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dnalkaline · 3 months

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Warning for like really heavy talk I don't expect anyone to read this but I had to type the brain worms out and post them so I can reflect on this later after I have a nap. Might delete later.

I'm on temazepam and it makes me ramble so this is kinda long.

Well.

The other day I was like "man I'm sick of this shit if there's some higher power out there can you send me a sign that things are gonna be alright and tell me what to do to improve my life and be happy" and then meditated and fell asleep. In my dream I had a very realistic depiction/instruction of how to kill myself by walking into the woods and ODing on my medicine.

And I'm like. Ok. Maybe that's just coincidence.

So today I asked "ok what should I do that would make me happy in life" and drew lenormand cards. I got the Scythe and the Boat which implies an abrupt and violent end to a painful journey. When I drew the cards I got bad vibes from them so now I'm like. Alright. I think maybe something wants me dead.

Then I was like "Can I get a clarifier on what this means" and I drew the 9 of swords which is. About mental anguish, nightmares, etc etc. Which just kinda brings us back to the first point.

Assuming it's not all just coincidence or w.e and higher powers are Real this just feels like an absolute fucking "kick me when I'm down" moment. Even some of my spirit guides are like "... Man I'm sorry but I don't really know how to help you."

I did some other meditation rituals later to try and ask other entities for advice. The demons Bune and Andras had some more encouraging words about hanging in there and it doesn't Matter what other people think because I am still capable of great things, I just haven't figured it out yet. But like.

Man idk. I'm sick of fighting so hard and it feels like life isn't worth living. I've been clinically depressed since I was 16 and not much has changed to be honest. I understand that in theory, things can get better, but the problem is I'm so tired that I don't think the payoff is worth it. It feels like I'm essentially working for pennies and scraps.

People keep saying I'm just being pessimistic and that things Always get better, but I'm a little resentful because all of those people clearly have things that I don't or can't have (loving spouse, good family relations, a career, no degenerative disease, etc). I especially feel mad because part of the reason the endo is trying to block my organs and kill me is that people didn't believe I was having so much pain it occasionally leaves me bedbound. People would just tell me to exercise more which... made it worse.

And it's not that I have nothing- I have a lot of good internet friends. But that can only really take you so far, and most of them are also struggling and can't help much. I need some sort of safety social net and assisted living.

The spirits/demons I work with on a personal level that I've talked to about this said that they don't want me to kill myself, and that it's really important for my development (I believe in reincarnation and all that jazz) that I don't do this. I also need to help my family pay the mortgage and me dying would be a huge inconvenience, which is the main thing that has been stopping me lately.

I know life is supposed to be hard somewhat but like... I kinda just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to exist. I find it really hard to genuinely find joy in things and as time goes on, even with medications, things don't improve because I'm in perpetual poverty and dealing with an issue that's kinda similar to cancer but not technically cancer. (Along with brain damage that inhibits some of my ability to find joy in things) I'm in pain every day both physically and emotionally. My entire body hurts right now and there's nothing people can really do about it. I'm not going to live to retirement age so like... I don't know? What do I even do about this.

Whenever I get something that seems like it's a huge step in the right direction (like the surgery thing), life somehow finds a way to take it away from me. I was supposed to inherit a house and a car by now which would have been HUGE but things got changed around so now I get nothing.

Even if I do get the surgery there's a chance that it won't help much... Then I'd just feel like a waste of space and I'd feel guilty about the wasted money.

It's not fair. I'm basically middle aged for someone with my comorbid diseases/disabilities and it sucks because the majority of my life has just been a depression pit. I can't catch a break, and when I do, I'm so traumatized it's hard for me to relax and actually live in the moment without drugs.

I want to fix my life but I also... don't. I'm sick of playing this stupid "game". I'm tired of working my ass off only to get backstabbed by most people or have random accidents happen that set me back to square one. I know nobody is going to come and save me. And that I have to save myself. But I'm tired and I don't want to. I feel like people don't get it. On the last 12 years there has not been a single month in which I had gone without trying to think about how to kill myself without inconveniencing everyone. Part of the reason I'm still here is I have a lot of work to do before then.

Will I actually go through with it? Probably not, in all honesty. Even though I want to stop existing, I'm too scared to die.

Idk. It just sucks that most treatments for depression can't work on me due to my sensitive nerve issues or serotonin sensitivity. The only thing that might work are some experimental treatments that aren't covered by insurance anyway so I'd likely have to crowdfund or something. But I've tried crowdfunding before for the SGB injections and basically I got a lot of messages calling me a lazy piece of shit and I just need to "work harder" and I don't deserve handouts for needing PTSD treatment, so I just took it down. I don't have a lot of faith in general about that. Every time I make a dono post I get like... 5$ from it. I also stopped trying because I feel super guilty asking for money, especially since most of my friends have other shit they need to do as well.

Idk. I'm just tired of pretending to be happy so I don't worry people. If anyone reaches out to want to talk about this that's Fine but like. Please understand I am not in the mood for toxic positivity. It just makes me angrier and I feel like not a lot of people actually fully understand my situation and how this affects me. I don't really expect anyone to have anyhting profound to say, either.

I wish my parents never had me. They're both kinda old and going senile so I have to help take care of them on top of taking care of my severely disabled ass. Even if some things are improving, there's just a lot going on and I wish I could just pop out of existence like I was never real in the first place.

There's other stuff I'm thinking about but this is already getting super long so I'm cutting it here

#null rambles #heavy topics #suicide ideation tw #religion and spirituality tw

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030615 · 11 months

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Reflective Journal - Lim Lin Year 1 Production Arts for Screen

Leaving Singapore to a new country, and then starting classes the next day had made me disoriented and lost as a stranger in a foreign land. On the other hand, this transitional period has also shown me the promising pathway for a new door I had opened.

The identity lecture gave me a closer look at an individual’s sense of self in the modern world. With various analogies and thought experiments, we were taught different interpretations of this idea. A concept I thought was interesting is the way identity is linked to our contemporary society. We were asked to question how identity can be maintained in a vulnerable and unpredictable world. As someone who enjoys the sci-fi genre, the idea that many of these stories can be viewed as a metaphor for addressing current societal concerns was intriguing.

An example from the lectures that struck me was the real-life “brain worm” incident. A woman had a parasitical infection that caused a worm to grow in her brain and led her to become extremely ill. This non-fictional unnatural violation of the human body shocked me as a horrifying reality to live in could happen from a mundane situation of physical contact with nature. Not only was it unpredictable and terrifying, but it also confirmed fears of the inability of man to live in harmony with nature. This also acts as a real-life metaphor for broken natural boundaries, and the trespassing of personal space.

For the film project, we were tasked to film and edit a two-minute film using the theme of Identity. Although I had little experience with filming, I was thankful to be in a group of talented people who helped me along the way. We brainstormed several ideas and narrowed them down to personal experiences with identity. Our film was titled “Overload” which used a first-person point of view to convey the experience of autistic individuals. I learned a lot from my groupmates who have more experience in filming, such as different editing techniques and art direction that I had never thought of before.

After those two weeks, we resumed our course tutorials and the first unit commenced. We were tasked to create a character with the prompt “What's Behind The Door?”. The main struggle I had during this stage was to make the character believable. Initially, I wanted to create a grotesque man-eating creature as I like horror games. However, this led to a conflict I was unable to solve, as I did not know how to justify why a character would behave this way. The creature acted as a mindless killing machine, so I decided to start over with a new idea.

On my second attempt, I focused more on the personality of the character than its setting. Using the list of questions provided in the tutorial, I created a spider housekeeper who spends most of its time cleaning the room behind the door.

The above image shows concept sketches I made after writing the description of the character. I wanted to base the creature off a spider as the contrasting volume of the compact body mass and thin legs makes it appear more fragile, adding to its frantic personality. The second design was chosen, and the next tutorial allowed me to understand ways to convey a character’s personality through their body language. We were tasked to draw our character in four different poses representing different emotions.

A problem I encountered was the stiffness and awkwardness of the way I first drew the lying pose. This was because I used textual descriptions rather than visual references to draw the character, so this tutorial has taught me the importance of using photos when depicting body language. As such, for the rest of the task, I made sure to use visual references that effectively convey the mood and personality of the character.

Afterward, we were taught how to do three-dimensional drawing. This involves three main elements; simple volumes, basic perspectives, and overlapping forms. I found this lesson to be extremely useful for backgrounds as using these rules to create depth and structure achieves the illusion of 3D on a flat surface. This can also be applied to organic forms, such as foreshortening when drawing body parts. For this tutorial, we were tasked with drawing different objects from three different perspectives.

In hindsight, I should have given myself a larger space to do this exercise as gridding the paper into nine parts caused most of the drawings to appear too cramped or overly exaggerated. I was disappointed with the outcome as I could not fit the three-point perspective drawing of the piano in the last grid as it will look extremely distorted with that scale. The details on the objects are also inaccurate, so I would have to work on these problem areas when doing more perspective drawings in the future.

Another exercise related to improving our structure was the practice used for drawing human heads. As someone who is used to making photo studies with loose guidelines and editing the proportions during the rendering stage, I was not used to the methods used to break down features of the head. While drawing the basic forms was manageable separately, applying these steps to a face is challenging as you would also need to consider the proportions of the person.

While drawing Matt Damon’s face, I tried to follow the structure and created this portrait. The key issues I had were the proportions and the lower half of the face.

The following tutorial gave us pointers when designing characters and finding an art style for them. Drawing how the characters will be like rather than appear like would aid in creating a being capable of thought. We were recommended to use primary and secondary research and to base the character on something rather than to create one out of our imagination. We were also reminded to exaggerate the line of action while drawing with references and to consider how it affects the angle of hips, shoulders, and head.

Related to the technical aspects of drawing, we were taught how to draw clothing that belongs to the character. The lesson's outcome is to draw fabric that enhances the character's three-dimensionality rather than flatten it. To do this, the key point is to focus on structure and observation as it gives believability to the characters who should also have surface and form.

Some of the fabric I drew looked stiff as I either drew too many folds or did not follow the curve of the body. With the help of my tutor's drawing shown in the bottom right of the first page, I was able to make the fabric complement the form of the person more.

When drawing facial expressions, we were given points to take note of for more effective drawings. The expressions should convey the personality of the character, and this can be achieved by following design rules and establishing consistent structure and volume.

I faced many problems trying to exaggerate my character’s expressions. As the mouth was placed at the lowest point of its skull, it was difficult to create an “open mouth” expression without obscuring the eyes. Moreover, when trying to make the eyes expressive, distorting its size made the character not look like itself. In the end, I managed to convey its emotions by changing the length of the jaw and adjusting the height of the eyeballs.

The last practice we had in this unit covered the attitude of a character. With a simple prompt, a character’s audience appeal could be evoked with attitude. This can be achieved by giving characters a thought process, reflecting it with their design, and making the way they carry themselves consistently. Establishing the character’s point of view creates an expectation in the audience and reveals the person in the design. Afterward, we were given time to work on our character designs, so I worked on the turnaround and construction sheet during this time and digitalized these sketches for the final hand-in.

At the end of this unit, I was able to learn new rules of character design that helped me to communicate my ideas better to an audience. This has also helped to improve my technical skills in drawing and I will continue to practice more in the future to achieve better results in my art and storytelling.

#unit1

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ichorai · 4 years

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cellmates ; four ; j.wy

pairing ; jung wooyoung x reader

summary ; stuck in jail after stealing a necklace off the princess, what happens when your new cellmate with an impossible escape plan comes along?

words ; 5.2k

warnings / includes ; medieval fantasy au, blood and grime and death and everything in between, some curse words, future ateez cameos, future suggestive / mature content, cellmates to (future) lovers !!

a/n ; surprise !! here you go stop crying >:( kdjffj jk i hope yall enjoy !!! the plot thickens up quite a bit in this one 👀 ,,, there are also a couple surprises sprinkled here and there :DD to make up for what i did to yall last chapter lol

cellmates masterlist.

As a child, a popular tale you often heard was one depicting a man stranded on an island, throat dry with thirst and stomach void of nourishment. He passed out in exhaustion by the beach, just on the brink of death. But before his soul could fade away, the mermaids took pity on the man of skin-and-bones and brought him underwater, breathing life back into his lungs. He contentedly lived the rest of his life as a merperson.

Although stories like those always had happy endings, they could never really make you smile, unlike how all the other children reacted. What about the people the man cared about when he was on land? Had he just completely forgotten about them to selfishly live an easier life underwater?

The same thoughts ran through your pounding head repeatedly as you dully stared out into the gleaming ocean. From where you were, bound tightly against the main mast, you had a clear view of both the ship’s deck and the waters. You couldn’t really remember how long you’d been tied up… if you could recall correctly, they had only thrown Wooyoung overboard just last night. That felt like an eternity ago.

All thoughts of mermaids and fairy tales and Wooyoung dissipated from your mind once a pirate stepped into your view. In the daylight, they were far less scary than when you had first encountered them. The pirate had bronzed skin verging on being sunburnt, and sharp eyes of molten gold. A red bandana held his hair out of his leering face, and you noticed a dark branding burn of a sword ran through a skull embedded on his chest, partially covered by his loose tunic.

The man tutted, grabbing your chin between two fingers. It was then that you realized just how tired you were; you hadn’t gotten any sleep, instead spending the night struggling against your bonds and crying after Wooyoung.

“Let me go.” Your voice was so hoarse that it didn’t sound like yours anymore.

The pirate merely grinned and shook his head.

You wracked your brain for a second before spitting out, “Isn’t it bad luck to have a woman onboard? Your ship will sink if you keep me here.”

“Why, you must have nothing but worms between your ears,” He cackled in a sinister manner. “That’s just a silly little myth, sweetheart. Women are more than welcome here.” With those words, he ran his eyes over your tense form. A predator surveying its prey.

Much to your relief, the pirate stepped down. That feeling didn’t last very long, however. Just as he slid back, more pirates filtered into your view, clearly just having woken up to start the day. There were so many eyes on you; some curious, some disinterested, and some boldly staring with unsavory expressions.

“I say we make her do the dirty work,” One with golden teeth chimed. “Scrub the decks, clean the chamber pots.”

“We should toss her overboard. We don’t need another mouth to feed.”

“Keep her tied up there! A pretty thing like her should be on display for everyone to see!”

“We can drop her off at the next port and sell her off as a slave. We could use the extra gold.”

“Awh, don’t you think we should keep her? Ain’t half bad to look at.”

Those were only just a few snippets you could make out in the midst of the tumultuous roaring of the pirates as they yelled their suggestions over each other. They grew progressively louder as more ideas came into mind on what they should do with you. Panic brewed within you, but your limbs were tired and your mind was numb. All you could do was stand and watch.

The pirates immediately quietened once a one-eyed man with a peg leg hobbled out of the navigation room. The soft clunk, clunk, clunk of the wooden leg against the planks was not unsimilar to the rapid thundering of your heartbeat.

This is the captain, you thought. It was obvious, what with the way the pirates shut their mouths tightly and bowed their heads down to their chests. Some even trembled on the spot. If Wooyoung were here, he’d laugh at them.

Oh, how you missed him.

The captain had a voice of pure silk, a stark contrast to his ragged appearance. In a quietly powerful tone, he stated firmly, “We leave her here until we reach Aurecia. Then we sell her off.” After a tense pause, he sternly added on, “Nobody touches her until then. Aurecians pay well for unspoilt women, so if any of you lot come remotely close to her, I’ll have your heads.”

The diminutive consolation you received from the captain’s commands ebbed away slightly when you thought more about what he was saying. They were going to sell you off as a slave in Aurecia. And if you could recall the map correctly, Aurecia was the opposite direction of Virelis, where you were supposed to be going. To top it all off, Cerulea and Aurecia were trusted allies, and that could mean nothing good for you.

“No!” You suddenly interjected in a croaky voice, throat so dry it felt like you had sandpaper in your mouth. “Please, don’t take me there. I need to go to Virelis. Please, you can sell me there!”

Everybody stared at you in complete befuddlement. The captain gaped at you with one narrowed eye and spat out, “Virelis doesn’t take slaves. Don’t play games with me, girl.”

Out of desperation, pleading words frantically poured out of your mouth before you could stop and hesitate, “Then don’t sell me! I’m useful, I swear!”

“Forgive me if I have difficulty believing you,” The captain said in a bored tone, gesturing to your bleeding, tied up form.

A frustrated huff escaped you as you hissed out, “I’m Y/N L/N! I was the one that stole the princess’ necklace! I’m a valuable asset and you’d be lucky to have me on your crew.”

A stunned silence washed over the pirates. Then, one by one, they started laughing. They snorted and chuckled and slapped their knees as if you had told them the funniest joke in the world. You half-heartedly attempted speaking again, but your voice was drowned out by their howling laughter.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I FEED YOUR SORRY ASSES TO THE SHARKS!” The captain bellowed, his velvety tone long gone. He had his arms crossed tightly over his chest, a scowl pulling at his lips.

The lot of them snapped their mouths shut so quickly you could hear their teeth clacking against one other.

“Y/N L/N is nothing but a legend,” The captain stepped closer to you, his one eye narrowed in suspicion. “I don’t know, nor do I care for why you’re lying, but it better not become a problem. I’ve already got one crew to deal with. I don’t need to add a raving lunatic onto the list.”

“Please!” You wiggled against your bonds slightly, wincing at how the coarse rope fibers scratched at your chafed skin. “Why would I lie?! You’ve got to believe me, I’m Y/N L/N, I’ve been in jail for a long time and I’ve only recently escaped with the man you tossed overboard. Please, we can go bring him back, he can tell you, I - !”

The words lodged in your throat. It was pointless, trying to convince a haggle of savage pirates to go back for someone they tossed to the sharks. There was a sort of heavy pain deep down in your chest, and you brokenly blew out a sigh. The feeling churned at your insides uncomfortably. It might’ve been the sea sickness, but you knew it was a nasty combination of guilt and panic and regret.

The captain noticed your abrupt change in demeanor, but decided not to comment. Instead, he said stoically, “Y/N L/N is a wonderful character in a legend told to scare children and I would absolutely love to meet her. But unfortunately, I don’t think I’d ever get the pleasure to. She’s not real.” You stared into his one eye, tears welling up in your own. “And about the man we tossed over… he put up a real fight and he wasn’t worth the trouble. He’s probably long gone by now. It’d do you good to forget about him.”

Pirates behind the pair of you started snickering, but were quietened when the captain straightened and just about snarled out, “DON’T YOU HAVE WORK TO DO? GET ON WITH IT, YOU STINKY BASTARDS!”

They scrambled in a panicked fashion, a few of them running into each other as they dashed in opposite directions, others clumsily slipping on the damp plank wood, and some merely ran like headless chickens with no definite direction in mind.

“They’ll treat you well in Aurecia, girl,” The captain slipped back into his velvety tone once more. You supposed this was his way of apologizing… or, the closest thing to an apology you’d ever get from a pirate. “Just try to accept it and it won’t seem as bad. This lot here won’t hurt you in the meantime. I’ll make sure of that.” He gestured to the rest of the men who were settling back into their daily routines. You were surprised to see that they were already hard at work; manning the sails, scrubbing the decks, navigating the ship, so on so forth. The life of a pirate definitely wasn't an easy one.

You said nothing in return, staring blankly at the glinting ocean. The hollow clunk, clunk, clunk of his peg leg fading away was a sure sign that the captain was gone. You couldn’t bring it in yourself to watch him go.

This was most probably the worst possible time to cry. At this point, you were surprised your sore eyes could still manage to produce tears, considering how dehydrated you were. It was obvious that some of the pirates were still watching you, pausing mid-job. You tried to ignore them and hung your head sullenly as dry sobs rumbled in your chest.

You were stuck floating in a gigantic cesspool of saltwater, and yet your body had the audacity to produce even more. It was this very water you were bobbing on that most probably filled Wooyoung’s lungs as he gave up his last breath. The thought did nothing but make you weep harder.

Pirates really had no designated time to have luncheon and supper, but their stomachs all seemed to revolve around roughly the same hours. By the time the golden of the sun was grazing against the deep green waters and the sky was bleeding a strange shade of amaranthine, they were all shouting out complaints of hunger and trotting to the small kitchens below deck to have supper.

You were hungry, but also sure that if you had even a morsel of bread, you would heave it right back out. The day was spent with you gazing at the rocking waters, bustling pirates, and the large, tattered flag that hung proudly way above you. On occasion, you tried pleading to the pirates who were passing by, but none of them so much as glanced towards you. It seemed as though they took their captain’s orders to heart.

And so, after hours and hours of being neglected, imagine your surprise when one particular pirate sheepishly walked up to you, a little after all the others had disappeared below the deck to eat.

At first, you hadn’t noticed the quiet man because you had your stinging eyes shut, trying to block off the last and harshest glares of the sun as it sank under the edge of the world.

He cleared his throat once, and your eyes flew back open, startled.

“You must be starving,” He said.

The first thing you noticed about him was the strangely soft shade of pink his hair was. It wasn’t unsimilar to the color of Yunho’s hair, and you found yourself wondering how the kind giant of a man would react knowing that you lost Wooyoung.

“Oh,” He gestured to the brightly-hued strands on his forehead. “I’m half fairy. Everybody looks at me funny when they first see my hair.”

Snapping out of your thoughts, you observed the man in front of you suspiciously. You had little to say in reply to the strangely personal fact he told you, and so you bit down on your tongue and let silence further consume you.

He had an angular face and complementing sharp features, but he bore a timid expression in an unexpectedly stark contrast. What was this fairy-man doing on a pirate ship? He didn’t look at all like the rest of the crew. The others were sunburnt and filthy and rugged. He, however, was somewhat well kempt, skin void of burns and scars and dirt. A loose cream-hued tunic was hung over broad shoulders, barely slung over his hardened chest, a leather belt tightened around the small of his waist and tucked into black trousers. It was quite a dignifying outfit in comparison to the rest of the crew clad in dirty rags and stolen clothes that didn’t match in the slightest. But for that, you could understand. Seeing the pirates randomly throw on haphazard articles of clothing, you thought back to when you were on the run with Wooyoung, stealing clothes off of drying lines and changing into whatever would fit.

The only thing that pushed the strange pink-haired man more towards the ‘rugged pirate’ side was a silver lip ring glinting with the late sunlight from the side of his bottom lip. In his eyes you saw gentle kindness, but you knew better than to trust him just yet.

“Are you hungry? I can sneak something up for you while everyone’s busy stuffing their face full.” He had a voice of honey and silk, tempting you to accept his generous offer. But you kept your mouth shut.

“I understand,” A sad, empathetic look crossed his face. “Sea sickness is the worst the first couple of days. From there, it’ll gradually get better once you get used to it. But please, drink some water.”

From out of nowhere, he brandished a pretty silver chalice and held it up to you, the metal stingingly cool against your lips. You would’ve been stupid to turn down the water, so you leaned forward slightly and slurped at the drink so quickly that some sloshed down your chin and dripped onto your chest.

“I can get you some more later,” He said, pulling the cup away as you gasped for air. “But I have to tell you something important first. My name is San, by the way.”

He had a name that roughly translated to ‘mountain’ in Old Cerulean. You thought it was a rather pretty name… fitting for such a pretty man.

“I just wanted to say this while no one was around,” San sucked in a deep breath, steeling his quaking nerves. “I believe you.”

The water had certainly drowned away the scratchy burn in your throat, so you were free to painlessly stutter out, “W-What?”

“I believe you,” He repeated. “It’s like you said… why would you lie?”

“You believe that I’m Y/N?” Your voice raised an octave or two higher, to which San shot you a warning look and glanced behind him as a precaution. If anybody heard or saw either of you, the captain would have his head. “Why?”

Hope was a dangerous thing. It muddled your brain and clouded your consciousness, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. So you looked upon the pink-haired pirate dubiously, furrowing your eyebrows.

“I might be the most gullible man out there,” San snorted, raising a hand to rub against the back of his neck. “You kinda fit the description in all the stories and legends. And you don’t look like you’re lying… I don’t know… it must be the fairy blood in me. My mother always knew when I was lying or telling the truth. She used to tell me that good people only truly lie when they want to protect others. But… you don’t have anybody here to protect. Not anymore, anyways.” There was a guilty, remorseful sort of look that flooded his face.

You were so relieved that you could’ve burst into tears right then and there.

“And… that man the others threw overboard… he kept saying your name. You might’ve had reason to lie to us, but he didn’t. Especially not then.” San spoke gently in a low tone, as if he were speaking to a frightened child. Something painful twisted in your stomach at his words. “So… yes, Y/N, I believe you.”

Then he leaned forward and quickly swiped his cool thumb over your damp cheek. You only then realized that you were crying again, flinching away from his touch at first, before relaxing your tensed muscles.

“Thank you,” was the only thing you could properly croak out. There were so many things you wanted to tell him. Help me. Let me out. Bring Wooyoung back. Take me away from here. Why are you helping me? What are you doing here?

Although none of your erratic thoughts were heard, you sagged in relief when he said, “I’ll try to talk to the captain about making a stop in Virelis.” As a tentative afterthought, he added, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I loved him,” You croaked out, surprising even yourself. “I didn’t know that I did.”

San flashed you a sad smile, “Some people never realize. You’re lucky that you did.” Then, he murmured after gesturing to your bloody hands and wrists, “I’m also sorry about them hurting you. I have a special coconut extract lotion that treats wounds and burns very well. I’ll try to sneak up something for you to eat, as well. We’ll have to wait until it’s completely dark, though.”

You had so much to tell him, so much to ask, so much to thank him for. The fairy-man rotated on the stub of his heel to walk away, and you whispered out, “San!” He glanced back at you with a curious expression, and you nodded your head, sincerely grateful, “Thank you.” The questions could wait, you supposed.

A smile so wide spread across his lips that his eyes almost disappeared. Around savage pirates practically all his life, he rarely ever heard those two strangely comforting words. He dipped his head politely and walked away, leaving you to your own overwhelming thoughts.

Sleep had taken you under its dark wing a little while after San left, however fitful and sporadic. Your head pounded as your swollen and aching eyes fluttered open, somewhat surprised to see that it was still dark. Where was San?

Then, as your consciousness shook away the foggy webs of sleep, your brain registered a faint singing voice. However, it wasn’t just any rotten pirates’ singing voice; it sounded as if a woman was wailing, but in the most beautiful way possible. The trembling vocal chords pierced through the night sky, high-pitched and ringing in your ears melodically. It was a song in a language you couldn’t understand, but the warbled words molded together sounded pure and whole, just about placing you under a trance. But of course, you were still quite dazed and confused from slumber, unable to clearly hear the singing voices. On top of that, the water seemed to be extra loud, splashes and waves thundering against the boat almost every five seconds.

Tired, you rolled your stiff neck. Strangely, you noticed that the deck in front of you was void of any pirates. Glancing to the side, there was not a single soul to be seen manning the navigational wheel. Your neck ached as you craned it to look upwards, squinting at the crows’ nest, just to see that it was equally empty. Where are they? you thought absent-mindedly.

The singing was getting louder, and you had to physically shake your head to get your mind out of the gutters. The ropes strained against the skin of your raw wrists even more when you shifted to look behind you.

The sight that you were met with had you reeling against the mast in panic.

Sirens. Dozens of them, sitting on moldy rocky ledges jutting out of the ocean waters. They were beautiful creatures, smooth skins tainted a faint green and shimmery silver hair just long enough to drape wetly over their breasts. They bore seductive expressions and parted their full lips to croon out the mesmerizing song in unison.

And the splashing against the boat? With a choked gasp of horror, the undisputed mystery of where all the pirates had gone was answered. One by one, they were marching off the planks, plummeting into the salty ocean waters, swimming as if their life depended on it, closer and closer to the beckoning sirens. They all held entranced expressions, some with gaping mouths and others with fully blown pupils of adoration and lust.

The sirens were far enough where you weren’t fully under influence, but much too close to be clear of mind. You had to count yourself lucky for being female; it was known that sirens had stronger effects on men. But you didn’t have much time to spare.

You suddenly became short of breath in panic. Where was San? Had he already jumped off? Blowing out a shuddering sigh, your neck trembled with great effort as you angled yourself to look back again. It was easy to spot his brightly-colored mane, the pink starkly bright in the moonlight.

“SAN!” You screamed to the best of your abilities, voice scratchy from your previous slumber. For a second, the fairy-man seemed to twitch slightly into your direction. A particularly high-pitched note echoed across the waters, just about slicing through any hesitation San might’ve held. Just like that, he turned completely away from you with a stupefied look, before hopping off the ship and plunging into the ocean.

A scream of protest ripped through your throat. There was no time to think… you could already feel their lulling voices numb the corners of your mind…

No. No, I have to get out of this.

With a quick glance back, a flare of hope ignited somewhere within your chest when you spotted a dagger just behind you, buried in the fraying wood of a grog barrel. Its handle was jutting out in your direction, the crooked blade void of rust and gleaming with reflected moonlight. Excruciating pain shot through your right arm as you twisted your wrist about, desperate to be freed of the knot. The hardest part was getting your hand through the tight loophole, groaning at the throbbing sensation.

After frantically yanking yourself upwards, you managed to wrench your right wrist free, covered with blood and scratches and blisters. Then, with no time to spare, you reached as far as you could behind you, towards the barrel. Your bones ached and cracked under the strain, but you pushed through with gritted teeth. Tears ran down your twisted features from the pain. With a final shriek, you lunged and wrapped your blood-slicken fingers around the hilt. The sick sound of your left shoulder popping had you screaming in pained misery, but there was no time to lament. You’d fix it up later.

It took little effort to extract the blade out of the rotting wood. You prayed not to drop the dagger as your hand trembled ruthlessly. Swallowing dryly, you raised the blade to your left wrist, and began hacking away at the ropes.

They were tough, coarse things, but gave way eventually, unraveling with each strand. You didn’t even have to cut through the whole thing until it was weak enough to break on its own.

You were free.

The sirens’ song grew louder and louder, and frantically, you wobbled away from the mast and to the side of the ship, steadying your shaking legs against the rail. Every fibre of your being screamed at you to stop and jump into the water, swim to the beautiful melody that came from just over there…

“No!” You managed to moan out. Your left arm was completely useless; you weren’t able to move the limb at all. The tearing of your shirt as you somehow managed to rip off the sleeve rang in your muddled head alongside the foreign words quavering through the air. You used the dagger to slice the cloth in half, and shoved each piece into your ears. It was disgusting and uncomfortable, but it would have to suffice. The sirens’ voices sounded little other than muffled hums, and though you had to stay cautious, you could already feel your mind clear tremendously.

The last of the pirates had just clambered off the side. You would’ve heard the large splash he made as he cannon-balled into the waters if it weren’t for your make-shift ear plugs.

You were tired. You were thirsty, aching, sleepy, and just about every other bad feeling one could possibly have. Unfortunately, the ship was still heading right towards the sirens, no doubt turned off-course by a crewmate heavily under their influence.

And so, you dragged your heavy limbs over to the navigational wheel, letting out a soft tormented wince when the small act of curling your quaking fingers around the wooden spokes were enough to send what felt like great electric shocks of pain up your spine. Then, you spun the wheel one-handed, over and over and over again until the massive beauty of a ship leaned away from the sirens (who were clearly enraged, hissing and baring their sharp teeth), silkily gliding over the waters. Warm ocean air billowed into your face and tousled your hair, and for the first time since you’ve gotten onto the ship, you didn’t feel like throwing up.

A part of you felt bad for leaving San, the only pirate to show you even just a morsel of empathy. Who knows, maybe he’d survive. He was half fairy, after all. You muttered out a soft soft wish of good luck for the pink-haired man, though you doubted that would do much.

Your mind was quick to leap from the fate of San to a man who’s been in your life for much longer. Where would you be if it weren’t for him?

Wooyoung wasn’t one to just… give up like that. He couldn’t be dead. Perhaps you were being a fool for holding onto hope, but you would gladly welcome that title if there was even the slightest chance that he was still out there, alive and breathing.

And so, you steeled your nerves by drawing in a grand breath. Your lips settled in a firm, determined line.

You were going to go find Wooyoung.

Where were you to start?

Dozens and dozens of maps and scrolls were tossed about as you pillaged through the papers, in search of a chart that would actually be of use to you. Much to your dismay, there weren’t any maps whatsoever that held the directions to Virelis. There goes that plan down the drain. Where else was there to go?

The sling that held up your left arm was procured hastily from the medbay after you popped your dislocated shoulder back into its socket with a quailing shriek. The pain had faded into a dull ache, but at least now you could wiggle your fingers. That was a good sign, you supposed. Your stomach was full with what you could find in their kitchen pantries (which was mostly just stale biscuits and half-cooked fish), and to be honest, you felt better than you have in a long, long time, despite the circumstances.

There was still the problem of finding him, though. If you could recall correctly, you were only around a days’ sail away from where they had kicked Wooyoung off.

But that would mean turning back to Cerulea. And that… definitely didn’t sound smart. You rubbed your fingers against your throbbing temple, taking a long swig of refreshing water from a pitcher. Gentle light was filtering in through the small circular window, illuminating the yellowed maps in such a way to make them look golden. There was no time to appreciate the simple beauty of this, however, because a stupid, moronishly foolish, plan was forming in your head.

What if you went back to Cerulea? Would Wooyoung be waiting for you there? Maybe he was staying with Yunho while he got back on his feet. After all, it’s not like he could swim all the way to Virelis, especially with how injured he was. Cerulea was a much closer, safer plan. It was the only place he could go, right?

Unease twisted your stomach at the thought of going back to the country that locked you in a dark dungeon for moons upon moons upon moons. Deep down inside, you knew that no part of Wooyoung would ever willingly go back to Cerulea. Not after all he went through trying to get out. But what else were you to do? And even if he weren’t there, at least you’d be able to inform Yunho on what happened. Then the sweet giant of a man could help you find him.

You stood up, compasses and maps slipping off your lap, respectively clanging and fluttering towards the ground noisily. With large, determined strides, you exited the navigational room and to the main deck, where the steering wheel was situated. Warm, salty breeze whispered against your ears, calm and encouraging.

“I’ll find you, Wooyoung,” Your words were swiftly stolen by the wind. You hoped that gale would be kind enough to carry the message over to him, however impossible it was.

Halfway across the world, laid an unconscious dark-haired man, clad in nothing save for his smallclothes and bandages tightly wrapped around his skull. He was situated stiffly atop a narrow bed, scars and bruises still quite fresh and clearly visible against his paler-than-usual skin.

Wooyoung awoke with a startled choke of a gasp, sore eyes flying wide open. There was a searing pain in his abdomen as he sat up, wheezing and hissing in agony. He took in his surroundings with a panicked demeanor, gaze landing on the mildly surprised fair-headed figure with striking green eyes standing by the doorway, fresh bandages in his palms. He’s an elf, Wooyoung realized after a long moment of gaping, noticing the ever-so-slightly pointed ears poking out beneath silvery locks and the infamous nature-woven clothes only elves wore.

“Took you long enough,” He said in a thick Elvish accent, followed by a beguiling snort. “I thought you would stay asleep forever. I’m Yeosang.”

Wooyoung blinked sluggishly once, twice, and a third and fourth time for good measure. He knew very well that he should probably answer. After all, elves were widely known to be an easily offended kind. But for the love of everything he held dear, he just couldn’t seem to crack his lips open.

The two stared at each other awkwardly for a second more. Then promptly, his eyes rolled into the back of his skull as his upper half crumpled onto the bed, instantaneously returning into the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

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anniesocsandgeneralstore · 4 years

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Grow Old With You - Reykha’s Birth

IF YOU ONCE READ THIS FIC AND WANT SOME CLOSURE HERE IS A LINK FOR YOU/OR IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHERE THE HECK THE REST OF THIS FIC IS IT IS EXPLAINED HERE

Summary: lol this is the last thing I wrote for Grow Old With You/Build a Home With You. I felt y’all deserved to read it cause I do really like how it turned out. Also Ara and Din are space MILF and DILF that deserve the world.

Pairing: The Mandalorian (Din Djarin) x OFC (Ara Obagh)

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: fairly graphic depictions of birth and labor, major fluff, a lot of feels, Ara’s glorious return

With one hand, Ara gripped a rung of the ladder while the other tried to soothe the underside of her belly as another spasm ripped across her abdomen. It was the worst pain she had ever felt. She had been stabbed, shot, and tortured. But nothing compared to this. Her lower back now throbbed. The weight, and pressure of the baby against her pelvis nearly made her knees buckle. Her mouth opened in a silent groan as the pain peaked, her belly stiffening in her hand, and then it slowly began to fade.

For a moment, she believed it was over. The doctor had warned against false pains that could be mistaken for real labor. Something similar happened at the beach just a few days earlier. She hoped that was what it was. Ara wanted to have the baby back home on Naboo. In the solace of her own bed. Not on the Razor Crest, a cold ship that left much to be desired when it came to comfort.

But then she felt a soft pop between her legs. Like a balloon filled with too much air. Then a sudden gush of liquid between her legs. Did I just wet myself? Ara thought. That would be an embarrassing thing to have to explain to Din and Cara when they got back. But when she looked down at the floor to the small puddle she now stood in, her eyes widened at the sight. There was a tiny amount of blood mixed in with the clear fluid.

“Oh no,” Ara whispered.

Her water just broke. On the Razor Crest. On Denon of all places.

The next contraction hit about thirty minutes later. She hadn’t moved from her spot in front of the ladder, afraid that would make the now constant ache even worse. Pain, like an iron belt wrapped around her middle, coursed through her stomach and into her spine. Ara whimpered as she swayed back and forth, her free hand rubbing soothing circles into her abdomen. Hot tears, which she felt betrayed by, built up in the corners of her eyes and threatened to fall. She had felt pain before. She had been through worse. But Maker this kriffing hurt and she had no idea when Din was going to be back. And the more she thought about that, the more her tears blurred her vision and her lip began to quiver. She didn’t want to go through this alone. What if something went wrong? What if the baby was breach or something worse? Ara rested her forehead against the cool metal of the ladder as her tears finally fell.

“Just a little bit longer, fierce girl,” she whispered, voice trembling, “Please.”

Ten minutes. Another contraction. They were getting closer together and the pain was getting worse. Both hands on the ladder, Ara breathed through it as Vaisha had told her to do. But she couldn’t stop the choked sob that broke past her lips. Din should be there. Breathing with her and massaging her back to help relieve the pain. He should be whispering encouragements in her ear. But he wasn’t. She prayed that he would be back soon, even as she gathered all her courage and moved her hand between her legs.

She was about halfway dilated. It was almost time.

_______________________________________________________________________

“I get that you wanna go in there blaster first — but we need a plan,” Cara argued as they walked back to where the Crest had been parked.

“Fine,” Din relented, feeling agitated, “Make a plan. Attack his safehouse first thing in the morning.”

Cara agreed with a slight nod of her head as they approached the Crest. Din pulled the comlink from his belt and held it up to his helmet. “Ara, we’re back. Release the ground security protocols.”

Nothing. Complete and deafening silence.

Din felt panic, like a sudden harpoon through his chest. He took a deep breath to calm himself. Maybe she was asleep. Or perhaps the comlink ran out of batteries. He could always just pound on the ramp if all else failed. She was fine. Perfectly fine.

He repeated, quieter, his voice strained, “Ara?”

The Crest hissed to life as the ramp popped open and then slowly lowered. Din heaved a sigh of relief as Cara slapped him on the back. She knew everything was fine. Ara was way too capable, even when she was about to have a baby, to let something happen to her. But then they both got a good look at Ara standing at the top of the ramp. She was soaked in sweat. Her cheeks red. She stood hunched over, her knees buckled, one hand against the wall and the other clutching her stomach. Tears had stained her cheeks. Her entire form flinched as her face crumpled in pain. The concave of her back bending even further.

Then she looked up at them, desperate and in agony before whimpering, “Din…”

Cara had seen the Mandalorian move quickly. It always impressed her how hard he could haul ass with all that armor on. But in this instance, he truly surprised her with how swiftly he moved. He was up the ramp and inside the Crest within seconds. One arm supporting Ara’s back while the other wrapped around her middle to keep her upright. Cara stared for only a moment longer than either of the Mandalorians liked.

“Dune!” he shouted, “Get in here!”

She quickly did as she was told. Scrambling up the ramp and it was immediately closed behind her.

“What’s happening?” Cara asked, voice edging on panicked. A new emotion for her. Stars, is she dying?

“Baby…” Ara struggled to answer, grunting in pain and clutching at her stomach, “The baby…”

Oh shit, Cara thought, eyes gone wide.

Ara panted, tears of sweet relief now flowing down her face, as Din lowered her slowly to the floor. Back leaned against the now-closed ramp and her knees bent. The pain was nearing on constant now. She felt like she was going to vomit or pass out because of it. Din quickly whipped his cape off his shoulders and threw it down on the floor. Followed by his gloves. Then he started working on getting his vambraces off, and it was only then that he noticed Cara still standing there. Staring at Ara like she was about to explode.

“Can I…Help?” the ex-shock trooper asked unsurely, eyes still trained on Ara who threw her head back against the wall and groaned loudly in pain.

“No.” Din grunted as he finally pulled one vambrace away from his arm. His fingers fumbled and shook as he began working on the other one. “Get into the cockpit and set course for Naboo.”

“Mando, you can’t be serious — ?”

“Just do it!” he shouted roughly, shocking even Cara with his harsh and frantic tone, “And stay up there till I say.”

As soon as he heard the hatch up into the cockpit slide shut behind Cara, Din ripped his helmet from his head and took in a massive lungful of air. His entire body seemed to shake as an autumn leaf in the breeze, ready to break free from its father branch and fall to the ground in silence. Did this have to happen now? Right now? When he was so close to getting Gideon and ridding them of their fears for good? Maker, he wasn’t ready. He thought he would have more time to prepare for this. To prepare for helping Ara, for helping the baby, for being the firm foundation that both of them needed right now. He worked, hands trembling, on getting at least the top half of his armor removed. The first time he held his Creed-born child, he would not be covered in the armor he showed the world. He would be just himself. What if he did something wrong? He had gone over the procedure a million times with the doctor and had bothered Vaisha with far too many questions. He wanted to do this right. He wanted to be there for Ara. He wanted her to be comfortable. And Maker he really wished they were not on the Razor Crest, on some foreign planet where a man who wanted them dead was located. This was not like anything he had pictured.

Fear, as worm in his brain, wiggled and took hold of him. He wasn’t ready. He couldn’t do this. He needed more time.

“I-I’m sorry,” Ara panted from behind him, “But I — mmm — I knew this would happen.”

The next contraction crescendoed and Ara’s steadily increasing pants for breath turned into a scream. Throat exposed and a vein popping out on her forehead as her sweaty palms scrambled for purchase. Din turned immediately and knelt down before her on his knees, taking her hands in his and letting her squeeze till his own mouth dropped open in pain. Her screams reduced to panted groans and her grip on him relented as the contraction subsided. But the pain never fully went away, only became less intense.

He looked deep into her face. That beautiful face that still threw him into a state of shock and awe. Covered in a layer of sweat, red-cheeked, pinched in agony, and she still looked like the sun-rise. Constant and devastating in its beauty. It didn’t matter that Din wasn’t ready. It didn’t matter that Ara wasn’t ready. This baby was coming. The circumstances were not going to change. Ara needed him. The baby needed him. And he was always going to be there for them. No matter what.

It was on this ship that they were delivered from a burning Mandalore. And it seemed that on that same ship the next generation of a planet burned would be born.

“How far apart are they?” he asked as he let go of her hands and flexed his fingers.

“Three minutes — I-I think — Maker, I don’t know,” she whimpered.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Din reassured, reaching up and unwinding her scarf from her head. Her hair was drenched in sweat. But she needed to be fully uncovered when the baby was born. “Just take deep breaths. Just like that. You’re doing great.”

“Did you — Did you find Gideon?”

Of course, she would still be thinking about that at a time like this.

He debated, for an instant, if he should lie and tell her that Cara’s information had been wrong. But he always had been a terrible liar. Or Ara had always had a way of seeing right through him to the truth.

He sighed, his chin dropped to his chest before mumbling, “Yeah.”

He lifted his head just in time to see guilt take over her face and a fresh wave of tears build up in her eyes. They wouldn’t be able to attack his safe house now. Din wouldn’t stand being parted from her or the baby once she was born. And Cara couldn’t take down that squadron by herself. They could wait a few weeks and come back, but by then Gideon might move to a different safe house. Who knew what kind of rotations he and the other wanted Imperial warlords had going on. And as each of them felt the familiar pull of takeoff, they knew Gideon was slipping through their fingers once more.

Ara’s lip had begun to bleed with the abuse her teeth had been putting it through. She tasted copper in her mouth as she let go and whispered, “M’sorry.”

With a shake of his head, Din reached out and pressed his thumb flat into her chin. Nothing to apologize for.

He then pulled down her underwear and checked how far along into labor she was. “You’re almost completely dilated. I’ll go get the supplies.”

Ara didn’t want him to leave her. She whimpered slightly as he got up from the floor and made his way into the refresher. He got a few towels and a bowl of hot water. In this moment alone, he paused. Turned to the west on instinct, he began to pray. Ara always had been better at it than he was. But right now, she needed his prayers more than ever. So he tried to remember the words.

Protect my child whose name I’ve yet to know as mine, but so desperately want to. If I must die in order for that to happen, let it be. Protect Ara, who is one with me when together or parted. By the Star, you created all, and by it, you shall destroy. And by the Star, you will give us the strength to deliver this child into the world. Please…Keep them safe. I can’t lose them.

A peace that he would never be able to bring himself washed over him as he opened his eyes. Another scream echoed through the Razor Crest. And Din, with this newfound peace and confidence, stepped out of the refresher with the needed supplies. A bowl of warm water. A few towels. The sheers from the medpack.

He quickly kneeled back down between Ara’s bent legs.

The legends say that when a warrior died honorably in battle, paint across his helmet and blood upon his chest plate, it was the closest anyone could get to holding the Maker’s star in their hands. To holding the greatest power, the greatest glory, and the greatest light in their mortal grasp. But when that baby slipped from Ara and into Din’s steady, awaiting hands — screaming and squirming and covered in fluids — the legends were proven wrong.

All of time seemed to stop. The entire universe tilting it’s chin to get a better look at the life that had just been born. To hear the joyous, in-awe laugh that bubbled from Din’s throat.

“Ara,” he whispered, cradling the tiny body in his much larger hands, “It’s a girl.”

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the babe in his hands. In those sinner’s hands that had caused so much destruction. And yet he had made this most precious thing, with Ara, with the breath of his life. This perfect, fragile thing that all at once told him that life was so fleeting and that life was so very beautiful. He didn’t need the warrior. He didn’t need battle paint on his helmet. He didn’t need honorable death to hold a piece of the heavens in his grasp. She was right there. Wiggling and screaming at him for being born.

Tears, testaments to his absolute joy and rapture, spilled from his eyes without his permission. But he wasn’t going to berate them or curse them. As he had his entire life. He welcomed them with open arms.

Ara finally broke him from his revere with her panted reply, “A girl?”

Din looked up into his wife’s face and laughed again. A quiet, breathless thing as he pushed himself up and placed the wailing baby in her arms. She looked exhausted, pale, but happy. Tears fell from her eyes as well. Ara cradled the baby in her arms and laughed softly. She was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

A tuft of dark hair on her head. A small, squished face that was angry red. But her screams turned slowly to whimpers, and then faded out completely in her mother’s arms. Ara reached up a weary finger and brushed a knuckle over her soft cheek.

The air had suddenly become thick as the baby slowly opened her eyes for the first time. Ara’s ragged breaths seemed far too loud in her uncovered ears. But the air became caught in her throat when the baby looked into her eyes for the first time. Dark and endless, just like her parents.

So this was what it was like to be seen. To be really seen by someone else.

“Hello, my fierce girl,” Ara whispered, voice horse even at such a volume, “I know your name as my child — Reykha.”

Din made quick work of snipping the umbilical cord and cleaning the baby off with the warm water.

“Mm — Din,” Ara grunted while he cleaned the fussy baby.

He looked over his shoulder to see her face pinched in pain. Legs tucked back up against her chest with her hands.

“Afterbirth?” he questioned, laying Reykha down on a towel and drying her off.

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed back.

The pain wasn’t as intense, but it still kriffing hurt. And she was tired. So very tired.

“Shit — okay.”

Din couldn’t find the blanket they had packed. He could have sworn he had grabbed it from the baby’s room before they left. And he could have sworn he had dropped it down to the floor along with the rest of the birthing supplies. But the blanket Yasima had gifted to Ara, with their signet stitched into the soft fabric, was nowhere in sight. Din cursed under his breath as he looked back over at his wife. Her face pinched in pain and resisting the urge to push again. He really did not want to clean her placenta up off the floor. But Reykha needed to be wrapped up in something to keep her warm. But what? He forgot the damn blanket and Ara was never going to let him hear the end of it —

There. His cape balled up in the corner. That would do for now. He quickly snatched it from the floor and swaddled the baby up in it. Then, cradling the baby in one arm, he pushed the empty bowl he had grabbed between Ara’s legs just in time.

“You forgot the blanket didn’t you?” she panted as she let her legs fall back down to the floor.

“Shut up,” he grumbled lightly, taking the bowl in his free hand and sliding it across the floor towards the refresher.

Then she got a look at them. Unannounced tears pricked at her eyes. Little Reykha, bundled in her father’s cape and tucked into the crook of his elbow. Safe, fast asleep, not even five minutes old. Din, half of his armor tossed carelessly onto the floor, hair disheveled, and sweat sheening on his brow. Safe, tired, a smile quirking his lips and creating a singular dimple in his cheek. Good Maker, he’s beautiful. Ara’s mind had gone blank of anything else in the universe. Her heart couldn’t decide if it wanted to go at lightspeed or stop altogether. She couldn’t help but take in the little scar across the bridge of his nose, the one on his top lip. Evidence of years of fighting, of resentment, of a life that felt like a deep and distant dream.

After all this time. After all the waiting. After the heartache of losing Mandalore, the rage of being with Ran and his crew, the monotony and restlessness of their years with the Guild, the fear and running from the remains of the Empire. All of it was leading up to this. Kha’s last command, last request on a dying Mandalore — You must carry us with you always — and you must keep Mandalore alive through the warriors you will raise — she waited thirty years for them to fulfill their vow. And now she could march beside her fellow warriors in peace. And Ara could feel it, feel that eternal peace wash over her as Din sat down beside her and placed Reykha into her arms.

“I wish the kid was here,” Ara commented as she leaned into Din’s shoulder.

“Me too,” he whispered back, unable to look away from the little pink face poking out of his cape, “But we’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Maker, I hope he likes her.”

“He will. We’ve been talking about it.”

Ara looked over at him with an incredulous smile. “You have?”

“Mm,” Din grunted, reaching out and tracing his fingers over Reykha’s hairline, “How he’ll be a big brother. The responsibility — the care. How she’ll need a lot of your attention.”

Ara stared at him a moment. At the way his kind, warm, brown eyes were transfixed by the babe in her arms. At the soft smile adorning his hard features. At the crook of his nose. At the soft tumble of his hair. At the love and peace and warmth that seemed to radiate off of him.

In Mando’a there are two words for breath. One of them is kar’am. This word translates into Basic as the literal air inside a being’s lungs. The breath of life. The thing that can get knocked out of someone during a fight or stolen from them in a moment of emotion. The other word for breath is haal. This word has no direct translation. A rough sort of definition is that haal is the thing that gives you a reason to breathe. The thing, beyond air, beyond oxygen, that gives one meaning and gives one a reason to keep going. The life-force, the light, the purpose for drawing air into your lungs. Even to say the word, haal, it sounds like an exhale. A declaration that what one is calling their breath owns it.

“Kiss me,” Ara whispered softly, too softly, “Ner haal.”

Din looked up at her with raised brows and wide eyes. But then his every feature softened. He was her reason to keep going. The man who had given her everything she had ever desired. Who had painted the picture of their lives with her at the center of it. Who worked to the point of breaking his back nearly every single day. A man who lost everything and now had all that he had ever desired. The love of his life at his side. A Foundling and a Creed-born child of his own. A house with transparisteel hanging above the door and his armor stowed away in a shed. He was the very breath inside her lungs. Her very reason for living.

With a tender hand, Din reached out and cupped her cheek in his calloused hand. He marveled in the way she leaned into his touch. Then he kissed her. Slanting his lips against her own and molding his mouth into her own softly, reverently, slowly. He pulled away just enough to whisper back to her, ner haal, letting his breath mingle with her own. Tying them together like the breeze through forest branches.

A breath of life shared between them.

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linxuelian · 4 years

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I found a Chinese BL Warring States Game of Thrones, three years older than The Untamed

And I just had to write a review about it! It’s 60 episodes long so I haven’t finished it yet at the time I’m writing this - but I decided to just go ahead and recommend it anyway.

Why, you ask?

For one, it’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms with all the Hollywood action and adult HBO things. It’s got explosions:

Horses falling down:

People getting flogged:

Sweaty soldiers getting mauled to death:

Children used as hostages:

Dead bodies presented in court:

Stylish dye jobs:

Loving father figures:

A Jon Snow lookalike:

And very gay innuendo:

That’s right, unlike The Untamed, which was first written as a straight series featuring Wen Qing as the main female lead and then rewritten again after fans of the novel decided to boycott it, this series was written to be gay from the very beginning. It got taken down by the Chinese Censorship Board after twelve episodes and river-crabbed to death, but a good number of scenes survived censorship. Those that did not made it to BiliBili in the form of “hidden” videos and disguised as “music videos”.

That’s not all. For a warring period Wuxia series, it’s got very beautiful actors, backdrops and clothing. It’s dressed like a fairy tale, with different kingdoms sporting different colours and styles in fashion and tastes.

In terms of art direction, it’s pretty low-budget for a series but the team makes good use of existing props, locations and brighter-coloured fabric to make up for the quality. The costume design is more fantasy-based than period, and the vivid takes and angles in the first season add to its charm.

There’s also its complex story line, which brings us to...

Men with Swords is not a title for the faint-hearted. There is an acute absence of black-and-white morality depicted in it.

If you think a BL series with such beautiful backdrops and fairytale-like clothes is for the simple-minded, one-track-good-vs-evil sort, think again. The series is a tale about Murong Li, a vengeful prince disguised as a musician and his rise to power, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

Where The Untamed fails at delivering gray morality unlike the novel it’s adapted from, choosing to alter its script to fit a more general audience (a commercially-wise decision which got it into Netflix), Men with Swords succeeds in faithfully telling a tale where there is no good or evil, only humanity, jealousy, grudges, rebellion, loyalty, life, death, greed and love.

Everyone has both good and bad sides, just different camps and motives. Men with Swords tells the story from not just one person’s perspective, but from the perspective of many different people, all of whom become entangled in a battle for their figurative Iron Throne - to become the king of the world.

There are no “what ifs” in this story, only decisions, reactions and repercussions

A prevailing theme in this series is that there are no “what ifs” and no turning back in life, only things that have happened and will happen. Murong Li starts his journey as a prince who has lost everything and a victim of war, wandering around for three years while being put down and getting sexually harassed, eventually losing it, taking his chances and hardening his heart as he walks down his conniving, badass path of destruction towards the top.

Men with Swords is not a series for the faint-hearted. It’s a game of chess where the main character, Murong Li, is cunning and decisive, cold and ruthless and many recurring characters die horrible, sudden deaths, friend and foe alike, a la Attack on Titan.

The series is filled with political strife and warfare, peppered with some sweet, comedic and romantic undertones. There is a stark contrast between fluffy and dark in its narrative, which is pretty refreshing overall.

With that all aside, I know what you’re probably scrolling down for:

The main characters and their boyfriends

This is it. This is what you’re here for. Most “BL” series are actually bromances, but the real upside for a BL fan is that this show is not a bromance - it’s a BL title, and even with censorship, the love stories prevail.

I’m going to put this under a cut because it’s LONG AF, but what that means is that there is a LOT of BL content available, and not the type that you have to hunt for. They’re very open about it.

While the show itself has a lot of ships, there’s a larger focus on three main ones, namely the beautiful Murong Li and two powerful kings, the fairy-like Ling Guang and his servants, and King Jian Bin with his general.

Murong Li: Da Ji 2.0 and his rich and powerful kings

If you’re a Jin Guangyao fan, you’ll probably enjoy Murong Li and his elegant, charming viles and ruthless scheming. He’s a surprisingly good fighter too, and unlike most elegant and waif-like beauties in dramas and novels alike, he’s a beauty with brains who uses his physical weakness as his strength, bending and seducing his way up to power.

Murong Li only really goes after rich and powerful people, worming his way into the kingdom and taking them down from the inside. Two main love interests are King Zhi Ming, the childish but rich king of Tianquan:

And Yu Xiao, a powerful barbarian king with a soft heart:

Murong Li, while wandering around as a musician, picks up many tricks along the way to hone himself. He’s adept at dressing up, making himself look helpless and alluring to bewitch powerful men, for one:

See that small smile right there? Yes, our boy knows what he’s doing.

Aside from that, Murong Li’s also pretty good at manipulating people by using their jealousies and insecurities, getting them to fight with each other over him.

Murong Li, although modeled after the cruel and beautiful Murong Chong, the Emperor of Wei, is likened to Da Ji, the favorite consort of the King Zhou of Shang. Da Ji was said to be a malevolent fox spirit who started the art of foot-binding to hide her fox feet. Everyone else looking in can see it, but the King was blinded, just like Murong Li’s powerful love interests. In fact, the series draws a direct parallel to it:

The Guo Shi here uses the term “yao”, which alludes to a malevolent spirit.

It’s not that Murong Li doesn’t have a weakness, though. Just like every Jin Guangyao has a Lan Xichen around to cause him to slip now and then, Murong Li surprisingly is weak towards the most naive and childish character in the series, the truant King Zhi Ming, whose only qualities are having purple bangs and being rich and playful.

No matter how calculative and ruthless Murong Li is in the series, he does end up almost slipping up and giving everything away when it comes to this bumbling fellow:

He’s saved only at the nick of time by one of his followers. Murong Li tells a lot of lies, but the one thing he can’t lie about are his feelings towards King Zhi Ming, who is ultimately the one thing he can’t give up next to his kingdom.

There’s a lot more one can write about a complex character such as Murong Li, but the second ship is just as good. It features:

Ling Guang: The Ex-Arrogant Depressed Hamster hung up over a dead ex

Ling Guang, the mortal enemy and foil to Murong Li, is a baby-faced, very-much-older-than-he-looks character whose sole purpose in this series is to wear frilly magenta clothing, destroy the kingdom of Yaoguang, set Murong Li down a path of vengeful destruction and piss off eligible, probably younger bachelors by comparing them to his very handsome, very loyal and very dead boyfriend, his personal guard, Qiu Zhen, who died sometime over thirteen years ago.

The bachelors’ pissed off takes to this are particularly priceless:

Here’s another one from season 2:

That HMPH face is to die for.

Ling Guang’s delusions are met head-on by these eligible bachelors, his ministers and his allies alike:

Only to be met by a, “haha, NO.”

Frustrating, right? It only gets worse as the series progresses. Due to Wuxia’s fantastical existence of sword souls, he begins to actively test his subjects out to see if they’re his dead boyfriend, whose sword soul is still alive:

Gu Shi’an: WTF.

So why do these eligible, handsome bachelors, particularly this guy from season two, jump at his lap every chance they get?

First off, he’s very, very pretty. He’s arguably the prettiest and fanciest king in the series, with a cute rounded face, favoring fluffy organza, frills and feathers in his garb, and sporting fabulous curls like that of a swan princess on a good day.

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s likely because he’s the type loyal dogs adore.

He’s stupidly and openly attached to his bodyguards and servants, unable to hide his feelings or control them. Ling Guang’s relationships are technically the opposite of Murong Li’s. While Murong Li hides his feelings and goes after men of power and tends to use them before leaving them, Ling Guang’s willing to sacrifice everything, including his kingdom, his health and his own life for men who are merely servants.

He's a king who doesn’t know proper protocol. He’s the type who’ll demand to eat with you at the same table:

Creeps outside the palace to see you off:

Hugs your sword around like a pillow while he waddles around listlessly and sleeps with it by his side after you’re long dead (grand total: 13 years):

Coddles you when you’re sick:

Takes arrows for you:

Isn’t afraid to cry and tell you how it is:

Faints violently and won’t rest until he can get your stolen body back:

The results?

If he’s not what loyal bodyguards like, I don’t know what he is. If Murong Li’s love interests have to pit themselves against each other to show how useful they are for his sake, Ling Guang’s love interests need to wrestle with a dead man he can’t let go of... which is hopeless, because you can’t kill a guy who’s already dead.

As a foil to Murong Li, what’s also interesting to note is that it’s alluded to and foreshadowed that he’s exactly the sort the loyal Yu Xiao, the current barbarian king, would have loved to have as a lover - honest, loyal and doting - unlike Murong Li himself. Gongsun Qian, a deputy minister with great foresight, had wanted Ling Guang to go to see the new barbarian kingdom, but he had refused to go outside the palace, shutting himself inside like an otaku. This decision ultimately gave Murong Li a step forward with his plans, at the great cost of four kingdoms, including his own.

Jian Bin: My boyfriend can (REALLY) fight

Next up is Jian Bin and his general. Jian Bin’s the king of Tian Ji, a new kingdom founded by astrologers. The catch here is that Jian Bin and his boyfriend, Qi Zhi Kan, are both men of science, and this tank of a boyfriend is a genius on the battlefield who doesn’t give a single shit about star signs, astrology and superstitions.

A story between a serious, loving king and his handsome general who was once a simple sword-maker in the woods, King Jian Bin meets his handsome ex-lumberjack boyfriend when he’s attacked, falls down from his horse and is rescued by the man himself.

Jian Bin then brings the guy back to his palace and dresses him in armor:

This puts the king’s general on the war path of several ministers and the superstitious people in their kingdom. As lovers, the two go through various trials together in an attempt to run their kingdom their way.

Qi Zhi Kan may seem like a herbivore in front of the king, but he’s really not one at all. He’s terrifying to a degree when it comes to warfare, and very, very difficult to take down. Unlike the other ministers, Qi Zhi Kan knows that he can expand the kingdom quickly and solve problems by waging war.

Even his allies are scared of him:

Ultimately, it’s a ship meant for those who like watching the king teasing his loyal subject and caressing armor whenever he’s around AND not around. Jian Bin even admits to it on-scene:

This loving and devoted couple were originally blessed as the ones with the most piggyback scenes, tender bandaging-your-chest and armor fondling, but they got censored unfortunately.

Scenes like these made the cut, though:

And that’s it! There are actually other minor ships, but these are the main ones for now.

If you’re sold and interested in the show, the series is available online on Rakuten Viki. https://www.viki.com/tv/35524c?locale=zh

#bl series #chinese bl #series recommendations #c-drama #men with sword #chinese period drama

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amwritingmeta · 4 years

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15x14: Striking A Balance

This is late. I fell behind. Life happens. I still haven’t watched 15x15. Gah! But now to some thoughts on 15x14...

I thought this was a great episode the first time I watched it. Then I thought it was a bloody fantastic episode the second time I watched it, and the third time… well, it just gets better and better. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the final six. I hope you are too.

I hope you’re as well as you can be and that you’re not living in a stress bubble. They’re the worst. I’d hand you a big old needle if I could. Maybe this meta can be some sort of needle (for popping), because at least I don’t feel the ending of this show is anything we need to stress about. I do believe it’s going to be utterly spectacular. *all the faith*

So I spent a chunk of lockdown watching this show of ours. I started at 12x19 (that episode still makes me tremble with its sheer brilliance) through to 15x13, and felt an overwhelming satisfaction at the evenness of the storytelling for these last three-ish seasons.

A brief breakdown of three years of meta writing would be: Dean has been pushed to face, recognise and dismantle his internalised toxic masculinity traits aka his Shadow (which has been the root of unhealthy coping mechanisms and an inability to put down boundaries, communicate openly and handle his emotions), he’s been pushed to see the strength and power of his feminine traits (his nurturing side, his compassion, his protective nature) through being put in situations where he’s had no choice but to open up to being honest with himself, in turn bringing him on a course to him handling his emotions better, as well as the narrative giving us moments where he’s gotten the chance to acknowledge and embrace his neglected inner child.

Yes, Jungian doctrine runs like a river through it, what can I say? I’m a fan.

With Dean as our protagonist, Sam and Cas are both on mirroring journeys, though Sam is Dean’s mirror opposite and Cas is Dean’s mirror likeness. It doesn’t take away from the individual journeys of Sam and Cas: it’s just that their choices and their progression are not determining the course of the narrative. Rather, their choices and progression work to underline and highlight Dean’s growth. Sam and Cas are main characters, but they’re not driving the core of the plot.

Make sense? Cool!

Especially as this also means that Dean’s progression is pivotal for all three of them to actually reach… well, since it’s a word used twice this season why shouldn’t we just go with it? — completion.

Which is why my eyes are happily peeled for Dean having moments that display a deepened sense of self-understanding (like his prayer to Cas, where Dean put words on the anger he’s always feeling and how he doesn’t know why or where it’s coming from) (an enormous step toward actually dealing with that emotion) (as self-deception through denial caused by fear of weakness tied to fear of rejection and fear of failure — that’s a mouthful — has always formed Dean’s biggest internal obstacle) because neither Sam nor Cas should, when we look at the narrative as a whole, be able or allowed to reach full completion (or individuation, to use Jungian terms) without Dean getting there first, or at least being shown to be well on his way to getting there.

This episode then is more of an epicsode, because, man, do we get to explore balanced!Dean, and it’s all through Jack: the narrative representation of Dean’s inner child.

Oh, yeah. Way I see it, Jeremy Adams brought us right back to the threads he was pulling on in Scoobynatural. *bless his brain* Only this time he’s pushed it a step further and rather than Dean simply facing his inner child—as (14x16 whoops I mean) 13x16 opened up that can of worms—now, in 15x14, Dean is forced to properly acknowledge and embrace that inner child. I mean. The mind crackles. The feels are cascading like a waterfall over a great cliff. The excitement, people, is real.

Let’s dig in!

Sam and Dean

They were glorious this episode!!

So Sam ended up tortured a little, but that was because he was shooting first, asking questions second, and sure, Mrs. Butters had gone a bit crazy, but as he learned: it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her nature, the crazy had been torture-nurtured into her.

And Dean was faced with yet one more reminder of how kindness, compassion and protectiveness can go haywire when there’s influence from toxic masculinity (aka Cuthbert Sinclair) pushing someone into a position of mistrust, insecurity and need for control.

Let me reiterate the fact that when I’m talking masculine/feminine I’m not tying these concepts to gender, though of course these concepts have been tied to gender traits to the point of brainwashing people into thinking they should dictate what is male and what is female. (mental) Rather I mean all of our internal masculine/feminine traits that need to find balance if we are each to feel happy and content as human beings.

It’s Tao, and it’s Jung, and it’s beautiful. Is all I’m saying.

Digression.

My point is that in spite of sorting stuff out in their individual arcs, the brotherly relationship was depicted awesomely this episode, with Dean being 1000% supportive of Sam going to get itches scratched with Eileen, to the point of feeling he would rather just handle the sudden turn of events and this new threat by himself, than disrupt Sam and Eileen’s fun times (and by “fun times” I mean sex), and Sam going along for the joyride of holiday celebrations, home cooked meals and the supportive, warm and caring mother figure that they’re both, again, missing in their lives.

Sam was submissive this episode, following Dean’s opinions on how to best handle Jack (even with Dean being disastrous in the past when stating what Jack needs) which is somewhat frustrating, because Sam has so much more in him, but he also got to show that humongous heart of his, where he understood the root cause of Mrs. Butters’ behaviour and showed compassion, rather than judgement. His compassion has always been one of his most formidable strengths.

And, of course, Sam had to ride sidesaddle this episode because if he was putting up any sort of protest—regarding accepting Mrs. Butters as part of the bunker or how best to deal with Jack— Dean wouldn’t have gone through the push for progression, delivered through the representation of his inner femininity that is Mrs. Butters, but primarily through the representation of (and here we go into the deeper digging) his inner child—Jack.

Dean and Jack

You know, end of the episode Dean states what is evident throughout: he’s trying.

In the opening scene he asks Sam if Jack’s come out of his room, and then he’s the one who goes and knocks on Jack’s door to warn him about Mrs. Butters, placing trust in Jack that he can handle it and will call them if anything gets weird, and he cajoles Jack to come out with the promise of snickerdoodles. All of this subtly shows us that Dean knows what Jack is suffering, and we can be sure of that because we know he’s been there enough times.

The guilt, the self-blame, as well as the self-doubt underpinning it all, making it difficult to forgive.

Because, thing is, Jack is struggling to forgive himself. To accept that it was an accident. He’s waiting for Dean’s forgiveness to give him a marker for whether it’s okay for him to even begin to forgive himself, which is understandable on all the levels of his character progression, but especially when looking at him as a representative of Dean’s inner child.

So then, why is Dean acknowledging, embracing and nurturing his inner child important?

Because, when looking at the narrative from the angle where it’s filled with symbolisism to do with Dean’s internal journey (and by extension the internal journeys of all the characters), then Dean’s progression, and especially lack there of, has been closely tied to the fact that he never got to be a kid.

He had to grow up fast, got responsibility put on him that was way out of proportion for a four year old child, had to be a father and a mother to his younger brother, and learned to repress and suppress his childish urges, wants and needs through unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to dress himself in the image of the strongerst person that he’s ever known: his father.

(which is a misnomer because there was plenty of weakness to John Winchester) (especially how he was a highly emotional man who spent the years after his wife’s death driven by grief, but hammered it into his eldest son that emotions are weaknesses that will get you killed and you should control them to the point of barely being able to recognise them anymore)

It’s imperitive for Dean to deal with the neglect he suffered in his childhood, rather than ignore it, if he’s ever going to be able to let those wounds heal over. And letting them heal over is important because pushing down trauma leaves it room to influence our choices and to keep us in old patterns of behaviour. Because self-denial and self-neglect is where our Shadow lives and thrives—our unconscious gaining power over us and dictating our behaviour even as we’re unaware of it.

Remember how Jack swallowed Michael? Remember how Michael was Dean’s Shadow representative? It’s not by accident that what Dean has left to confront, fully, is self-trust, self-forgiveness and finding his way to real self-love, symbolically given to us in this narrative through his treatment of Jack.

Because Jack is the final piece of Dean’s internal puzzle: his inner child in need of some real TLC.

So then, what does Dean need in order to be able to show Jack aka himself some real TLC?

Mrs. Butters

Ah, yes, of course what Dean needs most is to engage with his internal femininity.

Mrs. Butters represents Dean’s suppressed and repressed longing for more in life, for a home, for love, and the only reason there’s been a need to suppress and repress this longing is to due with what he was taught as a child and throughout his formative years, actively by his father, and unconsciously by the way he was never taught or shown how to deal in any type of healthy way with the loss of his mother.

Mrs. Butters as our representative of positive femininity then shows us as the audience how Dean, in his heart of heart, wants to believe that he can have good things in his life. That he deserves them.

Mrs. Butters shows us that what Dean needs is to allow himself to feel joy, without expecting it to flip at a moment’s notice into feeling loss.

And yes, I realise where the episode ends, but perhaps the feeling of joy wouldn’t flip if the lesson was learned in full and Dean knew how to trust and simply let go of the undercurrent of fear that the flip is lurking somewhere just around the next bend.

What this episode shows us is that he’s just not quite there yet, but omg the threshholding is intense.

Because Mrs. Butters underlines that what Dean needs, more than anything, is to practice trust. Dean needs to practice opening up. Dean needs to practice letting go of his need for control.

He can still be in charge of a situation, without thinking it’s all on him always.

Now, the episode highlights this in a rather glorious way, by trapping him in a room, under threat, knowing Sam is about to walk into the situation, and deciding not only is he not going to call Sam for help, he’s not even going to text him a heads up.

Look. This might be a plothole here. Jeremy Adams might have been so focused on the joke of Dean not wanting to interrupt Sam’s sexy times that he didn’t realise the implactions of Dean not even sending a text to warn Sam that he was essentially heading home to a dangerous situation, yeah?

But the rather lax attitude of the brothers this episode: letting Mrs. Butters stay, and both of them neglecting the need for them to look into her backstory further, because they both got so distracted by holiday celebrations and her amazing cooking, combined with the hopscotch way they approach getting rid of her, all this is intentional enough for me to lean into the reading of Dean’s need to practice trust being explored in awesome ways.

Because Dean needs someone to take the load off, and Mrs. Butters does this in spades.

What with how she brokers zero arguments, immediately getting him to clean up his language, and I mean, Dean then defying this is a moment of awesomeness and of course we all want him to continue being midly CW foulmouthed, but for all intents and purposes, he succumbs to her chastising quickly, and she gets him to open up to the joy of the moment via holiday celebrations, and, to top it all off, she gets him to eat healthier.

The fact that she’s introduced folding his underwear, and then goes on to tell him that she wouldn’t have had to if he’d just done it right to begin with, is fairly epic. (verrryy epic) As is her giving Dean the nightshirt from Scoobynatural. Obviously! He’s wrapped in hugs! Purple hugs! And having Dean dressed in purple and eating vegetables in the same episode is enough to make one’s head explode.

*head* *ex* *ploded*

Balance. Is why my head is exploding. The purple and the vegetables are indications of growing internal balance. *yes please and thank you!*

I loved them celebrating Sam’s birthday and Dean having specific requests for his, Mrs. Butters dismissing him with how she thought he’s too old to want to celebrate. It was such a moment of reminding Dean that he’s not supposed to regress, he’s not to forget that he is, in fact, an adult, and nurturing his inner child is about letting go of the need for the childhood he never had—which is keeping him from properly having the adult life he deep down yearns for.

(and then this reminder was followed by a moment of kindness) (as there already were rice crispie treats waiting for him) (and his eager little face!) *heart eyes*

There was so much to love about Mrs. Butters, though!

Like the big bowl of crispy bacon on the breakfast table and her encouraging Sam to enjoy the world he’s fighting for, the waxing of Baby (!!), the introduction of the monster radar, finally getting the telescope—pardon me, the interdimensional geoscope—given some attention, Dean blowing a door down by using the grenade launcher (symbolically tied to self-liberation), the fixing of the TV in the Deancave (with thanks to Jeremy! he who breaketh he too shalt fixeth), the fact that Mrs. Butters is a straight-up anti-Nazi killing machine and that her violence stems directly from her need to protect her home and the people she cares about.

Yeah, there’s so much good in her that her not ending up shot, even though she tortured Sam, is not very surprising and I really enjoyed the fact that her story ended on a compassionate note of understanding, and that, if she hadn’t longed to go back to the woods, the boys would have wanted her to stick around.

Forgiveness—looking for it, or needing it— is a clear thread through this episode.

As For the Deeper Symbolism

Dean starts out cooking, wearing his new favourite garment—an apron. Now, I could tie that to Dean embracing his inner femininity and the rest of the episode working to underline this fact to us, but that’s just my reading of it, so who knows what the deal with the apron actually is. I do love it though, and it’s put in dialogue twice so we were definitely meant to make note of it.

The cooking ties him directly to Mrs. Butters, of course (or her to him, if you will) and creates a bookend for the episode, where Dean starts and ends the episode wearing the apron: first presenting Sam with a burger (meat man!) and then presenting Jack with a birthday cake.

This bookend is also tied very strongly to Jack.

Dean asks about him in the opening scene and we learn Jack is holed up in his room, the episode going from having Jack hiding himself away, ashamed and self-hating in his room, to him sitting opposite Sam, expressing concern that they’re putting all their bets on him and he’s not sure he’ll be able to kill God, Sam offering assurance and Dean, through his cake-baking and happy birthday wishes, offering forgiveness and support.

It’s awesome! Beyond awesome! It’s bloody brilliant, is what it is!

Especially when looking at the implications it holds for Dean’s inner work: his inner child starts out locked away, fearful and despairing, being brought out of that room through the kind and supportive side to his internal femininity representative, only for that representative to turn around and step into the shoes of the toxic masculinity traits that have always been the source of Dean’s self-hatred, distrust and lack of faith in himself, and once being granted honesty from the ego (Dean’s consciousness admitting that he’s trying, he’s angry, maybe always will be, but he’s trying) his inner child ends up with the ego showing that inner child how much it matters, that it’s trusted, cared for and loved.

*brains on ceiling*

Now, as mentioned briefly, the narrative gives us Dean’s inner femininity (Mrs. Butters) influenced by what is a clear toxic masculinity/Shadow character (Sinclair) and shows us why Dean is still wary of his inner child, still not entirely trusting, and it makes all the sense, especially now that the inner child has swallowed up the Shadow and incorporated it into himself.

Mrs. Butters’ mistrust of Jack becomes emblematic of Dean’s own mistrust in himself, but his inner child knows better and Jack’s continous denial of Mrs. Butters’ accusations underscores this fact. There is self-trust within Dean. Stronger than the lingering mistrust.

All of this inner work for Dean and Sam’s the one who gets tortured?

Well, I can see good reason why Sam is Mrs. Butters’ favourite and it’s to do with how he’s so closely tied to Dean’s purpose in life. Mrs. Butters is a reflection of Dean, and as she moves into Protector of the Bunker she’s also a reflection of any lingering toxic masculinity within Dean, and how it’s always been trying to find a way to sink its claws in Sam, but Sam has never bought into the toxic masculinty spiel, and because of that he’s needed in this instance, to see through the behaviour, to push for compassion, to break through the brainwashing that Mrs. Butters is under, to point out how she was used, taken out of her true nature to do someone else’s bidding.

The most thrilling part is that it’s Dean who delivers the biggest missing piece to Mrs. Butters’ puzzle: the true nature of Jack.

Because, looked at symbolically, Jack’s ability to save the world represents Dean’s inner child’s ability to save Dean.

Because if any side to Dean were to destroy/thoroughly repress his inner child, he’d be lost. He would never be able to heal.

The fact that Dean gets to be the one to do this, to talk a representative of his own inner imbalance down, makes me giddy.

He would not have been able to do this a season ago. He was barely able to do this at the beginning of this season, because he was so full of anger.

That anger, after voicing it to Cas, doesn’t hold the same sway anymore.

He freely admitted to Jack that he’s still angry, and perhaps he always will be a little angry, but he is trying, and this, to me, is enormous. He expressed his emotion and he’s in zero ways allowing that emotion to control his actions anymore.

And, hey, we got Dean, wearing purple, assuring Mrs. Butters that Jack is a good kid.

It’s just… happy happy joy joy!

And a standing ovation to Meagen Fay. She really helped make the episode compelling to watch, balancing Mrs. Butters’ homely and darling characteristics with the darker and MoL compelled Protector of the Bunker that slowly, but surely, reared its not-as-darling head. Kudos!

Right. I could write about this episode some more, because layers, but it’s time to leave off. One thing before I go, though: I loved that we finally had them talk about that big-ass telescope. And I love that it’s not a telescope, because it makes sense. They’re underground—how would they see the stars? I figured there was some sort of skylight somehow that would open or something but meh, dull. This is so much better! And I loved that the green colour of warning was actually to do with the fact that they’re now not being able to see anything through it, rather than the colour having to do exclusively with Mrs. Butters. Utterly brilliant! And… oh dear, what horrors lie ahead??

Now to go watch 15x15.

I’m not biting my nails.

At all.

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doctormage · 3 years

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ok as promised here's my whole thedosian astrology spiral in one big post

underneath a read more bc i love you all

starting w my tags from the first post bc context:

#bc i saw a post that put the zodiac seasons (for thedas) roughly from the 20th of one month to the 20th of the next #like it is irl #but the zodiac seasons coincide w the actual seasons #the start of aries season is the vernal equinox #the start of cancer season is the summer solstice #the start of libra season is the autumnal equinox #the start of capricorn season is the winter solstice #and (to my knowledge??) the seasons in thedas start with their annum holidays or whatever #wintersend = beginning of spring #summerday = beginning of summer #all souls day = beginning of fall #satinalia = beginning of winter #(someone PLEASE correct me if im wrong on that) #well i know summerday and satinalia are right but #ANYWAY #using that logic the zodiac seasons would also start on those days #thedas-aries season would run from the 1st to the 30th of guardian #thedas-taurus would be 1-30 drakonis #thedas-gemini would be 1-30 cloudreach #so that thedas-cancer aka the start of summer aka summerday aka THE FIRST OF BLOOMINGTIDE #kSLFdfslkdFDKs #anyway. now i have to be Right about this#my previous hyperfixation and my current one.....coming together....to make me into a Massive Bitch<3

when would the zodiac signs' seasons take place in the thedosian calendar?

so bc the zodiac signs are based on constellations and all the lore etc that accompanies them i'm not even gonna touch that (YET.....yet...) but since spring, summer, autumn, and winter start on the first days of guardian, bloomingtide, august, and firstfall, respectively, so would those particular seasons of the zodiac

thedas-equivalent-of-aries season would just be 1-30 guardian, bc irl the beginning of aries season coincides with the beginning of spring and continues until the sun moves into taurus; all the cardinal signs (aries, cancer, libra, capricorn) begin on the first of the season like that, so we can assume that – IF there are 12 zodiac signs in thedas – the sun is in each sign for approximately a month. so that in 3 months the next cardinal sign can coincide w the beginning of that season

imo it makes sense that (if we're assuming thedas also has 12 signs and that their sun spends roughly equal time in all of them) four of them would coincide w the beginning of the seasons. so like yeah thedas is fake and for all we know they have 10 zodiac signs and they all start on wildly different days, but then everything is just shooting in the dark and where's the fun in that. obviously the changing of the seasons is important to them bc their holidays center around them, therefore i don't think it's wildly out of the blue to think that whatever star sign system they have going on would similarly coincide w the changing seasons

again i'm not currently bothering with picking constellations/symbols/stories/traits/etc for each sign so i'll just say first, second, third etc. point being the seasons of the zodiac would actually be like they are below, rather than how they are irl (aka the 20th-ish of each month to the 20th-ish of the next; it's like that irl bc our calendar is stupid and the beginning of the seasons randomly happens 2/3 of the way thru the month):

first sign = begins spring, 1-30 guardian

second sign ≈ 1-30 drakonis

third sign ≈ 1-30 cloudreach

fourth sign = begins summer, 1-30 bloomingtide

fifth sign ≈ 1-30 justinian

sixth sign ≈ 1-30 solace

seventh sign = begins autumn, 1-30 august

eighth sign ≈ 1-30 kingsway

ninth sign ≈ 1-30 harvestmere

tenth sign = begins winter, 1-30 firstfall

eleventh sign ≈ 1-30 haring

twelfth sign ≈ 1-30 wintermarch

okay so we have cardinal signs, what about fixed and mutable signs?

the cardinal signs are CALLED the cardinal signs bc they begin the seasons; they're the ~get up and goers~ of the zodiac, motivated, leaders, trail blazers, energetic, etc. they litchrally bring in the changes of the season so that makes sense right

so IF we are to continue w that logic — and here's where i'm getting (even more) conjecture-y, but i feel p confident that since 4 of the 5 major holidays in thedas are based on the changing seasons aka thats important — then the traits of the thedas-equivalent of those signs would also have similarities to the irl cardinal signs (namely the traits listed above)

but there are also FIXED signs and MUTABLE signs: so called bc fixed signs are firmly planted in the middle of each season (taurus in spring, leo in summer, scorpio in autumn, aquarius in winter) and bc mutable signs precede the major change from one season to the next (gemini from spring to summer, virgo from summer to autumn, sagittarius from autumn to winter, pisces from winter-to-spring)

and again bc these are based on the seasons, it also makes sense to me that, generally speaking, the signs in the middle and at the end of the seasons would also be distinct in some way. and probably have similarities to irl fixed and mutable signs, tho i'm not as obstinate about that as i am abt the cardinal signs. but anyway MOVING ON

[the one section with the fan-made sky map ended up being relatively useless even tho the sky map was in fact very cool]

general disclaimer that at this point i’m literally just. straight up guessing lmao

also since we only have so many constellations we see in-game, and since they each come with a codex giving us at least a little background info (aka CRUMBS), any suggestions of which constellations are part of the zodiac are based on those specifically. obviously in real life theres a bazillion constellations that aren’t part of the zodiac, but we do not have the luxury of knowing every constellation in thedas so i am going with what we got

the thedosian constellation map (the canon one) is different than the fan-made sky map, but because i highly doubt anyone at bioware could’ve predicted someone would be As Insane As I Am Being Right Now about it, i don’t think they probably put a lot of thought into making it lmao. the fan made sky map DID have thought put into it tho, and it actually features the constellations we see in-game, so i’m going w that one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AND. i’m gonna look at the names of the months (both the fancy ancient tevinter names and the ~low/common~ names) in comparison w the constellations we have at our disposal bc why the fuck wouldn’t they be related in some way. this has no basis in any deeper logic than “maybe the fact that the ‘common’ name for this month is drakonis has somethinng to do with the constellation draconis idfk” but like. it’s literally the same name but with one letter (that makes the same sound) changed. i don’t think i’m asking too much here lmao

signs that start the seasons

wintersend is canonically associated with the old god urthemiel; the codex entry for the constellation bellitanus states it (is believed that it) was originally associated with urthemiel. using the same reasoning as with satinalis/satinalia, i’m gonna assume that bellitanus-as-a-zodiac-season would start with wintersend and last through the whole of guardian

summerday was once called andoralis, dedicated to the old god andoral; the codex entry for the constellation servani states it is thought to be representative of andoral, but where the wiki says andoral is the god of unity, the codex says andoral was the god of slaves. (doesn’t clarify if andoral is like, a figure to which the enslaved would turn to in their plight, as like a savior? or whether andoral is...just associated with slaves in some way.) i have no idea what the fuck to do w that except assume bioware is back on their bullshit! i’m gonna come back to this later

all soul’s day was once funalis, dedicated to dumat, old god of silence; the codex entry for the constellation silentir (which literally means ‘silence’ lmao) is usually said to represent dumat. so by this logic we might say the zodiac season for silentir begins with all soul’s day and ends with the last day of august

the constellation satinalis is canonically associated with satinalia, so it makes sense to me that if satinalis is part of the zodiac, its season would start with satinalia / last through the month in which the holiday takes place. aka firstfall

with these in mind, we have (tentatively) 3 of our 4 cardinal signs aka the signs that begin the seasons: bellitanus for spring, silentir for autumn, and satinalis for winter

looking at the fan-made sky map, these aren’t super evenly spaced apart (but then again neither are irl constellations perfectly proportioned so whatever!) HOWEVER. they do still, at least vaguely 😭, follow a clockwise pattern in the correct order of guardian/spring → summerday/bloomingtide → all soul’s day/august → satinalia/firstfall. it’s about the small victories ok *inquisitor ameridan voice* take moments of happiness where you find them or whatever

what about the other 8 signs???

great question!!! haha!!!

✨I Am Once Again About To Start Guessing Wildly✨

because even tho the “cardinal signs” go clockwise and in order, there’s still an uneven amount of constellations BETWEEN them. there should be 2 between each but, for example, silentir and satinalis only have tenebrium between them. and there are fucking....TEN constellations between satinalis and bellitanus so we’re going to have to get even more creative somehow<3 lmao these are all taken from the codex entries for the constellations (the names are links!)

TOTH: tevinter old god of fire, thats p much it. the codex does say sometimes toth is depicted as a “flaming orb” which maybe i truly have succumbed to the brain worms but i hear ‘orb’ and ‘god’ and ‘flame’ (aka light/energy/etc or perhaps idk a fucking explosion) and yall already know where my dumb ass is going w that 🥴

since the rules are made up and the points dont matter, i have decided Fuck Bioware, toth is going with summerday now. i dont give a rats ass about andoral since apparently they dont care to tell us what he was actually god of, so welcome toth you are now in charge of the beginning of summer bc i said so

TENEBRIUM: associated with lusacan, tevinter old god of darkess/night. also obvious associations with falon’din, elven god of death, whose sacred animal is an owl

pea brain analysis: its dark in winter lol; slightly larger, maybe lima-bean-sized brain analysis: the beginning of a new year (aka first day aka first of wintermarch) could hypothetically be associated w the past ‘dying.’ and also the holiday was originally an annual check to make sure everyone was alive, so i don’t see why gods of death can’t be associated w making sure all your loved ones weren’t taken by said god of death lol

ELUVIA: commonly called “sacrifice,” it’s (apparently) based on an orlesian tale in which a woman is saved from a “””lustful mage””” (i love bioware i love this frachise) by being placed in the sky and becoming a constellation. before this inspiring tale that is definitely not anti mage propaganda, eluvia may have represented razikale, tevinter old god of mystery. the imagery of this constellation is a seated woman with a cloud right above her - literally like her head is in the clouds (also bc it sounds like ‘eluvian’ i’m like 👀)

i’m inclined to pair this one up with cloudreach both bc the ancient tevinter name is “eluviesta” and bc the woman in the story is literally. in the clouds. simple enough

PERAQUIALUS: it’s a boat! but apparently a “primitive vessel” sailed by ancient peoples like the neromenians. according to the codex the translation is usually ‘across the sea’ rather than ‘boat’ but that doesnt rly help me lol

sorry my beloved. before me stand 10 beautiful constellations but i only have 9 pictures in my hands. you are not thedas’s next top zodiac sign

DRACONIS: obviously its a dragon lol

i think the drakonis (the month) / draconis (this constellation) correlation is. pretty evident lmao and since we have all but thrown credible hypothesizing out the window, why NOT?? why not make drakonis the season of draconis!!! 🤡

FERVENIAL: an oak; some believe it could be representative of andruil, elven goddess of the hunt, as the vir tanadhal (“way of the three trees”) is her whole thing

sigh idk *spins wheel* leaves start changing color in mid-late autumn so *spins wheel again* fervenial can go with harvestmere which is thedas-october it’s fine

JUDEX: a big ol sword, sometimes called the “sword of mercy,” referring to pre-andrastian concepts of justice in ancient tevinter

speaking of pulling ideas right out of my ass, if this constellation is associated w justice it makes sense to me that its season would be in the month of justinian. bc again why the fuck not!

EQUINOR: the stallion / a horse, sometimes depicted as a seated griffon. some speculate the original imagery was a halla, linking the constellation to the elven god ghilan’nain aka “mother of the halla”

i am really grasping at straws here HAHA but the word haring (as a gerund/present participle of the verb ‘hare’) can mean to run or go with great speed. horses go fast, ghilan’nain is invoked when elves want to travel quickly, blah blah blah. whatever

SOLIUM: the sun; one interpretation is that it indicates an ancient fascination with ALL objects in the sky (aka both the sun and moon[s]), another interpretation associates it with the elven god elgar’nan, aka “eldest of the sun”

alright i know the name ‘solas’ means pride in elvhen and the word ‘solace’ means like comfort/consolation, neither of which have jack shit to do with the sun, so i shouldn’t assume solis is associated with solium exclusively bc they start with ‘sol’ and sol means sun in...a lot of irl languages lol HOWEVER. i have an even worse reasoning we can fall back on which is that it’s in summer and it’s...fucking sunny??? LMAO im so sorry

FENRIR: the white wolf 👁👄👁 scholars apparently dont know wtf to do w this one; obviously there is a case to be made about its association with fen’harel

i have talked myself in circles on this one but whenever i try to type it out it makes Zero Fucking Sense lmao so. i may come back and edit this but for now just know it’s going with kingsway and i want yall to know i do have some stupid nebulous reasoning for that in my silly little brain but communicating it is simply not in the cards for me today god bless 🙏

alright so what bullshit have you proposed at the end of all this EXTREMELY shaky guesswork, queen?

HERE YOU GO I GUESS

Bellitanus: begins spring, 1-30 Guardian

Draconis: 1-30 Drakonis

Eluvia: 1-30 Cloudreach

Toth: begins summer, 1-30 Bloomingtide

Judex: 1-30 Justinian

Solium: 1-30 Solace

Silentir: begins autumn, 1-30 August

Fenrir: 1-30 Kingsway

Fervenial: 1-30 Harvestmere

Satinalis: begins winter, 1-30 Firstfall

Equinor: 1-30 Haring

Tenebrium: 1-30 Wintermarch

next time i have a death wish i will come back and speculate what kind of traits would be associated w these signs (based on the ~lore~ surrounding the constellations, their tentative places as cardinal/fixed/mutable, etc) but i just wasted precious hours of my life on this and i cant look at it anymore!!!

also want to reiterate that, regarding the post i saw earlier that i disagreed with, my refutation of that argument ended like 2 reblogs many sections ago lol. the only thing i feel confident defending is that the different seasons of the zodiac would – based on the actual changing 4 seasons – start on the first of each month and end on the last day of each month, as opposed to the way it is in real life western astrology

all this other bullshit is just for fun (??? i guess????) and based ALMOST entirely on my own assumptions. informed by actual shit from the games ofc but mainly me just

EDIT: would like to add that i don't have world of thedas or any other supplementary shit; all i have at my disposal is the 3 games, their DLCs, and the wiki lol. so if there's anything here that WOT (or smth else) contradicts please lmk! and also sorry for any typos lmao

hope yall enjoyed witnessing this fully unhinged moment w me bye<3

#da #astro #thedas astrology #i'll delete all the other ones later

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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years

Text

A Brainful Process || Morgan &Rio

@3starsquinn

Cemetery field trip!

(Contains: zombie and animal gore)

Cemeteries were safer to visit in Morgan’s idle house than the woods. In cemeteries, most of the company was resting six feet under, and those that weren’t had a tendency to wave at Morgan as she walked by, content to leave her alone, one still soul to another. Some even warned her when it was better to turn back home. There’s a girl with the stake that comes by around now, a ghost might say. Or, we don’t like you that much. Cemeteries were safer, yes, and yet somehow tonight Morgan still found herself tackled to the ground, wrestling with a one legged zombie who, for all her wild hunger, really knew how to use her strength to her advantage. “Uh--a little help, maybe?” She called, appealing to one of the spirits nearby. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” the old man said, and drifted off to watch her struggle somewhere else. “Okay, okay, ok--ow!” The zombie woman bit into her shoulder, moaning with hunger. Morgan kicked, trying to knock her off balance enough to shift the weight between them like Mina had taught her, but it was a lot harder when the opponent didn’t have much of a mind for sensing pain. Morgan set her jaw and lashed out to struggle with the zombie woman again. “We got this,” she grunted. “You’re gonna be fine, you just gotta stop trying to eat me!”

Cemeteries had scared Orion far before he knew ghosts and spirits existed. He supposed he always knew they were real. Growing up learning about werewolves and Fae made pretty much anything believable. If his parents had bothered telling him about Santa, Rio might still think he was real. But he had always thought of ghosts in the more creepypasta YouTube sense. That they haunted others. They were crazy stories that made things colder and flipped on lights. Not the kind that possessed other humans and drained their life force. But ever since Rio had learned about the Dybbuks and other evil spirits, Rio hadn’t been able to get them off his mind. Rio began pulling books about ghosts and spirits. The more he read, the more intrigued he became with some of the accounts of sightings. Winston and Ricky must have really gotten to Rio. Without even realizing it, on his way home that night he was taking a detour and heading towards the cemetery. For no other reason than pure stupidity, if Rio had to guess. Once he was within range however, he started hearing voices. The hairs on his arms stood straight up and he immediately began shaking. At least, until he realized that the voices weren’t ghosts or spirits but a person. A person that sounded like they were in danger. Rio picked up his pace, beginning to job before breaking into a sprint towards the cemetery, stopping only when he finally spotted the source of the voice, a woman being attacked by another. “Hey!” Rio yelled, trying to sound more dangerous than he actually was, “Let her go!” Rio began moving towards the two slowly, freezing when he finally realized who the victim of the evening was, “Professor?”

The sound of another voice made Morgan’s dead body go stiff. Fuck. The last thing she needed was human company, or some hunter about to stumble upon a two-for-one deal. “W-we’re fine!” She grunted, finally grappling the zombie woman to the ground and pinning her down. “She’s--she’s just---uh--” Morgan struggled for a good lie. The woman was in literal pieces, her skin sagging off her bones and pockets of bare muscle spreading bursts of dark, grotesque color. And the person was coming closer. “Having an attack! Nothing to see here--Rio?”

Morgan saw him through the edge of her vision and didn’t know whether to be relieved or agitated. She hadn’t told Rio the ‘sudden loss in her family’ that explained away two weeks worth of missed classes had been her own. She hadn’t told any of her students. Funny enough, that still wasn’t a conversation she felt like having. But there wasn’t going to be any fooling him. He was too much of a supernatural scholar to not see the obvious, at least when it came to the woman thrashing and groaning under her. “Hey!” She said brightly, panic tight in her smile. “How weird and amazing to run into you here! I’m fine, she’s fine, we’re both fine right now, completely. But you should really stay back and um, maybe grab some rope? And some fresh brains?” She was convinced, maybe falsely, that she had enough confidence to sell everything she was saying without the need for questions. Then the zombie woman rocked against her weight and threw her off, driven by the pull of fresh meat.

For a long moment, Orion just stood from a distance and stared at Morgan and the woman clawing at her. This didn’t make any sense. Why was Morgan being so casual right now? Was this some sort of fever dream brought on by the lack of sleep? “Uh” Rio hummed, drawing it out for far longer than any of them needed. “Both fine. Right.” He realized, maybe many beats too late, that he had still not moved from his spot. Until now, he had stared at the sight as if it was a horror scene in a movie. “Brains?” Rio asked, touching at his head instinctively before realizing that Morgan probably had a rope and brains here. Because this was a zombie. A zombie. A ZOMBIE? It took this long for the fear to finally rush into Rio’s body and he immediately started fidgeting, the usual skin crawling feeling worming its way through his body. “Oh my god. A zombie! I’ve never met a zombie! I’m going to do something now.” Rio spoke aloud, as if that was going to finally motivate his body to follow the commands. Apparently it worked, his feet finally inching across the grass and towards the two. “What do you want me to do with these things once I have them?”

Morgan’s thin smile fractured with dismay. As much as she was relieved Rio wasn’t some guns a blazing hunter trying to get more goo for their collection. But she didn’t know if this was really the time for scholarly curiosity either. Maybe more like run and take action time. Move faster NOW time. Morgan dove for the zombie again, tackling her to the ground and pressing down with all her weight. She looked up at Rio, pleading for his help. She could keep the zombie pinned down for now, but she wouldn’t be able to help the dead woman with just her hands alone. And, shit--of course Rio wouldn’t have anything on him. He wasn’t Kaden, for crying out loud. Morgan looked around them, mind racing to keep up, to stay ahead of any panic. Maybe this was the time for scholarly curiosity. “The plan!” She said, forcing as much confidence into her bright voice as possible. “The plan is you...find something that will do instead of rope. Um...your belt! And uuh…” She looked around her with dismay. “My belt!” It was a lot daintier, meant for her small waist as decoration rather than supporting any weight. “And we are going to bind the zombie as tightly as we can. Because, fun fact: zombies have a much higher pain threshold than humans! Whatever would hurt for you won’t hurt for them, so that’s not something to worry about when they’re...like this.” She swallowed thickly and forced another smile as the zombie rocked and struggled under her. “When her limbes are secure, we’ll get her some of the food from my bag--” what was supposed to have been her lunch, “--and give her some of that. And then...more, probaby. From...somewhere else. I’m not...actually sure from where yet, but--fun zombie fact 2: decomposition and ‘rabid’ behavior is a symptom of starvation and not, necessarily, the zombie’s natural state! With sustainable access to food, your average zombie isn’t much different than a human, by outward appearances anyway.” Now if they could work on this together without Rio wondering too hard about how she knew all this, it might actually be easy. Or at least, not hard.

Okay, obviously it was clear that Morgan was preoccupied right now. Trying to hold back the woman- er uh the zombie from munching on either of them. Ignoring the swelling excitement as well as the far more palpable fear that was building inside of him, Orion tried to put aside any jitters and listen to Morgan’s instructions. He was lucky he had worn jeans today instead of the usual joggers or track pants, and that he was embarrassingly skinny for his age and height, so any pair of jeans that he wore usually required a belt. He pulled the belt free, hooking his pinky around a belt loop to avoid his jeans dropping. God, that would be embarrassing. “Okay uh- my belt is good. And your belt is uh- still attached to you.” Rio called, still standing a few feet back. He was not incredibly comfortable with the idea of undoing his teacher’s belt, but he supposed there were… strange circumstances.

“This is great!” Rio tried remaining positive, his voice cracking at the end of his sentence. Although Rio greatly appreciated the information on Zombies, a species he had not done much study on. He was familiar with a couple of culture’s depiction of zombies in their own lore, but from what Morgan was describing, they differed quite a bit. “I am very happy to help and I am totally going to keep my cool during this time.” Rio said aloud, probably trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince Morgan. He slowly inched towards them, holding his arms out with his belt gripped tightly in both hands. “Do uh- you want me to do this? Or you? Is the whole thing about a zombie bite still true?”

Jeepers, this was going to be tricky. The zombie woman was beginning to thrash, dragging her and Morgan across the ground inch by inch. The closer Rio got, the more she wriggled her head, gnashing her rotting teeth. Morgan shifted position, pressing her knee down into the woman’s back. This was really not very seemly, but she couldn’t think of another way that would keep the zombie from hurting anyone long enough to feed properly. “We got this, we got this,” she murmured, still racing for ideas. “We got this!” She declared. “You are doing a great job, Rio! Just grab her legs and I’ll get the arms, and we’ll bind them up together. No worries!” She grabbed one of the zombie’s arms, then the other, wrestling against the woman’s frustration. “But, uh, yeah, about the bite. Fun fact, that’s--fuck!” The zombie woman’s teeth bit into her hand, grazing the cuff she used to hide her real scar. Morgan finished wrangling the arms with a grimace and whipped off her belt to fasten her arms together so the wrists would come more easily. “The bite thing is real,” she said, looking down at the wound in her hand. “But don’t freak out, Rio, okay? It doesn’t matter if she bites me, it’s you I’m worried about. Uh, get her wrists and ankles together?”

Orion could do this. He could totally do this. He did not love the idea of grabbing onto this woman, zombie or no. But Morgan seemed convinced that she would not feel the pain and that they were not going to harm her. That was what Rio wanted right? What was some tying and gagging if it meant helping her and others not get hurt? That was totally something that Rio could get behind. Grabbing onto her legs was surprisingly easy. Hunter strength and all made wrangling the woman’s legs surprisingly easy. At least, until the zombie bit Morgan. Rio dropped the legs immediately and began screaming his head off. At that moment, he wasn’t sure what was happening. Would Morgan turn into a zombie? How fast was the process? Was there something he could do to stop it? Rio had seen some zombie shows. How they amputated the body part that had been bitten to stop the spread. Even the idea made Rio light headed. He definitely couldn’t do that. Finally, Rio contained himself again, grappling the legs again and holding them. What the heck did Morgan mean that she wasn’t worried about herself? Was she immune to the bite somehow? “I- I don’t- uhhhhh” Rio’s brain broke for a moment, but he forced himself out of the slump. Grabbing onto the woman’s wrists and easily pulling them back to meet the ankles and wrapping his belt around them. “Oh god- Oh god. I hate this. I’m really bad at this. I think I’m going to puke. Are you okay???”

“Rio! You cannot puke on this woman!” Morgan shrieked. Oh dear. This wasn’t calm. This was the opposite of calm. Could she breathe? Was that ever going to work again? She missed the time when all she had to do was tell herself to breathe and her body would start to right itself back into something right and normal. But the quiet was too great and there was too much happening at once. “I’m fine! I’m not even bleeding!” Mostly because she didn’t have any circulation. “Just--just hold her steady and don’t turn into a zombie!” She scrambled over to her bag and prised open a tupperware full of brains, a blend, as it happened, but even a smidgen of person in there probably wasn’t going to get this woman back to normal. They’d have to take her somewhere better, or get better to her. Morgan stuck the tupperware under the woman’s nose and watched, grimacing, as she moaned and wrangled herself closer to fit as much of it in her mouth as possible. Morgan sat back and deflated. That would keep her busy for, what, five minutes? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am fine though. I’m…” Morgan shook her head and sid off the cuff, showing Rio her old scar, a perfect oval in the shape of Remmy’s mouth. “I’m already bitten and dead, Rio. Say, you didn’t happen to bring a car here, did you?”

“I’m not going to puke on her!” Orion yelled back, unsure why he was even still yelling. Stress. He totally blamed stress. He needed to calm down. Take a chill pill or something. That was all thrown out the window when Morgan tried to reassure him by letting him know that she wasn’t bleeding. “How are you not bleeding?” Rio was right back to freaking out now. But Morgan seemed more together than Rio was. She was in the right state of mind to fish out something from her bag and give it to the tied up woman. “Is that… brains?” Rio asked, the most calm he had been since showing up here. He examined the mush curiously. Everything seemingly clicked into place when Morgan showed off what looked like an old, already healed scar. She was dead? “You’re… a zombie?” Rio muttered aloud, needing to hear the words to actually begin processing it. A moment of fear passed through him as he considered that Rio had just willingly walked into being part of their midnight snack. But he pushed the thought away quickly. That couldn’t be. This was his professor. They had talked about books and the supernatural together. “Woah. You’re nothing like the old Haitian story of zombies.” His head tilted curiously as he examined his teacher to try to pick out any defining details. By all accounts, she looked human to him. “Hmm… interesting.” Rio nodded, and then grimaced at the next question, “About that… I don’t really have a car right now. It belongs to my parents and I’m not really talking to them right now and- y’know what? It’s a whole thing. Clearly we have other things going on right now. Maybe I can call my friend Blanche. Or one of my roommates! Maybe they can help us? Or uh… Where are we taking her anyways?”

“Wow, kid, that’s really one heck of a compliment,” Morgan deadpanned. “But...yes. I got hurt really bad and I died. Two months ago now. That’s why I missed so much school towards the end of the semester. I died, Rio.” She looked down at the woman gnashing her teeth at the brain bits in the tupperware. “But I have people who help take care of me. I can stay fed easily. I have a home. I have a girlfriend that loves me. I even have magic pills for my new zombie physiology that help manage all the depression I’ve got over dying. I don’t know which of those this woman is missing, but whatever it is, she’s still a person. She’s as much of a person as I am. Does that make sense?” She looked at him earnestly. Rio was a good kid. Rio didn’t believe in hurting people. He had to get it. Maybe it was hard to see the woman in her own right. Even Morgan couldn’t do that. She didn’t know her name or if she was happy before she died or how long she had been dragging herself out of bed. She could only see her pain. She had to be in so much pain to have sunk this far. The days of starving had to have been excruciating. With this kind of decay, maybe it was even weeks. “I was thinking of getting her to the butcher’s, but I don’t know if their stock will be enough for her. It’s worth a shot, if we can keep her from getting noticed. “Unless you wanna do a run? You got venmo, Rio?” She asked. The brains were almost gone, and of the two of them, Rio was the one most in danger. And this wasn’t his problem, now that she was mostly subdued. “You don’t have to, you know. I can take this from here.”

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say at this moment. Clearly, Orion had no idea what he was doing. He had grown up knowing about the supernatural. He loved learning about them and yet despite this he still had just barely scratched the surface. He knew nothing about Zombies, or real zombies at least. “Wow. I’m uh- sorry? That doesn’t sound like a good thing. But you don’t look dead.” Rio tried, he didn’t think that helped redeem him. “Okay that was probably a bad thing to say too. But despite all that… I’m really glad that you have a good support system, y’know? That must have been a really difficult thing to go through and… well I’m really glad things seem okay now. At least, hopefully everything’s okay.” And Morgan seemed dead set on helping this woman right now. And though the woman tied up seemed a little… murdery right now, Rio believed that with some help she could end up like Morgan seemed now. Completely put together. “I believe you. And I’m in. Let’s help her. Uh- I can run somewhere and get stuff… I don’t know what to get. But tell me and I’ll figure something out.”

“Well, you can tell that to my necrosis whenever I wait too long to eat my wheaties.” Morgan mumbled. You can test my pulse too, if you want.” She held out her hand, the bite standing out as a heavy shadow on her pale skin. “And no, you don’t need to be sorry--” But Rio was. He was just a kid doing his best with problems way bigger than himself. “But thank you. I know you mean it well.” She stared at the woman writhing in front of them again. She could see, too clearly now, what hunters did. A raving thing, a disaster they needed to triage before it got out of hand, a monster… “I can venmo you. A hundred dollars so should be able to buy out the brains at the butcher shop, whatever other weird organs they’ve got. That’s a start.” And while he was out she could maybe scrounge up a deer. They wandered through near dusk in little clusters, and it was the time of year when fauns were left to hide in the tall grass while mothers hunted. If she was quick and lucky, she’d be able to nab one for this woman to have. And maybe then, maybe if they were lucky, she could be okay. Morgan wrenched a hand through her hair and took out her phone to send the money over.

Orion laughed, happy that despite the horrible events that had clearly befallen his teacher without him even knowing about it, she could maintain some level of humor. “Don’t worry. I believe you. It’s uh- definitely not my first rodeo with the supernatural.” Even if he didn’t quite understand, he did believe. “Um right. I got it. Give me…” Rio paused, checking his phone for the time, “Twenty minutes. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

One of the good things about being a hunter? Superhuman endurance. Rio was definitely not in shape, but he could run for a while without having to stop. From here, he was pretty sure that it would be more efficient to get a car. If he could run home and borrow Ricky’s truck then he could get to the butcher shop and back without too much trouble. So he ran towards their house as fast as he possibly could, not letting anything distract him.

It worried Morgan how much animals still trusted her. The faun was too scared of the moaning woman six yards ahead to move. Morgan was able to settle down near it, still as death, and when it came over to sniff her out of curiosity, she took its neck and snapped it. The head dangled limp from the body like a toy that had lost all its stuffing. She carried it back to the woman and did not have to wait for her to wriggle and strain against her bonds trying to eat it. Morgan took out a knife and sliced the creature open neatly so she didn’t have to fight. Then she walked away enough yards so the smell of it wouldn’t compel her to steal a starving woman’s meal and licked blood and skin from her hands.

When Rio finally returned, Morgan was perched atop a large cross marker, stained with blood for all that she’d tried to keep herself clean. “Just unwrap everything for her and drop it where she can reach,” she called. “And then, you know, come over here so you don’t get bitten.”

Buying brains from a butcher was perhaps the most uncomfortable Orion had ever been. Despite this incredibly odd request, the butcher didn’t seem to think much of it at all. Which could only mean that this was not an uncommon request that he received. Which probably implied that Morgan and this woman were not the only zombies in town. It hadn’t occurred until now that Morgan could have been the one that turned this woman. But no. His Professor wouldn’t do that. Not unless she had to for some reason. Right?

Rio drove back to Morgan mostly in silence. He hated driving the truck. He didn’t trust himself with a big car. Plus he could barely see while driving the thing and hated ruining Ricky’s seat and mirror placement. But desperate times. Rio parked and hopped out, extending his arm so he could hold the brains at a distance from himself. “I’m here!” Rio yelled out, stopping when he noticed that Morgan had blood all over her shirt. Oh no. “What happened? Are you okay?” Rio asked. Despite this, maybe because he was too trusting just as Athena had always insulted him with, he followed Morgan’s instructions. Unwrapping the brains and tossing it to the tied up woman before hopping away and standing close to his professor. He could smell the blood that stained her. It was fresh.

“It’s okay, Rio,” Morgan said. “What do you think I’m gonna do, die again?” She smirked. A beat later, maybe too late, she wondered if that was maybe a bad joke. Rio knew about the supernatural, but maybe not about death. He hadn’t studied zombies before in his big secret library. He barely seemed comfortable with hauling brains and organs over from the butcher. Morgan sighed with a grimace and tried again. “I killed a faun for her. I didn’t think that was something you needed to be around to see. Brains sustain zombies best, but freshly dead meat is…” Her stomach grumbled, twisting. “Like candy on Halloween. You can’t not have any.” She looked down at him, still clinging to her perch. Her fingers had worn notches into the rock, worrying at the grain to keep from breaking off Bambi’s leg and going to town herself. “It’s just how we’re made,” she said quietly. “When the mother comes back to see if her faun is still around, I’ll try to get her too, if our friend isn’t back to herself yet.” She hesitated a moment, wondering if they had crossed into over sharing territory, if this was already too much for one troubled kid to bear in one night. “You don’t have to watch, or be around for any of that,” she said. “This is just another Tuesday for me, but it was a lot to get used to. It still is. You’ve been a big help, though. If all this turns out okay, it’s gonna be because of you. Because you cared.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “You uh...you can ask me questions, if you have any. I know all this is...strange. And lived experience can tell you certain things a book can’t.” She offered him a smile, her fear weighing on her softness. Please don’t think less of me for this.

Orion laughed nervously. Was that Morgan being offended? Or Morgan making a joke. A few seconds later and Morgan smirked at Rio, hopefully confirming that it had been a joke instead. “A faun.” Rio repeated, mostly to himself. He was still processing. Rio appreciated the information. He was taking mental notes, making sure to remember all of the information that he was learning about zombies. Maybe he would head back to the building tomorrow, start digging through his books for some information on the undead. The whole thing seemed like Alain’s side, but Rio knew better than to trust a hunter’s point of view when it came to the supernatural. Rio knew from personal experience that those teachings were biased. “I don’t- I usually don’t do that well around blood. But uh- I don’t want to make you do this stuff by yourself.” Morgan opened the board for questions. And boy, did Rio have questions. Way more questions than he possibly knew how to order and ask. “I- I have questions. But right now seems like the wrong time, y’know? With her… in the state she is in.” He sighed. Just another person in this town that has been through some awful experience that Rio wasn’t able to help prevent.

Morgan nodded and watched the woman eat. It might’ve been faster to let her have her hands back, but Morgan remembered the complete haze around her mind when she woke into her feeding frenzy. She hadn’t even known her own name, much less ‘eating people bad.’ If the wrong person had been in the room, she probably would’ve done everything she could to tear them to bits. “Anyone tell you lately what a good kid you are?” She asked. It was a rhetorical question, but she hoped nonetheless that someone was encouraging his generosity. Even if he could probably stand to get less squeamish. In time, the groans of the woman changed. Morgan gestured for Rio to stay back and made her way slowly over.

There was hardly anything left of the faun, but just enough that Morgan couldn’t stop herself from reaching into its ruined skull and scooping out its small black eyes and the thin tissue of its cheek muscle to munch on. She knelt down near the woman, still working the flesh in her mouth. “Hey,” she said, gently as she could with her mouth half full. “Can you talk? Are you good now?” The woman groaned and dashed herself into the red stained grass, angling her mouth for the rest of the faun. “Okay! Not feeling the impulse control. That’s okay! But I’m gonna need like...one intelligible word before you get this carcass.”

“Mmmhh. Aaarr...oh..k-kay.”

Blessed universe she was okay.

Morgan went around and loosened her bonds enough for her to wriggle free and stepped back as she held the faun and the scraps of flesh she hadn’t devoured yet as if they were all the treasure in the world. “You...shouldn’t...have done this,” she panted.

“I don’t see why not, Morgan replied. “What’s your name?”

The woman sucked the last remnants of life from the faun’s ribs and reached for a scattering of brain bits to shove into her mouth. “Ashley,” she said at last. “I didn’t--” She paused to swallow. As she wiped the mess from her chin she caught sight of the blood and mess on her hands, matching Morgan’s and then some. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said through gritted teeth. “Not any of this, you idiots.” And then she was sprinting downhill, stumbling and falling over her own feet but never stopping, the dead animal still tucked in her arms. Morgan reached for her, but caught only the edge of her torn hiking vest. It fell right off, like it had been waiting to all along.

“It hurts sometimes, being like this, Rio,” she said, hanging her head as Ashley disappeared from sight. “Even when you have everything you need, it can still hurt.” There wasn’t any point in tracking her down again, not when Rio could get hurt, and he had done so much already. She willed herself to look up and gave him the saddest apologetic smile. “Sorry you got sucked into this. What were you up to before anyway?”

Orion felt the heat burning his cheeks as the blush came on. Good kid. They weren’t unfamiliar words, not anymore. But they still warmed him each time he heard them. He supposed being starved for acceptance and praise did that to a kid. “Uh- I get told that more so recently than ever before. But uh- Thank you.” Whether or not she was expecting an answer, Rio thought it would be rude to just not thank her for the compliment.

Over time, Rio witnessed first hand how the almost primal hunger seemed to die down from the woman. Slowly, her eating became less frantic and more of that of a human that had not eaten in days. Morgan was fearless, strolling right up to her. Though he supposed death probably helped to quell many of the fears that Rio felt right now.

The zombie- Ashley- seemed confused. Scared, even. And despite what the two had done to help her, Ashley took off the moment she was comprehensive and scurried off down the hill, leaving Rio and Morgan by themselves. And all of that fear and anguish that Rio could see in Ashley’s face, must have been similar to what Morgan had been through. Her words were raw, her smile doing nothing to mask the sadness or pain present in her voice. This was her life now. Something she was forced to deal with in order to stay alive. Or re-alive, which wasn’t actually a word but would have to apply for this situation. “You helped her. Even though she couldn’t see it right now… you just protected people from potentially getting hurt. And you protected her from making a terrible mistake. That’s… incredible.” Rio breathed, realizing only now that he had been holding his breath the entire time. “I was just at the old Scribe building, heading home for the night when I heard the noises outside the cemetery.”

“Stars, I hope so,” Morgan sighed. She didn’t feel like she had done much. She had hoped to at least talk to someone else like her for a little longer, to ask what she really needed to get by for longer than a day or two. Who did she have? How had she starved so badly? All she had to go on was one torn up hiking vest and a name. She pushed the thought of Ashley to the back of her mind. Maybe she could put out a call online or ask the ghosts in the cemetery to keep an eye out, just in case she turned up here again or...something. But for now she was as good as lost.

Morgan exhaled. Without the need for air, her body retained most of its tension from the past hour until she worked consciously at it, slumping and rolling her neck and shoulders and arms. “You helped too, Rio. I wouldn’t have been able to manage her by myself. Come on,” she urged gently. She held out an arm, beckoning him close, imagining a one armed hug to calm his nerves. Then she saw the blood on her hands and thought better on it. She let it fall limp at her side and wiped it down on her skirt. “I appreciate that you tried. That counts for something. Let’s get you home, okay?”

#brainful process #wr rio #wr chatzy #wr rio chatzy #wr

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tiffany-loves-broadway · 5 years

Text

Characters from Worm and Ward as @dril_gpt2 tweets

Wildbow: i wrote the post. sorry everyone.

Emma: You fucking worm. Youre a foul, stinking rat. Fanart is pure garbage.

Skitter, pre-Leviathan: my followers are wasting my time by asking me stupid shit like "where is my worm hole" and "where is my piss hole"

Tattletale: 13 Reasons Why Sasquatch Is Real

Bitch: you know society is ASS-FUCKED when people spend tens of millions of dollars to maim and disfigure their dogs in an effort to appear more "INTP"

Panacea: im going to dress up like a nurse and perform emergency C-sections on the street to build self respect

Coil, on Dinah: Everything you say is true and good. no exceptions

Miss Militia: the idea that i would ever lose my shit on the computer board game "minesweeper" is one of the most despicable maladies ive ever suffered

Skitter, post-Leviathan: to the guy who paid me to distribute free toilet paper to the homeless in my hometown: thanks for 00000000000 \000 \000 .

Jack Slash: the human mind... is a funny little thing... called A Mind

Crawler: my ass has become highly immunized against fungal infections, by ingesting fantastic amounts of kfc

Cherish: sending my most powerful kiss to any image of blue jeans because i just want to die by suicide because my brain and body are FUCKED

Dragon: ...the US Navy's newest computer chip can now program itself to 'Play Pokemon' and evolve into a Pokemon with it ....

Simurgh: saddened to see that people woud gravitate towards gaming as a career path, rather than exclusively gravitate towards gaming during a time of crisis

Perdition: *does the dishes in reverse for shock value*

Watchdog: INTRODUCTION TO THE GUILD OF THINKERS 1. who are these people whose opinions are worth less than mine to keep me away from the toilet 2. how do i add 3D effects to my hair 3. WHO CARES I DIDNT ADD 3D SHADES TO MY JUGGLY

Greg: well gotta go with the old adage "Dont forget to feed the trolls"

Valefor: causing your dick to hurt because you have too much respect for the Virgin Mary to engrave "666" onto the back of your dick

Weaver: I will do the right thing, and delete all my posts about eating maggots

Behemoth: *glances towards the camera slowly becoming more and more skeletal*

Tecton: Geology is Theory. Geology is not Fact.

Heartbreaker: me fucking ruining another wedding by asking the bride to marry me for $6. its just too hard

Glenn Chambers: the most important part of being a content producer is being able to mentally picture the Brands' Emblems on your fridge and never missing a Brand Point Update

Glenn Chambers, on Skitter: "i firmly believe that bugs should be banned," i continue, letting the video conclude. "But…" i pause to collect myself, "but…" i increase the volume

Riley: im sorry but how can i reconcile my increasingly loathsome behaviors with the cheerful, bubbly manner in which i am marketed

Clockblocker: according to wikipedia, the bed bugs and human fly larvae that burrow into my skin and organs are my soul mate

Andrew Richter: i am truly devastated to announce that the y2k bug is now officially classified as a feature

Scion: 1) Kill all the people 2)

The Elite: to the distrusted: To the disappointed: Towards the hungry: I will not trade places with you. Good bye.

Eden: As an evolved being I want to fuck Humankind

Khepri: my followers are nothing but worms, trying to devour me alive , my only value is that i make people mad

Pandora: i've been itching to get online for a while now, and i finally did it. this is the ultimate sacrifice

Bitch, with Biter: i have the brain of a small dog and the asshole of a college educated adult

Valkyrie, on Clockblocker, Kid Win, and Grue: The "Boys" are back! They're back from the dead

Victoria Dallon, looking for work: After finding out that my followers believed that doctors should be allowed to force me to eat grass, i vowed never to read any posts from you all again

Seir: the "minor girls" jokes is one of the few parts of the Alabama Republican Platform That I actually respect, and wouldn't change a word

Mama Mathers: god grant me th e ability to send very strong, very small particles of information through the air into the eyeballs of <- targeted <-

Tattletale, on clusters: blood transfusions vs gunshot wounds - the jury is still out on which one is "good"

Sidepiece: here comes that ass hole. here comes that spleen. here comes that gut. *spits out another mouthful of food turds* wow. im pretty good at kicking ass

Nursery: How To Make Hugs Out Of Anything - Essential book for new Mommers

Foil: You've heard of Small Arms Firepower, but did you Know Small Arms Penetration Power?

Love Lost: Fear not, a tiny speaker attached to my gas mask will allow me to better understand the emotions of my followers

Ratcatcher: Rats Are Life Forms Too Sub-Genius

Custodian: i demand now that complete and utter silence be accorded to the hideous sonic boogie man who has inhabited my thoughts for 17 years.

Teacher: micropenis Wearing A Turtleneck Sweater

Valkyrie, on Furcate: i am fucking thrilled that my daughter is becoming ultra-sensitive to light after undergoing sex reassignment surgery. she is the most POWERFUL KISS GIRL yet

Ingenue: my nudes... have helped me tremendously in my career, and... i'm extremely Pleased...

Cradle: brain death huh. Not good. Not good at all.

Negotiator Shard: strapped to an eyeball looking for the peak of Mt. Doom, not realizing that all the eyeballs are now gnawing

Red Queen: I think that for every person who tells me that they like my posts i should be able to kill about 8 people

SpaceBattles: im classified as a Mature writer, 1) I cannot handle discussion of sexual matters 2) I am unlikely to read a book of 100,000 words without destruc[ing myself physically)

Eric: i help girls by inventing and selling "I helped a girl" tshirts. i have a very good following

Parian: in mourning the passing of my grandmother, i will gladly accept donations to pay for her "Face lift".

Gimel Checkpoint Attendants: #DollarsShit the US Dollar has devalued, and is the currency of scum, and shit

Antares, at the crystals: a giant screen saver depicting my entire fucking body changing into a huge wad of spaghetti

#parahumans #worm spoilers #ward spoilers #gpt-2 #dril #text synthesis

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fearfearer · 5 years

Text

i have caught up with the magnus archives.

when i started listening, i started a text file to note down any thoughts/confusion/analysis/jokes i had as i listened. i isolated a few bits of it into standalone text posts that i already posted, but here is the whole thing, my long-form liveblog

thoughts on the magnus archive as i listen

jonny sims gives an impassioned performance of someone's statement-- a diegetic impassioned performance, as we witness it being interrupted and resuming-- and follows it up with his own judgement of merciless doubt. classic. why the impassioned performance? he's just a nerd. i dearly hope this is the fandom consensus

every episode ends at the perfect volume to which i have adjusted it, and then i start the next episode and it blares in my ears. i think the volume of the intro must be like 1.75x the volume of the rest

*makes a serious effort to listen to and remember the name and date at the beginning of the statement recording* *forgets completely within 2 minutes*

i saw a fanart of gerard keay and learned [1] that he must be a good guy after all, since they drew him lookin cute, and [2] that his name is not, in fact, jared key. what, am i supposed to be looking at the transcripts? understanding names properly? in my defense, jonny sims clearly articulates "Jared" when he says it. maybe i'm not as good at decoding british accents as i thought. [footnote added in later: ok good i'm not the only one who hears "Jared" and thinks "Jared" instead of "Gerard"]

when gerard keay was described as having numerous eye tattoos on his joints, obviously my first thought was, "including the ankle? so he's count olaf?" because that's definitely a way count olaf would disguise his eye tattoo: by tattooing eyes everywhere else too and becoming The Eye Tattoo Guy. anyway this is part of why i was not at first inclined to think favorably of gerard keay

"The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic." if you know shit fuck you

it has come to my attention that there are ships. makes sense... after all, everyone in every fandom is horny af*. i'm not in deep enough to ship yet but naturally i'm keeping an eye on it

*horny af for depictions of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, but mostly sexual

definitely feel like i need to be writing down every name i hear because they're never not cropping back up but for now i'll just let it all wash over me

so sasha has been replaced with not-sasha, huh? pretty sure. though i'm not good at distinguishing voices. but that sounded pretty different, and my listening comprehension wrt that table isn't that bad. <<as time passes i doubt myself more and more on this point but not enough to go back and listen again

"You believe me?" "Yes, I think I do." (smashes button labeled "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT" and a loud buzzer sounds)

IT'S MICHAEL!!! i hope michael is a long-term good guy... he's not seeming like a good guy right now... he says he's mostly neutral. vaguely recall seeing a tumblr post about michael in the recent past but that didn't give me any hints and i don't remember it well anyway. michael's voice is good though. good laugh

i'm not good at visualizing characters based on descriptions, let alone based merely on their voices, so the only image i have in my head of jonathan is a furrowed brow

i'm on episode 49 and i don't like jonathan's distrust of his colleagues... i don't understand why his immediate suspicion was that gertrude's murder was an inside job. hasn't he just learned firsthand that the institute is not impenetrable? it's not inconceivable that someone could enter and shoot her and leave. especially when it took place in underground tunnels connected to unknown locations.

there's a good Old Lady Voice Combo on episode 62

so agnes montague was heavily cursed... that's my conclusion after episode 67

elias seems to tell jonathan to "get some sleep" a lot. though it IS generally good advice

episode 70, 9 minutes, 41 seconds: jonny sims's cell phone goes off in the background

small brain: ghost ship medium brain: ghost train galaxy brain: dirt train

i wanted to see if there was fanart of michael so i looked it up... i might as well have googled "blonde slenderman"

sweeney todd mentions tally: II

for some reason, hearing michael described this time as "a tall man with curly blonde hair and an unnerving laugh" puts an image in my head without my consent, and that image is chris fleming. now, he's not quite blonde, is he? but that doesn't change my casting decision, which is now set in stone. hope he does a good british accent

"YES i know what a meme is."

why is melanie the first/only one to notice that sasha is now not-sasha? is it because she is experienced in firsthand paranormal encounters (whereas the archivists are experienced in decidedly SECONDhand paranormal encounters, save for the worm debacle)? oh, my question was answered handily in the next episode. ok.

the replacer definitely limits its glamour to everyone except one person just so that it can be amused by the distress and confusion of the one person who can see the truth. that must also be the reason it chooses a completely different appearance. it surely COULD replace a person with their exact likeness; it just uses another face for fun, and to be satisfied that it can get away with it.

this table has appeared in like 10 episodes... Guess It's Crucial

jonny sims yelling while swinging an axe. jonny sims goes through michael's door (eyes emoji)

the idea of the replacer killing jonathan and not even replacing him brings to mind "AT LEAST RIDE IT YOU ASSHOLE"

wasn't expecting to hear from leitner at this point... he's dropping tons of lore here. too much lore. so much is happening. i have to say i kinda like it better when the stakes are not quite so high as this.

so at the end of season 2, tim and martin believe that jonny sims killed this guy, who they probably don't know is leitner... and we the audience believe that elias, now almost certainly a double murderer, has very quietly stabbed leitner to death. do i the audience believe it? i'll keep an open mind for now. things are not always as they seem. except when sasha was replaced with not-sasha, which was exactly as it seemed. [footnote added in later: looks like elias being a double murderer was exactly as it seemed.]

so jonathan sims is the name of the actual guy voicing jonathan sims. it's a cecil situation. so are they someday going to go back and retcon every episode to change his name, like with palmer/baldwin? or does jonathan sims just not mind being a character as well? as long as it doesn't devolve into RPS i guess it's fine. if there's fanart of jonmartin i hope it doesn't depict them as their actors bc that's too close for comfort to RPS

there's been a truly hellish c*ndy cr*sh ad that has played like 40 times between episodes and i'm pretty well convinced to never ever play that curséd game

elias has some serious blackmail for daisy, huh? that's heavy, having police characters in fiction who do extrajudicial killings. life imitates art imitates life

"i'm not on drugs or anything. ...what? i could be on drugs!"

he said "ample opportunity" but like "amplopportunity" with emphasis on the "plop"

it was obviously elias who delivered the statement to jonathan in hiding, because he knew he would record it despite not being at work... bc he's a nerd

so if gerard keay has eye tattoos, does that mean he also serves the uhh the observing or whatever? [verdict arrived at later: no he just has those because he's cool. or because his mom tattooed him. ok almost certainly the latter.]

"what do i feed it?" obviously you feed it filled up cassette tapes, jon... nothing has ever been more obvious

it's okay that jon very stupidly burned his hand to a crisp. you don't need even one hand to turn on a cassette recorder. you can do that with your nose

so if these people who are wax figures serve the desolation, and not-sasha was spending time at the wax museum, does that mean there is a connection between the replacer and desolation? i think that would make sense, since both seem to enjoy making people feel bad feelings. also i'm starting to think that agnes was not actually cursed, but that would mean she burned that guy on purpose after being nice to him... was she just really selfish in that way? using him to experience Dating and mutilating him when he crossed the line, so she punished him as a cruel goodbye? or just building up his hopes so they will be even more fun to burn down when the time comes?

"perhaps doing a bit of mindless filing will help distract you." honestly that is something i would like to do in real life... i do enjoy a good mindless task. though doing mostly mindless tasks 40 hours a week is not a fun time for me lately. but it would be better if i didn't have to listen to bad radio at the same time

what?! the friendly midnight acrobat described in episode 90 sounds totally non-threatening and i hope there's fanart of it. was that gym just jared the bone turner helping people live their twisted athletic fetishes?! [footnote added in later: YES! god i hope people draw these turn-boned creatures optimized for their gymnastic of choice. show me a person who remade their body specifically for the balance beam]

so the power endowed in the archivist by the viewening is that when you sit them down across from someone they want to interview, that someone will invariably spill SOME beans and think it was their idea. maybe? [footnote added in later: yes.]

ok so Michael "The Distortion" Michael, of fractals and golden ringlets, has specifically tormented this other michael, lichtenberg michael?

jon is clearly moved to ask questions by an external force because he's a sensible guy who would not try to ask questions when daisy is holding a gun on him

i think basira has precisely the same accent as estelle... or maybe just a similarly staccato way of speaking (or of line-reading)

[episode 93] elias: (holding jon's face between two pieces of bread) what are you? jon: (sigh) the archivist...

well, they did something i didn't expect them to do with this show: create a compelling in-universe reason for jon to read statements aloud. because obviously until now there was none.

jon did the cockney accents. (insert emoji for indescribable feeling)

here's the purpose of the pit: if we all climb in the muddy pit together at night, the earthquake will only jiggle us gently and no one will be inside collapsing buildings to be crushed. it's only logical

ok i was gonna say this before but why is jon still at georgie's house??? he's not on the run for murder anymore, right? he has an apartment with all his stuff in it, right? [footnote added in later: i still don't understand why it was like this.]

i will confess that usually once the credits start to roll i zip to the next episode, but this time i zoned out a bit and it's really funny that jonny sims reads out "Rate and Review Us Online" in his archivist voice

a third michael. this one is probably already dead though. unless distortion michael takes over this guy's body or something. oh, jon came in at the end of the episode to say precisely this.

was episode 100 mostly improvised? if so, that would be appropriate. but i wouldn't put it past them to write every stuttering bit of those four statements

MARTIN...................................................................................................................................................... (typed this as martin gave some of his own money to the lady who expected payment for a statement)

i'm skipping 100.1 through 100.5 for now... just for now.

ok so michael is michael but not lightning mike michael, and two of these michaels are dead, but one is something that has never been alive nor dead. got it

everyone's morality is much more gray than i at first anticipated. the only people who seem to be solidly and earnestly on the side of good, as much as possible, are jonathan and martin and basira and georgie and maybe tim?

so michael just died and was overtaken by pseudo-helen? neo-helen? ok. that's kinda too bad, as i enjoyed michael's terrible laugh and unpredictability. but the feeling of michael being revealed as having been michael shelley feels somewhat similarly disappointing (but a bit less staggeringly groan-inducing) to when the mysterious koro-sensei in assassination classroom was revealed to have been a twink in his past. because of course he was. (that's when i stopped reading that manga. too precipitously dumb to sustain my suspension of disbelief.) it's like, ok, you had an interestingly mysterious character going on, but having solved the mystery, what interestingness is left? not much. fortunately this was resolved by promptly ending the existence of this michael and instead introducing new and improved helen

ooh martin has the asky ability too huh? nice [footnote added in later: he only used it this one time, and i'm wondering if they did that and then forgot and decided that jon is actually the only one with asky ability.] [[another footnote added in much later: How did i manage to mistake jon’s voice for martin’s voice? How?]]

the way martin said "kumo ga tabeteiru" in episode 110... alexander j newall does not watch anime

"I'm a book." ~Gerard Keay, 2017

it was a few episodes ago now but i noticed that when jon clearly articulated "Jared" referring to gerard, elias was like "Jared? you mean Gerard Keay?" (pronouncing it like "Gerard.") there is definitely a disagreement between these two (actors) about how to pronounce that name

the eye, the spiral, the end, the stranger, the lonely, the desolation, the slaughter, the vast, the buried, the dark, the corruption, the web, the flesh, the hunt.

Q: why would anyone want one of these rituals to succeed? A: it's their fetish. it's their sexual fetish

ok time to make up names for each possible apocalypse. these are the real and true names according to me, who knows such things: the eye - the viewening the spiral - down the drain the end - the really end end the stranger - oh wait we know this one. it's the unknowing. the lonely - the alonening the desolation - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Lightless Flame the slaughter - world war all the vast - the expansion the buried - the grand lahar (or the Smothering) the dark - the extinguishment the corruption - the Great Rot the web - the spidening the flesh - the smorgasbord (or the Eatening) the hunt - come and get it

gerry said there was no dark god of indigestion, but i can tell you from personal experience that there is. though it's true that there is also fear involved, so maybe no separate pantheon is necessary

i sense that there is a battle between people who say it like "gotta get myself oriented" and "i feel disoriented" (as feels correct/natural to me) and people who say "gotta get myself orienTATed" and "i feel disorienTATed," and this podcast falls SQUARELY on the latter team. they've said it like 20 times

idk why he has to be such a dick to helen. jeez

the guy who coded his mind into a computer, which of the 14 was that? the corruption? the stranger? gotta be the corruption, but that doesn't fit perfectly with its rot/bugs aesthetic...

speed -> speeding -> sped. heed -> heeding -> hed. thus i decree

in my dream i listened to a whole episode of this show, narrated by gertrude, and i was like "whoa this is cool" and i went to write it down but i was still in the dream and writing doesn't work in dreams :( also any successful writing in dreams doesn't transfer to real life paper :( the only snippet i remember: “...in his white mouth, which had known only bread...”

"I, uh..." Jonathan Sims, a thousand times, 20XX

martin's job is PLAINLY to distract elias and elias barges in like "martin. i see you're trying to distract me." and martin's like "maybe i am!"

o, jonny took a breath. that's good

he wasn't hooked up to an EKG or anything? you spend long enough with no heartbeat that they're just like "i guess we can turn this off"

this episode about philosophical zombies sounds a lot like that NPC meme from a year or two ago... and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, the way this person inspects others to determine whether they are True Minds or Impostors based on their emotional expressions, their eyes... because i don't always do the correct or appropriate expressions, and would someone judge me as being a non-person who is trying and failing to imitate human emotions?

i generally don't enjoy ships that have more-or-less explicit canon support, but i can't say jon/martin isn't good

melanie blaming jon isn't right... no one had a better plan to stop the unknowing, did they? (they didn't!) didn't all of them agree on the plan and understand that they might die? (they did!) she's just imposing survivor's guilt upon him because he survived for supernatural reasons. but it's not like he eagerly embraced his new supernaturalness, or even asked for it outright! i think she's being unreasonable. i didn't like her insistence on trying to kill elias either, even though elias is a huge dick. what's with her?

wait, peter lukas is the lonely? (meme where calculations and equations whiz past me)

jonathan baa'd

oh, see. the bullet is making melanie act without reason. i get it now. can't say i think they had the best approach to getting the bullet out, but all's well that ends well (???)

martin is being prohibited from talking to jon >:I martin is on a first-name basis with peter lukas >:I...

martin grumbles, "i don't like being manipulated..." while obviously and continuously allowing himself to be manipulated

jon is afraid of and uncomfortable with what he's becoming, at least to a degree, right? but he seems to be going about his duties (i.e. feeding the eye) with vigor and without reluctance. is he really that motivated by his own desire to know and understand? who is he doing this for? is the eye's influence on him so strong that "doing what the eye wants" seems to manifest as what HE wants to do?

"He'd place it over the one he wore already, and he would larf and larf and larf" (from breacon’s statement... just heard it like this for some reason)

deep water could be the domain of both the buried and the vast, because you could lose yourself in the vast ocean, but experience the physical effects of being buried under thousands of feet of water...

so tom han was an avatar of the flesh but he ultimately died after being tortured by the spiral... right?

"we're not people, though, are we? not anymore." close enough, i'd say.

jonathan has deployed THREE "I, uh..."s in episode 131 alone and i want to smack him in real life. FOUR NOW. JON. JONATHAN SIMS THE REAL ACTOR. LISTEN... quit falling back on your "I, uh..."s. and if they're written into the script i'll punch whoever did that too. total of five in a single episode. never utter "I, uh..." again

i hope whoever's throat is okay after doing bone turner voice for a whole statement.

jonny sure needs saving quite often, doesn't he.

peter lukas being a slightly chipper advocate for becoming a follower of the lonely is very strange

neil lagorio and his whole cinematographic history is made up but they namedropped kevin costner, who is real

VERY, VERY GOOD laugh at 23:44 of episode 136

melanie getting her session recorded... i was doing audio transcription for a while and you'd definitely come across bits of therapy-type sessions that very much seemed like they should have been confidential.

i wonder if the eye ultimately turned its back on gertrude and allowed her to be killed. if jon could survive a collapsing building, could gertrude not have survived a couple of bullets? wouldn't the difference be the protection of the eye? [footnote added in later: of course now i see who turned their back on whom.]

i'm somewhat heartened to learn that agnes montague was, in fact, a heavily cursed individual, though she seemed to have embraced it to a degree... and she wasn't made of wax.

i like that jon now includes helen in his office politics briefing

basira's like "Edmund Halley" and jon's like "Halley's comet?" (like “Hale-ey”) and two minutes later jon's like "Edmund Hally" (not "Hale-y")

"What's this?" "OH... That's, uh... that's... my rib..." "Right." (tiny clunk of rib being set down)

so giving a statement puts a curse on you... or is it "having a statement extracted / being compelled" that puts a curse on you? and the resulting curse, the fear it reawakens, is that good for the eye, or is that good for the powers that initially caused the fear?

well, i heard a homestuck reference in one of the patreon names at the beginning of an episode, and who is surprised? of course, i'm not one to talk

episode 144- the english think their summer is bad... as a professional "hot weather is bad" person, i feel doubtful, because if the sky is grey, it is not as hot as it Could Be, and therefore one should quit one's bitching

first statement about the extinction... interesting. but hearing martin be a jerk to daisy makes me sad :(

the powers never tell avatars exactly what they need to be doing, but that's just concerning the means. the ends are always clear: the power gets fed. and all of the powers feed on fear. also jonny is horny for statements. i hope, but also doubt, that his harmful behavior is at least partially the spider's doing. oh, i see now that it's not. yeah.

jon wants to eat fresh and delicious statements produced just for him, instead of reconstituting the dusty old statements already in the archive

episode 148 - samson stiller gets a crush. but in all seriousness, is he becoming an avatar of the eye but like, not institute-related? is that a thing? i guess that would make sense, but still seems weird

episode 149 - considering ring -> rang -> rung, we seem to have stumbled upon spin -> span -> spun, and the compasses gently span around (9:40)

does martin have loneliness powers now? it's sad that he is getting lonely... as a lonely person, i know.

the lady on TV in episode 150 was just speaking simlish.

i really want jon to overcome his urge to forcefully take statements because i want to be able to root for him still

british podcasts really have a leg up over american podcasts, at least among american audiences, purely based on their interesting and varied accents

i can't say the gravedigger's envy doesn't make me myself feel like going to sleep in the cold dirt forever. but bad depression lately is also a factor, so

jonathan having to settle for reading already archived statements instead of harvesting fresh ones is exactly like a vampire (not the kind detailed in this series) who has to choose between hunting people to suck their blood or drinking bags of donated blood from a (near-endless) stockpile. there's an ethical choice with a clear right answer, but the urge is also understandable

jon following up gertrude's tape with just "fuck" was really good. now he's like "ok martin. let's run away together"

spent all day at work thinking about how i can't fuckin believe the first thing jon did when he heard how to escape the institute was to go tell martin like "there will be a great cost, but... we can elope now"

also if tim was still around jon would tell him the way out and he would do it right then and there, i'm 100% sure. like before jon was finished explaining tim would be like "the eyes? (grabs scissors) got it. (does the deed)"

earlier today i was just thinking that we would almost certainly hear gertrude's death on tape, especially given that we now understand tape recorders are wont to turn on autonomously whenever something important is happening. anyway then i came home and heard gertrude's death on tape

peter, as an avatar of the lonely, is easy to play like a cheap whistle because as someone who clearly hates spending time around other people, he is not keen to the symptoms of being played.

elias is like "you'll have to go into the lonely to get him" and jon's probably thinking "but then at least we'll be in the lonely... ~*~*~together~*~*~"

i think martin's whole thing for most of the series has been that he sounds a little doofy, for lack of a better word, and people constantly underestimate his intelligence. and now he has played peter lukas like a cheap whistle and forced me to realize that by taking for granted that he was being successfully manipulated by peter lukas, i too was underestimating martin... and his pure love for jon <:3c no but seriously i even remember explicitly making a mental note to remember that martin is smartin but it fell by the wayside as my emotions (of sadness that jon and martin seemed to be growing further apart) took precedent

i work a non-verbal job just doing mundane tasks and that gives me all the time in the world to think about things like "if they were to have jon and martin reunite in a tearful embrace, how would you convey the physical contact in an audio format? like, whap? soft thud?"

jon enters the lonely and voiceover peter comes in to try and factcheck the ship

i guess it makes sense that peter would try to do the ritual for the lonely all by himself

did he kill peter by asking him to death? or did peter just self-destruct rather than be forced to answer?

the way jon snapped martin out of the loneliness just by making him look at his face... that's powerful. as a lonely person, i know that the most cry-making thing you can realize when you feel alone is that another person is, in fact, there with you

martin went for a walk and now it's thunderstorming. i wonder if he came back as soon as it started raining and now he's standing nearby invisibly as jon reads the intimidating magnus statement. ...I GUESS NOT

i plan to read through the transcripts of all the episodes (as it’s faster than re-listening, though i might selectively re-listen) so that i may better understand some things and answer some questions in this post that i didn’t ultimately resolve. i can’t say i was paying 101% attention all the way through. also april is very far away

#the magnus archives

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mittensmorgul · 6 years

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Hi, sorry to bother you, but what do you make of all the biblical symbols. There's the snake (obviously the real life snake and there's one on the wall behind Cas in the diner), Jack even brought it into the bunker (not saying the bunker is paradise lol) and then the Judas Iscariot-ish poisonous kiss on the cheek. Does that mean something?

hey hi, you’re definitely not a bother. :D

I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask about religious symbolism, for several reasons. I usually try to avoid making “real world Religion” comparisons to Supernatural canon, because so much of their use of this symbolism is only tangentially related to real-world meanings and purposes for these symbols, you know? So I try to look at them in the context Supernatural is using them, rather than how we would look at them in reality.

I hope that makes sense, because this is such a potentially touchy topic. So I’ll do my best to attempt to explain my understanding within Supernatural canon, and not mix it up too heavily with actual real-world biblical lore, because that’s a big enough can of worms on its own. (cue biblical scholar fisticuffs in three, two...) :P

This entire episode seemed to have been framed around various snake-related mythologies, not just from the bible. The title Ouroboros is a depiction of a snake eating its own tail in a circle, and a quick scan of the wikipedia article on it shows the diverse origins of this mythological symbol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros. There’s a lot going on here, but all of it is snakey.

Then we have a gorgon for our MotW. The most famous gorgon we know of is Medusa, but this gorgon didn’t have snakes for hair, but his pet Felix (which is the snake Jack brought back to the bunker). But again, the mythology is complicated and has shifted over time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon

The gorgon’s name was Noah Ophius, and Ophius means “snake.”

Dean references Clash of the Titans to explain his knowledge of the gorgon, but the knowledge he actually relates... doesn’t actually apply to a gorgon, but to a hydra. It’s not a gorgon that grows back more heads when it’s beheaded, but the hydra, which is also a snake-like creature, but definitely not a gorgon.

Also in this episode, Felix the snake shed his skin-- a reminder that this is how snakes grow, by sloughing off and discarding the old layer to reveal the new layer beneath. Kind of like Jack has been doing as he’s grown, in a metaphorical fashion.

And we know some snakes are venomous, like our gorgon monster, but poor lil Felix is just an innocent lil beauty of a corn snake. Not a drop of venom in him. I did find it hilarious that the show opened in Raton, New Mexico, because it vaguely looks like “Rat town,” and the snake monster is eating the residents, and rats are the standard fare for many snakes-- including Felix the corn snake (aka the red rat snake).

Strangely enough, a close relative of the red rat snake is the black rat snake, and the egg-eating black snakes of Africa from which the parable of the chicken and the black snake that the gorgon told Jack in this episode derived.

But I’d venture to suggest that all of them have brought potential danger into the bunker, you know?

They knowingly brought Dean into the bunker even though Michael was locked in his brain fridge and could’ve theoretically escaped at any time. They knowingly brought Michael himself, while possessing Dean, into the bunker in 14.10. They unwittingly brought some of Michael’s monsters into the bunker in the same episode. They brought Jack into the bunker back in the beginning of s13 not knowing if he was gonna go evil and explode at any moment. They brought all the AU hunters through the rift in s13, even knowing that doing so was incredibly dangerous to the Natural Order (Billie warned them not to mess with the AU’s because the cosmic house of cards was highly unstable), but again, it was supposed to be a temporary place of refuge for them to regroup and plan a more direct attack on Michael in their own world, before Michael himself came here instead.

So yeah, there’s a lot of circles closing, a lot of snake imagery (both positive and negative, thanks to Felix being a good bean and not an inherently evil thing like his former owner).

On to the Judas Kiss. Let’s look at Luke 22:47-48:

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?"

This was how Judas “identified” Jesus to the Romans, so he could be captured. But some biblical scholars believe that this wasn’t a betrayal at all, but more of an understanding between the two that this was something that needed to be done. Essentially the ultimate act of “killing what you love” for the salvation of the rest of the world.

Remind you of anyone? Of Cas sacrificing himself to the Empty in Jack’s place? Of Dean wanting everyone to agree to let him go into the Ma’lak box to save them all from Michael? Of Sam back in 5.22 knowing the only way to stop the apocalypse was for him to say yes to Lucifer and fling himself into the cage, or even the trials he undertook in s8 to close the gates of Hell? Of Jack willing to burn up his own soul in order to kill Michael and thereby save the world?

It’s all fun and games until someone chokes on a boiled egg... or on the equivalent of all the souls in Purgatory... >.>

This theme of sacrifice is finally getting a blatantly toxic label here, I guess? I don’t know what it means going forward, but the show has been thematically denouncing this sort of “all in for death” play for a while now, and this is about as blatant a “Danger Poison” label as the act has been given yet.

And then we have one final bit of snakey imagery-- the vortex of Michael’s grace spinning in a circle above Jack’s head as he burned it off from an ouroboros of malice into a lil wispy snake that he eventually inhaled and apparently assimilated into his own being. I found it fascinating that he just burned off the vast majority of that grace cloud until he was left with what was apparently just the “power pack of grace” he needed for himself, and the rest had apparently been “the Persona of Michael.”

Heck I don’t even know what else to write about any of this, and I don’t think very much of it was actually biblical, and I didn’t even touch on the “letting the snake into the garden” thing, because I feel like the show already dealt with that during the Gadreel arc in s9. And heck if that wasn’t letting the serpent into the garden, right?

#spn 14.14 #spn s14 spoilers #reaperlove77

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