#BUT it also serves as a double edged sword reminder as to why he wants to take over the world

[gothamsfinestdummy]

Here’s a random awkward Romy I drew up in my evil science lab

[agentrouka-blog]

Tyrion and Tysha murder mystery hints - first mention in the text

This thing just keeps tugging at me, and this recent thread made me ambitious to examine it in more detail. So I’ll look at hints for an even darker edge to the story of Tyrion and Tysha in the parts of the text that actually mention her.

Since I have limited time, I’ll do several posts. This one is about how we learn about Tysha in A Game of Thrones.

We head into AGOT, Tyrion VI via a chapter transition from AGOT, Jon V, where Jon talks Maester Aemon into choosing Samwell as his assistant. In the presence of his current assistant Chett, who - it is revealed later in the ASOS Prologue - murdered a girl he liked for rejecting him.

Chett gave a nasty laugh. “I’ve seen what happens to soft lordlings when they’re put to work. Set them to churning butter and their hands blister and bleed. Give them an axe to split logs, and they cut off their own foot.”

“I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone.”

“Yes?” Maester Aemon prompted.

Jon glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and angry. “He could help you,” he said quickly. “He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can’t read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read every book in his father’s library. He’d be good with the ravens too. Animals seem to like him. Ghost took to him straight off. There’s a lot he could do, besides fighting. The Night’s Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead.”

Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Jon was afraid that he had gone to sleep. Finally he said, “Maester Luwin taught you well, Jon Snow. Your mind is as deft as your blade, it would seem.”

“Does that mean …?”

“It means I shall think on what you have said,” the maester told him firmly. “And now, I believe I am ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brother to the door.”

(AGOT, Jon V)

The chapter is followed by AGOT, Tyrion VI, where Tyrion and Bronn rest on the high road after being kicked out of the Gates of the Moon, after he won his trial by combat:

They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens just off the high road. Tyrion was gathering dead-wood while their horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped to pick up a splintered branch and examined it critically. “Will this do? I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for me.” 

The entire conversation between Jon, Aemon and Chett sets up Tyrion. A lordling, bad with manual labor, but smart and a reader. Yet we know he is no Samwell Tarly in his sensibilities, and the last sentence is dedicated to Chett.

Chett...

The only women Chett had ever known were the whores he’d bought in Mole’s Town. When he’d been younger, the village girls took one look at his face, with its boils and its wen, and turned away sickened. The worst was that slattern Bessa. She’d spread her legs for every boy in Hag’s Mire so he’d figured why not him too? He even spent a morning picking wildflowers when he heard she liked them, but she’d just laughed in his face and told him she’d crawl in a bed with his father’s leeches before she’d crawl in one with him. She stopped laughing when he put his knife in her. That was sweet, the look on her face, so he pulled the knife out and put it in her again. When they caught him down near Sevenstreams, old Lord Walder Frey hadn’t even bothered to come himself to do the judging. He’d sent one of his bastards, that Walder Rivers, and the next thing Chett had known he was walking to the Wall with that foul-smelling black devil Yoren. To pay for his one sweet moment, they took his whole life.

But now he meant to take it back, and Craster’s women too. That twisted old wildling has the right of it. If you want a woman to wife you take her, and none of this giving her flowers so that maybe she don’t notice your bloody boils. Chett didn’t mean to make that mistake again.

Like Tyrion, Chett is rejected by others for his appearance, has a violent father and a lot of resentment that comes out in the shape of murdering “slatterns”. He also mixes it up with the idea of marriage. Like Tyrion, the cold night reminds Chett of the girl in his past.

He could see Bessa’s face floating before him. It wasn’t the knife I wanted to put in you, he wanted to tell her. I picked you flowers, wild roses and tansy and goldencups, it took me all morning. His heart was thumping like a drum, so loud he feared it might wake the camp. Ice caked his beard all around his mouth. Where did that come from, with Bessa? Whenever he’d thought of her before, it had only been to remember the way she’d looked, dying. What was wrong with him?

Chett killed her in a rage, but the truth is layered and haunts him.

But back to Tyrion.

Tyrion VI emphasizes Tyrion’s cleverness as he converses with Bronn, explaining his strategy in the Vale for how to steal Bronn from Cat’s service and make use of his practical talents, and his strategy for their travels in the Mountains of the Moon. Tyrion talks, Bronn listens and agrees to serve him.

The point is, Tyrion is very observant and smart. Reader, trust Tyrion’s judgent and words, is the message. Then we get more personal.

As they light a fire and eat a goat, Tyrion remembers his goaler Mord who treated him cruelly in the sky cells.

(Mord, btw, translates to murder in many a germanic/Scandinvian language.)

“And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold,” Bronn said.

“A Lannister always pays his debts.”

Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse. The gaoler’s eyes had gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold. “I kept the silver,” Tyrion had told him with a crooked smile, “but you were promised the gold, and there it is.” It was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a lifetime of abusing prisoners. “And remember what I said, this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn’s service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I’ll pay you the rest of what I owe you.” With golden dragons spilling out of both hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that.

The image of coins spilling from hands is picked up later.

Tyrion was hoping to lure in the mountain clans, but they take their time showing up, so he tries to be even more conspicuous.

Tyrion chuckled. “Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror.” He began to whistle a tune.

He chooses the “terrible” tune himself. It leads straight to his memory:

“Myrish. ‘The Seasons of My Love.’ Sweet and sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I’ve never been able to put it out of my head.” Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless as truth. “I met her on a night like this,” he heard himself saying. “Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting threats.

Myrish, as in the Myrish lens. The object Lysa sends Catelyn, which has a false bottom hiding the real message in a secret language, a message of murder and conspiracy. A secret language, a foreign language, like Mord.

"A lens is an instrument to help us see."     (AGOT, Catelyn II)

Bright and merciless as truth.

My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed … yet lovely. They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of her, and a story. She was a crofter’s child, orphaned when her father died of fever, on her way to … well, nowhere, really.

Where Tysha went will become a theme. @une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir examines that beautifully here.

But even right here, the tone is ominous, and GRRM goes out of his way to emphasize it with the ellipses.

We get the story of Jaime chasing after the outlaws and Tyrion and Tysha falling into bed at an inn after drinking, eating and talking, and the story of their marriage, and its end.

Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him feel to say it, even after all these years. Perhaps he was just tired. “That was the end of my marriage.” He sat up and stared at the dying fire, blinking at the light.

“He sent the girl away?”

“He did better than that,” Tyrion said. “First he made my brother tell me the truth. The girl was a whore, you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of it. He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid double for a maiden, knowing it would be my first time.

NOTHING about this makes sense, which is ridiculous when you consider we were just hammered over the head with how smart Tyrion is supposed to be.

Since when is Jaime prone to setting up complex schemes? Why would feel the need to push Tyrion to have sex at thirteen, and why would be ever do it this way? Why would be hire him a virgin for his first time? We don’t question it because GRRM has told us not to question the smartiepants. But as we later learn, that was all. not. true. So maybe other things aren’t true, either.

“After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the lesson, Lord Tywin brought my wife in and gave her to his guards. They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how many whores command that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she had so many silvers the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the floor, she …” The smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into darkness. “Lord Tywin had me go last,” he said in a quiet voice. “And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because I was a Lannister, and worth more.”

The parallels to his memory of Mord are striking. Silver and gold, coins spilling from hands, a “price” beyond expectation... and a promise of something very sinister at the next meeting.

After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on stone as Bronn sharpened his sword. “Thirteen or thirty or three, I would have killed the man who did that to me.”

1) Nice how Bronn makes it about Tyrion’s pain. Tysha’s pain does not exist to them. And so the reader is also drawn away from it. Poor Tyrion.

2) Another reference to killing. It foreshadows Tyrion’s murder of Tywin over this very matter, of course, but at the same time...

Tyrion gestured impatiently with the bow. “Tysha. What did you do with her, after my little lesson?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Try harder. Did you have her killed?”

His father pursed his lips. “There was no reason for that, she’d learned her place … and had been well paid for her day’s work, I seem to recall. I suppose the steward sent her on her way. I never thought to inquire.”

“On her way where?”

“Wherever whores go.”

Tyrion’s finger clenched.  (ASOS, Tyrion XI)

I don’t think it can be emphasized enough that this happens right after he murders Shae. Shae the whore.

“Did you ever like it?” He cupped her cheek, remembering all the times he had done this before. All the times he’d slid his hands around her waist, squeezed her small firm breasts, stroked her short dark hair, touched her lips, her cheeks, her ears. All the times he had opened her with a finger to probe her secret sweetness and make her moan. “Did you ever like my touch?”

“More than anything,” she said, “my giant of Lannister.”

That was the worst thing you could have said, sweetling.

Tyrion slid a hand under his father’s chain, and twisted. The links tightened, digging into her neck. “For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm,” he said. He gave cold hands another twist as the warm ones beat away his tears.

And just before he asks him about Tysha, Tywin assures him he was meant to be sent to the Wall. Whether or not that’s a lie, we’re looking at another Chett parallel. Murdering a “slattern”, facing life at the Wall.

We close Tyrion’s memory of Tysha:

Tyrion swung around to face him. “You may get that chance one day.  Remember what I told you. A Lannister always pays his debts.” He yawned. “I think I will try and sleep. Wake me if we’re about to die.”

He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss …

Like Chett, his thoughts return to the girl. He turns into the goaler, Mord, his rage comes through, his capability of great violence. In ASOS, his lashing out at Tywin is preceeded by directing his violence toward the “whore” who allegedly betrayed him. Which is preceeded by a truth about Tysha.

“Thank you?” Tyrion’s voice was choked. “He gave her to his guards. A barracks full of guards. He made me … watch.” Aye, and more than watch. I took her too … my wife …

“I never knew he would do that. You must believe me.”

“Oh, must I?” Tyrion snarled. “Why should I believe you about anything, ever? She was my wife!”

“Tyrion—”

He hit him. It was a slap, backhanded, but he put all his strength into it, all his fear, all his rage, all his pain. Jaime was squatting, unbalanced. The blow sent him tumbling backward to the floor. “I … I suppose I earned that.”

“Oh, you’ve earned more than that, Jaime. You and my sweet sister and our loving father, yes, I can’t begin to tell you what you’ve earned. But you’ll have it, that I swear to you. A Lannister always pays his debts.” Tyrion waddled away, almost stumbling over the turnkey again in his haste. Before he had gone a dozen yards, he bumped up against an iron gate that closed the passage. Oh, gods. It was all he could do not to scream.

(ASOS, Tyrion XI)

The turnkey here is interesting. Once again, Tysha’s memory is associated with a cell and the presence of a turnkey. In his anguished memory, Tyrion almost stumbles over him. The last turnkey was Mord.

So, just looking at Tysha’s first mention, there are so many ominous connections. Murder murder murder.

The chapter ends with Tyrion meeting and “hiring” the mountain clans. How? To avenge himself on Lysa Arryn, he promises them the entire Vale. Really driving home that “a Lannister pays his debts” is all about disproportionate retribution.

A few chapter later, to create some distance to this dark tale, Tyrion meets Shae and sets up to re-create his entire Tysha trauma. The two are intertwined, so why should their ends not be?

That’s fodder for a different post, though.

[liferiz]

The Value of Hope for the Young by Olivia Franz D. Esguerra - P3B

The life of Dr. Jose Rizal was an indeed inspiring story. It was a story of a very intelligent and talented Filipino, who is willing to sacrifice his whole life just to attain freedom and peace for his family, and own nation. While engaging myself in the modules in the course- LIFERIZ, I am able to get to know him more. It might not be all about him, but those learnings and knowledge I learned, are enough to say that he deserves to be what he has been known today. And that is the National Hero of the Filipinos. 

His life was truly remarkable and bright. The hero’s experiences molded him to what God purposely do to him. Jose Rizal tells us the value of certain things which is important for the success of his life. There are so many lessons that we can learn from his life and work. His bravery and love for the country convey us to the belief that there is always hope, which is very important in our life, without it, means loss of our faith within us. 

There are still many Filipino who are still confused about why Dr. Jose Rizal became a national hero. Some may consider a hero when they gave their life and died fighting in combat. But looking back, on the previous modules, I remembered that one of the reasons why he is the national hero was that he choose to use his knowledge in searching for reform rather than resorting to violence. Little did these people know how great Dr. Jose Rizal fought against Spaniards during that time. He fought, not with any deadly war weapons, but rather using his pen and paper. He fought not in combat during that time but by writing novels and publishing newspapers. All of his writings were all about how Spain governed our country.  His writings made Filipinos realize that this is our country and we have the right to have freedom. It served as enlightenment during that time that give Filipinos hope. Hope that regain the hidden strength inside each every Filipino during the revolution. Rizal proved that a pen is more powerful than a sword, especially in times of war. His expertise in writing enables him to persuade his whole fellowmen to attain justice, thus destroying a cartel. For words flies wherever and ignite every man’s feelings. Just like a saying says, “word is powerful, there comes positive and negative in it”, it could heal one’s heart but also hurt another like a double-edged sword. Rizal has a God-fearing heart so he has ignited change and peace and this means we Filipinos should have a good conscience and a God-fearing heart to impose positive changes. 

Jose Rizal’s poem entitled “To the Filipino Youth” addressed the poem only for the youths of his time or the generation after them but for all Filipino youths of the past, present, and future. He wants to remind our younger generation and future leaders that they are the future of the motherland. These days, Filipino youths seem not to live up to what Rizal wanted them to be. Regardless, the youths of today are still the future of the motherland but, not the ideal youths that Rizal had hoped for.

References:

Eruminate - Filipino youth - ideal and ordeal. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://sites.google.com/view/eruminate/ideas/filipino-youth-ideal-and-ordeal

Brain Injury Services. (2019, November 14). Choose wisely: How our words impact others. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://braininjurysvcs.org/choose-wisely-how-our-words-impact-others/

[vicecityhq]

██████████████]99% loading…suspect into the apd database…

WITNESS(ES) SAY HE REMINDS THEM OF: glasses, academia, coffee shops . with a slight resemblance to JEON JUNGKOOK of/the BTS.

CLICK BELOW TO VIEW ENTIRE FILE.

FULL FILE:

last name, first name: lee, david alias: electro realm of birth(if earth, nationality): earth age: 23 date of birth: september 1, 1997 gender: cis-gender male preferred pronouns: he/him, they/them species: cyborg level 1, civilian sexual orientation: questioning

VISUAL FILE:

skin color: light tanned eye color: dark brown, blue tint when using eye enhancemets scars: none reported piercings: both ears tattoos: a simple black star on left wrist hair color: black, dyed a variety of colors at times abnormalities: none reported horns/ wings/ etc: none transformed form: none

PERSONAL FILE:

powers & abilities: enhanced vision, lens screen, vital monitor and data collection, temperature scanning, night vision, light adjustment vision, app synchronization (photo, video recording, downloading) traits: determined, aloof

BACKGROUND CHECK:

date of birth: september 1, 1997

date of death: -

crime record: a clean record

BACKGROUND/BIOGRAPHY:

david was the 2nd born in his family, to a career solider and a

struggling

opera singer. his sister was 1st and her words upon seeing him as a baby was “i’m cuter.”at times he felt neglected given that his sister was getting more attention that him, she was the golden child while he was …david, quiet most of the time but had moments of intense energy. his parents enrolled him a variety of sports which kept him in check. he excelled in martial arts (taekwondo and kumdo) and basketball which was used as leverage to keep in ballet. that was something his mother wanted for both of her children, though he never got a reason why. near the end of elementary school his parent’s divorced and his mother remarried a “rich man”. though he was kind he was very distant to him. his sister however took a liling to increases social status she had.

it was during middle school did david and his sister start to grow apart. sneaking out, skipping class, among other things became his sister’s focus. he had an idea of some things but didn’t speak on them since it would lead to an argument. “boring and straight laced” was what she called him, he and to edge to him. the young boy’s concern was to make in on a national team, it didn’t matter the sport. david used his studies as a shield against the chaos around him, not just at home and school, but the city in general. sometimes it felt like a comic with how crime was almost normalized be it in the background or directly involving you. he kept his circle small and hid most information about himself, his image had to be pure for the scouts and his future career.

given the reputation of his father, david knew military enlistment was the next step college or not. now being in the army was a double edge sword. there wasn’t this pressure to perform like say the marines but he was held to a higher standard. sometimes he was afforded privildges like extra time but also more severe punishments for making the same mistake as others. just going for 2 years wasn’t enough, he was expected to stay for 3. not for his own goals or wants but that of his father. it was during this time did david see that he had lived a rather comfortable life compared to others in his unit, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any issues. the constant question on his mind was “where do i belong?”.  well the military wasn’t the answer, his discharge date couldn’t come soon enough and when it came, he was already in another system. college.

a bit older and wiser, david could fully focus on his studies (again) something he was happy about and rebuild some parts of his past that he couldn’t while serving. while he is aware his parents expect to major in something like medicine or law, he has no interest in either. his duties to his family and country are complete. it’s for david to live for himself. during his 1st year of college his sister got married much to the joy of his parents. his brother-in-law was “well put together” despite being a little off in his manners. it wasn’t until a few months later did his sister reveal she married a vampire along with hints of her planning to become one. their step-dad was willing to overlook all of his since it met more access to money and power however their mom had reservations. knowing her relationship was rocky with her daughter, she asked david to look after her.

this was 1 of the few times in his life he went against his parents wishes. david had a real chance to be a top athlete and having a gang affiliation wouldn’t help. even if he did have access to money and in some ways protection it was too big of a risk. his sister made her choice to get and stay involved, if she did need help he would but only from her directly. not going through with it put distance between the young man and his mom. maybe it was pressure of college, stress, or still trying to answer the question but david had a chance to “be better” and secretly got an enhancement on his eyes. this afforded him the ability to study in any lighting and pick up on details he would other wise miss. his grade improved greatly but the bigger reward was that his physical fitness was fine tuned to the point he could stay at his peak. with his enhancement he could monitor his calorie intake and vitals, adjust his work out plan so his whole body performing at it’s maximum. this offered him some stability as he had something to thrive for and could take his mind off of the less appealing parts of his life.

INTERVIEW QUESTION (PARA SAMPLE): “JUST RUN US THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT”. - OFFICER

he was nervous looking at the “window” of the home unsure if there was others on the other side. running his hand through his hair was a ploy to cover his eye and scan for temperature, a rather unused feature of his eyes. he sighed out of relief not “seeing” anyone though he knew to not let his guard down. again the officer repeated their statement. this time he looked at them directly hands under the table quietly toying with the zipper of his jacket, “i was going home from the library but stopped at the store for a drink.” that was true, it was all true. though now he wished he just went straight home. “but you didn’t see the fight?” the officer raised a brow not totally convinced. “no, i wasn’t focused on that. i heard people yelling but didn’t look that’s how you get jumped. it wasn’t my business so i kept going,” he answered. “uh…david, you’re in school right? what do you want to be?” this sad attempt to relate to him. “that’s really irrelevant to why i’m here, shouldn’t you be talking to them or the store owner? i don’t know why i’m here, when i didn’t do anything.” his words had a hint of annoyance, he wasn’t a child. “you are a witness, maybe not a good one but still one regardless. even if your details are…missing. it’s enough with common sense to help confirm the series of events.” the officer replied, “you may go.” he was didn’t need to be told twice with his bag already on his shoulder and made his way out of the station.

[chibimyumi]

The Circus Arc

Last week somebody asked me what my favourite manga arc is, and without a second of hesitation I answered 🎪. As I have already publically declared my love, it is only natural for me to write a love letter to the Circus Arc.

Why do I consider the Circus Arc the best still after more than a decade?

I. The true story

First of all, the Circus Arc is in my opinion the first arc wherein we truly get to meet the characters, as well as the series itself.

A protagonist who is dispensable in their own story is not a true protagonist. As touched upon in this post, before the Circus Arc O!Ciel was actually little more than a plot device to show off Sebastian’s many assets. “The Watchdog has a case because the Queen said so, Sebastian solves it.” “The Watchdog was kidnapped because Yana TOLD us he made life for the mafia a bit hard, so Sebastian saves him.” When Sebas said to his master “you truly have no other talent except for getting yourself abducted,” it sure rang very true until that point. It wasn’t as much a story of O!Ciel’s revenge as it was Sebas saving the day because: demon powers.

In the Circus Arc however, we truly got an insight on why this little boy could indeed have made life for the mafia hard, and why after two years the Queen still hasn’t fired him. As discussed in the post mentioned before, almost as a compensation for his prior starfishhood, O!Ciel had insisted on doing the investigation himself, even at the cost of his own health. We saw him actively cooking up strategies as well as dealing with any situation as they were met. O!Ciel really displayed a commendable aptness at playing the cards he has been dealt in the Circus Arc. In contrast, while Sebas did make many accomplishments, all his actions were the undertaken because of O!Ciel’s orders. In the Circus Arc we truly got to see how the boy is the chess player, and demon the black knight.

II. Our protagonists - into the core

The Circus Arc is likewise the arc wherein we actually get to meet our two main characters outside their token function.

We have seen Sebastian’s establishment as “the pawn that can move across the entire chessboard in one single move”. But without O!Ciel’s input or any price that the master would have to pay, Sebastian is easily just an ‘instant-win card’, an ironic “deus” ex machina, if you will.

As discussed in this post and this post, in the Jack the Ripper Arc Sebastian was quite dissatisfied with his master and therefore decided to teach his master a lesson at the cost of more innocent lives. However nasty, it had been O!Ciel who ordered for a subpar move, and technically the pawn “did nothing wrong.”

In the Circus Arc O!Ciel became meticulous about decisions regarding his chess piece. Principally there was nothing wrong with the order O!Ciel had given his butler about releasing the snakes before the first stringers would return, and Sebas who was bound to perfect completion of any order also didn’t do anything wrong, technically. However, it had already been established that as long as Sebas sees the interest himself he would find any loophole in orders to still benefit his master in one way or another. As it is, considering how Sebas did decide to release the poisonous snakes while his master was in the danger zone, we are left with a chilling conclusion that Sebas simply ‘did not see the interest’ of shielding O!Ciel from danger. For the first time we truly learn the extent of Sebastian’s nondiscriminatory nastiness; how indeed all humans are the same to him. For the first time we truly understand that O!Ciel is paying with much more than his soul for Sebastian’s services. This demon is a double-edged sword, but much more than swinging outwards, this sword has a tendency to swing inwards the moment the wielder allows for any opening.

Previously discussed in this post, we also see the full extent of Sebastian’s manipulativeness and toxicity in the Circus Arc. Sure, in other arcs Sebas is also manipulative, but all of those actions could still be categorised under “merciless honesty”. In the Circus Arc however, O!Ciel objectively did nothing wrong to be triggered and exhausted from the Circus shenanigans, and yet Sebas was unnecessarily re-triggering and victim shaming his master for some extra “flavouring”. If there had been any doubt whether Sebas is bad for O!Ciel, then surely the Circus Arc put all doubts to rest.

For the first time in the manga we also see a genuine obstacle for Sebastian that is for not also the final hurdle to overcome, like in the Ripper, Curry, Campania or any other arc really. In the Manor Murder and Werewolf Arc there were of course Earl Grey and Wolfram respectively, but in those cases Sebas mostly tried to outrun the obstacles. In the Circus Arc however, William is likewise a supernatural being, and Sebas knew very well that he can’t just neutralise William without causing more trouble than good. Hence we saw how Sebas tried to negotiate with William, and we learned that even Sebastian cannot just avoid hurdles. Negotiating with William did not work of course, so the story forced Sebas to be creative. It truly was great to see Sebas use his brain rather than demon-muscles to overcome a problem for a change.

While getting “creative”, Sebas displayed his aptitude for preying on humans in our weakest of moments. As explained in this characterisation of Sebastian, Sebastian is not terrifying because he has super powers, but because he understands human weaknesses like no other and uses our own weaknesses against us. Click here for an analysis of Sebas’ cross-media manipulation of Beast.

In this same arc we likewise truly understand the looming threat O!Ciel is dealing with, an explicit revelation of the monster Sebastian is. This scene from underneath is the most explicit moment telling us that Sebas is not just dwelling on Earth comfortably; he is holding out under a cover. This scene almost served as an alarming reminder to us: “beware, the demon can snap”.

What about O!Ciel? In our boy we saw his tremendous dedication to his job. Except for purposes directly related to the investigation, never once did he order Sebastian to make life easier for him. He never made Sebas secure food for him or do any of the chores for him. Surely Earl Phantomhive would consider himself above wrestling for food or scrub some floors, and yet he was willing to just take on any task without complaining. In no other arc do we see just how effective O!Ciel is as the Watchdog exactly because he is so versatile both in playing the ‘cute little boy’ card as well as the ‘feared Watchdog’ card.

Doll was an exceptionally well chosen “obstacle” for O!Ciel (more about her later). When Doll briefly wondered about why a peasant boy like Smile would speak in flawless RP, we saw O!Ciel’s ability of thinking on his feet, giving a very logical explanation of: “I served in a Lord’s household where I learned to speak proper.” When Doll caught him red handed when he sneaked into Snake’s tent O!Ciel also immediately pulled the “I didn’t steal anything!” card, skillfully tying it into his previous story as ‘the page boy who was fired for stealing’. We learned that the Watchdog really is willing to carry out his job through any means necessary, not just ‘the cool and edgy means’.

One of the best ways to get to learn a person is judging from their gut reactions. When O!Ciel was triggered in the final showdown he no longer had any energy to put on a strong front or think about matters rationally. He was in emotional pain and his gut reaction was to want that pain gone.

Even Sebastian who would not directly benefit from the case being completed advised his master against burning down everything. Even with the Queen’s commission as leverage however, the boy still yelled to have everything reduced to ashes. In this moment we also understood just how traumatising everything was to O!Ciel personally. This trauma response didn’t come from nowhere; everything that happened up until that point had been a logical build-up towards this inevitable result.

III. The Side Characters

A story cannot be told with just the main characters; you need to care about the interactions they have with others too. In my opinion the Circus Arc has delivered the most memorable side characters that linger with us even after death. In particular Joker and Doll.

Joker is a very fun, charismatic character as well as a person with many different sides. He is lawfully inexcusable, but we cannot help but sympathise, or at least understand how he too is a victim compelled into evil. Rationally we reject Joker’s actions, but partially it is because we have the luxury to do so. “Is this self defense? Would we, or how would we have done anything differently had we been in his exact shoes?” is a question worth considering.

Doll too; we see a child who lived a relatively happy life in the recent past. In the anime they made it explicit that Doll was complicit in all the kidnappings of the children, but in the manga it is more ambiguous whether Doll is fully aware of Kelvin’s agenda. This gives the effect that with the revelation of Joker always having taken most of the bullets, we understand that the torment Joker has been suffering was the price he paid to buy his siblings a more-or-less normal life. If O!Ciel sold his soul to the devil in the literate sense, Joker did so in the figurative sense in exchange for his family’s happiness.

IV. The Antagonists?

We do not spend too much time with Baron Kelvin, and he is a relatively simple character. But that is not bad as long as the villain’s threat reaches us. The horrors of Kelvin have always been quite clear; when children are harmed it triggers a gut reaction of disgust in most viewers. But the kidnapped children were not the functional victims in this story, it is the first stringers with Joker in the centre.

Kelvin has made a bunch of crippled children fully dependent on him, and used their own dependency as a currency to satisfy his own greed. Never once did he allow these children to forget how he could easily return them to the gutter from where he collected them. The kidnapped children were just numbers in the newspaper, but the first stringers are characters we spent time with. We have seen their suffering and we know they are just trying to get by. So it is all the more heartbreaking that children who merely wanted their basic human rights were turned into the antagonists that had to be exterminated. In the showdown between Joker vs Watchdog, the dynamic is shifted from “heroes vs child-kidnapping villains” to “villain-protagonists vs anti-villains”.

The Circus Arc is very special in how the villain impacts the readers, because the people affected matter to us. In the earliest arcs we didn’t REALLY care about O!Ciel, but he was the main person who suffered from the villains. With Sebastian around however, we don’t really worry. In the Ripper, Mansion, Campania and Potter Arc the main victims are characters we don’t spend any time with, so emotionally we don’t really care whether “evil gets vanquished”. In the Werewolf Arc we do have Sieglinde and Wolfram, and it is heartbreaking to see Sieglinde discovering that all her happiness had been a big lie and that to even her own mother she was nothing but a tool. But in the very least she did grow up happily, she survived and has a fresh chance to start a new life, and the person closest to her (Wolfram) is still with her.

For the first stringers however... all had been meaningless, all is finite.

As expertly described by Sebas in the musical adaptation of the Circus Arc, humans are pathetic because we are merely “accumulating sins in the version of hell [we] have chosen to live.”

V. From foil to team members

The servants at the Phantomhive manor were originally just designed to be foil for Sebas to demonstrate his awesome butler skills. I don’t know whether they were liked at first, but for one I do know that many found them quite annoying or pointless too.

The Circus Arc is the first time we see the significance of the Phantomhive servants, that they’re not just there waiting to be fed by O!Ciel because... he’s a philanthropist of some sort? Yana had made some questionable decisions at first, and she clearly regretted those ‘choices’. I personally see the Circus Arc as her first demonstration of her skills as story writer, and her public proclamation of: “this is Kuroshitsuji’s potential!”

Had the entire series started with the Circus Arc, then surely the animated series would have gotten a much higher budget and a better time-slot for airing.

VI. Humour

The humour in the Circus Arc is also great, but nothing was shoehorned in there for the sake of laughs, neither do these moments disturb the tone of the story.

Everything was funny because they were the inevitable consequences of putting these people together. William had been established as a demon-racist plank, and when made to cooperate with a demon, of course he would say: “my hands will rot”. When called “four-eyes”, of course he would say: “it’s SUIT”.

Many of the comedic moments are centred around our protagonists’ inconveniences, but nobody is inconveniencing them for the sake of inconveniencing them. When Sebastian was not trying to leave the vicinity William mostly let him at peace. O!Ciel for example also couldn’t do many things simply because Doll was clinging to him. But she did not know what was at stake and her actions were well grounded in her immense desire to make new friends. “You are young, I am young. You lost an eye, I lost an eye. Let’s be FRIENDS!”

This is in stark contrast with how ‘funny inconveniences’ were staged before using Lizzie or Grell for example. Lizzie was a drag to O!Ciel because... she’s a girl who wanted everything to go HER way... and Grell was a drag to Sebas because she... is a girl who wanted everything to go HER way.

VII. Ending

The ending of the Circus Arc also carried a bitter-sweet tone that most other arcs do not present. The thematic of “demons dwell in the human nature of stepping on others” is perfectly addressed in the Circus Arc, but it does not end with: “so don’t be evil!”. The Circus Arc simply highlights the issue and reminds us that ‘stepping on others’ does not exist in a vacuum.

Had the objective of the series not been established as “boy who swore on revenge”, and instead be: "rethinking evil”, then the Circus Arc alone would have told the story sufficiently.

The finale of the Circus Arc resonates with its audience because the core principle on which Kuroshitsuji is built is a narrative humankind has always wanted to externalise, but without success: “demons are only as evil as humans allow their own evil to show”.

[tsaritsa]

tagged by the beautiful and sexy and successful @fullmetalscullyy + @megthemighty. ty babes ur both fergalicious mwah how many works do you have on ao3? 40

what’s your total ao3 word count?  275,381 words

what are your top five fics by kudos?

may i feel, said he

for the serpent has died and i’m leaning by your side

enthrallment

against the run of play

a strange fate with wandering limbs

i’m really proud of each of these pieces for different reasons. mifsh is a love letter to mar and to the fandom generally; ftshdailbys (what a fucking acronym lmao) was one of the first pieces i did with the intention of hitting a specific word count; enthrallment is a reminder to myself that pain does eventually pass (and that riza/bradley is sexy af); atrop definitely helped develop my love for multimedia fics and playing around with how we show information to the reader; and asfwwl was as much a study of riza as the people around her

do you reply to comments, why or why not? absolutely — although i tend to wait for updates to reply to the previous chapters if it’s an ongoing piece. i’m always stunned by the comments i get and i treasure each and every one of them. ty for giving me a little joy in my daily life

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? i guess it depends on ur perspective. a strange fate is essentially dead dove on arrival — and bellyache deals with some unsavoury themes as well

what’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? prolly that v saccharine valentines day fic. personally it makes me cringe a little now, but if that’s what floats ur boat, then go for it

do you write crossovers? if so, what’s the craziest one you’ve ever written? specific aus are as close as i’ve gotten - the crown!au would be the best fit. the concept of doing a marvel-esque endgame showdown has never really vibed with me; especially for the fma universe, which is incredibly niche and unique in a variety of ways

have you ever received hate on a fic? hahahahahah remember the time when ppl were bitching about mifsh on here bc it was ‘everywhere’ and we were ‘no better than rcyeddies’ with the power imbalance and it was a ‘glorified self-insert fic’ and we were deviants for sharing it and had made the royai fandom ‘cheap’ and ‘an awful place to be’ bc they were so much more than fucking?

yeah me neither lol. i’d also like to state that i’m not bitter about this anymore — but it really did feel awful to read those things, and for ppl to judge us and the substance of the story without ever bothering to talk to us before doing so. i’d like to think the fandom is a kinder space now, where we can just. move on if we don’t enjoy something, instead of sniping about it publicly and deliberately trying to make ppl feel bad

and if u were one of those ppl who were mean: either die mad and jealous lmao OR write something better and more engaging if u want ppl to shut up about may i feel. that’s literally all u have to do 🤷

do you write smut? if so, what kind? i write sexy smut. sometimes it’s an au where they’re in a ballet company. sometimes they’re at university. sometimes i forget to finish them in a timely fashion

have you ever had a fic stolen? not lifted verbatim. but there have been a few times where — and it’s not just my gut feeling, others have brought it to my attention — ideas and phrases align a little too neatly for me to brush it off as mere coincidence. at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter

have you ever had a fic translated? i’ve been very lucky to have a few translated: a few in spanish, russian, and mandarin as well, if memory serves me right

have you ever co-written a fic before? y’all know i have. may i feel and starstruck are the published ones, but maybe more will surface. we’ll see

what’s your all-time favourite ship? royai for sure. they just tickle a very specific part of my brain

what’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? won’t say i can’t finish any of them bc there’s always the chance i will — just a matter of sitting down and figuring out what needs to happen

what are your writing strengths? this made me pause for a bit bc in truth i’m not terribly sure. i’d like to think my dialogue is strong — not only in terms of characterisation, but in the ability to move the plot forward without having to simply tell the reader what is going on. y’all know i love making things sound pretty as well — assonance my beloved

what are your writing weaknesses? it’s a double-edged sword. as much as i love writing to a particular aesthetic, that definitely hinders me too when i get too involved with the details rather than examining my writing from a birds-eye perspective. i also know i struggle with keeping things simple — from explaining something as just. as it is as well as bigger issues like “let me just tell y’all about the history of the economy of resembool from the years 1872-1911 even though this was meant to be a throwaway sentence″

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? i think it can add a ton of depth to a scene — it’s more a case of ensuring that the context around the dialogue can help the reader infer meanings without feeling so unsure they want to go search the translation. for the most part in may i feel, i think readers have been able to understand without too much hassle when a character uses spanish (but also we all know enough rudimentary spanish that it’s not utterly foreign). using a non-latin written language like mandarin or thai would definitely take me out of the fic more — but again, it’s all in how u apply it 

what was the first fandom you wrote for? fruits basket! i never published it tho

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written? currently it’s my piece that will be published for this years fma big bang. i’m really excited to share more about it next month (and publish it on october 3rd!!)

tagging @firewoodfigs, @royai, and @bringingglory if y’all haven’t already gotten around to it

[lorei-writes]

The Dragon of Yss: Extra!

Bloopers, Outtakes, some HC

Masamune x MC (Mizusaki Mai)

Fantasy AU

Summary: He wanted Mai to remain herself - and for that very reason, he promised to protect her, at any cost. Little did he know, he may need somebody to save him as well.

All parts:  Part 1 - Sands of Estarra ,  Part 2 - Findings , Part 3 - “ I knew you’d come.” , Part 4 - Reborn , Part 5 - Eevi , Part 6 - Closer , Part 7 - Way to Varshka , Part 8 - The Gods We Trust , Part 9 - Flowers that Bloom in Adversity ,  Part 10 - Singing Bird , Part 11 - Vibrant Smoke ,  Part 12 - Hidden in Plain Sight , Part 13 - Heritage , Part 14 - Isger , Part 15 - Mad Possibility , Part 16 - Unraveling , Part 17 - Promises Sealed in Snow , Part 18 - Never Unfamiliar, Part 19 - White Noise , Epilogue: Threads

So, the main part of the story may be over... But it did not stop my brain from coming up with few little things here and there. As such, allow me to share those here as well.

// Dialogue shortly following the ending of the series; between Iroha and Masamune

// General post-chapter 19 notes/HC + explanations

“What do you mean you were turned into a dragon?! I thought you said you’ve lied to me only once in my life and that this was the lie!”

“Of course not. It was when you were seven and refused to go to sleep without having cake, so I told you that the neighbours’ dog was hungry and ate it.”

(Pause)

“Are you for real?”

“Dire situations call for appropriate measures.” 

“I swear to skies, dad...” 

The Plague of Yss

Iroha - the heiress of the Date clan

I feel it may be somewhat unclear, yet I decided against repeating it in the story itself. As was stated, Mitsunari had some hypothesis to test and needed at least a single person who survived long enough into the plague OR recovered from it.

The plague of Yss was in fact more of a double-edged sword, perhaps it could be even called a ritual performed by Isgerians. Yssians are their descendants and, as you probably already know, Masamune turned into the dragon as the result of this plague.

Long story short: Masamune is the survivor of the plague, the one thing Mitsunari needed. This is also why they came to live in Varshka, the place being one of two major cities presented in the story. (Why Varshka and not Vyrminia? University in Vyrminia would still be partially destroyed. As was stated by Mila, despite being almost the same in most regards, the atmosphere is the major thing setting those two apart. +Take note that Ieyasu did work there shortly before being forced to move to Vyrminia and recorded a rapid increase of cases of said plague there).

As was implied several times in the story, magical abilities or lack thereof may influence one’s life to a great extent - from their social status to rendering them a desirable product on the black market. 

Allow me to write a short list (least to most desirable) of abilities.

Giftless.

Healer.

Connector (either of two types).

Transmuter. 

(As for why this order is like so: talk between Oxa and Masamune in regards to giftless and healers; fact that the only transmuter in the story is Alleyah/Manya and it’s specifically mentioned that this ability is extremely rare and desirable to the point of people being bred to acquire it in the offspring. Yes - yikes; the only remaining and most common class are, of course, connectors, hence its placement).

Lastly, before I move to the point, please let me remind you: abilities are inherited. It is not completely random.

How does it all tie up into Iroha’s situation?

The history repeats itself. Iroha is hence more desirable heir than any of her cousins. If she so chooses - she will become the heiress of the Date clan. However, as it was already implied in the story: it is a choice. Masamune tells her he will handle any business with his family if she wishes to take a different path.

Masamune is giftless, which, aside from having only one eye, makes him a very poor candidate for a heir. As such, it was his younger brother who was granted the role - whichever type of magic he possessed, it was better than no magic and the risk of passing this “affliction” onto the next head of the family.

However, just as magic is passed, so is lack of it. Even if it did not activate in his generation, Kojirou’s children are born giftless. (Given the context, despite the other parent possessing some sort of ability).

Meanwhile, Masamune’s daughter, Iroha, was born a connector, having inherited the ability from her mother.

Her trip to Mitsuhide’s estate is related to that - there are little other reliable ways for her to be taught about diplomacy. 

On warlords and their relationships

This may cause a question to appear: how did the warlords even end up being connected? Well... Simply as that, they were all sons from rather prominent households and had most likely met each other during diplomacy trips of their parents. Them either becoming heads of said families or not - that comes into play later on in their life. Their relationships survived. 

It also means that the reason why Ieyasu was able to become a physician is because he was a healer and hence, not the best candidate. Also - Masamune could travel the world in search of Mai because... He didn’t have any political duties to attend to.

As for Mitsunari and Hideyoshi - it’s not explained nor implied how they got where they are. However, it’s possible to adapt canon for the sake of that.

Portal magic and its many faces

As it was stated in the story, the main thing setting Arynthian people from other connectors is that - if one of them is born a connector - their magic manifests somewhat differently. It’s ruled by different limitations.

As such, Mai’s portal magic is different from that of Kyubei. (As it was shown, she can see colorful lines and can follow them basically anywhere. Kyubei, meanwhile, has to be able to see the place he is supposed to open the portal to - or to be able to visualise it well, as was pointed out when Mai passed through a portal point).

Why am I bringing it up? Because Iroha’s magic is a bit different too. It has less limitations that Kyubei’s ability, yet it isn’t as powerful as Mai’s.

This also explains why “Arynthinas” are so rare - the ability degenerates fast. It’s more of an error than actual ability, so to say.

Kenshin & the timeskip 

What was he even doing then? How long was it?

Well. Kenshin has a very fuzzy memory of last 20-ish years of his life in the form of the dragon. As was previously mentioned, it happens so when the primal desires take over human mind - when smelling blood or... Well, or what? It was mentioned he was hungry.

Yes. He was starving himself for the entire duration of the timeskip. Why? Because then the flammable substance in his stomach self-ignited and caused him to combust. In a way, he committed an act of self-burning...

And flames of the dragon were the only thing which could turn him back. So they did. 

// Bullet-points (not written in the story, may not be written, but overall, you can assume those are canon)

Iroha was born 12 months after her parents reunited. When Mai got pregnant, it was a surprise for all parties involved. However, they chose to continue the pregnancy. 

Mai became proficient in portal magic mostly because Iroha’s powers would activate at random when she was still little. A toddler stuck between the worlds doesn’t make for a happy toddler.

On that note, Masamune could be hardly left home alone with her. Hardly, as he eventually developed fast enough reflexes to pull her out of a portal right as she was starting to pass through it. It later became a joke that they needed to keep her on a leash for few months - which is not completely incorrect. 

Developing the cure involved taking plenty of samples. In other words: RiP Masamune’s veins, he would curse like a sailor whenever he had to have his blood drawn.

To follow down this path: the preventive medicine involved having your skin cut and then it being injected. Iroha was very young when it happened and so, she has a scar on her arm from that. 

Shortly after that, they moved back to Yss. Masamune might have not been the heir, but family standing did make some matters easier to achieve for him. As such, he’s a bit of a local leader in his community, I would say, dealing mostly with local politics and management. 

They were relieved when it turned out their son, Tadamune, was giftless. 

Iroha will never live down what happened at the apple tree.

During winter, the frostbite on Mai’s hands makes itself known again. Her skin cracks and scabs start to form - and each year, Masamune takes it onto himself to tend to them. He is more than aware that she got it while he was still turned into the dragon.

Manya continued to serve under Mitsuhide. However, she hardly uses her power anymore. She grew particularly close with Kyubei, although they’re still working on the terminology. Or perhpas there is no reason for it?They’re not sure themselves; Call them very close friends.

Mitsuhide does not have a chid or a partner. He doesn’t seem to mind, however, his “niece” having always been a handful to manage. He made sure to tell everybody about the apple tree. All of his stories contradict each other. 

Time almost stopped for Kenshin when he was still a dragon. In other words, he’s the oldest in actual years of life, but in terms of physical form? He’s younger than Masamune or any other warlord. This lands him in a rather peculiar spot of... Well, an adult face, although in his case, it’s just another variety of VERY severe baby face. 

// outtakes 

-- this was a very early attempt at writing the smut scene. Written several months prior to actually getting to this point in the story.

The room was cozy and simple, the inventory of it consisting of  warm chimney stretching from below the floor and up through the ceiling, a small table, with a bronze basin on top of it, and a bed, just barely big enough to fit two people comfortably. They stepped inside, the white sheets seemingly calling them, inviting them to come closer. Mai sank onto the mattress first, her legs still remaining on the floor. She kicked her boots off and, this time, lay down properly.

„ We're switching today,” she said, opening her arms for Masamune. He obliged, soon nuzzling into the crook of her neck. Resting in silent contentment, he slung his arm over her waist, pulling her even closer. She stroked his hair tenderly, basking in the warmth exchanged between their bodies. Ever since she was kidnapped, she wanted to just hold him, knowing he'd push himself with no regard for his own well-being.

„ You shouldn't have done that, you know...” she hummed. „ What were you even thinking, it was so risky...”

„ I screwed up in the market, didn't I?” he sighed. „ I'm sorry I didn't keep my word then.”

„ You idiot, you missed the point entirely. I can... If... If that's what I have to do to survive, I will accept it. But I don't want to lose you,” her voice hitched. Masamune propped himself on his elbow, cupping her cheeks with his free hand.

„ I'm sorry. But I couldn't stand having you whisked away again too.”

As if guided by pure instinct, she pulled him into a kiss. His lips pressed against hers more delicately than usually. She opened her mouth, needing to taste him, over and over again. His familiar scent enveloped her, his fingers tracing the outline of her jaw – and for a moment she could have sworn that the time stopped, that the entire universe was reduced just to that single small room. Yet, they had to part eventually, their lungs begging for air. To her surprise, Masamune returned to his previous spot, his hair tickling her chin.

„ I missed you so much, Mai,” he murmured against her skin. His lips brushed her neck once, twice, and so many more, each and every time descending slightly, until he reached the very tip of her collarbone. His hand waited at the hemline of her shirt.

„ But you should rest...” she trailed off.

„ I'm fine. You know the question was whether you want it or not.”

Hadn't she known the answer already? Yet, the reason still fought within her, reminding her of both her and his fatigue... But... Maybe? Maybe just a little... Maybe just a little more.

„ I do,” she uttered finally.

-- At first I considered Mitsuhide and Manya becoming and endgame ship. I ended up deciding against it. However, a line of dialogue stayed. I debated using it for another pair, but it didn’t happen either. 

A chilly gust of wind slipped through the tiny creaks around the window. His teeth pulled lightly on the cord keeping her neckline closed, the knot soon unraveling. His hand snuck under her shirt, travelling up so very slowly, as if he wanted to renew the map of her body in his mind. She shivered under his touch, anticipation growing deep within her. His lips returned to her neck, as he cupped her breast from below, massaging it lightly. Switching between the left one and the right one, his fingers caressed them unhurriedly. Masamune pulled onto the top of her shirt, the fabric dispersing over the cord just slightly, exposing her shoulders. Cold air inviting itself into the room again, he kissed the newly freed skin. He  propped himself on his elbow and looked down at her, her nipples peaking through her clothing.

„ Masamune...” she whined a bit, as if to rush him. He chuckled in response, the garment soon flying to the floor.

„ Aren’t you impatient, kitten?” he hummed against her breast, his breath warming up her skin. Mai shivered.

“ You’re..!” her voice hitched, as he took her nipple between his teeth and bit on it just lightly, flicking it with his tongue and sucking it a moment later.

“ Have you said anything just now?” he laughed, looking up at her. Mischief played in his eye, as he returned to caressing her, his fingers sliding down her side.

“ That I missed you too,” she gasped as he grabbed her rear, his hand sneaking beneath the fabric of her pants. As if to make up to her for all the missed time, his lips trailed a path down her abdomen – until she couldn’t take it anymore, pulling him up by his shoulders, needing to taste his lips. She pushed Masamune against the pillows and straddled him. Seeing the surprised look he gave her, Mai laughed a little.

“ I still think you should rest,” she stated firmly, her fingers tracing his jawline. She cupped his face and leaned forward,  her hair tickling his cheeks as he kissed her again, his tongue entering her mouth eagerly. Wordlessly, she

-- Another dialogue exchanged between Mitsuhide and Manya. It made it into the final story, although slightly altered.

“I love you.”

“What--”

“With every fiber of my being. I love you.”

“He will not love you, no matter how much you change.”

“How can you know that?!”

“The filthiest scums on earth are unable to feel anything lest it’s twisted - and love, my dear little one, can never withstand that sort of deformation.”

Tag list: @datenoriko, @nad-zeta, @tsubaki3192, @jiyuu-chan, @missjudge-me, @ikemencrossedmyth, @encrytpta, @nuttytani, @thesirenwashere, @milas-imaginarium, @kisara-16, @yukas-clover, @alerialumina , @cheese-ception , @iamryxx, @cottonfluffballofdoom, @ozziegrl71, @in-words-of-what-maybe

If you want to be tagged under my future works, let me know (any way works)! ^^ Also, if you have some preferences (for example: you’d rather not be tagged under some series, etc.), please, tell me. 

If you don’t want to be tagged anymore - please, do not feel bad about it, just say so :)

[ruddcatha]

GUARDIAN Chapter 6

Thank you again to @heavenin--hell for your inspiration, I hope this story does your work justice.

posted on Ao3: Here

Posted on FFN: Here

If you would like to be added to the tags please let me know!

@willowandfog  @smmahamazing  @sticky-llama-perfection @alannada @shinidamachu @cstormsinukagblog @superpixie42 

Inuyasha eyed the strange seats that Kagome, Sango, Miroku and Totosai sat on.  His golden eyes darted around the room, seeking anything that he could say was “familiar” in the strange room.  He could smell the anxiety and undertones of residual fear, and it did nothing to calm his nerves.

“Inuyasha” Totosai called out to catch Inuyasha’s attention.  “I have to contact the council to inform them that you have awoken.”

“Keh” Inuyasha scoffed, continuing to look around the room.

Totosai tried again, he would need to bring the council more information for them to prepare for what was to come.

“Inuyasha, the council has only limited information about the events of the past…”

“For good reason” Inuyasha interjected.

“Kagome, are you able to follow what they are saying?” Sango said quietly to her friend, she was not able to understand any of the conversation around them.  MIroku took the opportunity to move his chair closer to the women, ignoring Sango’s look of annoyance, and began to translate.

“The time for secrecy is over Inuyasha, we need to know what occurred to discuss with the council. Lord Koga…”

“The wolf is still around? Good to know. But I need to know, who or what is this ‘council’?”

Totosai tilted his head “That is fair” he acknowledged.  

“Following your sealing, humans and yokai began to live among each other.  Initially, there were the expected conflicts.  Early on, a council was formed consisting of the heads of the yokai clans, the Ookami, the Kitsune, the Bats, the Oni, the bears, to act as a governing body for yokai.  They created a set of laws that govern yokai.”  

Kagome watched Inuyasha as Totosai spoke, fascinated by his ears.

“In time, as our races integrated as second council formed, a human-yokai alliance council.  The members were hand selected by the yokai council, humans must have spiritual abilities, such as myself and Miroku here, while the yokai must be trusted and loyal to the yokai council.  Information and membership are closely guarded secrets, all members are marked by a tattoo infused with spiritual energy that would only react when in the presence of the guardians.”

Totosai rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt, showing the glowing silver tattoo of a dog demon surrounded by a circle.  Inuyasha glanced over at his arm, nodding slightly in recognition.

“Feh, fine.  I guess father’s precautions worked.  How much do you know about the conflict with Ryukotsusei, what he was planning?”

“Very little, other than the information shared by some of the members of the yokai council. No one knew the location of your resting place, or when you would awaken.  When the shrine was uncovered, I was called in due to my reputation in the field, but also because of the influence of the yokai council, who wield a large amount of influence in this area, just in case. A member of the Human/Yokai alliance has been sent on every excavation of a shrine or temple for the past 100 years.”

Totosai took a deep breath before moving to stand in front of Inuyasha.  “Now we need to know why.”

Inuyasha released a grunt, lifting his head to stare at the strange roof above him.  It was time to begin.

__________________________

There was a simple beauty to mornings in the forest, the last vestiges of fog fading in tendrils off the lake, dew glistening as the early sun cast its warmth over the land. A doe made her way out of the safety of the trees, drawn towards the lake.  In a flash of silver and red, her journey was ended, the hanyou completing his hunt.  He closed his eyes, silently thanking the deer for the lifegiving sustenance she would provide.  He knew that most yokai would not offer the same respect, however he had learned early on to respect the cycle that provided life.  Inuyasha lifted the doe over his shoulder, padding through the forest with silent steps despite the extra weight he carried.  He paused briefly to collect the buck and the boar that he had also caught during his hunting trip, then continued to make his way home.

As Inuyasha entered his village he was surrounded by children, their voices all jumbling together in their eagerness to greet him and ask questions.  Even with his enhanced hearing he could not make out any specific question, he chuckled at their enthusiasm and eagerness.  He released a low growl, knowing his role in the daily game they played.  In response the children all gasped in mock terror at the Yokai who had broken into THEIR village.  The children began running around him in a circle, moving with him as he made his way to the center and the outdoor cooking area that had been constructed.  

He noted his father, the Inu No Taisho, nicknamed Toga by the children (who could not pronounce Taisho and decided his name was too long thank you very much) deep in conversation with the headman and the village elders.  His snorted when he saw his brother, Sesshomaru surrounded by the unmarried ladies of the village (and if his eyes were not deceiving him, which he knew they did not, quite a few of the married ladies as well).  If you did not know Sesshomaru, he would appear to be unaffected by the attention, his pale golden eyes seemed blank and his pale face gave away no emotion.  Inuyasha, however, could see signs of annoyance, the slight tick of his brother’s right eyebrow, subtle, oh so subtle, giving away his irritation.  

“Ah, Inuyasha” Sesshomaru coolly stated, gliding through the crowd that surrounded him towards his brother, then grabbing the boar from Inuyasha.  

Inuyasha quirked an eyebrow, laughter in his voice as he said “you know full well I can carry this with no problem Sessh…. Trying to avoid someone perhaps?”  

Sesshomaru glared at Inuyasha out of the corner of his eyes and tightened his jaw.  “You know I don’t share the same fascination with humans that you and father do… they just… refuse… to leave me alone” he growled, giving a slight shudder.  Both brothers caught the sighs of the women in the village, and a few of the men, as they continued to the center, Inuyasha letting out a soft chuckle of amusement while Sesshomaru tightened his jaw, emitting a soft growl that only his brother could hear.  

The brothers made a striking image as they walked together, their long silver hair glistening in the sunlight, their golden eyes appearing to glow. The villagers knew that the brother’s similarity ended with their coloring.  Sesshomaru, the ice king as he was (lovingly) called in the villagers’ whispers, refused to truly be part of the village.  The villagers had never seen him wear any color other than white, unless he was donning his armor, and he somehow managed to always keep it pristine. The women were drawn to his cold demeanor, seeking to be the one to thaw his heart, yet one glance of his golden eyes, frozen in their intensity, made them shiver, both in fear and with thoughts of what it would be like to have his attention focused on them.  Yet Sesshomaru never showed the slightest interest in them.  Those who had spoken with him knew that he found humans to be a bother, when he deigned to speak with the villagers or the elders, they were always left with the feeling that he was somehow judging them, and found them wanting.

Inuyasha had the warmth his brother lacked, like two sides of the same coin.  He and his father were always part of the village, helping them thrive, thus the hunting expedition that morning to help stock the villages stores and to prepare dried meats for the upcoming winter.  The children of the village loved to play with ‘Uncle Inu,’ his puppy ears drawing their attention and fascination.  Inuyasha had no qualms helping around the village, he and his father had helped to build most of the buildings and always attended every festival, gathering, and event.  Their presence served two purposes, one, to be part of the celebration, but two, and the most important, to protect the villagers from the yokai that sought to prey on them.  

The village was under the Taisho protection.  Any yokai that sought to prey on their village were soon reminded why Inu No Taisho was the Great Dog General, the strongest yokai alive, with his two sons close behind him in strength.    

The protection, however, was a double-edged sword.  Toga had lived near the village for over 1000 years, helping it grow to the thriving community it had become.  He had left the village unattended only once, when he entered a mating alliance with Inukimmi, a powerful Inu-Poison Yokai from another clan.  When Toga had returned with an infant Sesshomaru in his arms 300 years prior he found that the village had been nearly decimated as lesser yokai sought to destroy his home. He helped the village rebuild and placed it officially under his protection.  Toga had not left the area village for more than a day since, and when he did have to leave, Sesshomaru was there to act in his place. For two hundred years Toga and Sesshomaru worked as a team, making their home in the forest outside the village.  They did not join the village, building their grand home inside the walls, until Toga met her.

Izayoi.  Her family had once been powerful, her father a merchant in one of the main training ports, until he refused the Lord his daughter’s hand in marriage.  The lord, in his anger, destroyed their business and cast them out of the port.  Izayoi and her family were forced into the life of traveling merchants, making their way through Japan, trading their limited merchandise for lodging and food. Their journey brought them to the Inu forest village.  The moment Toga and Izayoi’s eyes met her parents began to negotiate with the headmaster to become members of the village.  They had heard of the Inu no Taisho, and it was obvious to them that their daughter would not be leaving the village, and equally obvious that if she tried the yokai would not let her.

Toga immediately sought to construct a home worthy of his family, to show Izayoi that he was able to provide for her.  That caused many fights between the father and son, Sesshomaru could not believe that his father was so taken with a female, “just bed her and be done with it” he had sneered one day.  

He almost did not survive his father’s attack in response.  Sesshomaru stared at his father though the haze of blood covering his eyes “why?  That is all I want to know, why?”  

Toga stared at his son, and in a cold voice calmly told him “one day you will understand.  One day you will have SOMEONE to protect.”  At that Sesshomaru was puzzled, “we have a whole village to protect.”  Toga softly shook his head and whispered “it’s not the same.  Until you experience it for yourself, you won’t understand.”  

Three years later, Inuyasha was born.  Sesshomaru watched coldly as his once stoic father was reduced to…*shudder* baby talk and cooing at the infant.  The child had dog ears, marking him as different, yet for some reason, his father did not see that.  He watched the child grow and his father continuing to change as they fully immersed their lives in the village.  His father and his woman (he refused to call Izayoi mother… causing more fights with his father) were honored guests at each event, his half-brother growing up as one of the children, playing among them. Inuyasha seemed to ignore the proud yokai lineage, content to act as a human.  That was acceptable in a hanyou, but Sesshomaru could not reconcile his once proud, silent, and strong father with the yokai before him, laughing, dancing, helping the humans.  Fighting other yokai to defend them, none the less.  But his father was his alpha, and as the beta it was his duty to follow the alpha’s orders, until he was no longer qualified to be the alpha.  In the blink of an eye, at least to Sesshomaru, Izayoi passed, Inuyasha was only 50, a child in yokai years.  

It had been almost 50 years since his mother passed, and Inuyasha was starting to see life come back into his father’s eyes.  In the past ten years, the attacks on the village had been increasing, and reports of attacks on other yokai lords had been reaching the Inu forest village.  

One of his father’s old friends, Ryukotsusei , a dragon yokai, was rumored to have been gathering yokai to his side and his belief that humans were no more than fodder, food to be raised and harvested, and yokai that did not agree with that vision were to be treated similarly.  The puzzle and the conflict seemed to invigorate his father, Toga once more donning the mantle and armor of the Inu no Taisho.  As Inuyasha and Sesshomaru deposited the two deer and the boar with the village cook and dryers to prepare the meat, they both caught snippets of the conversation their father was engaged in “… attack, the Ookami…. Tribe almost….”  The smile on Inuyasha’s lips fell as the brothers turned to their father, 50 years of training together had them moving as one.  

Toga stepped away from the conversation with the village elders, turning to his sons.  Sesshomaru froze when he caught his father’s full outfit, and Inuyasha burst out laughing as Toga, the Great Dog General, strode towards them in a white kosode and hakima, a red sash, and a long flowing cape. Toga stopped in front of his sons and cocked an eyebrow, a smirk touching his lips as he stared at his sons. He had taken to tying his long silver hair back with a strip of cloth, leaving the two purple lightening marks on his cheeks uncovered, giving him the appearance of an overgrown teenager, and not the imposing general Sesshomaru knew him to be.  

“Really dad, a cape?” Inuyasha choked out through his laughter.  

Toga’s smirk got wider “jealous pup?”

Inuyasha snorted “Hell no” as Sesshomaru lifted his left hand to his forehead… wondering yet again how he could be related to the two idiots.   “Clothing choices aside, dear father” Sesshomaru stated coolly, lowering his hand “what has happened?”

Toga’s face hardened, losing the smirk, his dark amber eyes sharpening as he remembered the conversation with the elders and headman.  

“There has been another attack, Ryukotsusei has attacked the Ookami tribe of the North.”  Inuyasha and Sesshomaru both growled at the news “the tribe was almost completely wiped out, only a handful survived.”  

“Koga?” Sesshomaru asked, remembering the prince of the tribe that he had met before.  

“Prince Koga was one of those who survived, he had been out on a hunting party at the time of the attack. He was able to help the remainder of his pack get to safety and headed further north to regroup with another tribe.” Inuyasha tightened his fist “how many more attacks must there be until someone stops him?”  Toga looked at his two sons, his eyes going sad That’s what we were just discussing.”

Toga refused to tell his sons anymore out in the open, motioning for them to follow him back to their home.  Once inside, with all the doors closed and windows sealed, Toga turned and faced them, gesturing for them both to sit.  He sighed deeply, trying to figure out how to explain what he had just been told with the least amount of outrage from his children.  “Kaede has had a vision.”  

At those words Inuyasha’s ears came to attention while Sesshomaru scoffed.  Both knew the name, Kaede was a well-respected healer and seer, any who disregarded her visions did so at their own peril, at least that is what Inuyasha believed.  Sesshomaru could not understand why his father was listening to any human, no matter how well respected she was.  

“What did this mortal see father?” Sesshomaru asked carefully, ignoring Inuyasha’s angry look at his tone of disrespect.  

Toga closed his eyes as if in pain and turned away from his sons.  “There is a battle coming.”  At these words, the face of both brothers took on a cruel smile, prepared to finally, FINALLY, be joining the fight “but not now.  It cannot happen now.”  

The smiles died, the siblings looking at each other in trepidation of what was about to follow.

“What do you mean dad?” Inuyasha asked, puzzled.  

“If we attack Ryukotsusei now, even with our allies at our side… we will lose.  Ryukotsusei will enslave all yokai who fought against him, and humans will be cultivated and harvested for food, eventually being eradicated completely.”  Toga turned back to his sons, his voice sounding as if the weight of all his centuries of life were weighing on him “We are the keys to end this”

“Then let us go end this now!” Inuyasha yelled as he jumped to his feet, interrupting his father. Sesshomaru reached up placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder, shocking Inuyasha as he was pushed back to his seat and held there by Sesshomaru’s grip.  

“Let him finish pup.” Sesshomaru calmly said, holding his struggling brother in place with an iron grip. Toga moved to sit before his two sons, taking in their appearances, knowing neither will like the rest of what he had to say.

“As I said, we are the key, but not now.  There are…. Pieces missing that will be needed to end this battle.”

“So, we wait it out” Inuyasha snarled, annoyed at being told that once again, they would be doing nothing.

“It isn’t that simple” his father whispered “if we wait, we will not survive long enough to end this. We will be hunted, and we will eventually be killed.  We are strong, but we cannot survive against Ryukotsusei’s army on our own.”  

Sesshomaru’s mouth tightened into a thin line before he spoke “and what, exactly, did this human priestess say that we, the strongest yokai known, need to do?” venom dripping from his voice in disdain.

“Seal ourselves.”

As expected, both Inuyasha and Sesshomaru jumped up, Inuyasha’s voice echoing loudly off the walls, Sesshomaru’s dangerously soft.

“What the actual fuck, why the hell do you think we would ever agree to just do fucking nothing, and be sealed so we can’t do a goddamn thing?”

“Explain to me father why we are listening to a human who wants nothing more than to be rid of our kind?

“Enough.”  The soft voice of their father stopped both Sesshomaru and Inuyasha.  

“There has been a council meeting of the remaining lords who oppose Ryukotsusei.  This has been an ongoing discussion and plan, only now we have the specifics of what needs to be done.”  

Toga raised his head to look directly at the two pups… no men before him.  “The blood of the remaining yokai lords, including me, will be used to bind Ryukotsusei, and we will take a blood pact, all involved, or their heirs, will stand beside us at the appointed time.  We will be sealed in a shrine until we are needed.  At the moment of sealing, Ryukotsusei’s spirit will be split into three, each portion sealed in a different vessel as a safeguard to prevent his release until we are awoken and to give us time to prepare our allies for the fight to come.  Those alive in our village will know where we are sealed, but this information will not be passed on to any others, not even their descendants.   All references to us and what has been done will be erased, we will become figures of myth until we are needed.”  

Toga paused, looking towards the sealed door.  

“This is the only way.”

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/14/2020: BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER FROM HELL

In the last couple of years, I've been paying a lot more attention to shot on video (or SOV) genre movies than I was ever compelled to do before. Platforms like the webzine Bleeding Skull and the restoration house American Genre Film Association have taken up the task of bringing this material greater attention, and treating it to the same kind of serious discussion that foundational film-based grade B-to-Z movies already enjoy. If I'm being completely honest, I don't always understand the appeal of these productions, which is part of the reason that the current SOV moment has me pricking up my ears. At the very least, I have a desire to understand it.

Not to suggest that I always find SOV production so impoverished. It is very often full of innovative special effects, envelope-pushing sex and violence, and bizarre narratives that a movie with more professional aspirations would never dare to attempt. Also, the umbrella term Shot On Video can include movies that were shot on smaller film formats, as long as a title demonstrates a certain style of grotty homemade charm and it arrived during the right era, it can be included in the SOV canon (as I’m seeing with BODYBUILDER now)--so this designation doesn't exclude the warm glow of film stock, which many of us prefer to the cold crunch of video. I like all this stuff as much as the next guy, but it feels like SOV movies are often regarded with a kind of uncritical indulgence, as if anything that is free from the oppression of the studio system--or even the basic production orthodoxy followed by the independents--is automatically a beacon of free-thinking, unfiltered personal expression...which is just not always an accurate description.

I'm familiar with, and often guilty of this attitude as regards independent and regional movies of the pre-video era; it's like, why bother criticizing something whose flaws are so plain, when it's so much more fun to discuss its hidden virtues? But I feel like SOV production faces a challenge that is unique to the time of its origins. By the 80s and 90s, the archetypal horror fan had been born: a connoisseur who became erudite through the miracle of home video, who writes and enjoys xerox-and-staple zines involving a mix of crude punk humor and intellectual analysis, who knows and repeats every line of every one of their favorite movies, no matter how badly you might want them to stop. Nerddom is great because it keeps alive wonderful things that would otherwise die from mainstream neglect, and it is terrible because it can have a calcifying effect, turning everything it consumes into a cliche of itself through rote repetition and imitation. The double-edged sword of production by and for nerds makes its mark on a lot of SOV output, and the recently exhumed BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER IN HELL is no exception. This movie was made with the passion that only a real nerd can sustain, shot and edited between 1995 and 2009 with no guarantee that anyone would ever see it. That's a pretty exciting proposal, but in practice, BODYBUILDER is not as weird as one might expect.

The lone 8mm creation of producer-director-writer-star Shinichi Fukazawa is equal parts fabulously original, and disappointingly familiar. Also known as "The Japanese Evil Dead", BODYBUILDER describes one terrifying night in a haunted house in which a demonic presence pits a group of young people against one another in a fight to the death. Fukazawa makes a handsome leading man and he knows it, punctuating the proceedings with regular inserts of himself smoldering and mugging in his best imitation of Bruce Campbell. Many of the makeup designs are as familiar as the plot, and the laudable no-budget special effects have some of that same "necessity is the mother of invention" quality that one associates with EVIL DEAD. While I certainly identify with Fukazawa's passion for the often imitated, never duplicated Sam Raimi classic, I wish I could tell him how much more valuable are his own signature innovations. The title BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER IN HELL is the best thing about the movie for sure, and it points to the second best thing about the movie: that Fukazawa is a bodybuilder, and this is a key part of his character. I'm so much less interested in him twirling a shotgun and slinging catch phrases like "Groovy", than I am in him flexing his considerable muscles, posing with obvious pleasure, and swinging a barbell like a bo staff to crack some zombie skulls.

So BODYBUILDER is kind of a mixed bag, and the 62 minute movie can drag surprisingly, because of a peculiar feature: It's essentially very competent. A lot of the writing is fairly typical of mid-grade supernatural thrillers, and the slow burn tour of the sinister house before the shit really hits the fan is, like, fine. It reminded me of a sound bite from Brian Eno in which he complains about the volume of perfectly-good music that people submit to him all the time; something that is just-fine can be intensely boring, much less stimulating than something that is interestingly bad. This is not to say that I would prefer that Fukazawa make more of a fool of himself for my amusement; it's just that the movie feels less alive when it most resembles what more people would consider a "real movie", following certain foregone conclusions about how these things are structured. BODYBUILDER succeeds more when it is unbeholden to conventions, serving up a feast of inventive FX solutions, and bathing its beefy hero in a halo of neon fog as he discovers the secret anti-demon weapon he's been questing for all along: his own muscles. Obviously I didn't love this as much as some viewers will, but it definitely earned my respect with its unique qualities, and despite my ambivalence for this kind of thing in general, I'm deeply grateful that folks like Wild Eye Releasing are out there, sharing the joy of discovery with us all.

[theonceoverthinker]

When Will My Life Begin? (Fair Game, 9/?)

“When Will My Life Begin?” 

Summary: Tangled AU. Clover Callows has been confined to a tower for all of his life, and given the threat that his Uncle Tyrian says his semblance poses to his safety, he accepts that fate. It’s the only life he’s ever known, after all. But when he’s offered the opportunity to fulfill his greatest dream after a chance encounter with a thief -- or bandit, as Qrow Branwen insists there’s a difference between the two -- both Clover and Qrow will discover joys that they never knew life could offer them before. AO3

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A/N: Hi! I don’t really have a lot to say about this chapter apart from it’s my first time making a chapter that wasn’t really a part of the movie, so that should be fun! Enjoy!

Also, I’m hosting an AMA on the Fair Game Effect Discord all day today as well as tonight (5/31/2020)! Hit me up with questions there! 

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Clover Callows had never felt breathless before.

He’d felt all the emotions that were often associated with breathlessness -- awestruckness, shock, anxiety, to name a few. Clover knew emotions could contribute to explaining the ‘why’ of the sensation of breathlessness, but the actual ‘what’ of the sensation beyond a pure biological one escaped him.

However, as Clover started untying his reluctant, but all the same willing guide, he started to feel it just a little. 

Breathlessness…

It took all Clover had in him to ignore soaking in and embracing what breathlessness really felt like in the same way he did with his blankets and pillows on a cold winter’s night.

Still he did ignore the temptation -- there were still things to do before leaving the tower -- but he was fine with that. After all, Clover knew there would be more to come of the feeling very soon, and he couldn’t wait to give it all the attention it deserved.

Clover had to hand it to himself -- his weapon-making skills weren’t pretty, but where they failed aesthetically, they more than made up for it in their top notch utility. He’d never had a real chance before to utilize Kingfisher’s line in such a way as it had over the past few hours, but when push came to shove, the fishing rod accomplished its many tasks marvelously, and given the way Qrow didn’t massage his wrist and ankles when he was finally freed of the line, it did its job while also making sure Qrow was never in pain while confined in its line. 

No matter what would come to pass on this journey, there had to be something to be said for that.

As Qrow stood up, now free of Kingfisher’s embrace, he stretched. 

“Never thought I’d be so happy to be standing,” he mumbled as he arched his back. 

Clover opened his mouth to chastise Qrow for mumbling, but closed it. 

Of all the family traits that he got from Uncle Tyrian, why was that the one that decided to show itself?

“The trek to the kingdom is about a day’s trip from here, maybe a little less if we’re lucky,” Qrow said. Clover gave Qrow a careful look, reminding himself that Qrow clearly had no idea about his semblance. 

It was going to be okay.

Qrow started at Clover’s hesitant look, obviously not understanding the reason for it. 

“What?” he asked, both defensively and exasperatedly, much in the same way Raven squawked when Clover suggested they do something silly or weird. 

If it weren’t for his most recent thoughts, Clover might have laughed at that.

“Good. That’s good to hear,” Clover said, ignoring Qrow’s question and focusing on maintaining a sense of seriousness once more. “You will indeed serve well as my guide.”

Qrow didn’t look fully convinced, but thankfully, he didn’t look fully unconvinced either. He just muttered something under his breath and continued stretching.

Suddenly though, he stopped. 

Something obviously caught his eye, and Clover knew exactly what it was.

“I’m gonna be needing that,” Qrow said, pointing to where he was looking at -- the other end of the tower where his scythe and its shielding sheath rested against the wall. Clover couldn’t help but narrow his eyes skeptically. “What?” Qrow continued, his tone strong and defensive. “I’ve got to be able to defend myself out there. I already told you I was being chased.”

Clover sighed, gesturing over to where Qrow’s weapon was, allowing Qrow to take it into his possession once more. 

If Clover was being honest with himself, he wasn’t excited at the prospect of giving a human a weapon. After all, as Uncle Tyrian had told him so many times before, half of a human’s strength came from their weapons. However, in addition to his confidence that Qrow didn’t know his semblance, eliminating many of Clover’s more prominent worries, Clover knew that if Qrow was going to take him to see the lights, he needed two things. 

First, as Qrow himself said, he needed a means of defending himself. If the world outside his tower was dangerous for him, it was no doubt dangerous for Qrow too. No matter what he thought of outsiders, he could never deny one protection. After all, he wasn’t about to leave Kingfisher, and he’d never ask Uncle Tyrian to leave the tower without his blades, and so he would allow Qrow the use of his weapon. 

Second, as anxious as it felt for Clover to do so, he needed to give Qrow at least some of his trust. Of course, he wasn’t going to divulge to Qrow just anything, especially the secret of his semblance -- he was lucky that Qrow didn’t already know it, and he wasn’t about to compromise that information any time soon -- but given the skills Clover had already displayed towards Qrow with Kingfisher as well as the leverage he held over Qrow, allowing Qrow the use of his weapon was a reasonable risk to take and bit of trust to give. Besides, Qrow had let him decide whether or not he’d get to use his weapon. That earned him a bit of the trust he knew he should return in kind.

Additionally, Clover had to admit that while he didn’t spare Qrow’s weapon as much thought as Qrow himself and his intentions for Qrow, he did find the weapon interesting all the same, and a chance to see it in action was a temptation hard to ignore.

A scythe...it was so strange…

He wanted to know, and maybe now was a good time to ask, given the small provision of trust he’d given Qrow.

Clover leaned back towards the nearest wall. He crossed one leg over the other while pretending to focus on his nails rather than Qrow, so as to appear as nonchalant as possible. “So why a scythe?” He asked, careful to keep a casual tone. “Weird choice of a weapon. Why not a sword, or a blade?” When he was finally done, he cautiously turned to look at Qrow.

Qrow gave him a look that screamed just how unimpressed and unfooled by Clover’s scheme he was. 

“Mr. Fishing Rod is telling me that my weapon choice is weird?” he snorted, slinging his scythe’s scabbard over his shoulder. 

Clover once more tried to feign a sense of casualness. “Just curious, you know?”

“Looks like it’s time for me to make a deal of my own. Give me my satchel back and I’ll tell you all about my scythe.”

Clover smirked at him, this time needing to fake nothing about his disposition. “Not a chance, Qrow.”

Qrow glared at him for half a beat before sighing, allowing it to dissolve into something more neutral, but still curious. “Okay, well then why don’t you tell me about that fishing rod of yours first?”

Clover smirked, proud that his weapon had managed to impress someone from the outside world as much as it impressed Qrow. 

“Kingfisher is unexpected,” Clover answered, unable to keep the boasting tone out of his voice. “Whenever I’ve been told or read about weapons, everyone always has swords, or knives, or arrows. But would anyone think of a fishing rod? I don’t think so. Gives me an edge in combat. Clearly worked on you.”

Qrow gave him a light sneer. “I was distracted, and you got lucky. I promise you, it won’t happen again.” He then scoffed, his vicious look once again disappearing. 

Gods, there was that word again. ‘Lucky.’

How did someone who knew nothing about his semblance keep stumbling right into it?

That just wasn’t fair.

Then again, that was Clover’s semblance for him -- it gave a little, and took a little.

Just his luck.

Clover coughed, careful as to not alert Qrow’s suspicions again. If Qrow thought anything strange of it, he didn’t say nor show it.

“Interesting,” Qrow said, nodding. “Well, it looks a little crude, but honestly, not bad.”

Clover smirked, proudly. He’d almost wanted to say thank you, but then remembered that he was owed a story, too.

“Your turn,” he said. 

Qrow took out Harbinger and signaled with his hand for Clover to take a step back, a suggestion Clover took with little prompting. Once he did, Qrow swung Harginbers blade, causing it to double in size. 

Blown away, Clover was pretty sure his jaw fell all the way to his knees.

Qrow looked so smug as he smirked in response to the awestruck expression. 

That did the job of taking Clover out of his trance to roll his eyes at him, though only for a moment as his focus quickly returned to Qrow’s weapon.

“This,” Qrow said, “is Harbinger, and it is so much better than any sword in the world. Scythes as a whole are more versatile and cover more ground than most swords, but Harbinger also folds in on itself, is good for climbing, and best of all, scares the shit out of anyone who messes with me.” In that moment, Qrow’s smirk turned just the slightest bit menacing. 

Clover had to admit that for a second, Harbinger’s latter purpose was definitely working on him. However, it was only a second all the same, and Clover was quick to brush it off.

“I know the difference between a threat and a bluff,” Clover shot back, “and that was most certainly a bluff.” Qrow’s sneer reformed. “But your weapon’s pretty nice. No match for Kingfisher, but nice all the same.” 

Qrow sighed, matching the eye roll Clover gave him earlier with one of his own as he folded up and sheathed Harbinger once more. He then looked intently at Clover, who immediately started feeling very uncomfortable.

“What?” Clover asked, unable to keep all of the hesitance in his voice at bay.

“You need an outfit change,” Qrow said.

There was a lot Clover figured Qrow might say after their little weapons showdown.

That wasn’t one of those.

“Excuse me?” Clover said slowly, looking over his clothes. 

Did they look bad?

Suddenly, Clover’s cheeks felt all too hot for his liking.

“You’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb in that getup. I don’t want that, and more importantly for you, something tells me you don’t want that, either.” Clover opened his mouth to feign a denial, but Qrow continued before he could say anything. “You’re not the only one who can spot some fishy business. Guy lives alone in a secret tower, or at least, almost all alone if your table’s any indication, and doesn’t know his way to the kingdom capital. There’s gotta be a reason for that.” Clover once more tried to give an explanation, but once more, Qrow beat him to the proverbial punch. “Don’t worry,” he continued, his hands up in a surrendering fashion, “I’m not gonna ask. You’ve got your business, and I’ve got mine. But still, if you’ve got something else, I’d recommend you change, if not today, then at least for when we get to the capital tomorrow. I think it’s safe to say that we could both do without the extra attention.” 

Clover took in Qrow’s words. 

He...wasn’t wrong...at all.

That somewhat disturbed him.

All the same though, Qrow was right -- he did need a change of clothes if he wanted to blend in once they got to town. While Clover was okay enough breaking his uncle’s greatest rule this one time in his life, he wasn’t about to take any extra risks to his safety if he could help it.

Clover nodded, more to himself than to Qrow, and then turned to Raven. 

“Watch him,” he ordered, much to Qrow’s clear dismay as conveyed by an overly loud groan from him.

He went to his closet and looked at another of his favorite outfits. The colors were more earthy. He’d probably fit in fine enough with them on, so he stuffed them into a bag and slung the bag over his shoulder to change into tomorrow. 

Clover wasn’t surprised when he turned back to see Qrow trying in vain to find his satchel and failing miserably while Raven mockingly squawked at him, as beside herself with laughter as a bird could possibly be. As Qrow turned to him, Clover smirked at his failed attempts at ending their deal prematurely.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Qrow said, shrugging.

“I can,” Clover said in a matter-of-fact fashion, “but you’ve caught me in a good mood, so I won’t.” Clover then pat the bag behind him. “All good to go,” he said to both of them, right before leaning down to pick up Raven and place her on his shoulder.

“Oh great,” Qrow muttered. “The bird is coming?”

Clover smiled, giving Raven an affectionate scratch on her neck. “Of course she’s coming. Raven’s my best friend.”

Qrow sighed tiredly, massaging the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “There is not a single thing about you that makes sense, muscles.”

Clover shot him a deadpan look at the reemergence of his nickname.

Was ‘Clover’ really that hard to use?

For Gods’ sake, it was the same amount of syllables as ‘muscles!’

He ignored it. Perhaps he’d just have to find a nickname for Qrow.

Yeah, that’s exactly what he’d do.

But right now, the nickname could wait.

“I’m heading down,” Qrow grumbled, taking his scythe out of its sheath and sitting on the window sill, seemingly planning his trip down the tower. 

Clover realized he had to do the same thing now.

This was so exciting!

Kingfisher’s presence as a key role in his descention was obvious. Even without the stone base, he could probably still configure the pulley to work for him by making it just act as a hook for Kingfisher. The more Clover worked out the plan, the more confident he became that it could be done. After all, while he was larger than his uncle, the stone base drastically cut down on the weight needed for him to be safely lowered, and Clover rose and lowered himself with just Kingfisher plenty of times before while playing and training. All he would have to do was put on his leather gloves to protect his hands as he fell -- easy enough.

It would work.

It would all work.

Qrow crossed over to the other side of the tower, and Clover instantly heard the now somewhat familiar sound of his scythe clanging against the structure. 

Clover went over to the windowsill and looked at Qrow, but Qrow didn’t return his gaze, clearly too focused on his climb down. He then looked to Raven, who did meet his gaze. They exchanged a smile. It was obvious that Raven was looking forward to this adventure just as much as Clover was.

Who could blame her?

“Hold onto my collar, nice and tight,” he said, nuzzling his head against hers. Once he was done, Raven looped her unmarred wing above and under Clover’s collar, giving him a squawk when she was done.

Clover took out Kingfisher and locked its hook into the pulley, staring at it in awe as he fully released its line and looped part of it around his waist. For once, the pulley was going to do its job, but only for him. 

It was unbelievable.

He looked towards the ground outside the tower. It was a long way down, but the terrain was one he knew well after cumulative days of looking down and across from his window and years of dreaming about what it would be like to experience the very thing he was just about to do.

“You coming, muscles?” Qrow called from below.

Oh, he was.

With a last deep breath of his home taken, Clover jumped off the windowsill and out of the tower.

Falling was a rush. The air slammed into his face, and the only way Clover could hope to describe it was like a noiseless version of Raven’s loudest squawks, but amplified to almost unreal proportions. It was cold, it was ceaseless, it was almost menacing in how the wind’s roar sounded vaguely menacing as Clover continued his descent. Clover loved every second of it. 

As he fell, he couldn’t help but release cries of joy as his laughter painted the skies with a beam that not even the sun could hope to match in power or size.

He could vaguely see and hear Qrow in the half of a second he passed him during his fall, but needless to say, Qrow seemed surprised by his choice of climbing strategies.

Well, as long as it didn’t mess with his navigation skills, it was certainly nice to leave his guide always guessing what new tricks he had up his sleeve.

As Clover fell from twenty feet from the tower’s base to ten, and from ten feet to five, he realized that it was time to execute his landing strategy.

He pulled himself up ever so slightly with an upward tug of Kingfisher’s line, allowing the impact of his fall to be absorbed before he ever risked feeling the pain of it.

The rest of the drop was only another couple of feet.

Clover could do it.

All at once, he fully let go of the line and fell the rest of the way.

The impact of the world at his feet was softer than Clover ever expected it to be.

Clover, speechless, allowed himself to just feel the sensation of it all.

Thin, tiny wisps of grass tickled his toes and the dew as well as the water from the nearby pond sank below the grass into the wetted dirt, covering the balls of Clover’s feet that sank into the earth below him.

Finally, his fall was done.

Finally, his feet were on the ground.

Finally, Clover was really, truly outside his tower.

Despite all the air that had flown in his face on the way down as well as the fresh air that now surrounded him, as those facts came to light, Clover, for the first time in his entire life, felt what it was like to be truly and fully breathless.

[youngdisciples]

Cooking is one of the essential things we do in life. So, if we know how to cook then we also know how to slice and cut bones. We know how to separate the meat from the bones and we know how to do all the procedures properly. 

Now, our Christian life is also like cooking. However, we are the ones who are cooked and God is the one cooking. Our lives before we knew Christ was surely full of sin and we delight in sin, even now. It is not new news for us because we know personally what we desire, what we want, what our motives are and what we did. 

In fact, we are human beings, therefore we delight in sin. However, this trait is very opposite to our God’s attribute. For how many days, we have been reflecting about God’s attribute of hating sin and we won’t stop to reflect on that because we have to be reminded always that the God we serve hates sin. 

So now, our verse talks about the Word of God being a double-edged sword, but what does it means? It means that just like cooking, as we use knives to separate meat from bones, the Word of God is like that also. It can penetrate and separate all our evil and good motives, it can penetrate even our hardest and darkest hearts. 

People will sometimes ask if reading the Bible can help them change, so now, this is the answer: Yes, it can! Because it can penetrate our body, soul and spirit. It can divide everything inside us and separate everything we evilly harbor and everything good we did. The Word of God does not only stand as a guide but it is what we need! 

When we feel like we are also hard as a shell and that we are unbreakable, read the Bible because it will be able to break through our hardest wall. This is why there is no impossible with God. In the book of Isaiah, it mentioned there that the Word of God will not go back empty and that it will fulfill its purpose. 

Therefore, the Word of God will slowly work inside us and will slowly change us as we meditate on it day and night. God will not command us to meditate on it day and night if we won’t get anything from it. God knows that through this, we will get our strength, our confidence, our faith, our love and everything because it is the written love letters of God. 

Also, the Word of God is Jesus Christ manifested. Faith comes from hearing and hearing the Word of God and that Word is Jesus Christ. As mentioned, it will penetrate our body, soul and spirit because it is Jesus Christ. In John 1:1 said, the Word became flesh, because from the creation, it was Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God made manifest and made into man to save us. 

The Word of the Lord is a double-edged sword because it is Jesus Christ. Jesus offered us salvation, cutting all the ties of death and sin from our lives. It was Jesus who also gave us eternal life. Jesus separated us from our sins and gave us a new beginning in Him. He was there since the creation of the world and until now He is here. 

The Word of the Lord is alive and active. It is not merely just words in there but it is alive since again it is Jesus and it is active because it can change us. It can change us, who were once from darkness to light. It can open our hard hearts and allow us to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. 

So now, may we always remember to stop delighting in sin and start delighting in God’s Word. May we always be reminded that the Word of the Lord endures forever and that we have to meditate on it day and night so it will penetrate us, help us to separate all the evil things we desire and help us to focus more on Jesus. 

Let us remain steadfast in His Word. Let us let God cook us, separate our motives. Let Him help us ponder our intentions and that we may be able to grow in His knowledge and love. It will be able to conquer our deepest evil desires and make it a new desire that only thrives for righteousness. We must meditate on His Word and let it work in our lives and then we will see the Lord’s goodness in our lives and we will be reminded how He came to this world to save us all. 

For more daily reflection, verse and encouragement, you may follow us. You can also like, follow and visit us on:

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[moody-bloosh]

Hi, I'm a huge fan of your writing! I was wondering if you could do #25 with bruno if you haven't already. Also sorry if its worded weirdly. I have never requested anything to anyone before. 🥴

ASDNKALSD THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! And of course you can! Don’t worry I understood you perfectly

content warning: yandere, medicine tampering, homicide, obsessive!reader, mind break

vice grip (Bruno Buccellati) 

His hand was wrapped around your own, holding you safe and secure as he guided you through the streets. The moon illuminated his form, and for a second you wondered how anyone could be as beautiful, as lovely as him. He takes you through winding staircases, shambling sidewalks, and then a dark alley. Coaxing you into the shadows, you stifled your heavy breathing as a group of heavily armed men ran past your hiding spot. You and Bruno stay still for a few more seconds before he finally deems it safe enough to leave. 

So the escape and his mission was successful. But what would you do now? You certainly couldn’t go back to that hellhole. You sneak a glance at Bruno once again, the strange man who had stumbled into your life and set everything ablaze. You honestly didn’t know what to make of him. You still didn’t understand why you decided to help him. 

“You…you should have left me back there.” 

He turned to you then, eyes wide with surprise at your sudden confession. Your cheeks flush as you realize that you’d voiced your thoughts aloud and upon realizing that you were still holding his hand, you let go.

“I-I mean, why…why did you even take me with you? It would have been easier for you to escape if you’d left me back there, you didn’t need to take someone useless like me. S-so why?”

“Because you looked like you wanted to leave that place,” he answers, as if he’s stating a common truth. “And besides, they would have killed you for helping me.” 

“B-but…I-” Your voice crests around the words you want to say but you never really let it leave your lips, it hangs in the air. 

I’m nothing. 

Bruno regards you for a tense moment, he takes in the bruises, the trembling. When he takes a step forward, you flinch on instinct. This is enough to make him reconsider his approach. He hesitates before he offers you his hand instead. You consider the gesture, looking at his hand first before you look into his eyes. They are so sincere, so genuine, so different from what you are used to. When he holds out his hand to you, you don’t hesitate, not after you’ve seen the resolve in his eyes. You take his hand. 

This was the beginning of your obsession with Bruno Buccellati. 

From that day on, you serve Bruno with undying devotion. You adore him, you worship him. Because he is the only person who has looked at you as if you are someone of worth, someone who is enough, someone who can still be fixed. He lets you stay in the spare room at his house. He even goes as far as to give you a spot in his team The whole time he was introducing you to the team, you clung to Bruno like a petulant child. Although he had already assured you that he had informed them about you and your situation, it seemed like some of your teammates still insisted on asking you questions that you were too uncomfortable to answer. You keep silent the whole meal, ignoring their questions and averting your gaze from them. Soon they get the message. 

Your everything is devoted to Bruno, how could you waste your breath on others? 

“You didn’t talk much today,” Bruno mused aloud on the way home. “I’m sure the others wanted to get to know you and I think it would be nice if you made friends too.” 

“I don’t need anyone,” you’d answered stubbornly, your grip on his hand tightening instinctively. “All I need is you, no one else matters.” 

He’d given you a fond little half smile and then gently, kindly, he patted your head. “As a new member of the team, I’d very much like it if you at least tried to have a cordial relationship with the others.” 

When you don’t reply, opting to purse your lips stubbornly in a little pout he chuckled. 

“Oh, _____, what am I to do with you?” 

The next day, when Bruno takes you to the restaurant with the others, you resolve to at least attempt to respond to their questions. Thankfully, you only needed to entertain Narancia and Mista’s questions. Abbacchio and Fugo had been kind enough not to pry. Really, the only reason you’d done it was because you wanted Bruno to praise you on the way home. Not because you had sincerely mulled over the little talk you had with Bruno yesterday and thought that maybe if they were friends with Bruno they weren’t all that bad. Really, really, you just wanted his praise. 

Really. 

Well, whatever your reason was, before you knew it you had some people you would probably consider your friends. Naturally, you are thankful to Bruno for introducing these people into your life, from bringing color to your monochrome world. One day, you catch yourself smiling as you enjoy a meal with the rest of the team. You quickly cover your mouth. You only smiled in front of Bruno, so why… Guiltily, your eyes met Bruno’s, your heart sinks. His eyes are cold for just a moment, perhaps it was your imagination. There was no way Bruno could be capable of such a cruel look. No way. No way… He takes a sip of his wine as he gives you a small smile. It reassures you enough that you are able to force away the memory of his cold glare in the back of your mind. 

You force yourself to think of other things, like how you want to be more useful to Bruno. How you don’t want to cause him any unnecessary burden. You want to make his life easier and you know that you’re not making his life any easier by living in his home free of charge. And you are aware that you’re not exactly the easiest person to be around, given your fragile mental state. You just wanted to be of even more use him. 

So don’t look at me like that, Bruno.  

“Th-the others they helped me find a place, an apartment just a few blocks from here. They said it’d help me get back on my feet. That by learning to be more independent, I won’t be causing you any more unnecessary burden so…” 

Ah, it was back. That terrifying look in his eyes. You hated it. You hated it. It was so frightening, so scary, so unlike him. He looked just like them. Oh god, was he going to hit you? Was he going to- you blink when he caresses your cheek and presses a soft kiss on your forehead. 

“I’m happy for you,” he says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

That week he is all smiles as he helps you pack your things but there is something in the pit of  your stomach that warns you not to be fooled by his nonchalant attitude. His smile truly was a double-edged sword. He pushes the bags in your hands, he opens the door for you, he doesn’t even look at you. Later he will tell you it’s because he thought you wanted to be independent. You think that he just doesn’t know any better but he knows full well that this does to you. When you get to the apartment, you are more than unhinged. Did you take your medicine today? Bruno would always be there to remind you but today he’d been so detached… He’d handed you a pill in the morning but it looked strange… No, stop. Stop thinking of him. 

He obviously won’t be thinking about you. 

You flinch, startling the landlady. When she asks you if you are alright you anxiously nod. You can’t fuck this up. You can’t fuck this up. Not after the others had worked so hard to help you get here. Not after… She offers to give you a tour of the building. And you thank her mechanically maybe this will get your mind off Bruno. Your throat is oddly dry. God, you can’t even think. 

Did you think you were special? Did you think you were important to him? 

How dare that landlady speak to you in this way. She didn’t know anything about you and Bruno. She didn’t know how strongly you felt about Bruno. She didn’t see the way he looked at you. She didn’t know the way he held your hand. 

“S-shut up,” you whispered weakly but loud enough to catch the landlady’s attention. 

“Pardon me?” 

There was something about the way she looked at you, you hated it. As if she were looking down on you, as if she knew something you didn’t. Her worried glance seemed warped in your eyes, as if you were viewing her through a funhouse mirror, you saw a wicked glimmer in place of the concerned look in her eyes. 

I bet Bruno is with someone else right now. Someone who isn’t a burden, someone who isn’t useless, someone who isn’t broken like you. 

“S-shut up! Shut up!” You shrieked, cutting her off. “Y-you’re trying to make me jealous, s-stop it!”

“D-dear please, I’m not doing anything of that sort. I-I haven’t even said anything.” 

“Don’t lie to me! You’re jealous of me and Bruno, aren’t you? You made me get this apartment so you can sneak off to be with him!” 

“W-who?” 

At that, you had tackled her. Her head hits the floor ungracefully but you don’t relent. Grabbing the hapless landlady by her collar, you snapped at her, “I won’t let you take him away from me, he’s mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. He’s mine, okay? So…so be a good girl and go away, okay?” 

She was crying, calling out for help. But at this time of the night, and in this part of town, it would be a miracle if anyone would even lift a finger. 

Like that night so long ago, you are running. But this time, there is no Bruno and the only thing you are running away from can’t even give chase. You’d made damn sure of that. Oh the poor thing, would anyone even be able to identify her after what you’d done to them? You stumble through the streets, the blood on your hands already drying. You feel so alone, so alone, so lonely, so sad. When you finally catch sight of his door, you don’t hesitate. You pound on his door, crying, shaking, begging. You’ve made a mistake, such a horrible mistake. How could you think that you could leave him? 

He’s already made it so that you can’t live without him. 

The door opens and there he was. Brows knit in concern, his eyes finally meeting yours after so long. You latch onto him before he can even say a word. Your bloody clothes taint his clean ones. You are dirty but he holds you tightly, as if nothing is wrong. 

“I-I’m sorry Bruno,” you ramble incoherently into his shirt. “I-I didn’t mean to. I’m so so sorry. I was wrong, wrong to leave. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to kill her.” 

“Shh, it’s okay,” he cooes, “it’ll be alright. I’m here for you, I’ll be here for you no matter what, _____.” 

So only look at me. Devote your whole being to me again. 

Pulling at your strings so well, you were none the wiser to his scheme. This was your place, right beside him. He’d made damn sure of that when he’d messed with your medicine, toying with the dosage little by little until you would do the job for him. 

Oh, don’t need to worry your pretty little head about the specifics. Don’t worry, you can stay with him again. Now, wouldn’t you like that? Doesn’t it feel like before? Trust in him, rely on him. 

Let him love you, dear. It will be easier that way. We don’t want a repeat of last time now, don’t we? 

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

The Rook. By Daniel O’Malley. New York: Back Bay Books, 2012.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: urban fantasy, paranormal

Part of a Series? Yes, The Chequy Files #1

Summary: "The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her. She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own. In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood, body horror

Overview: I can’t quite remember how this book fell under my radar, but it seemed like an interesting premise, so I gave it a go. Initially, it started out as a 4 star read for me - I liked the humor, the worldbuilding, and the dynamics between the main character’s pre- and post-amnesia self. Over time, however, this dropped to a three star, mostly because I felt like the tone never changed to fit the gravity of the situation, and the mystery in general was somewhat of a letdown. Still, I think that anyone who liked more light-hearted fantasy or dark humor might enjoy this book, so I recommend reading it for yourself if you’re not into grimdark supernatural worlds.

Writing: O’Malley’s prose is fitting for the type of book he’s trying to write. It’s fairly economical, and focuses more on evoking a humorous, snarky tone than an eerie atmosphere. While some may enjoy the humor and snark, I personally found it to be a double edged sword: I liked that O’Malley kept the mood light and avoided reveling in the darker aspects of his fantasy world, but I also don’t think emotionally heavy moments were given enough weight. Characters would crack jokes or be snarky at inappropriate times, often in ways that sabotaged their own goals, and it seemed like O’Malley was trying to make scenes more awkward or funny than was plausible.

I also think there were some throw-away lines or scenes that really showcased that this book was a man writing about a woman. It wasn’t so bad that it made me want to put the book down (I don’t think O’Malley was being sexist or anything, more like he was trying to be funny and the joke just didn’t land for me), it was annoying to read about Myfanwy thinking about her breasts, or about an invasive gynocological exam (even if one made sense in context, I didn’t need to be reminded that doctors were poking around in Myfanwy’s vagina).

I do think that O’Malley made a good decision by having a lot of his infodumps take the form of a letter or “encyclopedia entry.” Pre-amnesia Myfanwy writes letters and explanations of her job, her colleagues, etc. to help post-amnesia Myfanwy make sense of the supernatural world around her. Though I sometimes found reading all these texts to be exhausting, I do think that if an author is going to provide so much background information, he/she/they should do so in an interesting way that makes sense in context. The letters and entries, in my opinion, made sense in the context of the narrative, and O’Malley also made the task of writing all those things feel like something pre-amnesia Myfanwy would do.

Plot: The main plot follows Myfanwy Thomas, an administrator of sorts who loses her memory while investigating the return of her employer’s major supernatural enemy and its infiltration into their ranks. I really liked the idea of a post-amnesiac trying to pick up the pieces of her old life while keeping her amnesia under wraps just in case those closest to her are traitors, and I liked that readers able to learn about the world along with the main character.

However, I do think that not enough suspense or urgency was placed on the plot. Myfanwy didn’t seem to be in a rush to find out who had erased her memories and who tried to kill her, and scenes didn’t necessarily build on one another in a way that felt like a mystery was unfolding. For example, Myfanwy uncovers one traitor seemingly by accident, and doesn’t really bother to press them for more information when they let slip that there’s more to uncover. I wanted to follow Myfanwy as she uncovered more and more clues, but it seemed like a lot of things were happening at random until the end, when she solves the mystery and we get several pages of monologue that explains how everything happened behind the scenes (rather than on the page). I was kind of let down, to be honest, because I didn’t feel like I was being given the opportunity to guess what was going on myself.

I also wish a little more had been done with the letters past-Myfanwy wrote to present-Myfanwy. There was a sweetness to them, as past-Myfanwy seems to have great sympathy for her future self and expresses a lot of fear regarding what’s going to happen. But mostly, the letters served as infodumps, and I wish they had been used - at least sometimes - to spur some emotional growth in present-Myfanwy, or had mirrored what was going on in the present day more closely.

I also wish there had been a little more drama at the Chequy - the supernatural organization where Myfanwy works. Post-amnesia Myfanwy seems to be able to walk in and play her part with no one the wiser, which was a little implausible given that her personality is drastically different from before her amnesia and she’s so awkward that it was a wonder no one suspected something was amiss. I wanted to be a little more concerned that someone would figure out that Myfanwy was without her memory, and that it posed a threat to Myfanwy’s life. Instead, that never seemed to be an issue, just a pretense for a lot of awkwardness.

Characters: Myfanwy, our heroine, is essentially two different people before and after her amnesia. Pre-amnesia Myfanwy is shy, quiet, and something of a Type A personality who never uses her supernatural abilities unless it’s an emergency. Post-amnesia Myfanwy is assertive, snarky, and uses her abilities more liberally. Both, however, are extremely good at managing teams and keeping track of mountains of administrative paperwork. I liked that O’Malley turned “administration” into a useful skill - I feel like too often, female characters are only seen as useful if they can fight, and while Myfanwy does some of that, she also makes clear that it is her administrative abilities that make the difference in all kinds of situations. I do wish Myfanwy’s wisecracking was turned down a little, though, as it seemed to be inappropriate at times. I also wish Myfanwy had undergone more character development; she doesn’t change much over the course of the novel, except to realize that she likes her job. I wanted a little more out of her, not just a wisecracking boss who can take charge of a situation before stumbling her way through a fairly simple investigation.

The most interesting characters, at least for me, were the other members of the Chequy. The Chequy is run by a “Court,” which is made up of highly ranked officials with supernatural powers. I liked the creativity that O’Malley showed when designing them - Gestalt is a single consciousness in 4 bodies, Aldrich is a vampire, Eckhart is a chain-smoking military veteran who can control metal, etc. I do wish more was done with these characters to make their motivations more clear or more important to the overall narrative, and I wish they were a little more intelligent (they never suspect anything is amiss with Myfanwy, and even they can’t figure out anything useful about their enemy, despite Myfanwy practically stumbling onto information at random).

Myfanwy does have some female friends that I think could have been more interesting. Ingrid, her personal assistant, is something of a confidant, and I wish more had been done with that relationship to explore things like the tension between powered and non-powered people in the Chequy. Shantay, an official from the American branch of the Chequy, also had a lot of potential, and I liked that she and Myfanwy became fast friends (though I do think they dropped their professionalism a little too quickly). I wish Shantay had stuck around longer, perhaps to balance out Myfanwy’s flaws and shortcomings. Bronwyn, Myfanwy’s sister, should have been more important than she was. Bronwyn tracks down her sister after living her entire life knowing that the government took her away, and I think there’s a devotedness in that that wasn’t fully taken advantage of. The sisters’ reunion wasn’t very emotional, and Bronwyn mainly acted as a liability for when Myfanwy was threatened by her enemies.

Speaking of which, the big bad of the book - a group called the Grafters - were hardly impressive. While I liked the idea of the Chequy going up against people who could alter bodies and create monsters that resisted supernatural powers, the Grafters seemed to be invisible for most of the book, never showing themselves but sending agents to do their dirty work. I never really understood what the Grafters wanted or why they were doing things, so they felt less like a threat and more like a simple bad group of people that does bad things.

TL;DR: The Rook has an interesting premise and some creative worldbuilding, but ultimately suffers from a lack of a driving plot and too much concern with its own cleverness.

[vicecityhq]

██████████████]99% LOADING...SUSPECT INTO THE APD DATABASE...

WITNESS(ES) SAY HE REMINDS THEM OF: glasses, academia, coffee shops . With a slight resemblance to JEON JUNGKOOK of/the BTS.

CLICK BELOW TO VIEW ENTIRE FILE.

FULL FILE:

Last Name, First Name: Lee, David ALIAS: Electro Realm of birth(if earth, nationality): Earth Age: 23 Date of Birth: September 1, 1997 Gender: Cis-gender male Preferred Pronouns: He/Him, They/Them Species: Cyborg Level 1, Civilian  Sexual Orientation: Questioning

 VISUAL FILE: 

Skin Color: Light Tanned Eye color: Dark brown, Blue tint when using eye enhancemets Scars: None reported Piercings: Both ears Tattoos: A simple black star on left wrist Hair color: Black, dyed a variety of colors at times Abnormalities: None reported Horns/ wings/ etc: None Transformed form: None

PERSONAL FILE:

Powers & Abilities: Enhanced Vision, Lens screen, Vital monitor and data collection, temperature scanning, night vision, light adjustment vision, app synchronization (photo, video recording, downloading) Traits: Determined, Aloof

BACKGROUND CHECK:

Date of Birth: September 1, 1997

Date of Death: -

Crime Record: A clean record

Background/Biography:

David was the 2nd born in his family, to a career solider and a

struggling

opera singer. His sister was 1st and her words upon seeing him as a baby was “I’m cuter.”At times he felt neglected given that his sister was getting more attention that him, she was the golden child while he was . . .David, quiet most of the time but had moments of intense energy. His parents enrolled him a variety of sports which kept him in check. He excelled in martial arts (taekwondo and kumdo) and basketball which was used as leverage to keep in ballet. That was something his Mother wanted for both of her children, though he never got a reason why. Near the end of elementary school his parent’s divorced and his Mother remarried a “rich man”. Though he was kind he was VERY distant to him. His Sister however took a liling to increases social status she had.

It was during middle school did David and his Sister start to grow apart. Sneaking out, skipping class, among other things became his Sister’s focus. He had an idea of some things but didn’t speak on them since it would lead to an argument. “Boring and straight laced” was what she called him, he and to edge to him. The young boy’s concern was to make in on a national team, it didn’t matter the sport. David used his studies as a shield against the chaos around him, not just at home and school, but the city in general. Sometimes it felt like a comic with how crime was almost normalized be it in the background or directly involving you. He kept his circle small and hid most information about himself, his image had to be pure for the scouts and his future career.

Given the reputation of his Father, David knew military enlistment was the next step college or not. Now being in the army was a double edge sword. There wasn’t this pressure to perform like say the marines but he was held to a higher standard. Sometimes he was afforded privildges like extra time but also more severe punishments for making the same mistake as others. Just going for 2 years wasn’t enough, he was expected to stay for 3. Not for his own goals or wants but that of his Father. It was during this time did David see that he had lived a rather comfortable life compared to others in his unit, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any issues. The constant question on his mind was “Where do i belong?”.  Well the military wasn’t the answer, his discharge date couldn’t come soon enough and when it came, he was already in another system. College.

A bit older and wiser, David could fully focus on his studies (again) something he was happy about and rebuild some parts of his past that he couldn’t while serving. While he is aware his parents expect to major in something like medicine or law, he has no interest in either. His duties to his family and country are complete. It’s for David to live for himself. During his 1st year of college his Sister got married much to the joy of his parents. His Brother-in-Law was “well put together” despite being a little off in his manners. It wasn’t until a few months later did his Sister reveal she married a vampire along with hints of her planning to become one. Their Step-Dad was willing to overlook all of his since it met more access to money and power however their Mom had reservations. Knowing her relationship was rocky with her daughter, she asked David to look after her.

This was 1 of the few times in his life he went against his parents wishes. David had a real chance to be a top athlete and having a gang affiliation wouldn’t help. Even if he did have access to money and in some ways protection it was too big of a risk. His Sister made her choice to get and stay involved, if she did need help he would but only from her directly. Not going through with it put distance between the young man and his Mom. Maybe it was pressure of college, stress, or still trying to answer the question but David had a chance to “be better” and secretly got an enhancement on his eyes. This afforded him the ability to study in any lighting and pick up on details he would other wise miss. His grade improved greatly but the bigger reward was that his physical fitness was fine tuned to the point he could stay at his peak. With his enhancement he could monitor his calorie intake and vitals, adjust his work out plan so his whole body performing at it’s maximum. This offered him some stability as he had something to thrive for and could take his mind off of the less appealing parts of his life.

INTERVIEW QUESTION (para sample): “Just run us through what happened that night”. - Officer

He was nervous looking at the “window” of the home unsure if there was others on the other side. Running his hand through his hair was a ploy to cover his eye and scan for temperature, a rather unused feature of his eyes. He sighed out of relief not “seeing” anyone though he knew to not let his guard down. Again the officer repeated their statement. This time he looked at them directly hands under the table quietly toying with the zipper of his jacket, “I was going home from the library but stopped at the store for a drink.” That was true, it was all true. Though now he wished he just went straight home. “But you didn’t see the fight?” the Officer raised a brow not totally convinced. “No, I wasn’t focused on that. I heard people yelling but didn’t look that’s how you get jumped. It wasn’t my business so I kept going,” he answered. “Uh. . .David, you’re in school right? What do you want to be?” This sad attempt to relate to him. “That’s really irrelevant to why I’m here, shouldn’t you be talking to them or the store owner? I don’t know why I’m here, when I didn’t do anything.” his words had a hint of annoyance, he wasn’t a child. “You are a witness, maybe not a good one but still one regardless. Even if your details are. . .missing. It’s enough with common sense to help confirm the series of events.” The Officer replied, “You may go.” He was didn’t need to be told twice with his bag already on his shoulder and made his way out of the station.

[amwritingmeta]

14x14: Dean and Cas and Questioning the Status Quo

Note: I found this in drafts and I believe I chopped it into smaller pieces, but I thought I’d post the whole long thing because it actually ties back to the lack of communication currently happening in S15 and the need to shake up the status quo. By, you know, someone actually speaking words. And the other, you know, actually listening. :) 

Let’s take a closer look at this, because it warrants a closer look, or so I’d like to argue: these two idiots are (and Sam too but Dean and Cas more prominently so in this ep) locked in a status quo that is informed by Dean’s inability to stop believing that what he wants is something he can’t have.

Know what I mean?

Now, I think the dance around this fact in 14x14 is quite elegant, way I see it, and though what exactly the gorgon represents is up for interpretation, the simple facts are:

Noah the gorgon in and of himself is a snake symbol, and per the ouroboros of the title, the snake symbolism in 14x14 might be leaning towards renewal, rebirth and a conjoining of opposites rather than, you know, the snake that brought knowledge to mankind and helped us rebel........ Yeah, kinda good either way you look at it, no?

Noah also Biblically brought the flood, which is a mighty symbol of rebirth, so he’s this double-edged sword where both edges spell renewal

Noah looks at you, assesses you and sees the truth of you, established with the truck driver, his note to Dean and with Jack - a bit of a narrative tie to Michael in 14x01, who blasted onto the scene reading the truth of people’s motivations left and right, and subtle foreshadowing of how Michael will shed Dean and go looking for a new skin *shudder’

Noah enjoys both men and women (yes indeed bisexual symbol and nope I am not the first to point this out of course)

That’s the basic makeup of Noah’s demi-god character, yeah?

Now a bit of a look at the interaction we have in the episode between Dean and Cas. (I have a very strong urge to refer to them as nothing but the two idiots for the rest of this post but) (I shall not)

1. Invisible Cas (and Jack)

It’s rather striking. The first image we get of Sam and Dean breaking through that door together, and alone, only for a mirror moment to come barely a minute later of them doing the exact same thing, only now Cas (and yes, Jack) is stepping through the door with them. *goosebumps all over*

What does it mean? Could mean a host of things. To me? 

Well, Noah can’t see angels. Right? Fair enough, he can’t see either Cas or Jack so it’s not like Cas is special here, not really, but what does Noah represent? I talked briefly in an ask about whether he’s representative of toxic masculinity and how I don’t think he is. 

He’s submitting to his fate, isn’t he? He’d rather not, but for survival’s sake, he doesn’t really have a choice. He’s performing ritualistic killings because that’s what’s expected of him. He’s not taking any real pleasure from it. Not very toxic, especially when compared to Michael the Dick Archangel, who breaks his promise to Rowena and slaughters the innocent’s of the bunker without mercy.

I would say Noah is more likely to be representative of suppression/repression, predominantly suppression in Dean, because oh, man, is Dean tying himself in very knowing knots this episode, and predominantly repression in Cas and Jack, which is why it makes enormous sense to me that he cannot see them.

You see, where Dean is completely aware of his emotions and is actively and consciously suppressing them - which is so fucking unhealthy - Cas and Jack are both shown, throughout the episode, to be unaware of how deeply their unconscious repression runs. I’ll talk about Jack in a separate post, but oh god. It’s lovely.

Sidenote

Suppression is a psychological term for when we consciously push down unwanted thoughts or urges. Used healthily this is where self-control lies, but when an unwanted emotion or urge is ignored out of fear, this suppression tactic can turn into a pattern of behaviour that may lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms (like drinking, casual sex, violent outbursts, addiction to danger etc) *side eye Dean Winchester* and irrational behaviour and lack of self-control due to lack of self-awareness.

Repression is a psychological term for when we push down unwanted thoughts, urges or very often memories into our unconscious, where our conscious mind is protected from having to deal with these particulars, because our conscious mind is kept wholly unaware that these particulars are a part of us. However, these repressed thoughts, urges or memories will push to be recognised, because anything we try to simply forget, that is deeply affecting, will never stay forgotten, and being unable to confront these buried thoughts, urges or memories may result in unhealthy outlets, such as the coping mechanisms and irrational behaviour mentioned above.

(long af)

2. Almost Liturgical

This scene is so incredibly wonderful for setting up Dean and Cas’ attitudes for the rest of the episode. Cas is observant and supportive and quietly brazen in making Dean be honest with him, and Dean can’t resist opening up, not when Cas asks him to. Prompts him to, even.

There’s so much softness from Dean here, and I’d say Cas sees it, and still doesn’t see it at all. Dean’s been looking at him with heart eyes for so long without it meaning that anything between them is developing or, I don’t know, renewing, that Cas just takes that softness and those heart eyes at face value.

There are subtle shifts throughout this scene between them, but the biggest one, to my mind, comes once Jack is back at the table and tells them he’s fine, because Dean then tries to swipe his opening up to Cas, as well as the severity of his reminding Cas of Plan B, aside by being flippant and adding this smile:

Which basically gets him a stern look from Cas -->

--> because no, Dean, Cas isn’t fine with everyone being fine. You can’t just make him be fine with Plan B, because Plan B is anything but fine.

And Dean looks contrite enough -->

--> and, I would say, realising exactly how open he just left himself to Cas’ scrutiny. Feeling exposed and vulnerable and a little raw and this isn’t helped by Cas putting himself in a position of having the upper hand by using a word that’s not in Dean’s vocabulary, because whenever Cas gets the upper hand it serves to remind Dean of? 

Yes, that Cas isn’t his to make heart eyes at.

Because? 

He believes, to his core, that what he wants, he can’t have.

I’d like to shake him. And shake him hard. Because even when Cas, over and over, through his actions and reactions, tell Dean exactly what he’s feeling, Dean still doesn’t see.

And so he goes from the soft expression and full on openness with Cas...

...to that ^^^ detached and Got Work To Do expression.

*shake shake bloody shake*

Now, of course, the fact that he’s being open and making heart eyes and feeling all sorts of things that are scary as all fuck to him and always have been - the scariest thing of all is love, right? - makes him go to great and unnecessary lengths to cover those feelings up to anyone who might be watching him.

And to suppress them to himself.

Stop wanting, essentially. Letting that hope flare that Cas could love him back only leads to pain and pain and pain, because in his low self-worth idled brain, his thoughts are stuck running along the same lines that they’ve always been running along, saying the same thing they’ve always said: why would an angel rescue him from hell? 

Which translates to: why would he ever deserve Cas’ love? 

In his head, he doesn’t deserve good things. 

And he’s perpetuating this conviction out of fear, rooted in losing his family at four years old, a loss that has cemented the belief of how Good Things Don’t Last, and this cementation has occurred in Dean out of sheer ego self-preservation, and Michael now is the ultimate proof of that. Michael in his head. Because Dean said yes. So -->

3. Overcompensation

This is Dean’s default reaction to Cas being in an obviously superior position, no matter how small that superiority might be. In 14x14 it’s something as simple as Cas having a deeper vocabulary and Dean being in the sudden situation where this is revealed to Jack, who couldn’t give less of a fuck, but since Dean just spent five minutes laying his soul bare to Cas, this moment is like a slap back to reality for Dean.

And what does he do?

He does what he always does. He tries to put himself in the superior position, because, truthfully, he knows he never really can be superior to Cas, because, um, angel. Yeah. Can’t really bypass that fact.

This ^^^ is all about Dean desperately trying to cover, trying to act like Cas knowing things beyond what Dean knows makes him, somehow, inferior. 

Look, Dean’s habit of pulling Cas down to Earth is never malicious in intent, but all to do with Dean’s insecurities and, in many scenarios, also directly linked to his falling in love and not believing, ever, for a second, that Cas the angel - as an angel - could or would or should love him back. 

The angle in 14x14, where he makes light of Cas’ superior vocabulary by putting him in with the brainy kids in AV Club - and look at how it sets up for Dean with his next breath trying to impress with his knowledge of Medusa, that turns out to be based in a movie that’s exaggerated the myth for entertainment purposes, which leaves very little of his knowledge to feel as impressive as Cas’ observations regarding the gorgon - the AV Club reference aids in Dean’s suppression of his emotions.

All the while this utter verbal denial of what it is that he truly loves about Cas serves to underline to us how he really feels deep down, and knows he feels deep down, which is why he’s scrambling to cover it up, terrified the truth is written all over his face, the way it is whenever he looks softly, softly at Cas and dares to open himself up to everything Cas means to him.

So instead, in dialogue, he goes:

-- Oh, look at the baby in the trench coat. Not so powerful now. -- Oh, look at the weird, dorky little guy. He’s not a commander. -- Oh, look at the nerdy dude who knows words. He is so not my type.

Yeah, okay, sure, Jan.

Meanwhile, Cas is like The fuck? -->

*darling Cas*

Now, when it comes to not seeing, we are presented with a baddie who eats the eyes of his victim to glimpse the future. Obviously he doesn’t snack on anyone’s eyes out of TFW 2.0, but he does carry a bit of the whole other side to him, where he can read people’s fate, with him in how he interacts with them, doesn’t he? It’s like he reads Jack’s palm, once he has him in front of him. And Dean and Cas?

Well, not the first one to point out that they’re both flat on their backs on the floor by the end of their encounter with the flood. 

I mean, their encounter with Noah. 

Who is actually the saviour away from the flood. Almost like their interaction with him constitutes the way out of drowning, for both of them. Funny that. But I’m skipping ahead.

First -->

4. Regards, Noah

Dean,

I see you standing alone by the truck stop reading this. I see you and the tall man and the red headed witch chasing me. I will always see you. Stop, or I will make you stop.

Regards, Noah

I’ll get back to this.

5. He’s a Lover, Not a Fighter

So, we arrive at the confrontation, which opens with the statement Noah makes of how he’s a lover, not a fighter. Interesting, isn’t it? Because this is truly the core trait of the entire TFW 2.0 --> innately they are not killers, they are protectors; they are not weapons, they are shields.

In the confrontation scene we also get a previously invisible and now not at all invisible Cas focusing on giving the antidote to the victim, while Jack keeps Noah distracted by listening to the fable. 

Cas is mildly on guard about the whole thing and finally comes right out and questions Noah’s motives for telling the story to Jack. When Noah gives voice to what could be read as Cas’ own worries concerning Jack burning off his soul, Cas attacks, because he doesn’t want to even think about the implications of what Noah is seeing, or unable to properly make out, in Jack -->

--> in this context, Noah as a manifestation of Cas’ suppressed fears about Jack’s choices.

Cas being in denial of how serious Jack’s situation is, is given to us in the El Saboros, because we see Jack alone healing himself, burning off his soul, and returning to the table with a ready lie of how he’s fine. Cas might not be convinced, but he’s also unaware of how Jack is still coughing up blood, and if he wasn’t suppressing his constant worry, arguably writing it off as him being overprotective, he’d most likely take actual action in order to stop Jack from walking down the dangerous path he’s stubbornly treading. 

(rather than the righteous path) (*clears throat*)

Back with the confrontation, where Noah very easily disarms Cas (demi-god that Noah is and all), slaps Cas twice, once across each cheek, and then kisses one of those cheeks, effectively paralysing Cas with gorgon poison. 

Cas goes rigid and falls to the floor, unable to move, but the antidote doesn’t work on Cas.

Why does the poison have the same effect on him as on a human, but the antidote doesn’t? Why does it take Jack sacrificing a piece of his humanity in order to tap into his angelic powers for Cas to be released from the poison?

Mh-hmh, let’s look at Dean before we try and answer, shall we?

Dean bursts in and Noah very easily disarms him (Noah can fight y’all) and knocks Dean’s head once, twice against the wall, rendering Dean unconscious.

Let’s glance back for a moment at how we got to here:

Throughout S13 Dean was confronted with toxic masculinity representatives leading right into him saying yes to having the most outstanding toxic masculinity representative literally possess him by the end of the season. S13 was all about making Dean aware of how toxic the ideal he’s modelled himself after for so long truly is, and he did begin to move away from it, this in order to be equipped to recognise Michael’s true colours, once he had to grant them absolute access.

S14 has been very much about confronting the past and all those suppressed/repressed fears and hangups being pushed to the surface. This while TFW 2.0 have all been asked - in not so many words - to find the answer to the question of What Do I Want? 

Dean’s reply to this question in 14x12 is so far from what the narrative is continuously angling for it to be, that only two episodes later that answer is not only nullified, but brings on a possible narrative punishment, because odds are that Jack, through self-sacrifice, is opening himself up to a world of hurt, and if Dean’s answer to the question of What Do I Want? had been different, if he’d reached that point in his individuation process where he could be honest with himself, then the outcome would have been different too.

But he hasn’t reached that point, and so the outcome is what we’re given in 14x14. So, what’s Dean’s answer to the question What Do I Want?

Plan B.

You see, Dean doesn’t believe that they’ll find another way to beat Michael, not really. Dean is humouring the people he loves, but he’s expecting them to be the ones to do all the emotional work and let him go, rather than him doing the necessary emotional work and confronting his fears, collected in the manifestation of his shadow-self: Michael.

Dean’s answer to the question What Do I Want? is to symbolically put himself into the box of societal norms that has dictated his relationship with his shadow-self for his entire life, and drown his ego, his consciousness, with the cycle of unhealthy suppression/repression that the darker side to his shadow-self is responsible for maintaining. (Dean’s suppressed longing for more, for a long and happy life; and his repressed childhood neglect)

Why? Because his fears run so deep that he doesn’t know how to confront them without annihilating his identity. To get to his true identity, though, he must confront these fears and understand the truth: that his fears are nothing but a construct, and that he can choose for them to no longer hold any merit.

6. Shake Shake Shake

Now, diving back into 14x14, where Dean and Cas are both flat on their back thanks to Noah.

So, let’s pull on the symbolical threads I set up at the start of this post. Threads that are very much tied to the Jungian doctrine of individuation, which I first wrote about here and have been reading up on since. (seriously it makes for deeply satisfying study) (Carl Jung was a great man)

Cas

When it comes to his worry for Jack, Cas deals in suppression, but when it comes to answering the question What Do I Want? Cas deals wholly in repression. He is not being honest with himself, and it’s given to us in his exchange later on with Jack, where he talks about humans as burning bright, unlike "things like us”. 

Yes, an unspecified thing is what he identifies himself with. 

He doesn’t identify himself as an angel, which, to my mind, is important, but for him to also step as far away as he can from humanity is equally pertinent because, well, this meta writer does believe that he needs to admit to himself what it is he truly wants for himself before he’ll be able to properly begin the final leg of his journey towards internal balance. 

Noah’s note underlines how he sees Dean, but Noah couldn’t see Cas, and to me this is all because Noah is much more narratively tied to Dean, while serving - as representative of suppression/repression - to narratively highlight these habits in all of TFW 2.0, but there’s another layer to it, where Noah is tied to Cas’ repressed true identity, meaning Cas is blind to his own repression.

(and Jack is blind to his own internal conflict, given to us in dialogue when he yells at Michael - childishly - that he’s not a child) (because Jack still is a kid)

Looking at the setup of Noah not being able to see Cas and Jack, it could be argued that he can’t see them, that he’s cut off from them, because they’re unaware of him, and so he’s unaware of them.

Awareness is key to confrontation. So, to me, it’s delicious that it’s Cas and Jack who grow aware of Noah and go to confront him, allowing him to see them, because it’s the ego’s awareness that allows for any internal imbalance to be confronted and worked through.

Moreover, Cas’ continued unawareness - his inability to recognise what it is he’s actually doing - of his own repression is what is keeping Cas complacent.

It’s keeping Cas accepting the status quo.

It’s keeping Cas paralysed in his own skin.

See what I’m getting at? Cas’ confrontation with Noah is brief, very, very brief, and Cas is disarmed very, very quickly and receives the kiss that paralyses him after being slapped, like a proverbial wakeup call, on either cheek, by the representative of his repression.

And, look it, when it comes to the question of why the antidote doesn’t work on him: if Cas had been human, it would’ve.

But Cas - being an angel - needs Jack to help him, needs Jack to burn off a piece of his soul in order to get the poison out, needs Jack to unlock his limbs and get him out of the paralysis. 

Jack, who in 14x08, was shown to be such an incredibly important tool for Cas’ individuation, since Jack is the one who symbolically (and literally) woke him, making Cas aware of his shadow-self.

And where Dean is unable to face his shadow-self due to his low self-worth making him fear what it will mean for his ego, aka his self-view and understanding of who he is if he were to confront his deepest fears, Cas’ low self-worth is equally exposed through his acceptance of the shadow-self’s threat to come and take him in his happiest moment. Cas doesn’t believe he deserves more, so for his happiest moment to be a point of punishment makes perfect sense to him, and this makes it incredibly difficult for him to break out of his complacency.

Better the status quo than the Empty.

Better a useful thing than daring to consider what would actually make him happy by truthfully answering the questions of Who am I? and Who do I want to be? and going for it.

*shake shake bloody shake*

The poisonous kiss from his repression, and Cas’ inability to get himself out of a state of paralysis without Jack’s help, doesn’t necessarily set up for what’s to come, but to me it does underline what is: as an angel Cas is stuck in a place where, as a human, he wouldn’t need help getting out of.

And this place that he’s stuck in takes a toll on the one person he’s tried, for seasons now, to protect - Jack - and this moment is entirely reflective of - and of course helps set up for - Jack’s choice to step into this exact same position for Dean, when he kills Michael. 

Dean

Oh, Dean.

Old patterns are a bitch. 

Actually, old patterns are turning into his greatest enemy, which gets me all kinds of squeakily excited for him. The lessons he’s been set out to learn for many, many moons now, are, at this point, hitting him so hard over the head they’re knocking him out against a wall.

Dean was fighting his toxic masculinity in S13. Growing aware of the ideal and moving away from it so that he can see Toxic Masculinity Michael for what he truly is, but because of patterns that have informed Dean’s sense of identity ever since he was a child, modelling himself on John and his mode of Feelings are Weaknesses that Will Get You and Your Brother Killed, Dean can’t bring himself to believe that there’s a way out of this confrontation with his shadow-self without killing the ego. Meaning without killing his conscious idea of himself. And because of the fear this brings of losing his sense of self completely, his incapable of believing there’s a way of beating Michael.

Even when Dean is sitting in front of the key to his own faith in the future, and yes, indeed the key to Dean’s faith in the future has always been Cas, and Cas is basically telling Dean that there’s no way Cas is ever giving up on him, and that they’ll find another way, Dean still can’t submit to his own need to believe, because his love of Cas is tethered to just as much fear as anything else, and confronting that fear, his fear of love and having hope for the future and believing that Cas does or could love him back, brings on just as much of an identity crisis as the thought of confronting his shadow-self.

And it’s all connected, of course. Because Dean’s internal fears don’t exist in a vacuum. But if he dared lean on his love for Cas and the faith and trust it’s always brought him, then he’d find the strength to confront his shadow-self and question all the lies it keeps filling his head with when it comes to perpetuating his low self-worth. Likewise, if he dared push past his identity crisis and begin to question the lies of his shadow-self that keeps his self-worth low, he would begin to feel the faith and trust Cas instils in him, and he’d start to believe in the love that Cas is continuously showing him.

But Dean can’t.

Dean is stuck in the belief that lingering in the status quo, and keeping to what he knows, is preferable, because there’s this huge thing in the way for Dean to be able to do anything else.

And holy fuck it’s formidable how this is now set up. (if I’m right in this reading)

The huge thing in the way for Dean to dare open himself up to his true identity is his inability to let go of old patterns, and 14x14 makes it explicit to me that this inability is rooted entirely in his neglected inner child. 

So what truly needs nurturing and attention and for Dean to grow aware of exactly how much he’s been neglecting it, is Dean’s inner child. An inner child that he’s been ignoring through his repression of his yearning for love. This yearning has been present in him since childhood and he’s repressed it by adopting the adage that feelings are weaknesses, and adopting this very harsh take on love in order to protect himself from a father incapable of providing the affection every child needs to feel truly safe and protected.

Moreover, Dean has been putting up walls to keep out the memory of the horror of his mother’s death and the guilt that’s haunted him and the mistrust it’s produced in him of anything good ever truly lasting for very long, and this, all this, is why he, in 14x14, teases Cas and tries to cover up how he’s really feeling and it gets him his head smashed into a wall by the representative of all of the above fears collected into his lifelong habit of suppression and repression of his true identity.

Noah sees Dean.

Noah will always see Dean.

And the narrative punishes Dean’s inability to break old patterns by having those old patterns knock him out cold, because clearly something needs to happen to shake up the status quo. 

Because the representative of Dean’s neglected inner child is...?

Jack.

And so Dean’s inability to do the shadow work needed, or to fully trust in those he loves, brings about the necessity for the representative of his inner child to step up to the plate and take matters into hand by expelling the manifestation of Dean’s shadow-self, while taking part of it into itself.

Yeah, I know right?

To my mind, Jack swallowing Michael’s grace is set to lead to not very good things.

Well, ultimately it will, I believe, but, oh, there may be quite a bit of glorious turbulence ahead. Or, at least, a huge push for Dean to face his internal imbalance and find a way to start all the emotional work needed if he’s to take full responsibility and stop running.

7. Off With Their Heads

This image is so powerful, because it serves so many possible purposes and can be interpreted in so many different ways, but here’s what I see:

A foreshadowing of the snake in Dean’s head (Michael) shedding his skin

An underlining for what Michael shedding Dean truly stands for: the first step toward internal rebirth/renewal for Dean

A plant for Jack picking up Felix and claiming him for a pet, which is deeply symbolic when looking at what Jack represents in the narrative, and what Jack himself needs for his own progression

But first, we get Sam also thrown across the room, very, very easily, by Noah the suppression/repression representative, because of course, Sam’s got his own shit to work through. Like his inability to take a moment for himself. His codependent behaviour runs so deep that he has no idea who he is unless he has people to look out for. And, good Lord, all the people under his protection getting killed by Michael after Sam insisted they bring Dean back. The internal conflict must be tearing Sam apart. *hands clutched to mouth* It’s not your fault, Sam!!

Once Sam hits the floor without getting knocked out (feels possibly significant here because Sam leading the way in letting go of the dependency and pushing himself into adulthood feels so important for Dean to finally allow himself to do the same) (but we shall see about that) we get Jack cutting off Noah’s head.

And looking at the fact of how Jack is the one to place his hands on either side of Rowena’s head, driving Michael out of her, you might say he cuts the head off both snakes in this narrative, right?

But, as I wrote here, he also swallows one of those snakes down, taking its essence into himself, while keeping a little piece of Noah in a glass box in his room, and so it can be said that he, symbolically, is tied to both symbols (suppression/repression/shadow-self) and is the last snake standing.

So. Turbulence.

Because Jack is no snake.

Jack has felt like a powerful symbol of internal balance for all of TFW and so for this symbol to now be in such absolute imbalance is quite possibly heralding Jack’s own dark arc, which could prove a necessary push out of the status quo that Dean and Cas and Sam are all in. 

Something to shake shake bloody shake them awake already.

Please. And thank you. :)

8. Access Denied

Cas has tried, on more than one occasion on the ride back to the bunker, to heal Dean, but he can’t. He can’t even see what’s going on inside Dean’s head.

*slow eyebrow raise*

Dean’s repression knocks him out -->

leading to Dean’s shadow-self no longer staying suppressed

leading to Dean’s inner child confronting the shadow-self with a declaration of how its not a child

Dean’s inner child swallowing the essence of Dean’s shadow-self down and declaring that it’s now itself again, restored to its former glory through taking into itself the toxic masculinity representative that’s the source of Dean’s repressed longing for love and his neglecting of his inner child in the first place

Oof.

Cas suddenly has no access to Dean because Dean’s repression runs too deep, and faith can’t reach where it’s not welcome, where it’s constantly shut down and mistrusted, and neither can love.

Especially not a faith or a love that doesn’t actually believe it belongs there.

The fucking status quo acting like the barrier it’s always been between these men, the barrier sitting like an enormous obstacle in front of open communication and honesty with each other, but foremost with themselves.

*so frustratingly amazing*

[goldstarnation]

SEPTEMBER 2019 GOLD STAR MEDIA SCHEDULES & REVIEW

Members may earn 3 points each (up to 6 points) for writing, by the end of October 7 KST:

A solo para of 400+ words based on their monthly schedule (does not count toward your monthly total).

A thread of six posts (three per participant, including the starter) based on their monthly schedule.

Threads do not have to take place directly during an important date listed on the schedule, but must be related to what the muse is mentioned to be doing in the paragraph explaining their schedule/the company’s schedule for the month and/or their thoughts on the mentioned activities or lack thereof.

These schedules may be updated throughout the month if new information needs to be added.

Reminder: August schedule posts are due by the end of September 7 KST.

Overall Company

In the aftermath of their company concert, Gold Star executives are pleased with the turn out and there’s talk they’re considering taking the family concert overseas in the future to take full advantage of the pull their company name has in places like Southeast Asia and the US. In the meantime, everything is back to normal around the main building, and all Gold Star idols get a three day break for Chuseok unless they’re beholden to other voluntary individual schedules.

Important dates:

September 12-14: Chuseok break (no activities save for specific voluntary individual schedules).

Gold Star Soloist 1

This month marks her eleventh anniversary since her debut, an achievement few in the industry can rival, especially with her kind of success. To celebrate, Gold Star has arranged a schedule VLive on her anniversary which will be advertised as an online fan meeting of sorts. She’ll have mostly free rein over what she does during the live stream as long as management is informed in advance. The following week, she’ll be doing a free public “busking” event performing some of her songs and select covers. It won’t be completely authentic busking, as the time and location will be announced following her anniversary VLive and she’ll be performing on a small raised stage with adequate security.

Important dates:

September 18: Scheduled 11th anniversary VLive.

September 25: 11th anniversary public busking event.

Gold Star Soloist 2

On top of recording for her upcoming album the whole month, her Seoul concerts have finally arrived for the weekend right after Chuseok. Gold Star anticipates a more general public audience than a fandom one, so most of the promotion for it is out of her hands and she’s encouraged to focus on being in her best vocal condition for the concert instead.

Important dates:

September 15: I AM concert at Olympic Hall in Seoul, South Korea.

September 16: I AM concert at Olympic Hall in Seoul, South Korea.

September 21: Performance at K-Crush 2019 Concert at Impact Challenger Hall 1 in Bangkok, Thailand (also performing: 7ROPHY)

Gold Star Soloist 3

The first three weeks of the month are spent finishing off his promotions for “Runaway”, so the short Chuseok break is only a brief reprieve from music shows and the expectation is for him to keep himself in top shape for his tour to continue once promotions wrap. He’ll get only a one day break on the 22nd before he flies out to the first stops of his Europe tour.

Important dates:

September 21: End of music show promotions.

September 24: Self-titled tour concert at Time Out Studio in Lisbon, Portugal.

September 25: Self-titled tour concert at Cool Stage in Madrid, Spain.

September 28: Self-titled tour concert at Santeria Social Club in Milan, Italy.

September 30: Self-titled tour concert at Lucerna Music Bar in Prague, Czech Republic.

Silhouette

The members finish recording their upcoming mini-album this month and begin learning the choreography after they return from their three-day Chuseok break. They’ve also been chosen as the new faces of sportswear brand Mizuno, so they’re scheduled to film their first CF for the brand and will be hosting a fan sign at the end of the month after the CF begins airing nationwide. With Origin’s comeback mysteriously delayed, what had previously been a low-pressure comeback ups the ante and expectations from management to perform well have increased in a way that is unlikely to go unnoticed by the members.

Important dates:

September 8: Mizuno Sports CF filming.

September 29: Mizuno fan sign in Seoul.

Aria

As rehearsals continue for their concerts next month, the members are given the opportunity for solo (or duo) stages as listed below. Members will be given the chance to suggest what stages they would like to do, but the final decisions are made by management, whether that aligns with the member’s choice or not. They’ll be rehearsing those all month on top of several of their latest title tracks and b-sides, and have also booked another mobile game CF to film after their return from their short Chuseok break.

Leader/vocal/rapper & main dancer/lead vocal - I Didn’t Go To School

Main vocal - Domino

Maknae/vocal/rapper - Gashina

Main rapper and lead vocal - All Hands On Deck

Lead dancer and vocal - New Face

Important dates:

September 16: The Rulers mobile game CF filming.

September 28-29: Performance at Super K-Pop Festival Indonesia 2019 at the Indonesia Convention Exhibition BSD in Tangerang, Indonesia (also performing: Aria and Decipher).

Origin

A meeting is called on September 9 when the members come in to record in the studio and they’re told that a decision has been made to go back to the drawing board with parts of their album. This means scrapping songs, including ones members may have had a hand in and had been told were confirmed for release, and working on “a better quality album”. It’s a shock considering they’d begun comeback preparation with everything in place at the end of last month and this has never happened before, but management doesn’t take time for questions. There’s bound to be rumors about all of the reasons behind why, but it does in part mean a slightly less heavy workload this month, though they’re still as packed as always. They’re sent right back to the studio to record something that was already planned and has now been moved up, which is a series of unit track collaborations with Western artists for the soundtrack of Origin World. They won’t meet or directly record with any of their collaboration partners.

Vocal 1, lead vocal/lead dancer, maknae/main vocal/lead dancer - Dream Glow ft. Charli XCX

Main dancer/lead rapper, vocal 2 - A Brand New Day ft. Zara Larsson

Main rapper, lead rapper - All Night ft. Juice WRLD

Important dates:

September 11: Photo shoot for Anan Magazine October issue.

September 15: Origin 2020 Season’s Greetings photo shoot.

September 17: Lights/Boy With Luv (Japanese Ver) hand shake event in Tokyo, Japan.

September 18: Lights/Boy With Luv (Japanese Ver.) hand shake event in Osaka, Japan.

September 24: Lotte Duty Free CF filming.

September 26: UNICEF Love Myself Global Campaign video filming.

Impulse

They kick off their world tour at the beginning of the month with their Seoul concerts and follow up with a KCon Thailand performance as headliners later in the month. That all means a lot of rehearsals and long night practices together as group save for the brief three-day Chuseok break. From he beginning of the month, members are also in the studio recording for another new Japanese album release before the end of the year, which means members are expected to be brushing up on their Japanese too.

Important dates:

September 5: End of music show promotions.

September 7: Keep Spinning 2019 World Tour concert at KSPO Dome in Seoul, South Korea.

September 8: Keep Spinnign 2019 World Tour concert at KSPO Dome in Seoul, South Korea.

September 28: Performance at KCon Thailand at Impact Arena in Bangkok, Thailand.

Fuse

The end of one comeback promotion period doesn’t mean a break for Fuse. As soon as the month starts, they hit the ground running on concept meetings and recording for songs off of their next mini-album, which will drop before the end of the year. The concept seems to be much more summery than Zimzalabim despite its slated late fall release date, which is sure to raise questions as to what Gold Star is thinking and whether they may have prioritized Femme Fatale having a successful comeback at the detriment of Fuse, but management claims it’d all part of Fuse’s “experimental” concept design.

Important dates:

September 11: Release of Sappy Japanese album.

September 28-29: Performance at Super K-Pop Festival Indonesia 2019 at the Indonesia Convention Exhibition BSD in Tangerang, Indonesia (also performing: Aria and Decipher).

Element

Element are saved another month from Gold Star’s love of VLives to connect with fans, although this is a double-edged sword as won’t go unnoticed by the fan base, who wanted more activities for the group in addition to the fan outreach versus instead of. In addition to concerts in India, making them the first group from Gold Star to perform in the country, and a festival in Germany, Element have been picked for their first group brand ambassador deal since they came onto the scene. It’s a deal with a Japanese footwear brand, but they’ve been chosen as Southeast Asia regional ambassadors instead of serving as ambassadors within their own country, a reminder of their struggle for popularity domestically.

Important dates:

September 15: ASICS CF filming.

September 20: 4lement tour concert at Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi, India.

September 22: 4lement tour concert at Shilpgram North East Zone Cultural Centre in Guwahati, India.

September 28: Performance at Finger Heart Festival in Mannheim, Germany (also performing: Alien).

Femme Fatale

The members are performing in their first major concerts since their debut this month as their Japan arena tour kicks off in Osaka (please see August’s schedule for their assigned solo stages). The attention their latest comeback has gotten internationally is particularly noticeable for them this month, as they’ve been booked for photo shoots in both a Chinese and Japanese magazine and have signed a deal as the new (and first)  regional brand ambassadors for Shopee in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

Important dates:

September 8: Photo shoot for Grazia China October issue.

September 16: Photo shoot for Glitter Magazine Japan October issue + individual interviews.

September 17: Femme Fatale Arena Tour at Osaka-Jo Hall in Osaka, Japan.

September 18: Femme Fatale Arena Tour at Osaka-Jo Hall in Osaka, Japan.

September 22: Shopee CF filming.