeed, one specific word choice actually rules out the possibility.

So, that’s all the manga says directly. It’s not the only evidence there is, though. In fact, the next piece makes it even more clear how colossally and impossibly wrong a father/son connection for Destro and his modern successor is.

Timeline

The long and short of this section is, “Since Harima Oji was Sako Atsuhiro’s great-great-grandfather, there is no possible way that Destro—who pre-dated Harima—can be Re-Destro’s father.” If you read that sentence and nodded your complete understanding and agreement, feel free to skip ahead to the last section. If you’d like the full explanation it takes to reach that sentence’s conclusion, though, read on.

So, aside from the word matsuei, the timeline is the most telling piece of evidence to my eye. I address it secondly rather than firstly because it’s less direct than the explicit narration; it relies on drawing conclusions based on things we’ve been told elsewhere rather than on the immediately relevant text. Oh, Mr. Compress’s relationship to Harima is explicit enough, but on what am I basing my claim that Destro predates him?

Regarding that, there’s no explicit year relative to My Hero Academia’s current events given for when Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army were active; the same is true for Harima Oji’s escapades. However, we are given some broad-strokes information, relative not to current events, but rather to the history of heroism as a legal institution in Japan.

We know that there was a widespread, lengthy period of chaos following the rise of quirks—called meta-abilities in those early years. At some point, however, people began to search for a way for meta-humans to live in peace with non-metas. The compromise that was reached was the foundation of professional heroism in Japan—while the use of meta-abilities would be legal in private settings, it was only by becoming licensed by the state as “heroes” that people could use their quirks in public.[3]

The legislation curtailing the use of meta-abilities—and the appropriation of a dead woman’s language to popularize a law establishing exactly the opposite of what she used that language to call for—is what catalyzed the rise of the original MLA. Thus, we can position Destro as being alive and active around the same time that heroism as a legal institution was being formed. Since we further know that he committed suicide in prison, we can assume that his child was conceived at some point prior to his capture. Ergo, Destro’s child, were they alive today, would be as old as Japanese professional heroism itself.

Next, consider Harima Oji, the Peerless Thief, a criminal who targeted the riches of “sham heroes.” We’re specifically told that he was active in the days in which the current system was settling into place—e.g. he only became active once the Hero System was established enough to have produced corrupt heroes. We’re told he preached reformation—he wasn’t just some pre-existing criminal who saw a shiny new target in heroes; he had specific grievances which he wanted addressed by the system, and which the system was not addressing.

The earliest Harima could possibly be active, then, is concurrent with Destro—Harima fighting against the corrupt people who had found their way into the new heroic institution, and Destro fighting against using the institution of heroism to oppress non-heroes. What I think is more likely, though, is that Harima came after Destro—Harima needed to have had time to realize what kinds of fakes had been drawn to this shiny new career path, maybe even to spend some time trying to change things the legal way.

I don’t suspect they were separated by very long—I would imagine Destro was easily within Harima’s living memory, and might well have influenced why he chose the path of protest that he did—but I do think they were separate.

Moving forward, then, Mr. Compress is four generations distant from his famous ancestor. Thus, even if you assume that Harima is of the same generation as Chikara, that’s what you’re looking at for Chikara’s child: someone who, were they alive today, would be old enough to be the great-grandparent of a thirty-two-year-old man.

Re-Destro’s probably a few years older than Mr. C, sure,[4] but that man doesn’t have Ujiko’s slow-aging quirk. Unless you want to start pulling theories about cryogenic stasis the story for some reason never saw fit to mention out of thin air, Re-Destro is in no way old enough to fit the bill.

This is backed up by one other piece of the timeline as well, and one more place we can look at language:

The small child at the center of the image is Rikiya, so young that he’s in schoolboy shorts for a meeting otherwise so formal that he’s been made to wear a tie. He’s, what, six to nine here, tops? And the adults speaking to him say that they’ve been in hiding for generations—代々, daidai, the kanji for generation followed by a kanji that just means, “See that kanji written right before me? Yeah, just read that one again.”

The original MLA was active for only a handful of years, and, per Chapter 218, they didn’t dissolve until Destro was captured. Thus, we can assume they have been in hiding since then, but not before then. With that in mind, this is another line that renders a father/son relationship impossible.

Remember, Chikara already had a child in the world circa his capture. If Rikiya were Chikara’s son, then Destro’s capture and his army’s subsequent dissolution could not have happened any farther back than nine months plus however old Rikiya was in this exact moment of his youth. Rikiya, who we see here as a child of less than ten.

Ten years in hiding doesn’t make one generation; it damn sure doesn’t make multiple ones.

Now, you could make theories about cryogenic statis that would explain this ludicrous discrepancy, sure. You could also theorize about e.g. artificial insemination,[5] or time stop quirks, or any number of other possibilities in the vast panoply the HeroAca world offers. The point is, though, that you don’t need to. There was, in the manga, no discrepancy that needed to be explained. It is only fanon misinterpretation and a glaring disinterest in the series’ villains from official sources that have presented this issue.

I’m praying that it’s all just a misunderstanding on the part of whoever maintains the website, and that the anime itself will render the relevant bits of dialogue correctly. Given the extreme cuts and alterations that My Villain Academia has been subjected to thus far, though, I’m sure you can appreciate my being concerned.

…So that’s the meat of it. The idea that Rikiya is Chikara’s son is wrong simply on the basis of what’s said in the text, and it’s doubly wrong on the basis of the timeline. There is, though, one other thing I think points towards Re-Destro being exactly the descendant he says he is, not a son playing down the connection out of humility or something. This one is a lot more headcanon-y, though, so I saved it for last.

MLA Social Dynamics

It’s quite simple. We have, in the MLA, a group of people that venerates Destro’s bloodline to an obviously unhealthy degree, putting up portraits of him wherever they can get away with it, tagging his successor with a “Re-” as if to invoke reincarnation or miraculous return, entirely willing to throw their lives away for what they think was his cause, and others’ lives if those others say anything too scathing about the words Destro wrote, quite as if they treat Destro’s memoir as some sort of holy writ.

They venerate Destro that much, and you’re trying to tell me that they wouldn’t just call a spade a spade and acknowledge RD as the son of their great leader? Come on.

Since long before I turned up the matsuei factoid in researching this piece, since long before Mr. Compress gave us such a helpful generational comparison, I’ve held the opinion that, given a group that holds their leaders in such high esteem, with such particular regard for bloodline, the only reason Rikiya does just call himself a descendant, rather than citing the specific term for what he is, is that the specific term is distant enough that it actually does sound more impressive to just say “descendant,” rather than something like, “great-great-great-grandson.” That kind of thing just begs the question, “What took you guys so long?” or, “You and how many other people, buddy?”

Mr. Compress may have the panache to carry off a line like that, but Rikiya’s a different story. If he had something so amazing up his sleeve as, “I am the son of the great Destro,” I have to think he’d just say it proudly, not fall back on the impressionistic vaguery of something like chi o tsugu mono. Even if I had no other evidence to work with, I’d think the same—all the evidence you need is right there in the character writing of who Rikiya and the MLA are and how they talk about the man whose dreams Re-Destro was raised to carry.

A closing note: I will allow that Rikiya is being overdramatic when he uses matsuei and its connotation of countless generations. There are a few other things we can use to trace the history of heroism—Ujiko’s age, and the 18-years-or-less periods that One For All was held by its pre-All Might bearers—and running those numbers leads me to believe that it is, in fact, entirely possible to count the number of generations between Rikiya and Chikara, and the number, while higher than one, is probably not all that high. Certainly matsuei is being more dramatic about it than is entirely warranted, hence the poetic flourish of the official translation’s, “His blood runs through these veins!” The theatricality only makes me fonder of him, however.

------------------------

FOOTNOTES

[1] It was changed and reverted on Re-Destro’s page at least twice before it finally stuck in January of this year. Chikara’s page took until July to be corrected, and it’s still wrong on various other subpages.

[2] Or your kids, if you have those. Only the last generation in the bloodline is the matsuei, but that’s a moving goalpost as long as the bloodline is still propagating.

[3] This summary of events combines what we know from both My Hero Academia proper and the Vigilantes spin-off, which I recommend to anyone who’s at all interested in finer-grained worldbuilding on Hero Society Japan than the main series makes time for.

[4] I personally headcanon him as 42.

[5] To which point I would refer back to the word kodomo, and note that that word choice indicates that Destro had a child in the world. Not a sperm sample kept in a freezer somewhere, waiting for the right would-be mother: an actual child. Some quick research on my part says that the farthest that term stretches is in using it to refer to yet-unborn children, fetuses still in the womb. Seeing as Japan doesn’t even allow inmates conjugal visits in real life, much less in a setting where villains are so dehumanized that Tartarus is an acceptable punishment for them, the line about Destro “having a child out in the world” takes us right back to a date of conception no later than Destro’s final night of freedom.

[the-land-of-eternal-winter-novel]

🌍💣👀🎨

(All answers are given in a way that better corresponds to draft 2, just a heads up for those of you who already read draft 1)

Worldbuilding:

The distinctive thing about my worldbuilding is that it makes it impossible for me to find a genre label

The distinctive thing about the worldbuilding in this story is that it's very very very distantly post-apocalyptic, namely it takes place 1000 years after a cataclysm, and of course, in many ways, the people living in this age are not affected anymore, but in other ways, they are obsessed with their lost past (especially given that they celebrate said 1000 year anniversary). What I'm going for with this is mostly a reversal of the usual past=regressive and present=progressive paradigm. (But of course I know that in and of itself is a trope, much like the legend of Atlantis. It just happens to be a trope I like better).

Another thing I was going for was creating a sort of winterland that was not Scandinavian coded (this is actually the very first idea I had back in May 2019 when I wrote draft 0). Obviously a Scandinavian coded wonderland does co-exist, being Ingrid (the main character's wife) country of origin, but the main country is mostly based on 18/19th cent Russia. Now, this fact, namely a vaguely 19th century Russia coded winterland + the fact of it being 1000 years post apocalypse, with the older civilisation bring more technologically advanced, I'd be inclined to label this a sort of steampunk. I'll see where I go with the tech related worldbuilding.

The climactic moment:

Well you asked for this, so spoiler warning. But I will try not to give the biggest reveals away.

The idea hinted at from the beginning is that Anatoliy killing the neighbour king Vaidas was not at all an isolated act of revenge, but, much to his horror, Anatoliy had played right into the hands of a much bigger conspiracy, which for whatever reason would've benefitted from Vaidas' death. Anatoliy, while having willfully killed Vaidas, was a completely unwilling pawn in this larger scheme. Over time, more and more conspirators get revealed, each (usually) a bigger villain than the previous.

Anatoliy's personal family conflict + his crime + the conspiracy + the three ongoing revolutionary movements somehow (using this word not out of uncertainty but because that's a huge spoiler) collide and some actually end up having to put aside differences to fight a greater evil. The climax thus is the reveal of the one who started the conspiracy in the first place, and the others having to fight against this newfound evil.

All I will say, thematically, is that the conflict in worldview shifts from revenge vs forgiveness to thinking you can change the world vs accepting it as it is and just living right.

Random lore dump:

Idk for sure what piece of non spoiler lore I haven't shared yet hmm. As I mentioned on my other sideblog @the-tzarina-alexandra-paracosm , the title The Land of Eternal Winter is a reference to one of the novels I wrote as a teen, namely a chapter with a similar name, in which one of the characters ends up at Stalingrad and has this whole flashback sequence/ internal monologue about his childhood in pre-communist Russia. I really wanted to steal the name from that chapter, seeing it more appropriate in the setting of this current novel.

I chose the word eternal too because it just sounds better and more spiritual, but that doesn't mean the winter is 1. Actually never-ending. Like they do get a summer but it's pretty mild. Their climate is just kind of subpolar/ tundra + taiga type of terrain. 2. A symbol of a spiritual realm such as Heaven or hell. It absolutely is not Heaven because look at how sinful these people are for real. And it absolutely is not hell either because first of all let's be real you know me, I love winter and see it as a good thing, so I would never characterise hell as a beautiful snowy place. If I tried to imply it was hell I would straight up name it the land of eternal fire or whatever. I would say winter, if you take the spiritual connotation, is earth. As in the condition of man, but most of all, it is neither Heaven nor hell, it is earth and earth cannot be eternal and guess what happens when humans think their earthly existence is eternal? Yep. And of course you are free to extrapolate all sorts of meanings from this title given the many symbols of winter etc. I just know that winter sometimes symbolises death and I only wanted to steer clear from the possible "eternal winter = eternal death?? = hell??" interpretation. In-universe the country has this nickname because their climate ofc, but their culture too is a cold one (as opposed to a warm friendly culture). They do have quite the negative reputation.

Colour or texture:

Cool tones, especially blue, but of course yhe works itself is colourful enough. I just think of images such as the one below when I think of colour + texture associations of this story

[sanjuno]

Sanjuno’s Story and Fandom Masterlist

I’m going to pin this list of titles so that people can more easily figure out what they want to vote for each Friday. Anything labelled with Meta, WIP, or Concept can be voted for.

1.    ATTACK ON TITAN

1.1.  Coordinates T by H: Eren’s coordinator abilities allow him to metaphysically bond with other humans, thereby giving everyone in the group the ability to psychically communicate with the rest and also boosting everyone’s healing ability exponentially to be on par with the Titan Shifters. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

2.    BLEACH

2.1. What Happens on Vacation: Crossover with YYH – turns out that Kurosaki Misaki was a senior ferry girl on sabbatical (which translates as living a mortal life unaware of her true nature) and she was late returning to work due to being trapped in Grand Fishers gut. Ichigo and Uryuu are very confused when their “cousin” Kazuma shows up to introduce his new bride to the family. Koenma is just really pissed off by all the paperwork he needs to deal with while cleaning up his father’s mismanaged pet project. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted

3.     CODE GEASS

3.1.  A Code of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Lelouch, his two younger siblings, and Lelouch’s most loyal followers are reincarnated into Westeros. Lelouch proceeds to make it his lifelong mission to drive Cersei into frothing fits and strengthens the Baratheon dynasty to the point that even Tywin is impressed by his grandson’s machinations. Then CC shows up with dragons and Ned Stark starts to think that maybe Robert’s onto something with the “drinking to forget” idea. Meta

3.2.  Abandon Thyself: Post-Zero Requiem Suzaku travels back in time to the scene in the Shinjuku Ghettos when the truck explodes. Given that the people closest to him haven’t actually spoken to Suzaku in years, the origins of Suzaku’s obvious mental instability is hilariously misattributed by various outside PoVs. So when Suzaku hits his knees in front of Lelouch, swearing eternal devotion and vowing to make Lelouch the next emperor nobody panics. (They should really reconsider panicking.) Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted

3.3.  The Sun Also Rises: At the moment of his death in the Zero Requiem, Lelouch travels back in time to his childhood body. With only a week to go before Marianne is “assassinated by terrorists” Lelouch sets out to rearrange the board in a way none of the other players will see coming until it’s far too late. Lelouch has been given a second chance to make things right, and Lelouch wouldn’t be Lelouch if he didn’t plan big. This time around, Lelouch plans for his victory to be a bit more obvious. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

4.    DCU

4.1.  Time Enough: Terry McGinnis, his little brother Matt, and their dogs are the only members of their timeline to survive because Bruce Wayne was too old to see any more of his sons die in front of him. So they all got knocked out, shoved into an escape capsule, and ejected from the Batman Beyond timeline before it crumbles. Said time pod crashes into the middle of a Red Hood versus Match throw down, and Terry’s Wayne-inherited charisma is so powerful it allows him to banter his way into good graces of both villains. Jason drags them all off to his lair because every single member of the Batfam hoards orphans. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

5.    DRAGON BALL

5.1.  Saiyajin Pride: Alien biology has a larger impact on characterization that it does in canon. Mirai comes back to the main timeline live in sin with Videl and Gohan. Vegeta and Goku deal with some shit that comes from being the last full-blooded members of their species. Then just as things are settling down… Garlic is an idiot who thinks up a loophole in the “can’t wish people dead” rule and wishes Goku and Vegeta’s families straight out of existence and they end up in an entirely different reality. The only upside is that Vegeta finally gets to kill Frieza. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted

6.    FAIRY TAIL

6.1.  Flight Of Dragons: Future!Lucy misses her target and ends up landing further back in time, during the same year Natsu and the rest of the Dragon Slayer kids were brought to when they were pulled forward in time.  Fairy Tail luck kicks in, and future!Lucy runs into child!Laxus as he escapes from his father after being fed the Lightning Dragon Lacrima. Laxus is handed a Prophecy and runs with it. Children have never needed Fairy Tales to tell them that Dragons exist, but they certainly help. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

6.2.  My Heart Overflows: Juvia and Grey have finally started dating, but the Fairy Tail Mage Guild has some interesting traditions when it comes to proving the validity of a romantic relationship. Oneshot, Prompt fill - Posted

7.    FAMILIAR OF ZERO

7.1.  A Velvet Glove: Crossover with TMNT – Leonardo gets summoned to be Louise’s Familiar. Since all of his brothers are dead, Leo sees no reason not to make the most of this “lifelong bond of magic and spirit” and adopts Louise as his little sister. Halgenkia is not prepared for a Louise Francois le Blanc de la Valliere with ninja training. Henrietta is probably far too gleeful over making her best friend her Spymaster, but it’s not like anyone knows enough about what they’re doing to stop her. Reconquista gets exposed and smashed, and Wardes really should have respected his fiancée more. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.    FINAL FANTASY VII

8.1.  A Dirge of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Several members of Avalanche and the Elite Soldiers are reincarnated as the spares and bastards of Westeros’ Great Houses. Given that Rhaenys Targaryen used to be Cid Highwind, the Sack of King’s Landing goes very differently. Meta

8.2.  A Feather’s Weight: Crossover with Naruto – Kakashi and Obito, along with their respective subordinates, are reincarnated in Wutai, and are thus in position to undermine a lot of Hojo’s plans simply by being themselves. Wutai still loses, but by a much smaller margin, and SHIN-RA realizes much too late that Wutai’s “concession” was a trap. Kakashi is a big shiny distraction for Sephiroth, the SOLDIERS revolt, and nobody knows who assassinated President Shinra. Chaptered, WIP - Unposted

8.3.  Antiviral: Woden and Gaia conspire to create antibodies to fight off Jenova’s infection. Cid and Vincent end up bearing the brunt of this decision, get roofied by Divine Intervention, and also end up the Gaian equivalent of demonic werewolves. Also the Planet is transforming all the SOLDIERS into werewolves too, yes, even the dead ones. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.4.  For Love Of: Cid Highwind crashes the Tiny Bronco into Lucrecia’s cave, does the metaphysical equivalent of tearing her heart out and eating it to absorb her power, and them proceeds to adopt General Sephiroth as his son because it’s not like anyone can stop him. Cid Highwind does what he wants. Sephiroth does what Mother wants. SHIN-RA soon regrets everything because Cid Highwind is a hell of a lot better at rewriting the social order than Avalanche is. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.5.  Hindsight is 20-20: CHAOS decides to rewrite time because they have a massive crush on Cid and they don’t want him to die. CHAOS fumbles the landing and Cid ends up in the body of some weird Lucrecia/Ancient-Cetra-Who-Was-Jenova’s-Host Clone and ends up giving birth to Sephiroth. Things only get worse from there. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.6.  Like it Rough: Cid likes Vincent a lot and also has a bit of a kink for scars. Cid walks in on Vincent naked, runs away to hide his raging boner, and Vincent ends up chasing Cid around the airship until he can pin his friend down in the Captain’s bunk because the demons are all drunk on the pheromones. Oneshot - Complete

8.7.  Names of Power: Jenova’s taint getting mixed into the Lifestream has far-reaching consequences, and Avalanche gets tapped to handle the fallout whither they like it or not. Series, WIP - Posted

8.7.1.     Small Packages: The Lifestream meddles in Avalanches lives even after the Planet has been saved. There are clones and ancient powers better off left alone but it’s not like Avalanche ever gets a say in the matter. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.7.2.     History Inverted: Jenova isn’t all the way gone and the Planet really doesn’t care if Humanity survives or not as long as the infection is burned away. Aerith shoves the spirits of Avalanche and their children into a new timeline because she doesn’t want to watch their souls get shredded. Avalanche proceeds to mosey along and wreak havoc in the way only they can manage. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

8.8.  To Earn the Sky: Echidna, Mother of Monsters and Heroes, and Jenova, the Calamity From the Skies, are at war. Hojo makes a very big mistake when he uses the Blood of Echidna’s Children in his Revenant Project. Cid Highwind is a good son, and his Mother wants to meet her new Grandchildren. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

9.    FINAL FANTASY XV

9.1.  A Light of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVX – Noctis, his Retinue, and the loyal members of the Kingsglaive and Crownsguard are reincarnated into Westeros. Jorah Mormont is Cor Leonis, but Cor Leonis is not Jorah Mormont, and so the Northern Forces are something to fear in Robert’s Rebellion. By the time King Robert visits Winterfell, it will be a very different Northern Kingdom that he finds there. Meta

10. GAME OF THRONES

10.1.               Crossover Fixits to Help Westeros be Less Miserably Doomed: Various casts from other series end up reborn in Westeros and use knowledge from their previous lives to change the Game. Series

10.1.1. An Assemblage of Ice and Fire: Crossover with MCU – Team Iron Man focus, since Tony is reincarnated as Ned Stark. Starks are made of Iron, and Winter is coming. Tony’s genius intellect, knowledge of politics and economics, experience with magic and alternate realities, and the fact that Extremis carried over through his reincarnation and adapted to work with First Man magic means that the Stark siblings who go to the Tourney of Harrenhal are nothing like the canon versions. Rhaegar gets his Stark bride, and he proceeds to regret it for the rest of his life. Meta

10.1.2. A Balance of Ice and Fire: Crossover with SW – Qui-Gon Jinn’s three Padawan Learners and Padme (who got taken in Anakin’s place) are reincarnated as the Tyrell siblings. They proceed to follow the Will of the Force and prepare the Seven Kingdoms to win against the Long Night. Meta

10.1.3. A Code of Ice and Fire: Crossover with CG – Lelouch, his two younger siblings, and Lelouch’s most loyal followers are reincarnated into Westeros. Lelouch proceeds to make it his lifelong mission to drive Cersei into frothing fits and strengthens the Baratheon dynasty to the point that even Tywin is impressed by his grandson’s machinations. Then CC shows up with dragons and Ned Stark starts to think that maybe Robert’s onto something with the “drinking to forget” thing. Meta

10.1.4. A Dirge of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVII – Several members of Avalanche and the Elite Soldiers are reincarnated as the spares and bastards of Westeros’ Great Houses. Given that Rhaenys Targaryen used to be Cid Highwind, the Sack of King’s Landing goes very differently. Meta

10.1.5. A Dying Will of Ice and Fire: Crossover with KHR – The Tri-Ni-Sette holders and all those bonded to them are reincarnated into Westeros Noble Houses. Xanxus is born as Robert’s eldest trueborn son and Heir to the Iron Throne, and so all it takes is one look at the Wall to know that there is something to fear on the other side. Tsuna is busy swooning over Arya’s muscles but in-between reciting odes to his amazing betrothed he takes time to tell Nono’s ghost “I told you Xanxus would make the better Heir.” Meta

10.1.6. A Light of Ice and Fire: Crossover with FFVX – Noctis, his Retinue, and the loyal members of the Kingsglaive and Crownsguard are reincarnated into Westeros. Jorah Mormont is Cor Leonis, but Cor Leonis is not Jorah Mormont, and so the Northern Forces are something to fear in Robert’s Rebellion. By the time King Robert visits Winterfell, it will be a very different Northern Kingdom that he finds there. Meta

10.1.7. A Space Between Ice and Fire: Crossover with Naruto WCE – The Konoha Founders and their siblings are reincarnated as Starks and Baratheons and manage to save the Realms of Men while resolving their many and varied issues with one another. Meta

10.1.8. A Transformation of Ice and Fire: Crossover with TFG1 – Most of the Cybertronians who died during Unicron’s Awakening end up reincarnated as dragons (Seekers) and Direwolves (Autobots). The sapience of the animals causes significant changes to outcome of several key canon events. Meta

10.2.              Singing In A Different Key: SI is reborn as Jon Snow, who then precedes to Machiavelli the fuck out of the North in preparation for the coming Long Night and also to screw over the Lannisters. Because fuckthe Lannisters. Meta

10.3.               Wolf At The Door: When Ice takes the head of Eddard Stark, Valeryian magic mixes with the Blood of the First Men. It’s wild, uncontrolled, and Ned ends up as a four year old in Winterfell’s Godswood, staring at his reflection in the water. Eddara Stark, second-born child and first-born daughter of Rikard and Lyarra Stark looks back up at him. Ned, fully believing that this is his punishment for failing his family and best friend the first time around, decides to fix the Realm by fulfilling the Pact of Fire and Ice. The thing about being a woman is that no one ever expects you to be a threat, not even other women. The thing about being the Quiet Wolf is that everyone overlooks you until the moment your teeth sink into their throat. Concept

11. GET BACKERS

11.1.               Holy Days of Yore: Various celebration themed fic that explore Ban’s backstory as the “With Queen’s Grandson” and bring a bit more of that old black magic into the Get Backer’s lifestyle. Series

11.1.1. Lupercalia: Ban gets a magic matchmaker box in the mail and everyone wears their heart on their sleeve for Valentine’s Day. Oneshot - Posted

11.1.2. Oeastre: Ban gets roped into being the master of ceremonies for Maria’s coven and Easter gets interesting. (Everyone makes like bunnies.) Oneshot - Posted

12. GIRL GENIUS

12.1.               The Other Side of the River: One of the Jagermonsters manages to catch wind of Lucrecia’s plans and absconds with Klaus Barry during the confusion caused by the first explosion. This understandably causes some disruption in everyones plans when KB and his nanny run into Agatha during her time with the Circus. WIP - Unposted

12.2.               Threefold Path: Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek get their brains booted back in time during the si vales valeo and decided to run away and join the circus until they’re old enough to take over the world properly. WIP - Unposted

13. GUNDAM WING

13.1.               Mistakes and Misdemeanors: Heero was on blockers for the entire war due to a series of implants, which did no favours to his mental health. When the implants run out Heero gets run over by a hormone train and absolutely nobody knows how to handle that. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)

14. HARRY POTTER

14.1.               Black As His Name: Sirius Back lives! Because the Veil dumps his mind-and-soul into the empty body of his younger self in a world where Walburga Black lost it on her eldest son much earlier in life and Sirius was tortured until he was left brain-dead. Arcturus Black is pissed off over the treatment of one of his Heirs and since Sirius’ magic is still intact, names Sirius the Heir to House Black and proceeds to hold the Heirship over everybody’s heads for spite for as long as Sirius continues to “live”. Everyone in the Black Family is very surprised when the annual shaming ritual disguised as Sirius’ birthday party is crashed. By none other than the birthday boy himself. Sirius rolls with it and becomes a True Black in the most Marauder manner possible. WIP - Unposted

14.2.               Black Hunt Under Bloody Skies: Crossover with KHR – Regulus and Sirius both end up dumped into KHR because Death owes them a favour on its Master’s behalf. Things start to get weird after the Arcobaleno curse is broken. Regulus is actually Skull and Sirius is his Sky and they confuse the entire Mafia so much. WIP - Unposted

15. HOMESTUCK

15.1.               A Jump To The Left Behind: Post game reality has all the races living in a Galactic Republic, and the Troll Ancestors and Human Guardians all need to team up in order to solve the mystery of the planetoid-sized meteor that just barreled into the middle of their busiest spacelane because their names are written all over it. In the process of exploring the meteor they accidently wake up the Players and Sprites. Chaos ensues. Concept

15.2.               Pandora’s Final Gift: A mermaid AU where a Deep Old One gives Eridan (and only Eridan) the memories of his Game Player Self as a lark. Eridan hits the level cap for his current reality, freaks out, saves Sollux’s life, and then absconds as far away from the center of the Empire as he can get. Concept

16. INU YASHA

16.1.              Hunter’s Moon: The standard “Demon Mating Season” idea that draws on the infectious nature of demon energy in the Sengoku Jidai and runs with it. Everyone over the age of eighteen gets some. Kagome gets to go home and take a nap. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)

16.2.              Cry Wolf: Playing straight with the crack concept that Inuyasha and Kouga were betrothed as children. Kagome isn’t in the picture because she got yeeted back to her own time when the Shikon no Tama got purified. Chaptered, WIP – Posted (Under Revision)

17. KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN

17.1.               A Dying Will of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – The Tri-Ni-Sette holders and all those bonded to them are reincarnated into Westeros Noble Houses. Xanxus is born as Robert’s eldest trueborn son and Heir to the Iron Throne, and so all it takes is one look at the Wall to know that there is something to fear on the other side. Tsuna is busy swooning over Arya’s muscles but in-between reciting odes to his amazing betrothed he takes time to tell Nono’s ghost “I told you Xanxus would make the better Heir.” Meta

17.2.               Black Hunt Under Bloody Skies: Crossover with HP – Regulus and Sirius both end up dumped into KHR because Death owes them a favour on its Master’s behalf. Things start to get weird after the Arcobaleno curse is broken. Regulus is actually Skull and Sirius is his Sky and they confuse the entire Mafia so much. WIP - Unposted

17.3.               Burning Salt Water: Crossover with OP – Xanxus gets dumped onto the Oro Jackson during the Pirate King’s last voyage when Nono’s Zero Point goes sideways and he ends up adopted by Rouge and Roger while he heals. After the execution Xanxus ends up raising the ASL trio to take over the Pirate Throne and Ace sets the Moby Dick on fire when Whitebeard kidnaps him. Meta, WIP - Unposted

17.4.               Cat’s Paws: Uri has seen enough Time Travel bullshit to know how it works, and so when Hayato gets himself killed she grabs his soul and flings herself backwards in time because fuck the timeline this is her human and he’s not allowed to abandon her again. The other Box Animals think it’s a great idea and do the same with their humans, and this results in the kind of alternate timeline that gives Byakuran a headache. In other words, Uri creates a timeline where Flame Actives are a lot more Alien than they used to be and now everyone thinks Youkai and other myths are real. Chapters, WIP - Posted

17.5.               Fire Shall Waken: All of Nono’s sons are still alive when the Cradle Affair happens and it results in the entire 10th Generation gathering up their Harmonies, rolling Xanxus into a blanket burrito, and taking off to Japan under assumed names where they proceed to spend the next eight years coddling Tsuna and being spoiled rotten by Nana in return. Meta

17.6.               Gremlins Della Varia: Mammon’s experiments with the Curse have had some odd side effects on the Varia. It all comes out during the Ring Battles and the other Arcobaleno are Judging You, Viper. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

17.7.               Karma, and the Repercussions Thereof: Crossover with Naruto. Legendary Ninja from the Elemental Countries get reincarnated into KHR and proceed to adopt all the Magic Rainbow Fire Children. Nono and Iemitsu suffer. Series, WIP

17.7.1. Karmic Balance: Kakashi and Obito are ninja married from the very start because of metaphysical bonding and some minor haunting during their last lives. Between Ninshu Shinobi needing to be in Clans and Flame Actives needing to be in Harmonies it does not take long before the child stealing begins. Gokudera Kakashi is the best wife and Dokuro Obito repents, repeatedly and often, while also having the time of his second life. Tsuna loves his Kakashi-sensei and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

17.7.2. Karmic Justice: Madara and his brothers are reborn as Fon’s nephews and do not take kindly to the Arcobaleno curse being put on one of their relatives. The Hibari Clan proceeds to start hunting for the Man in the Iron Man en mass. Madara and his brothers hit Namimori during Nono’s visit and witness the sealing of Tsunayoshi. They don’t take well to this either. Things go worse for Tsuna than they do in canon and Madara hunts down Tobirama because he needs the resurrection to be done perfectly. Tsuna loves his Madara-shishou and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Oneshot - Posted

17.7.2.1.      Karmic Justice – Hubris: Madara comes across Xanxus in the ice while investigating the Vongola and despite Xanxus being a bit older than the usual target for child stealing decides to steal him anyway. After resurrecting Tsuna, Madara and Tobirama’s next project is defrosting Xanxus. Concept

17.7.2.2.      Karmic Justice – Providence: Madara finds Xanxus on the streets while hunting in Italy for the Man in the Iron Mask. Wrath Flame calls to Wrath Flame and Madara instantly adopts the delightfully savage little boy. Then Namimori happens, and Tsuna’s seal gets him temporarily killed, and Xanxus reaches 100-year-vengance-plot levels of overprotective big brother. WIP - Unposted

17.8.               Music of the Spheres: Crossover with SM – Post Stars Usagi and Post Vongola Inheritance Tsuna are cousins who meet for the first time ever only after the Vongola’s enemies kidnap Ikkuko and Shingo. Usagi gets taken into protective custody by her Mafia relatives without being given the chance to say she doesn’t need it. Usagi then proceeds to seduce all the women, charm all the men, and accidently throw Iemitsu out the nearest window every time he’s in the same room she is. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

17.8.1. MotS - Celestial Chorus: Chibiusa’s arrival has Usagi dragging her family to Namimori to prove that Chibiusa isn’t their cousin and things get wildly out of hand. Meta

17.8.2. MotS - Sing In Exaltation: The Shingo from The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life hears the name of his ‘cousin in Namimori’ and immediately begins to meddle. Meta

17.9.               Overlooking the Obvious: They say that to truly know someone you need to walk a mile in their shoes. The adage is proven true rather dramatically when a misappropriated Possession Bullet ends up switching Gokudera and Hibari into each other’s bodies. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

17.10.           Reach For The Sky: Kamen Rider Sora and his team are the protectors of Namimori against the invasion of Youma from the dark dimension. Reborn shows up to tutor the last remaining Vongola Heir and ends up in the middle of a longstanding battle against the Forces of Evil. Does the World Greatest Hitman have what it takes to guide the mysterious masked Rider towards his true strength? Stay tuned to find out! Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted

17.11.           When the Nightingale Sings: Sky Flames are Dragons, and when a Sky is Sealed they turn into True Dragons once said Seal breaks. Tsuna has the Best Treasures Ever. Reborn is confused but willing to roll with it. Hayato needs to do all the research. Drabbles, Prompt Fill - Posted

17.12.           Where the Sky Meets the Sea: Crossover with OP – The ASL Trio are reborn as Sawada Tsunayoshi’s younger brothers, and the Will of D means they remember everything. Sawada Iemitsu might once have been Akagami no Shanks and despite lacking his memories knows better than to keep secrets from his wife. (Iemitsu does keep a lot of secrets from Nono, such as the fact that he has more than one son.) Iemitsu redirects Xanxus’ attention to the Family traitors, Nono never meets Tsuna, and nobody gets sealed. Then Reborn shows up, and everything is now on fire. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

17.13.            

18. KYOU KARA MAOU

18.1.              The Needs Of Our Natures: Wolfram decides to prove exactly how much his mother’s son he really is and seduces Yuuri. Wolfram seduces Yuuri like it’s his job. (Yuuri likes it.) WIP - Unposted

19. MARVEL

19.1.               An Assemblage of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Team Iron Man focus, since Tony is reincarnated as Ned Stark. Starks are made of Iron, and Winter is coming. Tony’s genius intellect, knowledge of politics and economics, experience with magic and alternate realities, and the fact that Extremis carried over through his reincarnation and adapted to work with First Man magic means that the Stark siblings who go to the Tourney of Harrenhal are nothing like the canon versions. Rhaegar gets his Stark bride, and he proceeds to regret it for the rest of his life. Meta

19.2.               Iron Laced: Crossover with TMNT – Maria Carbonell was actually Oroku Karai in disguise because she was on vacation from being a member of the Council of Shadows. Karai and all the Turtles accessed magic ninja dragon powers when they took over the Council and Karai-as-Maria passed that down to Tony. So Tony is actually a dragon and an encounter with the Enchantress leaves him locked in his dragon form. WIP - Unposted

19.3.               Miles To Go: Post-MCU Civil War almost-Time Travel where Tony grieves so hard he sends an Extremis injector capsule to the year before the Winter Soldier murdered his parents. Said capsule lands in front of a wasted 15-year-old Tony in the aftermath of a frat party. Cue the face hugger scene. Tony gets an Extremis upgrade about 30 years ahead of schedule and it’s the only reason he survives the memory download without his brain turning into mush. WIP - Unposted

19.4.               Perception: Instead of killing Scott in X3, Dark Phoenix instead fixes the brain damage that prevented him from controlling his optic blasts and then shunts him trough time an space. Scott wakes up 18-years-old in Stryker’s lab and proceeds to hijack Wolverine’s rampage so that they can both escape. James Howlett is impressed, and Cyclops hates everything but especially time travel because it ruins all his fallback plans. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

20. NARUTO

20.1.               A Feather’s Weight: Crossover with FFVII – Kakashi and Obito, along with their respective subordinates, are reincarnated in Wutai, and are thus in position to undermine a lot of Hojo’s plans simply by being themselves. Wutai still loses, but by a much smaller margin, and SHIN-RA realizes much too late that Wutai’s “concession” was a trap. Kakashi is a big shiny distraction for Sephiroth, the SOLDIERS revolt, and nobody knows who assassinated President Shinra. WIP - Unposted

20.2.               A Space Between Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – The Konoha Founders and their siblings are reincarnated as Starks and Baratheons and manage to save the Realms of Men while resolving their many and varied issues with one another. Meta

20.3.               A Widening Gyre: Rin survives the Chidori and her existence is now an S-class secret. Said S-class secret distracts Obito on his way to ambush Kushina’s labour and several different chase scenes take place. They all end up in the ROOT base made from one of Tobirama’s old labs and instead of Kyuubi getting loose Team Ro, the Fourth Hokage’s team of bodyguards, Obito, Anko, and all of ROOT plus Danzo himself get dumped into the Warring Clans Era. Obito kills Danzo in a panic when he realizes that taking the Bijuu means killing Rin, Kakashi sacrifices himself again, and there is a lot more running around. Kakashi suborns ROOT en masse, Obito is stupidly overpowered and homicidal but it’s okay because Kakashi is playing damsel in distress and distracting him. The Senju and the Uchiha are all really confused by these kids, there are far too many mistaken identities, and Konoha gets founded much earlier than in canon. Meta

20.4.               According to Custom: Hashirama and Madara should not be left unsupervised (that’s why Mito and Touka tend to lurk nearby when they have tea together) because it causes them to get Brilliant Ideas. This time they decide to make friends with one another’s little brothers. How Madara went from being “nice” to Tobirama to courting the oblivious younger Senju is still something of a mystery, but there are several bets riding on when Tobirama is going to realize what’s going on. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.5.               Around the River Bend: Tobirama feels Itama die and runs to the river to mourn. Quite predictably he meets Madara there, and the course of History changes. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.6.               Colours and Promises: Set a decade after the Evil has been defeated and life returned to normal, Tobirama (once the magical superhero Dragon) is still living with the side effects of sacrificing everything to save the world while he was still a teenager. Notes on a piano, and a familiar voice singing a familiar song. Tobirama finds Madara (once the magical superhero Phoenix) and finally gets to enjoy his victory. Love can be killed, but it never dies, only ever taking on new shapes as we move on with our lives. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.7.               Dare Not Speak Its Name: Madara is Demi as all get out aka Madara’s a virgin with a shy dick. Also known as the AU where Madara proposes marriage to Tobirama for the sake of peace and the children. The only reason Izuna approves is because the thought of Tobirama suffering a lifetime of blueballs is hilarious to him. Meta

20.8.               Heavy as the Mountain: Team 7 is losing the fight against Kaguya, but Obito and Kakashi perform a last-minute sacrifice that means the kids survive. It also causes them all to be de-aged by over a decade and thrown back in time to the Warring Clans Era. Kakashi and Obito die, Team 7 gets adopted by presumably-Hatake Kanna, then a few years later they run into Uchiha Izuna and it all descends into chaos. (Team 7 takes total advantage of everything to get their revenge on Zetsu and maybe fix some of Konoha’s longstanding issues at the same time.)  Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted

20.8.1. Crumble To The Sea: The adventures of time travelling Team 7 as they get adopted by the Uchiha Clan, arrange to make Izuna’s life miserable until he proves worthy of courting their An-chan, and get aggressively mother-henned by Uchiha Madara. (The last one came as a bit of a surprise.) Kurama ends up adopting the Uchiha Clan because he likes frustrating Zetsu, and Team 7 appreciates the extra time to grow taller before they need to go weed whacking. Concept

20.9.               In Konoha We Dance: The Uchiha Clan has a tradition of belly dancing and it fixes everything that was wrong with Konoha in canon. Series

20.9.1. O-Bon Appetite: Thanks to his dance training Izuna manages the core control to dodge Tobirama’s sword enough to avoid a fatal wound and Konoha starts off on more equal footing. Tobirama then walks into a traditional Uchiha celebration and his brain shuts off. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.9.2. Hot Like Burning: Kushina drags Minato to the Uchiha Police Office Party so she can make time with Mikoto and there is so much skin, Minato was not emotionally prepared for this. Fugaku takes advantage of the Yondaime’s weakness as only an Uchiha can and the glorious ‘ship FuMiKuMi sets sail. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.9.3. Got This Fire Burning: Overnight shifts at the Mission Desk gets boring. Konoha ninja like to dance, because dancing isn’t boring. Kakashi shows them all how it’s done when a member of Team 7 hits it. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.10.           Karma, and the Repercussions Thereof: Crossover with KHR – Legendary Ninja from the Elemental Countries get reincarnated into KHR and proceed to adopt all the Magic Rainbow Fire Children. Nono and Iemitsu suffer. Series - WIP

20.10.1.                Karmic Balance: Kakashi and Obito are ninja married from the very start because of metaphysical bonding and some minor haunting during their last lives. Between Ninshu Shinobi needing to be in Clans and Flame Actives needing to be in Harmonies it does not take long before the child stealing begins. Gokudera Kakashi is the best wife and Dokuro Obito repents, repeatedly and often, while also having the time of his second life. Tsuna loves his Kakashi-sensei and wants to be just like him when he grows up. WIP, Chaptered - Posted

20.10.2.                Karmic Justice: Madara and his brothers are reborn as Fon’s nephews and do not take kindly to the Arcobaleno curse being put on one of their relatives. The Hibari Clan proceeds to start hunting for the Man in the Iron Man en mass. Madara and his brothers hit Namimori during Nono’s visit and witness the sealing of Tsunayoshi. They don’t take well to this either. Things go worse for Tsuna than they do in canon and Madara hunts down Tobirama because he needs the resurrection to be done perfectly. Tsuna loves his Madara-shishou and wants to be just like him when he grows up. Oneshot - Posted

20.10.2.1.  Karmic Justice – Hubris: Madara comes across Xanxus in the ice while investigating the Vongola and despite Xanxus being a bit older than the usual target for child stealing decides to steal him anyway. After resurrecting Tsuna, Madara and Tobirama’s next project is defrosting Xanxus. Concept

20.10.2.2.  Karmic Justice – Providence: Madara finds Xanxus on the streets while hunting in Italy for the Man in the Iron Mask. Wrath Flame calls to Wrath Flame and Madara instantly adopts the delightfully savage little boy. Then Namimori happens, and Tsuna’s seal gets him temporarily killed, and Xanxus reaches 100-year-Xanatos-Gambit-vengance-plot levels of overprotective big brother. WIP - Unposted

20.11.           Look the Innocent Flower: Orochimaru gets the Hat instead of Minato because instead of working for Danzo he creates his Baby-no-Jutsu (the same one that produced Rogu and Mitsuki) and that’s how Orochimaru accidently turns Tenzo into the Orochimaru-and-Tsunade lovechild while field testing some gene-splicing adoption techniques. Sarutobi is so delighted by all the babies he names Orochimaru his successor without any further debate. Konoha proceeds to become a somewhat androgynous, gender-fluid utopia full off affectionate, friendly people who only want you for your body. Orochimaru refuses to allow hypocrisy in his Konoha and loyalty to ones comrades is not only encouraged, it’s enforced. Meta

20.12.           Negotiation is an Artform: Remix of The Art of Negotiation by Kage88 – Konoha’s Founders take a trip to Uzushio and the Uzumaki are annoyingly persistent in their attentions, even when said attentions are unwanted. Tobirama’s political savvy is not to be underestimated, and Tobirama’s just as ridiculously overprotective of his loved ones as his relatives are of him. Bitchy pining resolves into dating, and the only reason Tobirama lets Hashirama get away with betting on his love life is because Hashirama was the only one who had faith in Tobirama making the first move. Oneshot, Fandom Exchange Fill - Complete

20.13.           No Evil Abolishing Resentment System: Post Kaguya’s return, Madara gets bound by a System determined to help Madara turn all his Resentment Level into Love Points via a quick transmigration plot. Transmigrator!Madara gets to kiss-kiss fall in love with Reincarnator!Tobirama 55 times in a row. I promise that all the gratuitous makeout sessions are plot relevant. Meta

20.14.           Only Fools Rush In: Also known as the Uchiha Get Catnipped AU – the scene of Rin’s suicide is a few seconds off from canon and this not only results in Rin remaining alive, but Obito is also welcomed back to life so enthusiastically by his teammates that his Makengyou spontaneously manifests. A year or so later, Danzo attempts to use an experimental drug to weaken the Uchiha Clan enough for ROOT to have an easy time killing them and/or an excuse for eradicating the entire Clan. Only the drug is a happy-making drug that has every single member of the Clan manifest the Makengyou and immediately run off to snuggle their friends, family, and sundry other precious people. Meta

20.15.           Red in Hand and Claw: Madara has Raptor Summons. This fact is significantly more terrifying than anyone outside of the Uchiha Clan is really aware of. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.16.           Roads Diverged: Kakashi from a Darker-Than-Canon AU ends his fight with Obito with mutual destruction, and as they both lay dying Kakashi confesses to having always loved Obito. Obito being Obito and therefore unholy levels of Extra even for an Uchiha, proceeds to use Edo Tensai on Team 7 in order to heal Kakashi and then fling him through dimensions until he lands in a Lighter-Than-Canon AU where Kakashi sees Rin in time to avoid hitting her with the Chidori. Things spiral from there. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

20.17.           Spite And Fury: A crossover with the “Original Goods” Proud Immortal Demon Way from Scum Villains Self-Saving System – Uchiha Madara and Shen Jiu get combined into a single person and Cang Qiong is not ready for this much concentrated asshole. Too bad for them, the new-and-improved Shen Qingqui is here to stay. Meta

20.18.           That We Answer to Our Stars: Crossover with SW – Kaguya’s reality warp has some strange side effects to the point of ridiculousness. All the Uchiha to ever exist are resurrected and then dumped wholesale onto an alien deathworld that is essentially what Training Ground 44 would be if it was allowed to cover an entire planet. The Uchiha proceed to seduce the Jedi and foil all of Palpatine’s plans for galactic domination. Meta, Chaptered WIP - Posted

20.19.           The Memory Remains: Canon divergence via the reincarnation of Uchiha Izuna, his wife Kanna, and Senju Touka as Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi, and Nohara Rin. Yes, they retained all their memories. Yes, Konoha is going to suffer for its sins against the children. Yes, this is going to end in a Team Minato threesome. Meta

20.20.           The Thin Line: Kakashi loses patience with the Sandaime when no appreciable action is taken to remove Danzo from power even after Kakashi literally reports to Sarutobi’s face that he was ordered by Danzo to assassinate the Third Hokage. So Kakashi crashes an Uchiha Clan meeting and asks them to run away with him and his cute little brothers to a lovely tropical Island. Cue the Uchiha Exodus That Fucks Over Canon. Kakashi and the Uchiha Clan proceed to re-found Uzushio and collect a few S-class missing nin along the way. Meta, WIP - Unposted

20.21.           The Waters and the Wild: The Senju are High Court Fae, and the Uchiha are Wild Hunt Shapeshifters. Tobirama attempts to interrupt Hashirama and Madara during their riverside meeting, only it backfires when he realizes that Madara is his Soulmate. Also the Uchiha are “clothing optional” and Tobirama was not emotionally prepared for this. Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted

20.22.           To Linger In Dreams: After Kaguya takes over his body Madara gets yeeted out of reality into the Void. An eldritch Void god takes an interest in Madara and chucks Madara into a Magic Fantasy AU and Madara is even more not-Human than he was before. Also known as that really fucked up AU with cursed ABO dynamics. Meta

20.23.           Truth in Hyperbole: Shinobi are what happen when Aliens and Humans have kids, Bloodline Talents are what happens when Kami and Youkai ancestry gets added to the pot. Most of the time Shinobi stay mostly Human. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they really don’t. Series - WIP

20.23.1.                Blood Price: Tobirama wakes up after being killed and proceeds to resurrect his little brothers and Madara’s little brothers. Tobirama would resurrect Madara too but Madara had already managed to resurrect himself. Oneshot, Comm. Fill - Posted

20.23.2.                Still Waters Run: The Sage of Six Paths gets his ass kicked by his ex-wife, his daughter-in-law, and Tobirama’s mother. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.23.3.                A Thing With Feathers: Madara’s side of the story of their transformation into minor kami. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.23.4.                Come Away: Zetsu is targeting Obito in another attempt to create the Rinnegan. Kakashi has his first “near death” experience and Obito is not amused at all. Neither is Rin. Team 7 is overprotective and codependent regardless of the generation in question. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.23.5.                Quoth the Raven: Danzo’s schemes got him chased out of Konoha to escape execution, and he invades during the Chunin Exams in order to get his revenge. Summoning Tobirama using the Edo Tensai was probably not the best plan. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.24.           Tsukumogami No Kankurou: While he is still very young, Kankurou signs a Summons contract with the Tsukumogami (aka the Muppet Theater Troupe) and then proceeds to interrupt Yashamaru’s “attack” on Gaara while simultaneously wreaking havoc across the entirety of Sunagakure. All of this is done to get back at Rasa for not letting Kankurou play with his baby brother. The Middle Child Syndrome is strong in this one. Never underestimate the power of petty spite. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.25.           Twice is Happenstance: As a side effect of the battle against Kaguya breaking through dimensions, the ghosts of the Uchiha Clan send their memories as far back as possible. On the eve of his younger brother’s assassinations, Uchiha Madara wakes up with memories of being Indra and Sasuke. All the Uchiha have memories of their past and future lives combining with their current selves, and it causes something of a fracas while it gets sorted out. Cue the Uchiha Exodus That Fucks Over Canon. Oneshot - Posted

20.25.1.                Enemy Action: The building of Uchihatlantis, the knockback effects of remembering more than one lifetime, and what happens when the Uchiha start to go back out into the world in order to hunt down their spouses and mess up Zetsu’s plans. Meta

20.26.           Two Steps Back: Retired Rokudaime Hatake Kakashi accidently has his first vacation ever interrupted when he visits the Uzushiogakure ruins and gets slingshot back an incarnation or two due to triggering a derelict seal. Kakashi being Kakashi, he proceeds to continue with his vacation until he has a drunken bar hookup with Uchiha Izuna and now the beloved younger brother of Uchiha “I-can-fight-five-armies-and-win” Madara is stalking Kakashi in order to recite (hilariously awful) poetry about the beauty of Kakashi’s kenjutsu. This is not the retirement Kakashi signed up for. Drabbles, Prompt Fills – Posted

20.26.1.     TSB – And a Jump To The Left: The epic courtship confusion which descends upon the Land of Fire when the Time-Travelling King of Trolls and an Angry Weasel Brat attempt to out-romance each other. Meta

20.27.           Two Truths and a Lie: Mikoto and Kushina have been fake!dating for years to keep the more annoying Uchiha relatives from trying to get her married off. It’s a brilliant plan, and it works perfectly. But times change, and Kushina’s eyes are very pretty. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

20.28.           Wills of Fire and Conquest: Crossover with OP – Kakashi is Rouge’s little brother and ends up raising the ASL trio while also searching for other reincarnated shinobi. Obito and the rest of Akatsuki become the Red Dawn Pirates and Kakashi eventually founds a new Uzushiogakure on the Red Line. Ace decides he wants to be the Nidaime Uzukage, and Whitebeard accidently insults Ace’s mother so badly during the “recruitment” debacle that Ace spends 100 days trying to beat an apology out of the arrogant old goat. Shinobi-versus-pirate culture clash is frequent and hilarious. WIP - Unposted

20.29.           Worth of a Thousand Words: Political Hostage!Tobirama gets caught by the Uchiha just before he manages to use Hiraishin in battle for the first time. The Uchiha are all sensors that use Ninshu techniques otherwise since lost to time to communicate among themselves. This results in a much more united Uchiha Clan who are perfectly willing to let Madara push for a peace treaty with the Senju now that Tobirama’s capture has given them the leverage to do so. Meta

21. NURARIHYON NO MAGO

21.1.               1001 Demonic Nights: An AU Rikuo who was dragged into Yomi along with his Hakkai Yakko during the battle against the Nue manages to escape from hell by jumping into an alternate reality where his mother Wakana had a threesome with Rihan and Otome. Wakana left to take over her family shrine without telling her lovers that she was pregnant. The Rikuo who was born as a result died as an infant from the Nue’s curse on Nurarihyon’s bloodline. Both Rikuo and Otome’s daughter were conceived on the same night and are both half-demons due to Rihan shifting forms for kinky species-play. WIP - Unposted

22. ONE PIECE

22.1.               Burning Salt Water: Crossover with KHR – Xanxus gets dumped onto the Oro Jackson during the Pirate King’s last voyage when Nono’s Zero Point goes sideways and he ends up adopted by Rouge and Roger while he heals. After the execution Xanxus ends up raising the ASL trio to take over the Pirate Throne and Ace sets the Moby Dick on fire when Whitebeard kidnaps him. WIP – Unposted

22.2.               How Far I’ll Go: Roger had other lovers before he met Rouge and one of them was a Fishwife that he met at a Peacemoot. Their daughter was a mermaid and thus needed to remain on Fishman Island for her own safety. The World Government is so Human-centric that they don’t bother looking into any of Roger’s lady friends from the other races. Gol D Ann gives no shits about anybodies prejudices and when her mixed up genetics mean her feet come in about 20 years early she immediately takes off to track down her baby brother. Goldfish is Luffy’s favourite sibling and Ann is delighted to find three baby brothers for the price of one. WIP - Unposted

22.3.               Rumour, Slander, Hearsay: Garp is even worse at interpersonal communication than in canon and now the entire Marine fleet thinks that Monkey D Dragon is an oversexed degenerate who keep dumping his illegitimate spawn on his poor heroic father’s doorstep. Otherwise known as Dragon adopts ASL and they seek a glorious Revolution. Meta

22.4.               Those Who Favour Fire: Ace survives Marineford, even if only in spirit, because the Goddess of the Sea answered the prayer of another version of Ace. Waking up in the place of his 17-year-old murdered doppelganger, Ace now has to deal with raising a 7-year-old Luffy and escaping the notice of the Marines. Oh, and his murdered younger self is hanging around as a ghost, all the younger versions of Luffy’s crewmates keep showing up on Ace’s boat, and Ace keeps getting tripped up over how much more horrible this world is compared to the one he came from. Chaptered WIP - Posted

22.5.               Where the Sky Meets the Sea: Crossover with KHR – The ASL Trio are reborn as Sawada Tsunayoshi’s younger brothers, and the Will of D means they remember everything. Sawada Iemitsu might once have been Akagami no Shanks and despite lacking his memories knows better than to keep secrets from his wife. (Iemitsu does keep a lot of secrets from Nono, such as the fact that he has more than one son.) Iemitsu redirects Xanxus’ attention to the Family traitors, Nono never meets Tsuna, and nobody gets sealed. Then Reborn shows up, and everything is now on fire. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

22.6.               Wildfire Hearts: Ace goes back in time from his death to the Grey Terminal Fire, figures out how to use natural fire to heal himself, saves child!Ace and child!Luffy, changes his name to Portgas D Riot, runs away to the Grand Line with his baby brothers, puts together a new pirate crew, and hits on Marco so hard the Phoenix forgets how to complete his sentences. Everything works out for the better. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

22.6.1. WH – Heave A Sigh And A Wish For Me: SI-Clearfin Lionfish Mermaid named Occhio D Vittoria gets tapped in by the Ocean Goddess to help Riot et al from Wildfire Hearts succeed in their adventures.Oneshot, Prompt Fill – Posted

22.6.2. WH – Today Is The Day Of Reckoning: Riot is gathering up his new crew, forming the Anarchy Pirates, dealing with Garp, seducing Marco the Pheonix, and discovering that Sabo survived when his little brothers gatecrash a Revolutionary Army mission. Meta

22.7.               Wills of Fire and Conquest: Crossover with Naruto – Kakashi is Rouge’s little brother and ends up raising the ASL trio while also searching for other reincarnated shinobi. Obito and the rest of Akatsuki become the Red Dawn Pirates and Kakashi eventually founds a new Uzushio on the Red Line. Ace decides he wants to be the Nidaime Uzukage, and Whitebeard accidently insults Ace’s mother so badly during the “recruitment” debacle that Ace spends 100 days trying to beat an apology out of the arrogant old goat. Shinobi-versus-pirate culture clash is frequent and hilarious. WIP - Unposted

23. PETSHOP OF HORRORS

23.1.               Event Horizons: Leon isn’t human, and that changes things in the aftermath of the confrontation with Papa D. Count D wants to unravel the mystery of his favourite Detective, and Leon is starting to wake up. Hopefully they both find the knowledge they’re looking for before it’s too late and their enemy finds them. Chaptered WIP – Posted (Under Revision)

24. POKÉMON

24.1.              The Hero Of His Own Story: When Green Oak is replaced as the Kanto Champion less than a full 24 hours after winning the title, he runs. Right into a Celebi that was looking for an assistant. Green Oak gets over his bullshit really fast because oh shit that’s an Angry Legendary. Green is also supremely unimpressedwith Red’s bullshit when he learns that Red was supposed to be dealing with all the world-saving events but is instead hiding in a depression cave. Meta

25. SAILOR MOON

25.1.               From Olympus to Mu: The Senshi go to college and Mamoru reunites with the Shitennou. Basis of headcanons and characterization for any further post-canon SM fic. WIP - Unposted

25.2.               Music of the Spheres: Crossover with KHR – Post Stars Usagi and Post Vongola Inheritance Tsuna are cousins who meet for the first time ever only after the Vongola’s enemies kidnap Ikkuko and Shingo. Usagi gets taken into protective custody by her Mafia relatives without being given the chance to say she doesn’t need it. Usagi then proceeds to seduce all the women, charm all the men, and accidently throw Iemitsu out the nearest window every time he’s in the same room she is. Chaptered WIP - Posted

25.2.1. MotS – Celestial Chorus – MotS Spinoff AU: Chibiusa’s arrival has Usagi dragging her family to Namimori to prove that Chibiusa isn’t their cousin and things get wildly out of hand. Meta

25.2.2. MotS – Sing In Exaltation: The Shingo from The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life hears the name of his ‘cousin in Namimori’ and immediately begins to meddle. Meta

25.3.               The Sharp Knife Of A Short Life: SI is reborn as Tsukino Shingo under the aegis of the Roman God Janus and then proceeds to merrily say ‘screw canon, my sister gets to be happy or else’. Oneshot, Prompt Fill - Posted

26. SCUM VILLAINS SELF-SAVING SYSTEM

26.1.               Spite And Fury: A crossover with Naruto and the “Original Goods” Proud Immortal Demon Way from Scum Villains Self-Saving System – Uchiha Madara and Shen Jiu get combined into a single person and Cang Qiong is not ready for this much concentrated asshole. Too bad for them, the new-and-improved Shen Qingqui is here to stay. Meta

27. SLAYERS

27.1.               Infinite Blue: Zelgadis starts paying more attention to the deeper practices of Shamanism and gets in touch with his demonic side while achieving deeper harmony in himself. Xellos approves and it all results in magic explosions and very strange demonic courtship rituals. WIP - Unposted

28. SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

28.1.               Skipped Tracks: The triplets from Underground end up transmigrating into the recently deceased bodies of their counterparts in a SatAM reality and proceed to rock out and confuse everyone. WIP - Unposted

29. STAR WARS

29.1.               A Balance of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Qui-Gon Jinn’s three Padawan Learners and Padme (who got taken in Anakin’s place) are reincarnated as the Tyrell siblings. They proceed to follow the Will of the Force and prepare the Seven Kingdoms to win against the Long Night. Meta

29.2.               A Robe of Stars: Crossover with TMNT – The turtles and Karai help Obi-wan save the Initiates and babies in the Jedi crèche before the Temple gets razed. Once the children are safe, Obi-wan and his new allies turn their attention to saving the Vode. WIP – Unposted

29.3.               That We Answer to Our Stars: Crossover with Naruto – Kaguya’s reality warp has some strange side effects to the point of ridiculousness. All the Uchiha to ever exist are resurrected and then dumped wholesale onto an alien deathworld that is essentially what Training Ground 44 would be if it hadn’t been fenced in. The Uchiha proceed to seduce the Jedi and foil all of Palpatine’s plans for galactic domination. Meta, Chaptered WIP – Posted

30. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

30.1.               A Robe of Stars: Crossover with SW – The turtles and Karai help Obi-wan save the Initiates and babies in the Jedi crèche before the Temple gets razed. Once the children are safe, Obi-wan and his new allies turn their attention to saving the Vode. WIP - Unposted

30.2.               A Velvet Glove: Crossover with FOZ – Leonardo gets summoned to be Louise’s Familiar. Since all of his brothers are dead, Leo sees no reason not to make the most of this “lifelong bond of magic and spirit” and adopts Louise as his little sister. Halgenkia is not prepared for a Louise Francois le Blanc de la Valliere with ninja training. Henrietta is probably far too gleeful over making her best friend her Spymaster, but it’s not like anyone knows enough about what they’re doing to stop her. Reconquista gets exposed and smashed, and Wardes really should have respected his fiancée more. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

30.3.               Iron Laced: Crossover with TMNT – Maria Carbonell was actually Oroku Karai in disguise because she was on vacation from being a member of the Council of Shadows. Karai and all the Turtles accessed magic ninja dragon powers when they took over the Council and Karai-as-Maria passed that down to Tony. So Tony is actually a dragon and an encounter with the Enchantress leaves him locked in his dragon form. WIP - Unposted

30.4.               Paper Flowers: Leonardo and Michelangelo reconnect after years of separation and deal with some leftover issues from their childhood while they prepare to welcome the next generation of Ninja Turtles into the world. WIP - Unposted

30.5.               Patching the Trousers: Starting from the end of the Fast Forward arc, Leonardo gets lost in the multiverse and proceeds to adopt all the secondary turtles. All of them. Leonardo is the Mom Friend, only he’s not a friend he’s just a Mom. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

30.6.               Stained Bandages: Realistic resolution to the most common dark!Splinter tropes. Leo doesn’t really care about himself, but if you touch his brothers he will kill you. Splinter touches Raphael. Karai is gifted with Splinter’s decapitated head in a box. Oneshot- Posted

30.7.               Unraveled Sleeves: After First Contact and Splinter’s death from old age, the Turtles scattered to live their lives. Leonardo is the only one who stayed in the Lair. Making peace with the Karai was only the first step towards healing, and Leo makes peace with himself as he takes on students and his family grows again. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

31. TRANSFORMERS

31.1.               A Transformation of Ice and Fire: Crossover with GOT – Most of the Cybertronians who died during Unicron’s Awakening end up reincarnated as dragons (Seekers) and Direwolves (Autobots). The sapience of the animals causes significant changes to outcome of several key canon events. Meta

31.2.              Action Equals Reaction: There is a time and a place for everything. Even things like learning that your Air Commander is pregnant, and his parents are wingnuts. The middle of battle is neither the time nor the place. Oneshot - Posted

31.3.               Compromising Positions: Bay’verse Shattered Glass – Megatron knows that there’s something wrong with his brother, but nobody will listen to him. Oneshot - Posted

31.4.               High Stakes Wagers: Decepticon Romantic Gestures at their finest. Series

31.4.1. The Bet: Soundwave saves Starscream’s life after he gets blasted away from Unicron and they proceed to have wild, kinky spark-bonding and that’s it that’s the plot. Oneshot - Posted

31.4.2. The Rebirth: Starscream and Soundwave head off Galvatron and Zarak’s attempt to destroy Cybertron (and Earth, but that’s really secondary to them) and earn their just rewards for being on the winning side. Oneshot - Posted

31.5.               Nine Rings of Vos: The Epic Seeker Saga where Starscream is the uncontested leader of the Seekers and he’s using the Great War as a cover to renew his people’s population numbers, add some variety to their core coding, and also destroy the Cybertronian Government because they liked to make Seekers into their slaves. Seven-part Series, Chaptered, WIP - Posted

31.5.1. Before Dawn: A Rings spin-off where the Seekers are actually all sparklings who disguised themselves as their parents in order to survive the Great War. Crash-landing on Earth precipitates the Big Reveal and also the actual adult Seekers get woken from Government sanctioned stasis thanks to the energy surges caused by resource shipments coming in from Earth. Chaptered, WIP - Posted

31.6.               No Evil: Starscream is a scientist who wants to stay a scientist but he’s so damn good at being Air Commander that he gets promoted anyway. Also, his best friend/roommate from the War Academy is the closest thing to a therapist that the Decepticons have and that means Starscream stays mostly sane. Concept, WIP - Unposted

31.7.               Thundercracker’s So Crazy in Love: Seekers Go Into Heat and that will put the War on pause for a bit because of the crazy. Series

31.7.1. Always the Quiet Ones: Thundercracker terrorizes the Decepticon forces on Earth while displaying for his Wingmates and accidently kills Megatron. Oneshot - Posted

31.7.2. Decepticon Service Announcement: Thundercracker is the new Supreme Leader of the Decepticons and he’s decided that they’re in a good position to negotiate peace terms with the Autobots now. Oneshot - Posted

32. YU-GI-OH

32.1.               Old Game, New Rules: Sentinels and Guides are a built in part of society and a certain playing card game ties into that a bit more than most people would expect. There’s a lot of gratuitous soul-bonding smut, worldbuilding runs rampant, and there’s a lot of social commentary on the futility of stereotyping any portion of the population based on a single point of commonality. Chaptered WIP – Unposted

32.2.               The Future of the Past: Jounouchi’s past life left a surprise in their soul that the trip to memory world triggers and now Katsuya is living through all of Jono’s memories. Chaptered WIP – Posted (Under Revision)

33. YU YU HAKUSHO

33.1.              Bonds: Koenma and Yusuke are soulmates and Enma Daioh interferes because one his brat son is properly wedded and bedded Enma can take a long overdue vacation. Oneshot – Posted

33.1.1.                  Ties That Bind: Koenma and Yusuke are just starting to get used to being bonded mates when a new/old-and-forgotten enemy shows up to complicate things. WIP – Unposted (Under Revision)

33.2.              What Happens on Vacation: Crossover with Bleach – turns out that Kurosaki Misaki was a senior ferry girl on sabbatical (which translates as living a mortal life unaware of her true nature) and she was late returning to work due to being trapped in Grand Fishers gut. Ichigo and Uryuu are very confused when their “cousin” Kazuma shows up to introduce his new bride to the family. Koenma is just really pissed off by all the paperwork he needs to deal with while cleaning up his father’s mismanaged pet project. Chaptered WIP - Unposted

[cherrynojutsu]

Title: Like Silver

Summary: A companion series for Like Gold.

It’s challenging to finish up discharge summaries and operative reports when one’s vision keeps blurring, as it turns out. And when one keeps pressing fingers to their lips in disbelief. A poetic sort of procrastination, indeed.

Blank period, canon-compliant, Sakura-centric, some expanded plot points from Like Gold, fluff and pining, eventually becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes

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Chapter 2/?: A Poetic Sort of Procrastination, Indeed

Sakura saunters home late in the evening, admiring the stars above her in a daze of spring air and clutching her tote bag to her shoulder as if her very life force is tethered to it.

In the flurry of emotion, she completely forgot about returning her library books, but she doesn’t give a damn.

She drudged through her entire pile of paperwork, though it was an almighty effort requiring every ounce of her discipline. Even after Sasuke left, she kept tearing up and just gawking at the impossibly beautiful gift he’s given her, affection requited bubbling up inside her ribcage and unleashed into the air she breathes like some sort of ambrosial perfume she can finally afford to bask in. She has always known there is a softer side to him, that there is much more beneath the surface than he lets on with his laconic demeanor, but this is something else.

It’s challenging to finish up discharge summaries and operative reports when one’s vision keeps blurring, as it turns out.

And when one keeps pressing fingers to their lips in disbelief.

A poetic sort of procrastination, indeed.

She hangs her tote on its entryway hook and carefully removes the box inside once she reaches her apartment. After she’s padded her way to her bedroom, she flips on the two lamps before placing it tenderly on her bed.

Sakura briefly contemplates taking the lid off then and there, but she knows she really should shower first, because otherwise the evening is going to quickly spiral away from her, whirlpool of tender feelings that it already is.

It’s the quickest shower she’s ever taken in her life; berry-scented soap floods her body and seems to take forever to rinse clean in her haste, although it can’t actually be more than a minute or two in reality. It’s also the quickest she’s ever toweled off and changed into pajamas, scurrying back to her room and grabbing the first pair she lays eyes on from her dresser drawer.

Once she has shimmied them on, she opens the box again, and just looks.

It still exists - it doesn’t disappear or dissolve as a figment of her imagination - so she picks it up with careful hands.

It is so, so pretty, exquisite in a way that makes her heart hammer relentlessly against her sternum, a catharsis in her chest sweeter somehow than anything she’s ever experienced.

It’s unavoidable; her eyes well with tears again, because he said he had it made for her. Not found in an antique shop off the beaten path or some happenstance market who knows how many miles away. Not just something that reminded him of her.

Made for me.

Which means he thought of this himself. Silk that shifts colors like the Uchiha crest, fastidiously stitched petals, and a cherry blossom tree, carved light wood that is startlingly similar in tone to the accents here in her bedroom.

And the way he looked at her, after, a storm of silver and obsidian that took her breath away.

And he kissed her.

Sakura doesn’t know how she’s supposed to fall asleep tonight, deliriously happy as she is, or how she’s going to spend any of her free time from here on out not staring at this supernal treasure. She strokes the wood with careful fingers, bringing the carving upwards for closer inspection. Every inch of it is gorgeous; she is especially enamored with the pink and pearlescent stitching, coruscant in the low light. She assiduously counts the slivers of bamboo, too, and follows the rivulets of fine branches stretching upwards to the boundaries of the framework. Upon her inquest, she notices an impossibly tiny etching, faintly whittled on the interior of one of the slats of bamboo. Tai Ro, it says; she assumes that must be the craftsman’s signature. She wonders where it came from, which far-off land Sasuke traveled through to commission something so resplendent.

She has never seen anything so bewitching, except maybe silver flecks.

Tearing her gaze away from the fan, Sakura eyes the vanity by her balcony door, an idea brewing.

It’s an aged piece, of a bygone style featuring small drawers on each size and a sunken point in the middle, from which rises a large circular mirror. A framed copy of their original Team Seven portrait sits pushed against the framing, right in the center. She placed it there because she enjoys seeing it as she gets ready for the day. It’s a good memory, one of her favorites, sentimental in a way that makes her heart swell, after everything. A pale wooden hairbrush also sits perched atop its surface, given to her by her mother forever ago while she was still at the Academy.

“I found it in the market today, just after swinging by to pick up rose food from Ino’s mother. It’s old, an antique, but I think it suits you, my dear,” she’d said, ruffling her hair, still long at that point and chattering a mile a minute in the overbearing way she has always tended to. She’d brushed her already combed locks in the manner that Sakura thinks all mothers must with their daughters, even when they are starting to become too grown for that sort of thing. “What I wouldn’t give for your hair! So unique; you should have something lovely to brush it with. You’re already such a pretty girl, but someday you’re going to bloom, and when you do, heaven help the boys.”

There’s a cherry blossom on it, too, adorning the back simply with five perfect petals.

When Sakura moved out of her parents’ house, she chose the tones of her bedroom accents, inclusive of the frame, with it in mind; she’d been using it for years by then, and had developed a fondness for pale wood rooted in familial nostalgia. Most of her actual furniture in the room is secondhand, of an older variety and painted with a white stain to make them somewhat match - she prefers things with a little bit of history, has since her mom gifted her that hairbrush - but the few frames and wall-mounted shelves are lighter washes of wood.

Many of the surfaces in her apartment are cluttered with books and other knick knacks she has accumulated through the years, but she tries to keep the vanity’s top clear, almost like an altar, an ode to the things she finds lovely atop it to give her hope with which to greet the day.

Still clutching the gift tenderly in her hands, Sakura ventures over to it.

She holds the fan close to the frame as well as the brush, comparing the color, near an exact match, a fresh memory making her heart swell in a completely different way, a way she had previously thought was maybe unrealistic.

She’ll get a stand for it, she decides, and display it in the spot the frame currently sits; it would look perfect there, the curvature echoed above it in circular looking glass, a hairbrush of a similar stain beside it. Then she’ll be able to gaze at it every morning and evening. There is no way something this precious to her could ever be stored away in a box and only seen on special occasions; it’s the same reason she struggled with the idea of hiding his letters away in one.

No, Sakura is resolutely sure that admiring it will be a daily ritual.

She can relocate the photo frame to her bedside table, maybe, next to An Introduction to Electrocardiography , or perhaps to her living room, though it doesn’t really match the wood out there.

That gets her thinking. We’re... together now, right? He’s kissed her, and she really hopes he will again, surprisingly soft lips against hers, an aroma of woodsmoke, and butterflies unleashed in her stomach. Maybe she should put the frame on the shelf in the main room. He might come over, sometime; it would be good to have it visible, situated in a place where he can see it.

With the utmost care, she lays the fan on the surface in front of her. Sakura combs through wet locks, coaxing out tangles with an old gift and appreciating a new one with watery eyes. When she’s finished, she carefully clutches it again and admires it atop a lavender comforter for the better part of an hour, alternating between mentally mapping its fine stitching within the confines of her hippocampus and paging through her book of Sasuke’s letters in a way that is more than fond, affection freed from her chest after so very long. The jubilance crests to a sense of omneity as she does so, moon glow filtering in by way of the gauzy white curtains that shield the balcony’s glass door.

She absolutely can’t wait to see him tomorrow. She sincerely hopes she’s not dreaming all of this.

She is so enamored with it that she doesn’t even drink her customary evening tea, her being warmed in an entirely different manner she is as of yet unaccustomed to, better than earl grey or some variety of dessert. It’s immensely difficult to pry it from her own hands when the time comes to do so.

Always is the last word she thinks of before she succumbs to slumber, curled up in soft colors and hoping he has found somewhere comfortable to sleep. Treasured memories emanate from objects old and new, brewing together before a looking glass where she’s placed them for safekeeping and admiration.

XXX

When she awakens in the morning, Sakura jerks upright in bed, turning to her vanity to ascertain if it was all a dream, cozened in by her subconscious as she slept.

It wasn’t. The fan is still there, precious and so enchantingly beautiful, dawn flavoring the memory of Sasuke’s return just as sweet as it had tasted yesterday with his lips on hers.

She brushes her hair again, working at the task way longer than necessary and trying not to cry out of sheer happiness. She feels so light, as if being pulled upwards by a latterly existent force of gravity, theoretically possible in terms of relative physics and with the right circumstances, but never actually experienced.

Birds are singing on the balcony when Sakura finally steps outside, snacking on seeds from her bird feeder as she gives her fledgling plants a drink before leaving for work.

It is such a lovely morning.

XXX

Sakura makes it through work as if encapsulated in a brand of inertial navigation system, floating as if she’s a bizarrely sentient cloud from patients to test tubes. She feeds the mice and records the brief observations she usually does on Wednesdays, and then a Genin is being brought in with a linear fracture in their tibia, twisted wrong and impacted during training. She gives instructions to nurses, too, taking care of smaller tasks in between, part of her feeling like she is barely there.

Well, not barely. She still keeps her wits about her and heals people; she takes pride in what she does. She just… daydreams a little, too, sage, smoke, and silver occupying her spare moments, flitting in between the corridors of her head as she flits from exam room to exam room.

She’s sitting at her desk, eating an early dinner and working on a new pile of paperwork before her next appointment arrives at five thirty, when one of Naruto’s clones bangs on her window.

Her gaze shifts to the glass at the familiar boisterous whining of her name - “Sakura-chaaaaaaan!” - and she rises to open it the rest of the way, allowing him entry into her office, an easy grin coming to her lips.

“Naruto!” A million thoughts run through her head. He has to know Sasuke’s back at this point, right? Has he seen him? He must be so happy.

Cyan bores into her, and he grins as he steps down. “Sakura-chan, teme’s back! Can you believe it? Though I guess you knew since yesterday.”

Sakura’s cheeks warm at the implication of that, wondering how he knows this information, but her friend is plowing onwards.

“Anyways, wanna have an original Team Seven reunion dinner on Saturday night? Or maybe Sunday night? Kakashi-sensei said Saturday would be better for him, if it works for you. And we should also make it a housewarming party for teme, but Kakashi-sensei says DON’T tell him that, or he won’t agree! It’s a surprise.”

Laughter erupts from her chest, rich and joyful, because it is crystal clear in that moment that Naruto is as elated at Sasuke’s return as she is - okay, maybe not quite on the level that she is, but close - even through a clone. “Of course, we should! I don’t have anything planned for Saturday night.”

Her teammate grins, all infectious happiness in the way that is so utterly characteristic of him, eyes crinkling at their corners. “Good, great, awesome! Be sure to mention it to him when you see him at seven. I’m sure if you suggest it, he’ll definitely agree.” Sakura blinks in surprise, cheeks staining darker. “Man, this is gonna be so great! Team Seven is fucking back ! I can’t wait to get a mission! It’ll be just like old times. I gotta tell Hinata-chan, too!”

She can’t help it; she smiles so wide that it hurts her face, tears paying her another visit. Sasuke’s back. He’s really back. And-

“Well, anyways, I’ll leave you to eat your dinner, Sakura-chan, but we have to force him to be social. I can’t wait to spar! But also, we gotta have a picnic, and no tying me to the pole this time. We could even challenge Kakashi-sensei to get off his ass and give us another go at the bell test. And, and! We should have a movie night. And go drinking! I’ve never seen teme drunk. I bet he’s a lightweight, and he’ll probably say all sorts of embarrassing shit! And-” Naruto’s clone’s expression turns unexpectedly serious, blue eyes suddenly narrowing in a way that is all-seeing and a tan finger suddenly pointing at her accusingly.

“-I mean social outside of you and him, Sakura-chan! Don’t think for a second that you’re gonna escape my questions later, when my brain isn’t fried from staring at that stupid scroll Kakashi-sensei has me slaving over. I want answers. ”

And then Naruto’s clone disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving her blinking in a strange combination of bewilderment and somehow, shyness, too.

And ebullience. Mostly ebullience.

She stands there grinning like an idiot for a long time. She can’t wait to see him at seven.

[foxjevilwild]

Deltarune Chapter 2, Just finished and here are some thoughts:

Ralsei isn't a Darkner, but he's not able to exist in the Lightner World.

Darkners are reinterpretations, reimaginings, and dreams of things that exist in the Lightner World. They turn to stone in other Fountains (the concept solidifies and becomes unchanging) or they turn into mundane objects (like cards and junk) because outside of the theme of their own recontextualization they don't exist. The Dark is a form of exegis, a way of recreating the 'game' world.

This raises the question: Why can they exist in Ralsei's fountain? What is his fountain reinterpreting? -- My theory is his fountain is aware of and a recontextualization of the Game "Undertale 2" - so anything within the game, including the reinterpretations it creates, can persist there.

Each fountain, each Chapter is just the same game being retold, replayed again - because the world is still Undertale and is just presenting itself with the same themes, the same structure, and the same 'choices' like Pacifist/Genocide because it is expected to - because it was originally built to before the changes.

Whatever Kris is, whatever is using the fountains is doing so to keep the Lightner world from progressing forward. We the player have a game menu, interactions, choices - all of that in the Lightner world - but the plot in the Lightner world is allowed to progress according to its script only with minimal change. The times we would be interacting with and changing the plot, we're always pulled into the Dark Worlds - to solve a crisis that repeats, always with the same outcomes.

The only one telling us we have to close the fountain, and the only one telling us the world will end if we don't - is Ralsei.

Most of the more powerful characters in the game...like Jevil, Seam, and now Spamton - are aware of their realities being rewritten and of what happened in the time of ROARING that Ralsei promised would happen if the Dark takes over. All of these characters are outliers who couldn't be fully rewritten - whatever process is keeping the world stagnant and reset has failed on them.

Jevil is in an infinite loop, and the Dark has him quarantined.

Seam was torn apart and recompiled.

Spamton seems to be two beings, corrupted as one copied over the other. He's the Spambot from the Lightner world, and the Car Salesman from the Dark - and as a program, as either form, he's aware of his STRINGS - the lines of code that bind him to the Game.

These are things that happen when a program fails to execute, or glitches out.

All of these 'error' characters seem aware of 'Chaos', and of existing before the current iteration of their game loop.

I think Ralsei is still Asriel -- I think he's still the Asriel that was Flowey, actually. I think he or someone inadvertently helping him (like Gaster) - has rewritten the actual Undertale 2 into the world of 'Deltarune' (anagrams as a theme, remixing existing components) - a world where Asriel is away for college and not trapped forever in the Dark. A world where everyone loves and remembers him fondly - waiting for his return at the end of the week for the Festival.

Asriel is supposed to be the older brother, but Ralsei seems to be the same age as Asriel had 'died' in Undertale - the same child we see in the field of flowers. Does an older version of Asriel actually exist? I think Ralsei, or possibly someone else, has created a story where he gets to keep a looping world where his death and Flowey never happened - but maybe he can't return at the end of the 7 days?

De-termination. Undoing Death. Maybe the process here is incomplete or corruptible?

I think whatever is modifying the world - they used the 'Dark' to rewrite the world and reinterpret its components, to Re-Determine what's going to happen. I think every time a Player/SOUL shows up to affect their choices on the world and progress the plot, they sideline them with the worlds created in the Dark as a sort of treadmill, to keep them from playing the game that originally existed in the Lightner World and actually 'completing' the 7 day story.

We're told repeatedly by the metastructure of the game, and by presumably GASTER at the Survey_Program opening - that choices don't matter in this world. Every time we are given one, it's either discarded immediately, or affects nothing permanent in the Light World - only the Dark.

I think this is our antagonist, convincing us that the SOUL can't have an affect on the outcome because they don't want it to - they want this reality to continue, for the Dark to consume the world at the end, and for their reality to rewrite itself again so as to draw energy from it, from all the SOULS that run through the program/universe when they play the game again.

I presume it may be Gaster (or whoever narrated the Survey Program, but we're pretty sure that's Gaster, right?) as the 'behind the curtain villain' - I think Ralsei/Asriel may be playing into this loop or helping them, not realizing what's really happening or now unwilling to stop it after the first rewrite - because they don't want to be alone in the dark anymore like they were at the end of Undertale. I think Ralsei is sincere in his desire to close the other fountains, but I think he's unaware that the force creating them wants the ROARING to happen.

I think Kris, once it was determined he was the Vessel, was modified in the 'bunker' to be pliable, to be able to remove the SOUL. It's either the character of Kris (who, if you act out of character or pick dialogues that are kind, is called out by other characters for being different after the player takes over) - or whatever is controlling that vessel other than the Player/SOUL, that is creating the Dark Fountains and sidelining the progression and keeping the SOUL from modifying anything in the Lightner world. I think this process traumatized the real Kris, the character he was before we step in - because it seems clear from other characters he is terrified of that bunker.

A bunker which is a mystery to every character in the town so far.

By his character, I believe there is a second SOUL inside Kris, or something very similar (possibly an artificial version of a SOUL) that is the source of the Roaring Knight. It may also be that he was rewritten to be 'controlled' in this way - hence the underlying personality being so quiet, reclusive, and traumatized/repressed.

My guess is the titles here, like Knight, and Roaring, are phonetic plays on what is actually happening. Kris is the Knight, or the Night - periods of time when the SOUL can be sidelined and whatever our antagonist is can affect change and create the fountains. I think the Roaring is the Rearranging or Reordering, maybe? I'm not as certain on that one.

What Ralsei describes as the Roaring is an opening of too many fountains - the light world enveloped in total Darkness (full reinterpretation or system collapse) - and the emerging of TITANS from these fountains that devastate the world, shaped by their own fountains - leaving the Lightners alone in darkness and solidifying the darkners. I think the ROARING is a form of program crash, or total rewrite.

I think Ralsei may be disingenuous here - he doesn't want too many fountains to open - but he will never close his own. I think he is aware of what was before Deltarune, since he knows about the ROARING - and is trying this time to keep his favorable world going maybe?

It's hard to tell if he's working with or against the Roaring Knight (or their controller) - I think he wants to keep his world of friends and heroism, his Role-Reinterpretation from Undertale 2. I think he sincerely wants to close the other fountains, because the result he describes is what he had originally as Asriel, and Asriel could not have a role in Undertale 2 without this rewrite - as Asriel Dreemur he would've been Lost eternally in an endless night...

I love this interpretation because it plays into the nature of Dreamer/Dreemur (the Dark is the dream of the world that could be, and he is it's Prince), the nature of sequels in general (what we want and expect as an audience vs what would be organic to the characters), and a sort of meta-text about what an artist can do with a sequel (you can reinterpret, but not by much, never in a way that is unrecognizable and thus enchained to the original).

Undertale was a game with characters aware they were in a game.

Deltarune is a game so far where it seems characters are aware they are in a sequel.

Phenomenal, Mr. Fox!

--

This is a bit rambling but I had a lot I wanted to write down and it's super late. I might revise this later.

--

[midnightactual]

The Tenshiheisōban

This title gets thrown around some. I don’t like the usual interpretation of what it means. We first hear of it from Soifon in chapter 154:

天 - ten - heavens, sky 賜 - shi - to give, bestow, be given, be honored, gift, boon, results 兵 - hei - soldier, war machine, weapon, battle, war 装 - sō - clothing, binding, attire, dress, pretend, disguise, equipment 番 - ban - number (in a series), (one's) turn, watch, guard, rank, position

The meaning of Tenshiheisōban seems to be something like “Guard of the Heaven-bestowed Battle Dress”. The Bleach Wiki giving “Guard of the Heavenly Granted Armaments” is close enough. Where the Wiki is wrong, however, is that Viz is not translating this term as “Defender of the Realm.” Look at the footer. The title of Tenshiheisōban is conferred to them because they are the Defender of the Realm. Viz continually makes this distinction, as can be seen in the official translation of CFYOW:

This is notably missing from fan translations:

(There is an obvious reticence by Viz to translate certain terms, which is interesting. Also note Mayuri’s suspicions regarding the “supposed” origins of the artifacts that the Shihōin manage. He clearly doesn’t believe in it.) There’s something sort of weirdly reflexive and idiomatic about this title, and there’s a great effort being made by actual translators across almost two decades to ensure that you know it comes from the Shihōin’s status as Defenders of the Realm. It does not come from their holding of the Tenshiheisō, “the Heaven-bestowed Battle Dress” itself. And such a thing does exist, as Kisuke confirms its existence in chapter 612:

Yūshirō brought it along. But Kisuke doesn’t seem terribly enthused about this. If the Tenshiheisō really is, as the Bleach Wiki reports Bleach: Official Character Book SOULs saying, “an incredible spiritual tool that is said to have been handed down from the Heavens,” then this is a rather underwhelming use of it, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it have been better served being brought up to combat the Schutzstaffel if it was so great? Let’s go back to chapter 606:

If it’s so awesome, why is Yūshirō just lumping it in with “all kinds of things” that he brought along? Why is Kisuke giving such a suss facial expression in response if it’s really this amazing artifact?

Why is all the stuff still being treated as just stuff? Why isn’t Yoruichi up there during the fights with Pernida and Askin going, “Boy, sure would be great if I had that Tenshiheisō right now for this tough fight!” or something to that effect? Why does the title of Tenshiheisōban come not from holding the Tenshiheisō itself, but from being Defender of the Realm?

Well, I think the answer is fairly obvious: it’s because the Tenshiheisō is largely ceremonial and symbolic. It clearly has some utility, as Kisuke is able to use it to do stuff, but it’s not a Gundam or something, some deus ex machina that makes one invincible. So, what is it symbolizing, and why are the Shihōin the Defenders of the Realm if not for it?

Have you ever noticed the Shihōin are extremely hard to kill?

Here’s Yoruichi matching wits with Askin after he made oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2)—that is to say, 99.03% of the atmosphere assuming an Earthlike composition—and reishi—that is to say, everything solid nearby to include her own body—toxic to her. In other words, almost literally everything around her should be lethal poison to her. People give Kenpachi plaudits for surviving in space against Gremmy, but space is just indifferent to your survival. Everything is actively trying to kill Yoruichi—and failing.

Oh, and she keeps doing it as he continues using his abilities! Yūshirō, despite having been shot through the heart three times, and being notably less developed in his abilities, also survives this.

I think it’s pretty simple: the actual Tenshiheisō is the Shihōin themselves. And I here choose a different translation: each and every one of them are themselves the “Heavenly-granted War Machines” of Soul Society. It’s something to do with their constitution. (This is perhaps akin to, but probably not exactly like how the Royal Guard’s bones are the Ōken, especially as the “Tenshiheisō” seems to work like a key.) This is why they are the Defenders of the Realm, and why they are Tenshiheisōban. They are not guarding the Tenshiheisō, they are the Guard of Tenshiheisō.

[asleepinawell]

Been having a lot of Thoughts about the nier series recently and the larger themes of both games and wanted to jot them down and toss them into the void of the internet.

Massive spoilers for nier automata follow, including for ending e. Do not read this if you ever intend to play nier automata. There are spoilers for nier replicant as well, though not for ending e.

One of the biggest themes both nier games tackle is the tragedy of an uncaring universe. Bad things happen to good people, people who think they're good and doing the right thing find out they were actually committing atrocities, the very idea that there's 'good' and 'bad' people is dissected and rejected. At the end of the day, the universe doesn't give a shit about any of us and none of it matters. Enjoy your existential despair!

In nier replicant, the main character starts off as an optimistic young boy who wants to save, not only his sister, but the entire world. After the time skip, nier is a young man whose optimism has (partially) been tarnished and whose goal has narrowed down to just saving his sister. As you move through each route you understand more and more how tragic the world is and how, despite your best intentions, you are only adding to the tragedy of the world. The original 4 endings of nier replicant are all tragic in some way. Ending D has a glimmer of hope in it in the form of nier being able to save kainé at the cost of his own existence, but it's a bittersweet ending and the world is ultimately doomed anyway.

Which brings us to nier automata. Even more so than replicant, automata hammers home the meaningless of everything, the uncaring universe, tragedy both avoidable and unavoidable. The main characters are locked in an endless loop of violence and despair. The worst that could happen, does, again and again. It thrives off the type of tragedy porn I usually hate.

Except....

Except it doesn't. If endings a and b are the opening statement, endings c and d are the facts and body of the essay, but then there's ending e, the concluding paragraph which takes everything we've been told and gives you the chance to draw your own conclusion from it.

Route e starts after you've gotten both ending c and d and is no longer about the characters in the game at all. Route e is about you, the player, and what you believe. It says "we've given you a story of complete despair, we've shown you the universe is unfair and doesn't give a fuck about you, we've shown you things that end in tragedy. despite all of this, do you still believe it's worth fighting for the hope of something better?"

And then it asks you to prove it.

Route e is the ending every fan has asked for when they've said "I'll fight the creators to give my favs a happy ending." Today is your lucky day!

Route e is the ending credits of the game, except that the ending credits have turned into a bullet hell mini game. In fighting the actual credits themselves, you are fighting the game devs. You are saying fuck you I don't believe that everything is pointless. Fighting for better is always worth it. The meaning that we imbue in life is important to us and that matters.

The bullet hell of the end credits starts out fairly simple and gets harder and harder as you go, lasting something like 15 minutes total, which is a brutally long time to be playing something that requires split second timing and 100% of your focus. It's meant to feel insurmountable, just like the challenges the characters in the game faced (the larger plot challenges, not the combat). You will likely die a lot and check points are few and far between.

But there's more to it than that. The first time you die, a prompt comes up:

And then when you die again:

Except now, there’s a message on the screen. A message that appears to be from another player, somewhere in the world.

And again:

(this one really fucked me up, but that’s for a different post).

And then finally:

(thank you user MR-YE-1996)

When you accept the rescue offer, you go back to the bullet hell again, but now you have a wall of other players around your weak little avatar, shielding you from harm. The music, which has been a single vocal track up until now, gains an entire chorus of voices to represent the army of actual players who’ve shown up to save you (and there’s a lot I could say about the use of the (exquisitely good) music in the nier games, and especially about the difference in lyrical themes between ashes of dreams and weight of the world). Every time a bullet hits one of the players surrounding you, there’s a message saying that user’s data has been lost. Users from all over the world are sacrificing themselves to help you. It’s a very nice, heart-warming moment that you still don’t understand the full impact of quite yet.

After you beat the credits, you’re rewarded by a final cutscene. The android protagonists have been reconstructed and will receive a second chance at life. The narration at this point talks about how life exists within the spiral of life and death we are all trapped in. One of the two pods talking points out that even though the androids are being given a second chance at life, there’s a possibility that things will go just as poorly once again. And the other pod agrees, but adds: “However, the possibility of a different future also exists.”

And then the scene ends with this quote: “A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself.”

And this is really the final conclusion of the game. There is no inherent meaning in the universe, so the meaning we give our lives is the most meaningful thing. (And the ‘you’ here isn’t necessarily an individual either. It can be, or it can be humanity as a whole, or even one group). And you, the player, thought that it was worth fighting to give these characters a second chance, and other players out there in the world thought it was worth helping you to do so.

It’s such a wonderfully beautiful piece of meta interpretation posing as a game ending, and also a departure from the final conclusion of previous Yoko Taro games. It feels like a much more mature and nuanced interpretation of the world than the ending of replicant was (I won’t comment on the new ending e of replicant just yet since it didn’t come out that long ago). (Also, for the record, I love nier replicant and the characters in it with my entire heart. This post is not bashing it).

But the game has one more surprise in store for you. After the cutscene ends, you’re given one last choice. The game asks if you have any interest in helping other players the way you were helped. And if you say yes, you’re told that the only way you can do this is to sacrifice all your save data.

I think that sacrifice hits differently for different people. Some people genuinely won’t mind that at all. As someone who probably still has save data from games I played 20 years ago, it felt like a gut punch. To me, save data represents all the time and emotion and energy I’ve put into a game. Games are so deeply important to me in so many ways and have been since my childhood when they were one of the few ways I could escape from a lot of terrible shit going on in my life. (There’s a reason my blog title is what it is). I could talk a lot more about that point, but I’ll leave it by saying that when I saw what the game was asking of me it felt like someone had knocked my legs out from under me.

For more practical players, it also is locking you out of chapter select, the best way to go back and get all the things you missed and grab the achievements/trophies you still need.

The game will point out that you’ll get nothing in return for this (not a lie, there’s no secret reward), that you will likely never know if or who you helped, that you won’t be thanked, that the person you help could be someone you intensely dislike, etc. And with all of this comes the realization that all those people who came to help you in the credits had already done this. Those people whose data was sacrificed to help you get to the final cutscene had already sacrificed their save data to help you.

We’ve now gone from a world where everything is meaningless, to a world where other real actual human beings out there have sacrificed something that represented hours of their time and a varying amount of emotional investment without any hope of reward to help a stranger see a message of hope.

When I was younger, I was more drawn to dark, hopeless stories. Stories about how dark and meaningless the world was. The world was a terrible place then too. 9/11 happened when I was in highschool (an incident that influenced yoko taro’s creation of nier replicant and had a huge impact on me at the time), the pointless wars that happened after and the recession and a million other things seemed to infuse everything with hopelessness. In that world, stories about everything being meaningless and hopeless felt correct. They felt validating. Yes, everything really does suck that much!

That sort of story lost its appeal for me later on. Pointless and horrible things continued to happen, and still continue to happen. The world events of the last few years have been an unnerving reliving of those earlier years, except even worse. The cycles of tragedy are still there with no end in sight. I’m exhausted from all of it. It really does feel hopeless a lot.

But stories that stop at that point no longer appeal to me. Stories like nier automata--stories that say yes, things are terrible, but there’s always hope, you can create your own meaning, it is always worth it to fight for better even if you fail, your life is worthwhile simply for existing--those stories are the ones I think we all need more than anything.

[philliamwrites]

The Dawn Will Come [Chpt.6]

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Dimitri x Reader, Claude x Reader, Edelgard x Reader, Yuri x Reader, Edelgard x Byleth, lots of minor pairings

Tags: #gn reader, # platonic love byleth & reader, #reader is a tactical unit, #angst, #slow burn, #subplots, #unreliable narrator, #pining, #remporary amnesia, #reluctant herp, #canon divergence, #lost twin au, #many chapters, #original content

Words: 5.1k

Summary: Waking up in a forest without any knowledge of your past and who you are, you join the house leaders of the Officers Academy to search for a way to return your memories. Unfortunately, the church has different plans for you, and Fate places you in the centre of a cruel game with deadly stakes. It certainly doesn’t help to fall in love with a house leader who is doomed to be your demise.

Notes: Chapter 5 | Chapter 7

Chapter 06: From The Beyond

Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

[Mary B. Shelley, Frankenstein]

    Thinking back on it later, the events during Garland Moon were probably what set the hare running toward its demise. Not that any of you could have known that. Not the students who joyfully spend their days in cherished halls where daylight passes through coloured glass; not Byleth with her gift to correct past mistakes with a flick of her wrist and change the course of time; not you with your foresight to see what dangers await in the future and prepare a different path for those you care for to walk safely.

    Thinking back on it later, everything that followed surely ascribed to and served Fate, and not even Sylvain could charm her with his silver tongue and golden wit, for Fate’s lover is Time and she does not look kindly upon those who enslave him.

    Maybe that is why things turned out the way they did for Byleth and you.

    But that future is still far away and every single one of you still believes the goddess has Fate tightly leashed to her side, her benevolence endless and spreading to every corner in Fódlan.

    That is why you don’t think too much about it when one day, Seteth disturbs your seminar, a deep frown settled in his features as you explain how to turn an ambush to your advantage to the students.

    “Apologies for the disturbance, Herald. Lady Rhea asks to see Ashe.”

    The boy gives a pitiful squeal but is up on his feet nonetheless. “Me? Why?”

    “You will see. Please come.” Seteth holds the classroom’s door open.

    You nod, a little worried about the frightened glance Ashe sends your way like he hopes you can actually say no and decline Rhea’s command. An encouraging smile is everything you can give him on his way before the door shuts behind him. Its sound wakes everyone else from their slumber and it takes a few minutes to reclaim order and their attention. It certainly does help that the Blue Lion House isn’t as chaotic as a certain other, not to name any names.

    Said house proves again to be more difficult to teach. Or tame. You didn’t have the courage to ask why they thought it was a good idea to see whose shoe would leave the darkest stain on Claude’s bedroom’s ceiling. Even days after their mischief students kept talking about how they have never seen Seteth this furious.

    “Herald, please,” Hilda cries, tragically draped over the back of her chair, a maiden in bittersweet agony over her loss of free time. “It was all Claude’s fault.”

    “Liars never prosper,” Claude calls from the far back of the room. He’s hunched over his papers, working vigorously on Seteth’s punishment. He ordered them to write hundred times I shall not throw footwear against any ceiling in the monastery. They’ve been at it for about twenty minutes and Claude’s quill hasn’t stopped its furious scratching against parchment at all.

    “I won’t mess with Seteth,” you tell them and lean dangerously far back on your chair to place your feet on the teacher’s desk. “And you deserve it. Or do they not teach you proper manners in your noble homes?”

    “Well, it’s not like anyone taught us not to do it,” Hilda chirps. You throw a glare her way and she quickly dugs her head and continues writing. Quills scratch on paper for about seven seconds before Hilda stops again.

    “Herald,” she says. “What do you think about Lady Catherine’s Thunderbrand?”

    You look up from your book titled Noticeable War Generals. Smile gone from her face, Hilda looks up at you with sharp curiosity. It’s eerily silent now, and a quick glance towards Claude shows he is listening as well.

    Catherine’s Thunderbrand. Its sight is still burned into the back of your closed eyes: Golden ivory forged into a grotesque sword, a blood red Crest Stone in its middle that seemed to pulsate—as if it breathed. As if it was a living thing with a heart. You had simply stared at it in awe and thought What a mesmerising weapon.

    “It’s … fascinating,” you manage. “A Hero’s Relic. There are more than just Thunderbrand, right?”

    “Ten exist,” Claude calls from the back. “Bestowed by the goddess upon ten heroes, they are passed down to their descendants. House Riegan and House Goneril have one in their possession as well.”

    “Then why don’t you use it?” You certainly wouldn’t miss a chance to own and wield a mighty weapon like that.

    “Wield that?”Hilda shudders in disgust. “No thank you. It looks so weird, pulsating and moving like an insect.”

    “And we’re way too inexperienced to use it in a real battle.” Claude puts his quill between his nose and upper lip and tries to hold it there. “They’re locked away anyway and hidden from those who might misuse their power.”

    Claude has a point. Nonetheless, you’d gladly take a look at them. Maybe even hold one … Did the Herald own one as well? A special weapon only forged for the Herald. A slight shudder runs down your spine at the thought of using it in battle.

    Ten minutes later, Claude jumps to his feet. He hurries towards you, slams his parchments on the table and leaves just as fast. “Bye Herald!”

    “No way!” Hilda pales. “How is he so fast?”

    You wonder as well and take a look at his papers. Instead of writing what Seteth has told them, Claude simply left poor drawings of their crime and promised with one sentence he wouldn’t do it again.

    And we of House Riegan never break our promises, reads the last line.

    You groan. Now it’s your turn to think about a good explanation to Seteth’s questions why you haven’t paid more attention.

    Month three passed within the blink of an eye. Garland Moon brought the sweet smell of white roses to Garreg Mach, a tradition much anticipated by the students. Everywhere you went, garlands and gifts made of white roses were given to each other as a sign of friendship or budding love. Some found their way to your desk, though your admirers preferred to stay anonymous whereas Byleth was busy to stow them somewhere—not a day passed without her receiving something or a group of giggling students following her around.

    “I really don’t know what to do with all those flowers,” she told you one day during a tea session, a deep frown on her face. “They wilt. Then I throw them away. It’s a waste.”

    “Your students love it,” you replied but were glad not to be in her place.

    Another good deed Garland Moon brought with it is longer days and shorter nights. Students lounged outside in their summer uniforms after class, enjoying those last warm days before raining season arrived with fierce gusts and heavy pouring, forcing them back inside where they spent their free time inside the library or the dining hall, playing little games to kill time.

    For a change of pace, Byleth and Jeralt decided they’d hold a grilled fish dinner on every last day of each week and most of the invited either didn’t have the heart or the courage to tell them once every week was once every week too much.

    Everything happened too fast after that. Rhea informed the teacher’s faculty and her Knights of Lord Lonato Gaspard’s planned rebellion against the church. With that, the mystery of why Seteth had demanded to speak with Ashe was solved; it also explained why he spent so much time inside the chapel, praying and wondering himself about his adoptive father’s reasoning.

    “There is no question about it,” Rhea says in her cool, demanding voice once every teacher and Knight of Seiros gathered inside the War Room to discuss the matter. “We will send a troop to meet them halfway in Kingdom Territory. They will pay for mocking our goddess.”

    “Allow me to lead the Knights, Lady Rhea,” Catherine says. Even now, you can’t take your eyes off Thunderbrand strapped on her back. “I know Gaspard and what he’s capable of.”

    “We did not forget what you’ve done back when—” Seteth starts. Catherine silences him with one look, leaving no doubt she doesn’t wish to speak of it.

    “And that is exactly why I have to go.”

    Rhea nodded. “So be it. I know I leave this mission in your capable hands.”

    “But why is he leading this rebellion?” you wonder. “I thought the Kingdom is strongly devoted to Seiros’ teachings.”

    “Every flock has its black sheep,” Rhea says, sounding sad. “We will get our answers once we defeat and capture them.”

    “What about the surrounding villages and those who support Gaspard’s rebellion but don’t fight?” Byleth asked. Until now, you haven’t really thought of those not directly involved in it, but she does make a good point.

    Rhea squared her shoulders. “What about them?”

    “They’re not directly involved but might try to get in our way.” Byleth glanced at the strategic map laid out before her. There is a way through the forest for your units to approach Lonato’s stronghold. Surrounding villages are marked with a red pin. They surround the forest in a loose circle, making an intrusion possible, though sending Knights of Seiros out to watch them and stop them could be quite easy—

    “Everyone who supports this foolish rebellion should receive the rightful punishment,” Rhea says, her voice so cold it freezes your thoughts of how to make the villagers stay out of this. Your head snaps up as you stare at her. Byleth raises an eyebrow but remains silent just like everyone else. Something about that makes you shudder.

    “But they’re civilians, right? If we can avoid having them interfere—”

    “By joining Lonato Gaspard’s rebellion they pledge guilty to his cause.” Rhea looks up at you, scorn flashing briefly in her eyes. “I will not have them simply go if it opens the possibility for revenge one day.”

    If you squinted really hard, there was reason behind her words. Still, your stomach turned at the thought of endangering civilians even though it could be prevented. Without any protests, that was the plan for the operation.

    You sat this one out. There was much to prepare for the upcoming Rite of Rebirth, a ceremony when the Church of Seiros and its believers unite to pray for the return of the goddess. Even though you wouldn’t call yourself a believer—many find it strange that you remember the way of war but not the way of the Church as if you lived somewhere without Seiros’ teachings—your presence was of outmost importance as well. Though after you heard how the mission went, you really wished you had joined the Blue Lions fighting against Gaspard instead of sitting around and deciding which ceremonial robes fit better.

    Loud voices drift through the closed door of a classroom, voices you immediately recognise belonging to Dimitri and Byleth.

    “Are you insane?” You flinch back even though a heavy wooden door separates you from what is undoubtedly Dimitri’s wrath. “Those were civilians.”

    A reply is lost, too quiet for you to hear, but whatever Byleth said, it wasn’t the right thing. A second later, Dimitri storms through the doors. The distress in his features stops you from asking what is wrong, a flash of betrayal lurking in his eyes seals your mouth shut. You look after him until he disappears around the corner, only slowly turning towards Byleth. She is propping herself up on the table, learning on her strong arms and staring at the opposite wall, her mouth a grim line—solid rock that stands against the raging waves summoned by Dimitri, her grip on the edge of the table hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

    “Everything okay?” An unnecessary question answered by a simple shake of her head. You lean your hips against the table. “Do you want to talk about it?”

    Byleth is silent. Only slowly, like a tight knot finally coming lose, the tension in her shoulders dissipates and she takes a long, deep breath.

    “Dimitri told me about their mission. How they dealt with Lord Lonato’s revolt.” She finally steps away from the table and kneads the muscles in her shoulders. You imagine they’re hard like a rock. “They faced simple peasants who defended their Lord. Peasants who didn’t even know how to wield a sword without cutting their own thumbs off.”

    “And Rhea made quite clear how to deal with them,” you finish, summoning unwanted imaginations about a gruesome butchery in your mind. Byleth nods.

    “Dimitri asked for my advice,” she continues, her gaze drifting towards the door as if said young man might return like a bad haunting if his name is simply muttered. “If there was anything they could have done different. I told him there wasn’t.” She tears her eyes away from the door and fixes them on you. “I told him that is the way of war.”

    She is right, a part of you insists. Such facts cannot be changed and claiming anything different is foolish, naive. Yet, something stirs, a tiny tiny voice, a feeling, that challenges that thought. A feeling you didn’t expect to be part of you.

    “I don’t know about the details,” you say, shuffling from left to right, “but maybe it was avoidable. Lord Lonato must have known how his subjects felt about it. He didn’t need to involve them.”

    “I think they joined on their own. The students gave them a chance to lay down their weapons.”

    “Still—”

    “Still they decided to follow their foolish Lord,” a voice from the door joins, cold and imperious, chilling you to the bone. Rhea enters the War Room, her expression void of any warmth or kindness. “There is no place for doubt. We must punish any sinner who may inflict harm upon believers, even if those sinners are civilians.”

    “And you think to have the students punish them is right?” Byleth asks, earning a sharp glare from Rhea. She quickly, but somewhat begrudgingly adds, “Your Grace.”

    “I have heard that some students struggled with completing the task,” Rhea acknowledges, doing her best to show how unaffected she is by Byleth’s criticism. “I pray they learnt a valuable lesson about the fate that awaits all who are foolish enough to point their blades towards the heavens.”

    An icy shudder crawls up your spine, cold fingers tighten around your throat to keep you silent—a leash forged of obedience and intimidation, the mistress standing before you. It would be wise to keep your mouth shut, not draw unnecessary attention; keep your head low and nothing can slice it from your shoulders. But the words, burning hot on your tongue, demand freedom.

    “Fearing the Church isn’t the same as respecting it.”

    Something sharp flashes in Rhea’s eyes. “If fear is the only way to control them, then so be it. They are traitors to the holy teachings.”

    “They are people. People with families.”

    “People who would be wise to remember it was the progenitor god who gave them these lands and their life,” Rhea answers, growing impatient. She notices something in the way you look at her, for she takes a moment to collect herself by taking a deep breath. “I do not enjoy seeing those who wronged our holy teachings punished, Herald,” she continues, now much calmer. “But punish them we must before they hurt those who are dear to us.” Upon her last words, her eyes dart to Byleth, looking at her with so much fondness and care, a sting of jealousy in your chest forces you to avert your gaze to the ground. It isn’t the first time you notice Rhea’s palpable interest in Byleth’s wellbeing though no answer comes to mind why it is like that. If Byleth noticed the same, she doesn’t show it.

    After that, the incident is quickly forgotten, making room for the new incident occupying everyone’s mind: an assassination plot on Rhea on the day of the Rite of Rebirth found in Lonato’s possession. You aren’t the only one wondering why he’d carry something like that around where it’s easy to find. Multiple theories go around, one more farfetched than the other. One particular makes sense, its source none other than sharp witted Claude who thinks this plot is a simple distraction for something much bigger.

    “If security is focused on the Rite of Rebirth inside the Goddess’ Tower, pretty much anyone can simply stroll around the monastery and do who knows what,” he told you on the day Byleth and her class set out to discover what important places might become a target. Garreg Mach hides many secrets and treasures. Some of them even you are not allowed to see like relics passed down from archbishop to archbishop, guarded by the elite of the Knights of Seiros, tall and bulky men and women with grim mouths and determined eyes rooting them in place day and night in front of locked doors only Rhea knows what they hide.

    With every passing day, tension hangs in the air like a thick blanket waiting to smother you all. But it isn’t simply the anticipation for whatever the Western Church has planned. It is also the holy ceremony of the Rite of Rebirth, one you’ve practised under the stern eyes of Seteth who doesn’t settle for anything less than perfect. Every word, every step is engraved in your mind.

    On the day of the Rite of Rebirth the sun relentlessly blazes down at the monastery. Your ceremonial robes are heavy and woven from thick jacquard fabric lined with fine golden patterns that depict the Herald’s Crest on the back. You’ve barely finished preparing everything inside the round chamber inside the Goddess’ Tower but perspiration glues your hair to your forehead.

    A whole feast is prepared; food offerings and gifts from the townsfolk and priests served on golden and silver plates on long tables covered with white table clothes. In the middle Seteth prepared a small platform for Rhea to stand and speak in honour of the goddess that she may return to Fódlan and show its people her infinite grace. In short, you’d do anything to join the students who are securing the locations lacking in defence right now instead of standing around and waving at pilgrims. The only joy lies in Flayn’s bright presence and her never ending optimism. She’s a sweet girl and has been looking forward to the ceremony since the beginning of Blue Sea Moon. Looking upon her, it is hard not to catch her excitement and joy when the ceremony finally begins.

    Because of certain circumstances you couldn’t quite follow, the holy relic used for the ceremony, the Chalice of Beginnings, has been missing for a long time. Because of that, a mock chalice was prepared by the cardinals, a handful of high authority men and women who make it no secret they can’t quite decide if they like or dislike you and your position.

    “You must excuse them,” one of the cardinals says after a group of them simply shook their heads at you happily scooping tons of food on a plate. His dark hair falls to his shoulders and unlike the other cardinals, his brown eyes are filled with kindness. “They simply think in old patterns and value their old traditions. You are quite young, Herald. They don’t know how to handle that.”

    “But you do?” you wonder and notice too late how unfriendly that sounds. But he simply laughs.

    “I do frequent with young folk, yes,” he says. “They are my flock and I will do anything to protect them.”

    “That again, Aelfric?” Catherine joins you and slaps his shoulder just when he was about to drink from his cup. You pretend the pastries on your plate are far more interesting than watching him choke on wine. “You’re way too good for them, you know?”

    “Who is ‘them?’” you ask but Catherine just sways her hand as if he wants to get rid of a nasty fly.

    “Unimportant. You did a good job carrying the chalice to the podium.”

    “I did almost trip over these.” You pluck at the heavy robes, already looking forward to getting out of them.

    Catherine laughs but it is short lived. Out of nowhere, a knight hurriedly approaches and leans over to her, muttering, “They are after the tomb of Saint Seiros.”

    Glass shatters as her grip tightens around the fragile stem but without so much as noticing it she storms towards Rhea, fury blazing in her eyes. Something happened. Something far more exciting than playing a believer in front of everyone, so you follow her to listen in more.

    “Those dastards from the Western Church infiltrated the Holy Mausoleum,” she says. Rhea pales. “I will take some knights and go there at once.”

    “Go and be swift, Catherine.” Rhea’s words are barely a puff of breath, those news shaking her but she remains stoic in front of everyone to prevent panic. Her voice drops dangerously low. “Punish those heathens.”

    Catherine’s head dips in a slight bow. “I will, Your Grace.”

    “I want to help too.”

    Both turn around at your voice. Catherine narrows her eyes to sharp slits, but it is Rhea who says, “No. I need you here for the ceremony, Herald.”

    “Please, let me,” you beg. Something inside you demands to follow, demands to see what is inside the Holy Mausoleum that causes so much bloodshed. “I can’t explain, but I need to be there.”

    Rhea presses her lips into a thin line. Before she reopens her mouth to decline your wish, you whirl around and leave the ceremony room, Catherine in hot pursuit. You manage halfway down the hallway before she reaches you and grabs your arm hard.

    “Even though you are the Herald, I won’t allow you to show this disrespect towards Her Grace,” she snarls. “If she tells you to stay, you listen.”

    “I don’t expect you to understand,” you say, trying to free your arm from her bone breaking grip. “But something calls me to this place and I need to follow it.”

    Catherine isn’t pleased but she knows better than do you any real harm. With a crude nod, she allows you to follow. Several knights wait for you and together you make your way through the warm evening air towards the Holy Mausoleum that lies behind the chapel.

    You enter right before chaos erupts. At the end of the hall, its ceiling so high up it’s barely visible in the dark, Byleth stands tall and rises a sword that flashes in a bright red light. A throb goes through your body and brings you to your knees. It feels like an arrow drove into your chest, the stinging pain unlike anything you’ve felt before—no, it’s a pain you haven’t felt since the Crest appeared on your eye for the first time. And then that thrumming energy within you exploded, a sharp crimson that drenched every corner of your right vision, rushing through your veins.

    “Kill them!” an enemy mage commands, fury fuelling him to a last desperate attack. With his remaining companions, they summon a giant fire spell you’ve only read about in books, a combination of spells into a group flame that covers a large area—the pre-stage to a much more fatal blaze that can scorch the land. Blaze or no, the effect watching the giant fire ball curling and sparking until it grows large enough to wipe out anything in its way is the same. Fear paralyses your body. Move, your mind screams, but you can’t. Your muscles have locked up; a high whine of terror fills your head and fizzes in your blood like poison, yet you do not understand where this fear of fire comes from.

    “Take cover!” Catherine roars but it is too late. The blast hits the ground right before you, dispersing your small group of reinforcements like wind scattering leaves in all directions. A loud crack beneath you makes your heart skip a beat, a rumble shakes the hall and before you can fully comprehend what is happening, the ground gives way.

    The last thing you hear is Byleth shouting, not Herald, but your name before you plunge into darkness.

    Wake up.

    You have to wake up.

    This darkness is terrifying, so utterly black and choking, curling around you like a tight fist. Like someone is holding you in their dirty, tainted clutches, smelling of death and horror. Wake up, you tell yourself, more urgent now, your mind struggling to escape from claws digging into your consciousness, their goal unknown but you don’t want to stay here to find out what they are after. What they want to take from you.

    Wake up, this time another voice, the voice, echoing like a sweet bell’s chime, the flicker of light in a darkness so black it hums. You have to wake up.

    Your eyes snap open, the sudden white ceiling hurting like a sudden flash of light. Once you’re used to the brightness, you realise this isn’t a room, this is … this is your consciousness—no walls, no windows. It’s just a space, and yet you can clearly determine borders. Somewhere is an exit you’re free to use, nothing holds you captive. It’s your safe place. Your haven. Which doesn’t explain how you’ve gotten here.

    All you know is it feels safe. It feels like a warm embrace, the feeling of hope, watching a budding flower embraced by soft, fragile hands—asteritrope, your mind provides out of nowhere, the flower always turning its head towards the Blue Star.

    It is like breaking a spell. First, everything is simply white, empty, a second later, you stand in a vast field of asteritropes, an ocean of purple, gently swaying flowers at your feet. Everything smells of sweet innocence, of honey dipped fingers and bittersweet regret. It is a familiar scent, one your body remembers and reacts to with a shudder so strong it rattles deep in your bones; a chill so cold it freezes you on the spot, the slightest movement threatening to shatter you entirely.

    What is this grief, this sadness? Is it your own or have you fallen into a sea of tears wept by someone else? Your chest is heavy with a burden, a pulling towards the unknown that is yet so familiar. It is homesickness towards a place you have never been but long to visit.

    The flowers shaped like little stars stretch beyond what you think are the edges of this place. If this is a dream, you don’t want to wake up anytime soon, relishing in this peace and quiet.

    A peace and quiet that lasts only a moment until you notice it. Not it, him. In the middle of the field, a boy sits, bent over something that demands his complete attention. Dark curls fall against pale skin, his brows pulled tightly together as his fingers work something in his lap. He is wearing a simple white robe, though it is unlike any of the religious wear you've seen on the priests and nuns; it seem ... too old for that. Only after you approach, you see he is folding purple flowers and green steams into a crown.

    “Hello?” you say, only now entertaining the idea you might have died and this is the afterlife, the first point before returning to the goddess’ side. It is a strangely tranquil thought. “Can you hear me?”

    The boy’s head snaps up, his eyes wide as he momentarily forgets his work, and you take a step back, struck by how bright his steel grey eyes are. They roam over you, up and down, back up again, as he slowly raises to his feet.

    “You’re here,” he says, awestruck. “You’re finally here. It is so nice to meet you after all this time.”

    His voice is like a punch to your gut. You recognise it immediately, the voice who pulled you back from the darkness.

    “You—” Nothing makes sense. “Who are you? What are you?”

    “There is nothing to fear,” he says, offering you his hand. The tips of his fingers are purple from handling delicate petals. The crown lies at his bare feet, forgotten. He looks strangely vulnerable.

    You take another step back, worry a steady, hard pulse against your neck. The air catches in your lungs. You feel like the ground is opening beneath your feet. “Are you … the goddess? A god?”

    The boy blinks, then throws his head back and bursts out laughing, the sound like sweet bells chiming in the wind. “You people love to call everything you do not understand god.”

    “Then what are you?” It comes out as a breath, and for a brief second you think it’s fear that seizes your body, but no. You should be afraid and yet instead of frenzy panic there is a calm spreading inside you as if you belong here. You can’t say if it’s the boy’s presence or the familiar scent of wildflowers.

    The boy leans his head to the side, his smile as vibrant as early sunlight casting away leftover shadows from a dark night. “Hmmm … the End, perhaps? Or why not just … a friend?”

    “The end? My end?”

    “No, the end is never simply the end,” he says, shaking his head.

    “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

    “It may be a rebirth,” he continues. “Or the passing into a new era. Into a new dawn.”

    “A new dawn,” you mumble. The realisation makes your knees weak. “Don’t tell me—” You suck in a sharp breath, unable to belief where your thoughts are hurling towards in lightning speed. You kneel onto the soft flowerbed, careful not to crush any flowers. “Why are we here … do you know me by chance?”

    “I … cannot say for sure,” he starts slowly, uncertainty turning his features even younger. “I have been watching you since you awoke four moons ago. On that day, I as well awoke from a deep slumber. But I do not know why it is you that I am bound to.”

    “Bound to?” Your head spins. “What do you mean?”

    “You must have felt it by now, have you not? I am here because of this,” he says, and lifts his hand to point at your right eye. You flinch back as if he smacked you right across your face.

    “So you are him,” you whisper, a shudder ripping through your body. “You’re the first Herald. You are Seiros’ Champion.”

    The boy smiles.

[sailormoonandme]

Where to start with Sailor Moon?

From time to time I’ve seen people ask about how to get into Sailor Moon or how they might introduce it to someone else. 

As such I’ve made this to (hopefully) help people out.

Introduction

So first of all you should know that the official name for the over all franchise is ‘Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon’. This can (and has) been translated a few ways, but the current official name is ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’. Basically everything connected with Sailor Moon carries this full official name, but for the purposes of this post I’m just going to shorten things to ‘Sailor Moon’.

Moving on,  there are in fact different versions of the Sailor Moon story, even putting aside the various attempts at translating the story into different languages. Each version is best viewed as its own entity, sort of how there have been various versions of Sherlock Holmes that exist independently of one another. 

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to mostly keep this post to the original Japanese iterations of Sailor Moon, albeit from the point of view of an English speaking audience member.*

The main versions of the Sailor Moon story are as follows:

1) The Manga

The manga iteration of Sailor Moon began around late 1991/early 1992. It includes around 50 chapters, a handful of side stories and a prequel manga of sorts called Codename: Sailor-V. There have been several different English translations of this material over the years. However, my personal recommendation would be to experience the story through the ‘Eternal Editions’. These are easily available in print and digitally. As of this writing Codename: Sailor-V is scheduled to be collected in at some point in 2021, thus collecting all the manga stories.

2) The 1992 anime

This is the most famous iteration of Sailor Moon and loosely adapts the manga to the point where it is its own entity. It spans 200 episodes across five seasons, with each season being given its own subtitle. E.g. season 2 is referred to as ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon R’. Additionally there were a handful of shorts and specials connected with the anime and three films. I have already compiled a watch list for the show that I hope will help you navigate everything.

Like the manga, there have been multiple efforts to subtitle the show into English, particular among fan subbing circles. However, the easiest way to watch the show with English subs is to do so via a streaming service (last I checked it was available on Hulu and Crunchyroll) or to purchase the DVDs and Blu-rays from Viz Media, although you can also purchase them digitally on Amazon.com too.

3) The musicals

 On and off since 1993 there have been stage musicals produced for Sailor Moon. If you ever see the term ‘Sera Myu’ being used by fans (or even official sources) understand that it’s shorthand for these musicals.

The musicals are based chiefly upon the manga and the original anime, although with some original embellishments here and there. The degree to which a musical cuts closer to the manga, or the anime or does something all its own varies from one production to another. I’m not very well read up on the musicals I must admit, but it is to my understanding that each production exists independently from one another beyond at times carrying over cast and staff members. In essence there is no particular order you need to watch the musicals in. However, if you want more info on the musicals see the below EDIT, which is more well informed than I am.

To my knowledge, (which is limited in this particular case) all the musicals have been filmed but there has never been any kind of official English release for them. There have however been fan subbed efforts made for all of them. 

4) The 2003 live action TV show

In fan circles this show is referred to as ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’ or ‘Pretty Guardian’ or ‘PGSM’. This is because it was the first piece of Sailor Moon media to bear that particular English translation of ‘Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon’. Basically if you see ‘Pretty Guardian’ or ‘PGSM’, understand it is referencing this show.

The show exclusively adapts the ‘Dark Kingdom’ storyline, the first storyline in every version of Sailor Moon. The show was made in a similar vein to shows like Kamen Rider or Super Sentai and the latter’s American adaptation, Power Rangers. However, it also incorporates elements of Japanese soap opera dramas too, original elements that were never in any version of Sailor Moon beforehand and many different spins on the plot points that had been covered before. 

To my knowledge, like Sera Myu, no official English release for this show exists, but English fansubs are out there somewhere. If you manage to find the show then you should watch the various episodes and specials in their original broadcast order. For this Wikipedia is your friend. 

5) Sailor Moon Crystal

Sporadically since 2014 a new Sailor Moon anime has been in production. This new anime cuts much closer to the original manga (although it still makes some changes ) than any other version of Sailor Moon. As of this writing, the show has yet to be completed and still has material from the manga left to adapt. The show is available to watch with English subtitles from the same sources as the original 1992 anime, including DVDs and Blu-Rays from Viz Media.

Like the original anime, Crystal’s story arcs and seasons have gone under different names. The first two seasons/arcs are officially just called ‘Sailor Moon Crystal’, whilst the third is explicitly titled ‘Sailor Moon Crystal Season III’. In place of a fourth season two films, Sailor Moon: Eternal Part 1 and Part 2, were produced. As of this writing, the Eternal films have yet to have any kind of English release. To make your life easier, watch this show in the order of the original air/release dates. Just remember the Eternal films are to be viewed after Season III.

Which version should you start with?

Whilst that is how the franchise breaks down, it is not the order a Sailor Moon newbie should try experiencing it in.

My personal recommendation would be to begin with the original 1992 anime and then move on to any of the other versions from there. This is because the original anime is aimed at a younger audience and was incredibly influential on basically every other version of the story. 

However, if 200 episodes or more is too intimidating for you, then simply check out the manga. It’s far shorter, skewed a bit older and tells a concise and complete story. 

And if you are still apprehensive then I’d highly recommend watching the first Sailor Moon film, Sailor Moon R The Movie. This is a very good film unto itself but it is a microcosm of the characters and themes that define the franchise as a whole. If you dislike this Sailor Moon just isn’t for you. 

P.S. If you are simply dead set against subtitles then you should know the original 1992 anime and Crystal have in fact been dubbed into English by Viz Media. In fact, the first four seasons of the original anime, along with the first three films, have two English dubs, variously produced by DiC, Cloverway and Pioneer. These dubs were made in the 1990s and early 2000s and are currently not legally available anywhere. 

*Things get more complicated when we consider that even in Japan there have been updated and altered versions of the Sailor Moon manga, anime, etc. We aren’t going to worry about that in this post though. They exist and maybe someday you might be inclined to check them out, but you know...baby steps...

EDIT #1: The following information comes from https://euribear.tumblr.com/

Just something I want to add on about the Sailor Moon Musicals.

If you see a musical with the word Kaiteiban (revision) at the end of the name, that means it’s a revised version of the previous musical. Things added or taken away, different cast members at times, etc.

Also, there are three musicals (technically four) that have a continuous storyline. Starring Miyuki Kanbe as Sailor Moon, Last Dracul, Transylvania no Mori (and its Kaiteiban), and Death Vulcan should be viewed in order.

The Bandai era of musicals were from 1993 to 2005.

The Nelke musicals started in 2014 and there was one each year for five years. One musical for each arc of the manga.

There are also the NogiMyu. These are musicals that solely focus on the Dark Kingdom arc and they star various members of the pop idol group Nogizazaka46.

There were two teams of cast members for the inner senshi for both years, 2018 and 2019. The same story overall, just different actresses.

There was also Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live. My personal favorite, this was a musical performed only a few times. A couple of days in Japan in 2018 and then once in Paris in 2019 and then in Washington D.C. and later in NYC. I got to see this in person on one of the three showings in NYC. A dream come true. Unfortunately, this was never recorded, though they did release an instrumental musical album of the show.

[timextoxhajima]

HOSTIS, Chapter XVII.5: Inevitabilis, Inevitable

HOSTIS PLAYLIST: WONHO - LOSING YOU

Previous Chapter (XVII: Et Universum Parallel)

Member: Lee Hyunjae (tbz) 

Genre (by chapter): drama, angst

Category: Short Novel/Long Series

Dana’s A/N: this is a special piece written by @vxstarlightxv​ who has been feeding me ideas to fuel this story. i did not write this chapter, i only merely proof-read it/gave her tips etc, but otherwise the beauty of this chapter will never be able to be my own original work.

P.S: if you’re emotional, please keep a box of tissues with you 

“there is no escape from you, not now, not ever. you are inevitable.”

The day the kids at school start calling you Ares is the day Hyunjae loses faith in humanity. You are a spineless, low-life coward, who hardly deserves to be bestowed with the same title as himself. Yet here you are, acting as though you were worth being on the same plane as him.

He hates you. Oh god, he truly does.

He remembers the way you fucked him over so well and thoroughly, and in front of the whole school that too. Granted, he may have screwed with your equipment, but maybe if you didn’t suck so bad you wouldn’t have failed.

Blaming him for your shortcomings. How typical.

But showing Minhee ​that picture of the accidental kiss (that meant ​nothing​) for the sole purpose of destroying his relationship? That was a bitch move right there. So he has no regrets when he posts a cleverly edited picture of your lab teacher with his girlfriend. None at all. In fact, the sight of your tears when that himbo Younghoon dumps you is something that brings him delight.

His heart definitely did not twist when he saw you cry, because he definitely does not care. You hurt him, and it’s only fair that you’re hurting too.

Nonetheless, he is pleasantly surprised at how fast you bounce back. His breakup with Minhee was a huge watery mess, and he cannot help his grudging admiration for your strength when you power through your own with Younghoon.

It is only admiration, for he definitely still hates you.

When the time comes to choose a medical school, he chooses the one that seems the furthest away from you. But fate hates him, so after 4 years of respite, he is dumped back on your doorstep as your fellow intern in the neurology department.

Of all the fucky coincidences.

~~~

Ares is a brutal god. He is the fire of war, wild and relentless.

Hyunjae is furious when he finds out you’ve stolen his report, but he’s not surprised. Not when he would’ve done the same thing. Then again, he was kind of hoping you would leave him alone. Naturally, you’ve done the opposite. He wonders if his emotional response is a little… disproportionate, given the situation, but he’s not going to let you fuck him over like this and escape unscathed. He isn’t a fucking pussy, your thoughts on the matter be damned.

Silly little kitten. Put your paws in the fire, and watch the heat bubble your skin.

He is simmering as he bangs on your door. He hears you screaming some nonsense about your mother, but he’s too pissed to process anything. You open the door, face falling as you see him. He cannot help but reach out a hand and grab you by your pretty throat.

He shoves you into the house, fuelled by the magnitude of his anger. You’ve hurt his pride, made a fool out of him in front of Dr Kim. He wants to shred you to pieces, get you on your knees and rip the apologies from your mouth.

Tonight you will understand why the other gods fear the wrath of Ares.

 ~~~

Hyunjae replays the encounter in his head as he drives home. He has never once considered you as anything but an enemy. But today, something of seismic proportion has shifted in your dynamic.

The flutter of your lips against his, like butterfly wings on a flower. The warmth of your chest against his in a tight alcove, hiding from Dr Shin. The way you felt when you took him in, the way you cried when he hit every single spot that made your toes curl. The way you purred when he called you kitten and mewled as you fell apart on his cock.

In retrospect, he hopes that he didn’t hurt you. He usually likes to stick around for aftercare, but he didn’t want to ruin your pride even more. You’d already been dealt with a devastating blow, and he didn’t want to make it worse, regardless of how big of a dick you think he is.

(Ring, ring)

The sharp blare of his ringtone shatters the silence of his ride home. He glances at the screen, smiling when he sees the caller id.

“What’s up, Juyeonie? Are you finally back?” Hyunjae is thrilled to hear his best friend’s voice. Juyeon is very busy these days, being a commercial pilot and all, so these rare moments they have with each other are more precious than gold.

“Hey, hyung! Yes I am! On that note, are you free next Friday? Let’s get drinks and catch up!” Juyeon sounds so eager and hopeful that Hyunjae can’t help but say yes, no matter how packed his schedule might be. The rest of the conversation proceeds pleasantly, and he is happy to forget the day’s drama.

It is only when he reaches home that he realises that the thought of you has never quite left his head.

~~~

“So what happened? The last I heard, she left you high and dry in JFK.” 

He watches as feline eyes crinkle with delight at his question. His friend launches into a happy tirade about his mystery girl, going on and on about fate and chance encounters and love lost and found. Hyunjae listens carefully, admiring the way Juyeon has changed. He wonders for a moment if he'll ever experience something as profound as Juyeon has, will ever wake up one day knowing that his heart sits in the palms of another person, and will not fear the idea.

The image of your eyes dancing with wicked laughter arises unbidden, and it punches the breath out of him.

He is jostled out of his thoughts when a hand lands on his thigh. It is so abrupt, so sudden that he all but jumps out of his skin.

“Long time no see, stranger.”

Choi Minhee is standing in front of him, batting her mascara-painted eyelashes at him seductively. She is as pretty as ever, with her delicate collarbones and anime-girl eyes.

But she is not you.

The thought is so dreadful and unsettling that he cannot help but flirt with her the whole night in order to get it out of his head.

When have you become anything but an annoyance, anything but a pest that’s been shoved down his throat?

It is pleasant, talking to someone who he hasn’t met in a long time. He remembers her fondly, despite how miserable their parting was. Minhee is soft and kind, a gentle cherry-blossom compared to your ever-burning inferno. She complements him well (not perfectly, because only ​one​person does), and for a second he feels white-hot annoyance at you for fucking him over in this regard. Hyunjae cannot help but wonder if they would have been married by now had you not intervened with that photo. Would they be living the white-picket fence dream? What would their kids have looked like?

All he can see are children with your ash-brown hair and his almond eyes. The image causes his gut to clench so tightly that he wonders if something inside him might have cracked open.

“Have you and Y/N gotten together yet? I figured that after we broke up the two of you would end up going out. You were always kinda obsessed with each other.” The question jolts him out of his reverie. Juyeon, who has been listening politely so far, decides to insert himself into the conversation.

“Yeah, hyung. The two of you have always had something special, right? What was that stupid nickname we gave you? Paris and Helen?”

The irony is not lost to him. Enemies, being compared to the two greatest lovers of all time. A face that launched a thousand ships, a blaze of love that destroyed a nation. Only fools succumb to Aphrodite, the cruelest of the divine hosts.

“Ares and Ares. And for fuck’s sake, I will never be attracted to that hag. You won’t believe what she did at work last week-”

Hyunjae misses the knowing look Minhee and Juyeon exchange. He’s only seeing you.

~~~

If there is one thing that Hyunjae hates, it is surprises. So he really, really hates it when he sees you flirting with the intern as though ​he ​doesn’t exist.

The day had actually started off pretty well. He came into work feeling all pleased with himself. Not only did he break you down, but he also figured out a solid way to keep you in line. You were reacting beautifully to his taunts, and seeing you unable to walk made something vicious inside him preen.

And then, before he can breathe, you are making stupid cow-eyes at the snot-faced little intern as though he created entire galaxies in your honour.

How dare you, honestly? You’re wearing ​his ​hickeys on your neck, limping and ​sore because ​he​ripped you apart last night. How can you even ​think​of flirting with another man? Are you doing this on purpose, to get some semblance of power back?

This is not jealousy. It definitely is NOT jealousy because that would mean he would have to be attracted to your hideous hag face. No, it was an issue of pride. And no, he definitely was not deluding himself right now.

Nonetheless, watching Eric help you into his car after work makes him want to vomit.

~~~

It is the party incident that truly knocks it into his head. He spends the entire night seething over your flirtations with Eric, with even ​Sangyeon. He glares at you, but you pretend to not see, and it shoves him off the edge.

Why won’t you look at him? A room full of people, but you are the only one he sees. So why aren’t you seeing him too?

He reminds you that night, who is the only one who knows how to pick you apart, snap you in half. He reminds you who is the only one who can make your body thrum and vibrate, who is the only one who can coax tears from your eyes and pleasured sobs from your throat. But he is also tender with you after, because under that diamond-hard exterior is a heart wrapped in silks and satin. Hurting you is the last thing he wants to do.

It is only when he wakes up alone in the morning that he realises that maybe, just maybe, he wishes he could see you in his bed again, hair spilled across the sheets as your breathing slowly evens out into slumber. He wants to coo over your keening wails, drink the moans from your mouth.

A thought, fleeting and profound, surfaces.

He wants you to be his.

~~~

He goes to work on Sunday with iron resolve. He has spent the entirety of Saturday thinking hard about you, and the relationship you shared with him. The line between obsession and infatuation is a thin one, one that the two of you have been dancing on for 10 whole years. When did his foot slip? When did the late nights plotting revenge mutate into candied dreams of your lips, of your body, singing for him?

But of course, who else could it be? You have always been, will always be, his forever other half.

Ares and Ares, locked in their death dance. But when did Ares become Aphrodite? War has become Love, and Love has become War.

Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong. At some point or the other, he has forgotten the hatred that sizzled through him like blazing poison. He has forgotten that you are annoying, that you are competitive, and that you get revenge in the sleaziest ways possible. He has forgotten everything, because all that remains is the way your smile looks like a flashing ray of sunlight, like a tendril of shimmering starlight. All that remains is the sound of your wind chime laughter, the softness of your small hands on his heated skin. All that remains is the memory of how good you are for him, how addictive the juxtaposition between your submissive sweetness in bed and your fiery heat outside of it is.

So he decides that he is going to make you his. Granted, the order of things was completely wrong, but he would fix it. He would cook you dinner, press kisses onto your cherry mouth, and then love you till morning comes. And then he would repeat it every day, till the day the two of you are cradled in the eternal embrace of death.

Surely, surely you reciprocate his feelings? How can you not, when your body weeps for him the way it does?

He likes to think you do, when he admires the way your eyes flutter closed when he steals kisses in the pantry. He likes to think you do, when you stay four hours past your shift and order takeaway for him. He likes to think you do, when you dangle Eric in front of him in order to get him to fuck you ​hard,​just the way you like it.

You are his, now.

~~~

Hyunjae’s love for you grows like tender flowers. It starts off small, but grows into something lovely and heartbreaking. You have carved your way into him, nestling against the walls of his heart and beseeching him to let you in with your stupid almond eyes.

He loves your stupid almond eyes.

He is on a cloud these days, brimming with affection that lights up his every step. He never considered himself to be one of those annoying, lovey-dovey honeymooners, but he can definitely see where they get their joy from.

Lovers alone wear sunlight.

You become his greatest delight. When you are around, even dust seems to sparkle like a thousand tiny diamonds. He loves waking up with you, your eyes half lidded and neck covered in his marks. He loves to see you in his clothes, smelling of his body wash, smelling of ​him.

(He has an extra special fondness for the days in which you are soft and pliant, allowing him to dress you like a doll. It makes his internal organs feel like they are tumbling over each other, and it makes him a little giddy. He loves taking care of you.)

But if he really had to pick a moment, he supposes he loves you most when you are with your patients, hands calm and steady and strong. It reminds him of everything beautiful there is about his profession, and he cannot get enough.

You are beautiful, in all the ways there are to be beautiful. You race through him like lightning, and he is sucked further into your orbit everyday. You carry his heart with you (inside yours), and you are never without it.

So he is overflowing with love when he picks you up and tastes your peach-covered mouth. He is overflowing with love when you smile at him with a sort of lightness that he's never quite seen directed at him before. He is overflowing with love as he goes to your favourite cafe one day to pick up the chowder you never stop talking about. Tonight, he will ask you to be his girlfriend, make this tentative little dance official.

Perhaps that is why the pain is so exquisite when he sees you with Younghoon, and hears you talking about Eric with such tenderness in your eyes.

“​He’s super enthusiastic and there’s just something about him that’s so... comforting. I see him and I think about nothing but sunshine and warmth and laughter. He’s just... so cheerful, compared to whatever i’ve been used to.​​” Something inside him shatters into a million jagged pieces when he hears the words, and every breath becomes as a blood-drenched ordeal.

Sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine and warmth and laughter. The words ring like alarm bells.

Fool. Naive, hopeless fool. You were never really his, were you? You might be the light by which his spirit is born, you might be his sun, moon and stars, but he? He is your nothing. He is the shadow that is birthed of your radiance, forever connected and forever forgotten.

Is this is why storms are named after people? You have destroyed him in the sweetest of ways. Is this taste of heartbreak? Rust coats his tastebuds. Is this how tears are born? The agony is magnificent and all-encompassing. There is nothing left for him here. He has never been enough, never will be.

He leaves quietly, chowder forgotten.

~~~

It is truly repulsive, the fact that he can see what you adore about Eric. The intern is strong and sweet, kind in all the ways Hyunjae is not. He is soft and mellow, and will cool your scalding tantrums with gentle words. He will not stir up the embers of your fury the way Hyunjae does, hoping for a reaction. He will be tender with you, gently laying you out and coaxing your body to sing. He will not be harsh and hard and possessive like Hyunjae, claiming you with bites and bruises and writing his possession into your blood.

He has been measured, and he has been found lacking. Eric is the perfect Hephaesthus, a sweet spring dandelion, and it is no surprise that Zeus will give you to him.

Aphrodite never belonged to Ares, after all.

“Hey, Eric! Do you have a moment?” By some miracle, his voice doesn’t crack.

“Hey, hyung! What can I do for you?” Eric is as mirthful as ever, and Hyunjae wishes they weren’t fighting over the same girl because he might actually ​like the​ intern otherwise.

“Have you gotten Y/N’s number yet?” He pauses to watch the bashful amusement dance across the intern’s face, and waits for the head shake he knows is coming. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but she’s very into you. So here’s her number, and make sure you call her, alright?” The teasing lilt he’s going for comes off more as a hoarse croak, and he realises belatedly that he really needs to be less of a shit actor.

“Thank you so much, hyung! But hey, don’t you hate Y/N? Why are you helping her out?” The intern offers him a cheeky grin, and all Hyunjae wants to do is knock his teeth out. But he’s a ​professional,​so he offers Eric a tight smile (read: grimace) and says “Well, maybe I’m hoping you’ll distract her from work so that I’ll get the promotion first.” He tosses a wink in for good measure, before reaching out to ruffle Eric’s hair with a certain sadistic pleasure.

That’s thirty minutes in the bathroom gone down the drain. But that’s what he gets for stealing Hyunjae’s girl.

Of course, because Eric is quite literally an angel who can apparently do no wrong, he gives Hyunjae a sweet smile and rolls away happily in his chair, high off his excitement at finally getting the girl he’s been after for ​ages.

And then Hyunjae is left alone to drown in self-loathing.

Hyunjae is clearly a masochist who likes to hurt himself, so that’s why he decides to tell you to meet him at the carpark after work. One last time, he’ll be the one to drive you home, the one who kisses you goodnight.

He promises he’ll let you go after this.

~~~

The car ride is as quiet as ever. You enjoy being left alone with your thoughts, and Hyunjae isn’t about to interrupt you when he’s being pummeled by his own.

The Japanese once made up a fictional disease to describe the horrors of unrequited love. They call it ​Hanahaki​, in which flowers grow in the lungs of the victims, causing them to cough up petals when they suffer from one-sided love.

He supposes that it is the exact feeling that he feels now. His love for you coils in his chest, choking leaves and thorns that crush his internal organs. It is rooted so deep that it might never leave, killing him softly but surely. The petals tickle his throat in an insidious kiss as he chokes on his desire for you, their softness a poisonous taunt of your lips against his, a feeling he might never know again.

“Are you okay?” Your voice is a balm to his wounded heart.

Of course he’s not okay. He’s in love with you, but you’re not in love with him. He knows that he is nothing without you, and that knowledge is somehow everything.

All this time he wanted to make you his, but you have made him yours.

He cannot form words, so he looks at you, really, really looks at you. He memorises the contours of your face, the slender bone of your nose, the tilt of your eyes, the exact shade of red your lips are. He'll hold every little detail close, remember the last night you're his and his alone, because tomorrow Eric will ask you out and his Aphrodite will never be his again.

He wants to pretend like the sudden moisture in his eyes is surprising, but he can't lie to himself anymore.

Liar, liar. Ares is a liar.

Is this how Lucifer felt when he fell from heaven? You are life, you are life and light and everything bright. And he is cold, dark and alone. He has fallen from grace, and all that is left are the coiling tendrils of hubris keeping his spine straight and gluing the shattered pieces of his heart together. He is heartbroken, but he will clench his teeth and grit through it. Your joy is worth it. His ego won't let him fall apart. He's stronger than this. Isn't he?

Break my heart. Break it into a thousand pieces and then some. It was only ever yours to break anyways.

“Why wouldn’t I be? Anyways, we’re here now. Get out already.” Your scoff is musical. He is aching and he is broken, so he does not have the strength to resist the screaming in his head to steal one last kiss from you. He luxuriates in the feeling of your petal-soft lips against his, before pulling away reluctantly.

Everything is more beautiful because the two of you are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. You will never share this moment again.

“Goodbye, kitten.”

The words are far more permanent than he likes. You don’t hear them.

His tears run as he pulls out of your driveway. He allows himself one last look at you, confusion blossoming on the face he once swore was hideous but now haunts his every moment.

Love is fire. It burns as much as it warms, and he is the poor fool who allowed himself to get scarred.

~~~

Crossing the line from enemies to lovers was a wheeling drop of ecstasy and biting kisses. Crossing the line from lovers back to co-workers is a study in heartbreak, and Hyunjae doesn't know how much longer he can handle it.

How do I forget you? I've tasted your secrets on my lips and drank the whispers of your body. You are the weakness in my bones and the hollowness in my lungs. How do I cleave my soul from yours, when you are the drum that my heart beats to?

It is an awful sort of pain, feeling his chest cave in when he watches Eric roll over to you from his cubicle. You find him cute, it's obvious from the way your eyes crinkle like little stars when you regard him.

Look at me. Look only at me.

You look up, searching for his eyes like you’ve heard his prayer. You're expecting jealousy, disdain, fury. You're expecting him to drag you to the pantry, to call you ​kitten ​and kiss you till you bleed. But Hyunjae has no more poison to offer you. He is empty, and all he can do is give you a blank look. He hopes you will be happy, silently wishing you the best.

Hephaestus gets Aphrodite, and all Ares can do is watch. Bloody, brutal Ares is never the winner.

His lack of response throws you off. By now, you are used to his hissy fits, his seething rages. But who is he? What right does he have? You are not his to rage over, or his to claim. You might wear his marks on your neck, but you are definitely not ​his.

How he wishes you were. But wishes are like pixie dust, and this is no fairytale.

The rest of the day is agonising. His body is so keenly attuned to yours now, and he doesn’t know how to rewire himself. He keeps a cool distance from you, but every molecule in his being roars in fury at the forced detachment.

He misses you already.

You continue to press him, trying to push his buttons and rile him up. Hyunjae studiously ignores you, hoping his coldness will further fray the ropes holding up the fragile bridge of a relationship that the two of you have developed. You are looking at him with a strange mix of anger, disdain and annoyance. For a second, he thinks he might even see-

Is that? Could it be? Longing? Do you miss him like he misses you?

Wishful thinking. That’s what it is. But it hurts so bad that he decides that he’s just going to avoid you from now on, until he finds a more appropriate coping mechanism than simply crying like a toddler when he can’t get his way.

Maybe he should call Minhee, and try to rekindle-

He cuts the thought off before it dredges up more painful memories. All he can see when he thinks of Minhee are the one-thousand-and-one different ways you exceed her.

You’re fiercer, with more spine. You don’t give in as easily. You’re not afraid to fight with him. You have a kinder heart. You are so much smarter. Your lips are softer. Your hand fits into his so much more perfectly. You are lovely in all the ways she never was, never will be.

It is a numbing, novocaine relief when Dr Choi summons him for rounds. If Hyunjae is left for even a second longer with his thoughts, he might just spiral into a pit of depressed longing and self pity that he might never emerge from.

Mighty Ares, on his knees. Aphrodite’s laughter perfumes the air, irresistible and menacing.

~~~

He is on his final round when he meets Mrs Kang. The kind, old lady takes one look at him, eyes lighting up with knowledge that he wishes she wasn’t able to glean so easily.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Well he doesn’t, but the words explode out of his bleeding heart like ink spilling on ivory pages.

“I... I thought that it would be okay, that I could forget and let go and that it would all be fine and good but then… I saw her--” his voice cracks miserably as a lump etches itself into his throat. His heart is racing, and every inhale feels like swallowing glass shards.

“I saw her and something went terribly wrong because I couldn’t forget and my heart was remembering and I felt like I was dying but I couldn’t do anything because all I want is for her to be happy and I know that happiness isn’t with me and I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT.”

Mrs Kang is silent, regarding him with a look he can’t quite decipher. He takes it as an invitation to continue.

“I wish I was him. I wish I was the one who could make her smile, make her laugh. But I’m angry, I’m jealous and I’m immature. I’m overly competitive, and I don’t know how to lose graciously. When I’m pissed, I do stupid, radical things.”

Silence. Inside, outside. It is deafening.

“Why would she want me? I don’t deserve her, and knowing that I’ll have to live my life watching her in another man’s arms is ripping me apart.”

He’s breathing hard, like he just ran a marathon. It’s a terrifying prospect, facing his feelings head on. Until now, they were swirling around his head in an ugly tangle of emotion. Verbalising them, hearing them out loud, is painful and cathartic at once. But he’s already feeling like a pathetic little sap. He wonders if you would sneer at him if you heard. Is this what it feels like to lose? Is this how you felt, lifetimes ago, on your sofa? The two of you have always been push and pull, a forever impasse. But today, you’ve finally shoved him off balance.

Who is the stronger Ares now? Your kisses are his kryptonite.

A hand comes to rest over his.

“Love always finds a way. I know you’re feeling hopeless now, but know that if you are meant for each other, you will always find your way back,” Mrs Kang finishes with a gentle smile. The pretty words do not reassure him.

If only love was as perfect as love seems to be, if only his flaws and broken edges could be hidden away. But this is a dream that will never come to life, a flower that will never grow to bloom.

She does not know who it is that he is fighting with, who it is that is slipping away from him with every passing second. She thinks that it will be okay, but she does not know that Ares has no mercy. He expects none from you. Nonetheless, he gives her a watery grin in return before standing up to complete his rounds. He may have lost, but he has enough composure to know better than to break in public.

It is a monumental effort, holding it together.

Hyunjae makes it to the lift in peace, stepping in through the shiny doors and slamming the button for the fifth floor. When they slide open, the sight before him makes his heart drop like a wineglass.

You and Eric are standing across him, hand in hand. Eric’s foot is tapping impatiently, eager to drag you off to wherever he was taking you for dinner.

For a second, he loses control over his emotions. Agony crumples his face, and you, because you’re just that smart and just that perceptive, register it. He doesn’t have the heart to pretend anymore.

Hyunjae brushes past the two of you, ignoring your questioning look, ignoring Eric’s cheerful greeting, and most importantly ignoring the writhing in his chest. He goes straight for his briefcase and shoves his belongings in, flicking the lights off and rushing to the carpark. He does not want to see anyone. He does not want to process anything.

He is empty. So, so empty, and hollow. The void inside him threatens to consume him whole.

The moment he reaches home, he goes straight to his spirits. There’s a bottle of whiskey sitting in the top most shelf of his kitchen, a birthday gift from his father. He pulls it down, slamming the glass decanter onto the kitchen counter, and the pressure nearly cracks it open.

He remembers the sight of you pressed up against this very counter, squirming under his ministrations. He remembers your lips fall open in a sigh, and then to beg. He remembers standing between your thighs, feeding you and then licking cream off your lips. Memories swirl through his head, cutting through his ribcage and slicing his heart open.

He doesn’t bother to grab a glass, pouring the scorching liquid down his throat. It claws at him, and he welcomes the pain.

Love is cruel, love is cold. When it kills, it does it slow.

He knows the tears are coming. The pressure has been building in his head for the last twenty-four hours. They fall as he walks over to the living room, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

The mirror you clutched when you moaned wretchedly, promising him that HE was the only one who could ever ruin you this way.

He lifts the bottle, forcing himself to look his reflection in the eye as he drinks a toast to Eric. ​Here’s to you, buddy.

His reflection sneers back, bloodshot and desolate. A half of a whole, incomplete. This is what he is without you.

Hyunjae sinks to the ground, bottle thumping down on the carpet. It rolls once, twice, and rivulets of alcohol splash across the floor. Another memory lunges up.

There is nothing more striking than red on white. Blood on snow. Wine on cream skin, tracing paths his eager tongue follows. A hiss of anger that softens into a sigh.

The sofa smells like you. The study smells like you. You are everywhere, and it breaks him, tearing a wail of grief out of his chest.

One day, the smell of you will fade. You will slip between his fingers like the wisp of a dream, and all he will be left with is the recollection of the fleeting seconds you were his and his alone.

Too much. This is too much. He cannot think, he cannot see, he cannot ​breathe,​without being haunted by you. You are in every orifice, in every nook and cranny and cell. You are in the water of his blood and in the porous hollows of his bones. You are in the fibre between his atoms, you are in the electricity racing across his neurons. 

There is no escape from you, not now, not ever.

You are inevitable.

(Knock, knock)

It takes him a moment to realise that the pounding is not from the blood rushing in his head, but from someone impatiently banging on his door. He picks himself off the floor, not bothering to fix his appearance.

By now, you must be in Eric’s arms. He would kiss you softly, like summer rain. You would sigh into his lips, and he would look at you like you hung the moon. He would take you home, and press more kisses into your silk skin as he whispers his love. One day, he would get on one knee and present you with a diamond. You would say yes, because Eric is sunshine and warmth and laughter. Sunshine. Warmth. Laughter.

This, this is what you deserve. Not him, not his twisted mess of anger and jealousy. He is a stinging scorpion, and you deserve more than his petty poisons. But his heart still lurches at the thought of you, nestled into Eric.

The gods have always feared Aphrodite more than Ares. He thinks he can finally understand why.

He swings the door open, and once again forgets how to breathe, forgets how to think, forgets that he kinda hates you but now kinda loves you because there you are, raindrops glistening in your eyelashes, and you eclipse every star in the sky. There is nothing but you and you alone, and his withered little heart is shooting to life because ​that’s just what you do to him. There’s so much he wants to say, so many thoughts tumbling through his head. But he’s a frightful, useless coward, so all that flies out of his mouth is:

“Why the fuck are you--”

And then your lips are cushioned against his, kissing the venom out of him. He cannot help the sigh he breathes into your mouth at the way your body slots so perfectly against his.

Home, home is in your arms. He has been running all his life, and you have always been his only destination.

Tears slip out, hot and fast, washing the festering wound inside him clean. The cracked pieces of his soul begin to lift up and fuse together.

The light of a thousand suns slices through the void in him, and the darkness melts like ice on a hot summer day.

He is shuddering, wrecked by the sheer ​force​ of the emotions in him. But you are holding him tight, so very tight. He hopes you will never let him go. ​Never ever, ever let him go.

He is yours, and you are his. Where he ends, you begin and where you end, he begins. There is nothing else, no one else, because there was never anyone for him but you. Love not at first sight, or even the second, but at last sight and at ever and ever sight.

When you finally pull away to murmur the words he would have never even dreamed of hearing from you, it’s like starlight is filling the dusty hollows of his chest, sewing the pieces that have fallen apart back into the tapestry that is you. He is surprised, he really is, but something inside him has always known, has always clung to the hope that you would choose him, despite everything.

All that matters, is that you’ve come back to him. You are the only truth he’s ever known.

~~~ 

Later in the evening, when the two of you are spent from your love-making and coiled so tightly that your breaths have become one, Hyunjae takes a moment to contemplate the situation. You have won this competition between the two of you. You have planted yourself as first in his life, and for once (​and of course, the only time ever, because he is still going to get that damn promotion before you)​, he is happy to cede to you. This is what love is, to break and to be broken, to be full and to be empty, to win and to lose. He would have it no other way. All that he is, and all that he will be, center around the axis that is you.

Do you feel like this too? Like your heart is bursting from the seams?

You sigh in your sleep, seemingly agreeing. He loves you so much, it hurts. But there is one final thing to do.

He lifts his head to the stars, who have been waiting for this collision of souls for a long, long time.

Thank you, he whispers.

And for once, Zeus smiles down on his Ares.

ENDING THOUGHTS:

First of all, a very big thank you to everyone who made it to the end!! This piece has been a wild, emotional ride from start to finish and I understand that the sudden change in style can be jarring for some. As such, I am very grateful to everyone who took the time to read it :)

Hyunjae has always been a very complicated character. We’ve seen him through Y/N’s eyes for the last 17 or so chapters, and she is definitely not the most reliable of narrators. Many of her thoughts regarding his actions and motivations are shadowed by her own negative emotions, and he has come off as a rather poisonous character, except for the rare moments of tenderness he seems to show. Hopefully this will help you get a glimpse into Hyunjae’s psyche, in a way that is untainted by Y/N. I’ve seen many of your asks about Hyunjae and his behaviour, and perhaps you will see this as a sort of redemption for him, in the sense that he is so much deeper and complex than the seething neanderthal Y/N sees him as.

Writing this was a challenge nonetheless, and I think we should all be very grateful to Dana for powering through Y/N and Hyunjae’s story, given how much of a hot mess this couple is! It’s very hard to write an enemies-to-lovers fic without it coming off as corny and shallow, and she had the double struggle of writing that dynamic in a medical setting. The fact that we’re all whipped for these two is testament to her brilliant writing, so let’s all say a big thank you for that :))

Before I end, I’d like to pay homage to some of the writers that have inspired this fic. Reading through, you will see quotes inspired by the likes of Nabokov, Cummings and Homer. If I’m not wrong, there’s a little bit of Sarah J Maas and Caitlyn Siehl in there as well. And of course, who can forget the little bits of mythology peeking out here and there? If you happened to notice these references, feel free to scream in Dana’s ask box! It’ll be fun to read your thoughts :)

Once again, a very big thank you for following Hostis so devotedly, and showering Dana with your love. I hope you’ll continue to give her all your love and support the rest of her works.

(P.S Did anyone notice Pilot! Juyeon? If you didn’t, you should 1000% check out his story too, here.)

Love Always,

V

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter XVIII: Renuntiatio

[thanksjro]

Dark Cybertron Chapter 1: Welcome to Comic Event Hell

You know what readers love? When the stories they’ve gotten invested in over the course of a couple years get interrupted for some pseudo-crossover bullshit.

And you know what writers love? When the story they’ve been crafting over the course of a couple years get interrupted for some pseudo-crossover bullshit.

Did I say love?

Because I didn’t mean it.

“Dark Cybertron” was penned by John Barber and James Roberts, with collaboration with comic writer and artist Phil Jimenez, and was published from early November, 2013 to late March, 2014. Atilio Rojo, James Raiz, and Livio Ramondelli did the art, each responsible for scenes in specific locations, with Robert Gill filling in as needed. Alex Milne, Andrew Griffith, and Brendan Cahill would also contribute pencils to the first issue and the back half of the series. It was a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the franchise, and the second birthday of Phase Two... which went on for over four months, but never mind that!

Both "Dark Cybertron” and its preliminary materials were made to go alongside the Transformers: Generations toy-line, each issue being included as a toy pack-in with whatever character was being featured… or, at least, that was the plan. Sometimes it didn’t work out. Regardless, this storyline was created to sell toys directly, as opposed to the MTMTE/RID series being made to sell toys more through the power of suggestion. It’s a small distinction, but important, because it will help explain any lack of soul one may perceive while they read “Dark Cybertron”.

“But Hannz!” you cry out, reaching to grab me by the throat and shake me like a rag doll, because to you I’m merely a faceless voice on the internet. “Surely by calling this specific storyline soulless, you’re completely ignoring the very nature of this franchise that you’re almost uncomfortably invested in!”

To which I’ll say this: look, I’m pretty realistic about where my giant space robots came from; Transformers as a franchise would not exist the way it does without Ronald Reagan introducing the Free Market to literal children and fucking up how we interact with media for the rest of time. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and that rings especially true when I’ve got a Spinister on my bookshelf staring me down as I write this, that was likely made out of plastics which either involved blood oil or unethical labor practices, if not both.

However!

The choices of a company to have their comic license holders to cook up an entire plot that derails what they’ve already got planned out for toy tie-in comics is a completely different animal than what IDW had had going on up to this point. Phase Two had been about exploring different ideas that hadn’t been able to be explored during the war, and seeing what happens when you take away a third of the logline for Transformers G1 as a whole. Being a part of a brand of toys was almost inconsequential to how the stories were being told; even the Spotlights, which were also toy tie-in comics, had plenty of charm to them, if only because there weren’t quite as many constraints placed on the writers, and they were stand-alone issues.

Of course, being tie-in comics isn’t the only reason that “Dark Cybertron” is a bit of a slog, considering everything IDW itself was trying to get done within this storyline, but we’ll cover the publishing company’s/Simon Furman’s/Transformers’ tumultuous relationship with the concept of gender identity and expression later on, when it becomes relevant to the story proper. This point also ties into the interesting origin of Windblade, who we’ll meet in a few issues, and what happens when you let your fanbase have a taste of power and forget that people might like to see themselves represented in the media they consume.

“Dark Cybertron” is what ended up making me stop reading MTMTE the first time I tried it in 2015. A big part of it was because it forced the reader to need so much information from RID and even events prior to Phase Two, it wasn’t very fun to try to parse what was going on, on top of the writing beginning to flag because of obvious constraints to what Barber and Roberts could actually do, both within their deadlines and the rules put in place by their higher ups for the event.

 “Dark Cybertron” is the result of the sort of executive meddling that kills reader enjoyment by requiring writers to cram their two worlds together as quickly as possible, without the option to go for nuance because there simply isn’t time. The reason we have four separate artists for the front half of this story is because Milne and Griffith didn’t have time to draw both their current workload and “Dark Cybertron” at the same time... but sales probably went up due to the nature of how the story was published, so I’m sure they didn’t really see a problem with it.

That’s a general “they”, not a Milne and Griffith “they”.

In short, we’ve got license contract obligations, fan-poll obligations, and gender stuff fighting for space within the next 12 issues, which will be published in the span of roughly four months. Things are probably going to be a little bloated and sloppy.

Regardless of any of these points, this is what we’ve got. It’s not like it’s all bad- “Dark Cybertron” has the benefit of being written by two people who had been working closely before it had even been conceptualized. Barber was the senior editor for MTMTE, and IDW as a whole until he left in 2016. It also isn’t a proper crossover- y’know, where two completely separate titles get mashed together for a bit. MTMTE and RID exist in the same universe, just have their own things going on, so a decent amount of things still carry over without you needing to have read every single thing in both. The writing, while not quite up to par with pieces that had more creative freedom and breathing room between scenes, is still recognizable as being Barber and Roberts’. Their voices are still here, they’re just strained under the weight of everything that has to be said inside of 12 issues.

With all THAT out of the way, let’s dive in to Dark Dawn: Dark Cybertron Chapter 1.

We get a quick rundown of the most basic information you’ll need for this entire story to make sense, as we reintroduce the fact that Shockwave is an ecoterrorist with more agendas than a daily planner factory on meth, and also that he grows magic crystals. I don’t care what he says, the Ores are fucking space-magic. If you don’t want to read through all of RID for everything else, please see Robots in Disguise (2012), #1-22- A Recap, For Reference Purposes.  We also get a quick rundown of the Lost Lighters’ deal, as Swerve potentially has a meta-episode.

Be careful what you fucking wish for, bucko.

Our story proper starts with a flashback to the shittiest road trip Cyclonus ever went on, as the Ark 1 finds itself at the edge of a mysterious portal. This is likely why he wasn’t super thrilled when the portal to Luna 1 showed up- portals are probably a touchy subject for him.

Jhiaxus doesn’t know what this portal is- surely this means that science has failed us, and it’s time to call in the religious crowd to try and suss out what’s going on here.

It’s moments like this that make me wonder what exactly happened in the Dead Universe that made Cyclonus’ cheek meat just pack up and leave.

Now, we know that Cyclonus is correct here, because we as readers have more knowledge than the characters at this point, but Jhiaxus tries to write off this theory as hogwash, because he is a man of rationality and science. This is a slight removal from his character in the present, whose most notable traits seem to be a lack of ethics and screaming.

Everyone here seems to be slightly different from their current iterations, actually; Galvatron doesn’t say a word as he steps between Jhiaxus and Cyclonus, only using his body to communicate that the scientist might want to back off. Cyclonus himself is certainly the wordiest we’ve ever seen him to be, droning on through his actual thought process before he comes to a conclusion on what exactly they’ve found. Compare this to the Cyclonus of today, who only deigns to grace everyone with his voice if they outright threaten him, have something he wants, or are Tailgate. If he were to ever pull this verbal meandering on board the Lost Light, people would probably assume he’s having a stroke.

Nova Prime- you remember him, don’t you?- gives not a fuck about the Dead Universe, only what it means for him personally. And what it means for him is more locations to subjugate, because he is cartoonishly evil. His character is the least removed from his present-day iteration out of everyone. He tells the crew they’ll be getting a little closer, only for the portal to do the work for them, by way of dark energy tentacles.

Wow, the pilot for the Ark 1 really is just straight-up named Butt, isn’t he? And what the fuck is that face you’re making, Cyclonus? Are you- oh my god, are you emoting? Oh my god, he’s emoting.

As the Ark 1 is pulled to its doom, Jhiaxus makes a quick phone call to Shockwave to tell him he’s his favorite, and to keep up the good work.

In the present, Shockwave reflects on just how friggin’ long this whole ordeal has taken. Fortunately, Waspinator and the Titan are almost here, and he can hardly wait.

Not, uh, that he’s got emotions or anything. It’s been established that he doesn’t have those anymore. Is impatience an emotion? Does that count?

Shockwave seems like he’d be really frustrating to write for.

Anyway, the Titan shows up, the Ore inside him and the Ore in the underground Crystal City combine, and the Titan starts screaming because everything hurts. Shockwave’s about as thrilled as he can be about the situation, given his lack of emotions.

Above Crystal City, we finally get back to that nonsense about the early sunrise, as someone- maybe Starscream, given the color of the narration box- waxes poetic on the planet of Cybertron, wartorn and wild in its rebirth, ruled by paranoia that has nothing to bounce off of, and so creates its own walls.

Then we get a detailed shot of Rattrap’s mug, and the moment is broken.

Rattrap’s character is a lot of fun in everything he gets tossed into, but you’re a goddamn liar if you think he’s pretty to look at. You are lying to yourself, and I won’t apologize for saying it.

Starscream walks out of his room in his hot new body, feeling fine and ready to take on the world. We’ll check in on him later in the day to see how that positive mentality is working out for him.

So, the sun hasn’t moved, and it’s way too early for the sun to even be up right now. That’s weird. Because I guess he didn’t know how the sun works, Starscream’s only just realized that this is perhaps a problem. He does some computer work and realizes that this is indeed a very bad thing, and asks that Rattrap call the Autobots. Not the ones who fucked off into the wilderness, the other ones. The gay, space ones.

Up in space, Orion Pax and his pals have found themselves in dire straits, the collapsing Gorlam Prime sucking their ship back down as the Death Ore consumes everything.

That’s not how engines work! And I think it really says something about the “Prelude” issues that I completely forgot why Wheelie was down an arm for a solid five seconds.

It turns out that Orion was the narrator the entire time, which I should have known- since when is the once and future Optimus Prime not the primary voice in any media he appears in?

It’s looking rough for the fellas, but luckily we’ve got to get the plot rolling, so the Lost Light VZZZZTs into existence and picks up the Skyroller to place it gently into its belly.

Orion isn’t exactly jazzed about the fact that Rodimus didn’t listen to what he told him, not even bothering to thank the guy for saving his life. I say y’all keep going on your Thunderclash Quest and leave this ungrateful loser behind. No space yachting for you, Orion.

The rest of the Pax Posse enter the Lost Light proper, and Hardhead reveals that he nearly joined the Quest, before he saw who all would be coming with, while Garnak has a tearful reunion with Rodimus. The fact that he’s calling him Sir- which I don’t recall him doing in Transformers (2009), at least not in a way that seems reminiscent of an unfortunate Antebellum Period Romance- feels rather weird, but I’m glad someone’s fucking happy to see Rodimus at least. Ultra Magnus asks Orion if he’ll be assuming command of the vessel, as Rodimus tries not to look horrified by the thought alone, but fortunately Orion’s not going to pull his “I’m Optimus Prime and I Can Do What I Want” Card just yet.

Smash cut to the bridge, as Rodimus tries to make himself sound competent, when Starscream calls. Orion doesn’t like that Starscream has their number, Perceptor almost reveals the fact that this ship technically doesn’t belong to a faction, likely due to being purchased after the war, and Cyclonus gets brought in for his professional opinion.

As it turns out, that early sunrise isn’t a sunrise at all, but a portal to the Dead Universe. This is a problem, because the Dead Universe really sucks, and you don’t want to go there, especially if you enjoy being alive. Orion seems more concerned about the fact that Starscream is ruling the planet, and Bumblebee is nowhere to be found.

Speaking of Bumblebee, he and all his camp buddies are psyching themselves up for a confrontation.

Swoop, please, this is hardly the time for crudeness.

The Dinobots, sick of Bumblebee’s dithering about, decide they’re going to fight the fucking sun and gear up. Prowl, though generally disliking their brand of problem-solving, does share his begrudging respect of their can-do attitude.

Their can-do attitude over fighting the fucking sun.

Then an earthquake happens and the ground rips open to reveal that Titan that Waspinator showed up with.

Shockwave takes over the narration at this point, and we get artsy, as we see events that haven’t transpired yet over musings on the nature of... time? Maybe? It would be in line with Roberts’ go-to topics, but honestly the whole thing’s kind of vague so I couldn’t give you a solid answer. Shockwave gets awfully introspective for a guy who shouldn’t care, I know that much. The point is, he is inevitable and is super good at logic and science.

Also, Nova Prime and Galvatron are back, which is cool, I guess. Not sure where Galvatron had gotten to exactly after the events of “Chaos”, but he’s back now, so it doesn’t matter too terribly much. Shockwave serves them, which we’ll probably get an explanation for at some point.

God, you can practically taste the desperation to pin all these plot points together before the entire thing implodes on itself.

[maskedjoker]

We are getting really close to the scene in lost fragment of snow that was genuinely confusing in the book, and it's the scene were everyone in the circus is killed. I think what we will probably get is a scene were mana finally ends up giving into despair after he is hit and then allen is fed to a lion.

I think that with more current info, i can say for sure that sleeve earl and mana are a hybird. This will likely cause a resurgence of sleeve earl into taking over the body and becoming whole. This only lasts for a short time however and when cross confronts him after the rest of the circus has died from the audience turning into akuma(which i suppose are implied to be constantly just around the earl and is probably one of the many reasons cross warned Allen to stay away) some exchange of words or damage causes a lots of control. This damage however also hurts mana(or potentially just being forced out off control) causing him to loose even more memories as seen when mana and Allen reunite the next day.

Now i think we can agree that sleeve earl exists as a third entity, especially since her recent art exhibit interview, as she talked about the suit being a super sophisticated golem. I think in this case as with tim and lero yhat "golem" refers to AI. Id argue with the weird phrasing like helix of life and all the biotech style that magic is more often than not just more advanced technology, and wherever the noahs came from likely was, hence why they say they only seem strong because we have become so weak. This is only further shown with innocences resemblance to machines like its gear like parts and percentage resonance.

The noah memories in general i think are some kind of AI that passes through generation lines, carrying significant portions of its past forward and then fusing with a similar person in their lineage. For example early on road would have been just road, then through some means either became an AI(or was given a piece of someone that counts as one under golem, its unclear). Regardless once connected to the noah memory, it acts like a save file and becomes more sophisticated with time. It carries each life and gives all those memories, feelings and drives to a new body. So new road would remember being road, her life and everything, but also the life they had been living up until the two combined. Over time the noah memory keeps getting larger and larger to the point new experiences are so small, relatively speaking, that it overrides much more than normal. Since they are fuzed as one being they likely cant be separated without mutually assured destruction, were the current entity will die and any remains will not be the origionals, if anything remains at all. An example of this is that tyki could not be made human by Allen I their fight i the arc, despite having a blade that should destroy only part of him. Admittedly tyki is a special case though, and more tyki backstory is needed.

Changes from body to body become more subtle, but the base, which likely has a distinct core function as seen by its response to certain tasks and ideas, remains a strong aspect. This creates an almost reincarnation like effect for them, needing to only find a new body to continue.

The suit is like this, but different. I don't know how the original earl split, but i do think that some aspect of him was placed on the suit. I would like to say its the original version of the noah memories of the earl and nea got like a brand new copy, but i actually have no idea what memories he has of being past earl so its mostly a guess. Regardless the noah actually all seem to transform in some way when they get mega pissed. Im looking at you skinn, jasdevi, and tyki/joyd. So the suit is likely that kind of thing, but way more distinct and capable of acting autonomously. Since they all have different forms it makes sense that his would also be unique. They all probably represent some inner desire related to their memory. Skinn is just rage so big angry man works fine. Jasdero and devit are bonds so they want most to be one. Tyki got all fucked up before he changed so i got nothing, but it had a heavy does of sadism, which I guess is pleasure? Taking into account that killing in horrible graphic ways is his guilty pleasure it kinda makes sense.

So because of that, this sentient AI is constantly trying to pair with half a fucking brain because nea and mana only share one brain cell. Some kind of resistance from mana or strain causes him to constantly fall ill or comatose. Now to be clear on naming, sleeve earl does not refer to themselves as adam in the mirror scene nor does he refer to mana as adam, and only uses "we" when talking to mana about being the earl. Oddly enough the earls self pronouns are we, using wagashi which is kind of like the japanese equivalent of the royal we used in europe for the entirety of the series. For the record, mana in the flashbacks uses male or single they pronouns, i don't remember if he uses boku or watashi, but he uses at least one if not both.

So from this it seems millennium earl is a title, used by whatever is paired with the suit. Adam is the original name of the noah, and is the preferred name of the current earl aside from the title.

This circumstance was likely caused by the rest of the noah, who are using the earl for something related by the pillar. His separation either by accident or by intent was likely by the hands of his family trying to keep control for their ends. This is why the current earl is called a broken puppet and has so many things around him related to acting and stage plays. He is playing a role, the red clown to allens white clown as stated in the ark arc. He even wears a mask. His memories and mind have been damaged though, therefore broken. However broken puppet for both allen and the earl could also refer to a puppet that doesnt work as a double meaning, implying they can no longer be controlled or puppeted.

It is also implied that he is still unaware of this betrayal, but it is likely nea does to some degree as it would explain why he became a traitor and killed his own family. To be clear, i dont think all of the noah know everything, and i dont think they dont actually care for the earl. It seems they still genuinely follow him to their death and see him as one of their own, especially in cases like road, tyki and wisely.

Now early i said that different generations of noah would cope woth reincarnating differently. Since the earl only died once before 7000 years ago, id say resetting to a new body with only 17 years would be just smashed flat by any algorithm with that much data. However manas feelings are still the newest, and so still have an impact even on the current earl.

Now we come to resurrecting mana. How? Why? Well i dont know. But my guess is whatever part was the memories of mana for the 20 or so years he lived, or at least his memories at death, are in allen. His curse and weird hallucinations of mana seem to suggest it. Alternatively that part of his soul may have passed on, or it fuzed with the noah memory making the origional mana part of the hive and much like tyki and his noah memories cannot be seperated. Not good regardless.

As two additional things, i want to mention that hoshino is a twin and has always been obsessed with it, so having twins in her book was inevitable. What is extra weird is hoshino was actually going to be a triplet, but either her or her sister absorbed it before birth. She has mentioned it in dgm interviews and i cant PROVE it translates to anything in the plot but its suspicious. She also still list mana, nea and the earl as distinct in every book up to date in extra novels and at the start of her books. Oh and her favorite hat for the earl right now? The one featured on the most recent chapter? Has two faces on the front that are visible, and one in the back thats hidden, and the most recent art has the back face as the only one visible, angrily staring allen down. Great art foreshadowing if im right. Its also usually sleeve earl, if not exclusively, that wear it.

The second thing is mana talking about love and drive in the most recent chapter just brings up the earl having the noah memory of love or devotion or something for me. Ive written about it before but it just seems to fit. This character is all about that from the ability to fuze loved ones together to the hearts he talks with and his drives being based on grand acts of devotion, being by their side etc. Mana also loved and adopted both and dog and a homeless child and keeps talking about how the world is so beautiful despite all the bad. The earl literally acts like the whole noah clans mom by his own words and cooks for them, and both of them go out of their way to be cartoony to break tension. The earl literally goes and buys a single red rose from a poor girl while tyki pontificate on how he doesnt act like a villain. He doesnt take an umbrella because he wants to feel the rain. He talks about how what he does is in human nature and requires a connection between two people. He is even designed with his ideal colors as red and purple with white, as well as being designed after flowers. I know this probably doesnt make sense, but its stuck in my head.