#LET THEM ALL PERISH EXCEPT WE TWO!!!!! MAY WE TWO ALONE MAY LIVE IN THE GLORY OF TAKING TROY!!

[nikofortuna]

Poem: The End

The disaster inspiring this poem is a plague. It’s much less descriptive of the actual event than it is of the feelings of the author, which as I mentioned before is my character. Additionally at this point everybody engaged in the roleplay event has been planning to start a rebellion against the person who has been causing all of the disasters.

The End

Time and time it happens again,

Disaster strikes and locks us in,

Snow and Flame make heads spin,

Tides and Strain seek to win,

As if living was the greatest sin.

At leisure it takes away our kin,

While supplies too are running thin,

We are left to bury the fallen men.

Is it our fate to perish in this plague?

Or is there a cure so that we may endure?

It spread from high up reaching the sky,

But only grasps at the ones that bow far down below.

Stoking fires-

Burning incense-

Stoking fires to purify the bodies,

Burning incense to cleanse the souls.

So it goes ashes to ashes

And dust to dust.

With death we had many clashes,

Now we have to do what we must,

If only to survive at last.

Starting the analysis with the title this time!

So the title alone already reflects how thoroughly done my character is with the current happenings and it has been gradually radicalizing him with this disaster being the last straw in that regard.

Right at the beginning there is a bit of a recounting of the four previous disasters, how often they are occurring and how many lives are cut short every time. The first and last verse lock in every other verse in this stanza between each other through their rhyme scheme, which illustrates the lockdown the people have been experiencing in some way every disaster. Those are also the most important verses as every other verse except those two could be cut and the core meaning of the stanza would still be preserved.

The whole stanza feels a bit less flowery at least to me, which is supposed to showcase how upset my character as the author is that he speaks so directly and clearly.

The next stanza is a lot more flowery in contrast, in part because it has to be in a sense. Verses three and four clearly allude to the illness originating from the palace but only taking the lives of the citizens. It is just vague enough that my character could plausibly deny that the emperor is meant here and just say he means the Heavens instead.

The rhyme scheme in this stanza is a bit different from what I’ve done so far as the rhyming bits are within the same verse each. There are also two parallels to be found here with the subjects standing directly in opposition to each other in both cases. The first two verses set things up with the cure standing against the plague, which then makes it quite clear that the emperor is standing against the people. This verse set up also uplifts the people since structurally they stand in the same position as the cure.

As always we’ve got my favourite poem structure with another double parallel! Two things of fire with one big and the other small and two aspects of a person that are being made clean with those fires being set alight respectively.

In the last stanza the first half is obvious given that those verses are well known and refer to the death that has occurred again. Meanwhile the second half alludes to the citizens of the Crimson Empire rising up against the emperor, who at best is letting them die without interfering and at worst is the direct cause for all of this death. And with it being the only stanza with an uneven number of verses it signals a clear end.

[neil-gaiman]

How Did you come up with the first eve in the story about adams wives? I haven’t been able to find anything about her after I read it and I want to know if she’s an actual biblical character or just someone you made

She's from the Midrash. I learned about her as a 12 year old, from my barmitzvah teacher. There was a point in there, long after I'd put her into Sandman, where I was starting to think I'd imagined her, when I ran across her in Robert Graves's Hebrew Myths....

Excerpt from: The Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai (New York:  Doubleday, 1964), pp 65-69

Chapter 10: Adam's Helpmeets

(a) Having decided to give Adam a helpmeet lest he should be alone of his kind, God put him into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, formed it into a woman, and closed up the wound, Adam awoke and said: 'This being shall be named "Woman", because she has been taken out of man. A man and a woman shall be one flesh.' The title he gave her was Eve, 'the Mother of All Living''. [1]

(b) Some say that God created man and woman in His own image on the Sixth Day, giving them charge over the world; [2]  but that Eve did not yet exist. Now, God had set Adam to name every beast, bird and other living thing. When they passed before him in pairs, male and female, Adam-being already like a twenty-year-old man-felt jealous of their loves, and though he tried coupling with each female in turn, found no satisfaction in the act. He therefore cried: 'Every creature but I has a proper mate', and prayed God would remedy this injustice. [3]

(c) God then formed Lilith, the first woman, just as He had formed Adam, except that He used filth and sediment instead of pure dust. From Adam's union with this demoness, and with another like her named Naamah, Tubal Cain's sister, sprang Asmodeus and innumerable demons that still plague mankind. Many generations later, Lilith and Naamah came to Solomon's judgement seat, disguised as harlots of Jerusalem'. [4]

(d) Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.

Adam complained to God: 'I have been deserted by my helpmeet' God at once sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels said, `or we will drown you!' Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; [5] and if she could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would spitefully turn against her own. [6]

(e) Some say that Lilith ruled as queen in Zmargad, and again in Sheba; and was the demoness who destroyed job's sons. [7] Yet she escaped the curse of death which overtook Adam, since they had parted long before the Fall. Lilith and Naamah not only strangle infants but also seduce dreaming men, any one of whom, sleeping alone, may become their victim. [8]

(f) Undismayed by His failure to give Adam a suitable helpmeet, God tried again, and let him watch while he built up a woman's anatomy: using bones, tissues, muscles, blood and glandular secretions, then covering the whole with skin and adding tufts of hair in places. The sight caused Adam such disgust that even when this woman, the First Eve, stood there in her full beauty, he felt an invincible repugnance. God knew that He had failed once more, and took the First Eve away. Where she went, nobody knows for certain. [9]

(g) God tried a third time, and acted more circumspectly. Having taken a rib from Adam's side in his sleep, He formed it into a woman; then plaited her hair and adorned her, like a bride, with twenty-four pieces of jewellery, before waking him. Adam was entranced. [10]

(h) Some say that God created Eve not from Adam's rib, but from a tail ending in a sting which had been part of his body. God cut this off, and the stump-now a useless coccyx-is still carried by Adam's descendants. [11]

(i) Others say that God's original thought had been to create two human beings, male and female; but instead He designed a single one with a male face looking forward, and a female face looking back. Again He changed His mind, removed Adam's backward-looking face, and built a woman's body for it. [12]

(j) Still others hold that Adam was originally created as an androgyne of male and female bodies joined back to back. Since this posture made locomotion difficult, and conversation awkward, God divided the androgyne and gave each half a new rear. These separate beings He placed in Eden, forbidding them to couple. [13]

Notes on sources:

1. Genesis II. 18-25; III. 20.

2. Genesis I. 26-28.

3. Gen. Rab. 17.4; B. Yebamot 632.

4. Yalqut Reubeni ad. Gen. II. 21; IV. 8.

5. Alpha Beta diBen Sira, 47; Gaster, MGWJ, 29 (1880), 553 ff.

6. Num. Rab. 16.25.

7. Targum ad job 1. 15.

8. B. Shabbat 151b; Ginzberg, LJ, V. 147-48.

9. Gen. Rab. 158, 163-64; Mid. Abkir 133, 135; Abot diR. Nathan 24; B. Sanhedrin 39a.

10. Gen. II. 21-22; Gen. Rab. 161.

11. Gen. Rab. 134; B. Erubin 18a.

12. B. Erubin 18a.

13. Gen. Rab. 55; Lev. Rab. 14.1: Abot diR. Nathan 1.8; B. Berakhot 61a; B. Erubin 18a; Tanhuma Tazri'a 1; Yalchut Gen. 20; Tanh. Buber iii.33; Mid. Tehillim 139, 529.

Authors’ Comments on the Myth:

1. The tradition that man's first sexual intercourse was with animals, not women, may be due to the widely spread practice of bestiality among herdsmen of the Middle East, which is still condoned by custom, although figuring three times in the Pentateuch as a capital crime. In the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, Enkidu is said to have lived with gazelles and jostled other wild beasts at the watering place, until civilized by Aruru's priestess. Having enjoyed her embraces for six days and seven nights, he wished to rejoin the wild beasts but, to his surprise, they fled from him. Enkidu then knew that he had gained understanding, and the priestess said: 'Thou art wise, Enkidu, like unto a godl'

2. Primeval man was held by the Babylonians to have been androgynous. Thus the Gilgamesh Epic gives Enkidu androgynous features: `the hair of his head like a woman's, with locks that sprout like those of Nisaba, the Grain-goddess.' The Hebrew tradition evidently derives from Greek sources, because both terms used in a Tannaitic midrash to describe the bisexual Adam are Greek: androgynos, 'man-woman', and diprosopon, 'twofaced'. Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic philosopher and commentator on the Bible, contemporary with Jesus, held that man was at first bisexual; so did the Gnostics. This belief is clearly borrowed from Plato. Yet the myth of two bodies placed back to back may well have been founded on observation of Siamese twins, which are sometimes joined in this awkward manner. The two-faced Adam appears to be a fancy derived from coins or statues of Janus, the Roman New Year god.

3. Divergences between the Creation myths of Genesis r and n, which allow Lilith to be presumed as Adam's first mate, result from a careless weaving together of an early Judaean and a late priestly tradition. The older version contains the rib incident. Lilith typifies the Anath-worshipping Canaanite women, who were permitted pre-nuptial promiscuity. Time after time the prophets denounced Israelite women for following Canaanite practices; at first, apparently, with the priests' approval-since their habit of dedicating to God the fees thus earned is expressly forbidden in Deuteronomy xxIII. I8. Lilith's flight to the Red Sea recalls the ancient Hebrew view that water attracts demons. 'Tortured and rebellious demons' also found safe harbourage in Egypt. Thus Asmodeus, who had strangled Sarah's first six husbands, fled 'to the uttermost parts of Egypt' (Tobit viii. 3), when Tobias burned the heart and liver of a fish on their wedding night.

4. Lilith's bargain with the angels has its ritual counterpart in an apotropaic rite once performed in many Jewish communities. To protect the newborn child against Lilith-and especially a male, until he could be permanently safeguarded by circumcision-a ring was drawn with natron, or charcoal, on the wall of the birthroom, and inside it were written the words: 'Adam and Eve. Out, Lilith!' Also the names Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof (meanings uncertain) were inscribed on the door. If Lilith nevertheless succeeded in approaching the child and fondling him, he would laugh in his sleep. To avert danger, it was held wise to strike the sleeping child's lips with one finger-whereupon Lilith would vanish.

5. 'Lilith' is usually derived from the Babylonian-Assyrian word lilitu, ,a female demon, or wind-spirit'-one of a triad mentioned in Babylonian spells. But she appears earlier as 'Lillake' on a 2000 B.G. Sumerian tablet from Ur containing the tale of Gilgamesh and the Willow Tree. There she is a demoness dwelling in the trunk of a willow-tree tended by the Goddess Inanna (Anath) on the banks of the Euphrates. Popular Hebrew etymology seems to have derived 'Lilith' from layil, 'night'; and she therefore often appears as a hairy night-monster, as she also does in Arabian folklore. Solomon suspected the Queen of Sheba of being Lilith, because she had hairy legs. His judgement on the two harlots is recorded in I Kings III. 16 ff. According to Isaiah xxxiv. I4-I5, Lilith dwells among the desolate ruins in the Edomite Desert where satyrs (se'ir), reems, pelicans, owls, jackals, ostriches, arrow-snakes and kites keep her company.

6. Lilith's children are called lilim. In the Targum Yerushalmi, the priestly blessing of Numbers vi. 26 becomes: 'The Lord bless thee in all thy doings, and preserve thee from the Lilim!' The fourth-century A.D. commentator Hieronymus identified Lilith with the Greek Lamia, a Libyan queen deserted by Zeus, whom his wife Hera robbed of her children. She took revenge by robbing other women of theirs.

7. The Lamiae, who seduced sleeping men, sucked their blood and ate their flesh, as Lilith and her fellow-demonesses did, were also known as Empusae, 'forcers-in'; or Mormolyceia, 'frightening wolves'; and described as 'Children of Hecate'. A Hellenistic relief shows a naked Lamia straddling a traveller asleep on his back. It is characteristic of civilizations where women are treated as chattels that they must adopt the recumbent posture during intercourse, which Lilith refused. That Greek witches who worshipped Hecate favoured the superior posture, we know from Apuleius; and it occurs in early Sumerian representations of the sexual act, though not in the Hittite. Malinowski writes that Melanesian girls ridicule what they call `the missionary position', which demands that they should lie passive and recumbent.

8. Naamah, 'pleasant', is explained as meaning that 'the demoness sang pleasant songs to idols'. Zmargad suggest smaragdos, the semi-precious aquamarine; and may therefore be her submarine dwelling. A demon named Smaragos occurs in the Homeric Epigrams.

9. Eve's creation by God from Adam's rib-a myth establishing male supremacy and disguising Eve's divinity-lacks parallels in Mediterranean or early Middle-Eastern myth. The story perhaps derives iconotropically from an ancient relief, or painting, which showed the naked Goddess Anath poised in the air, watching her lover Mot murder his twin Aliyan; Mot (mistaken by the mythographer for Yahweh) was driving a curved dagger under Aliyan's fifth rib, not removing a sixth one. The familiar story is helped by a hidden pun on tsela, the Hebrew for 'rib': Eve, though designed to be Adam's helpmeet, proved to be a tsela, a 'stumbling', or 'misfortune'. Eve's formation from Adam's tail is an even more damaging myth; perhaps suggested by the birth of a child with a vestigial tail instead of a coccyx-a not infrequent occurrence.

10. The story of Lilith's escape to the East and of Adam's subsequent marriage to Eve may, however, record an early historical incident: nomad herdsmen, admitted into Lilith's Canaanite queendom as guests (see 16. 1), suddenly seize power and, when the royal household thereupon flees, occupy a second queendom which owes allegiance to the Hittite Goddess Heba.

The meaning of 'Eve' is disputed. Hawwah is explained in Genesis III. 20 as 'mother of all living'; but this may well be a Hebraicized form of the divine name Heba, Hebat, Khebat or Khiba. This goddess, wife of the Hittite Storm-god, is shown riding a lion in a rock-sculpture at Hattusaswhich equates her with Anath-and appears as a form of Ishtar in Hurrian texts. She was worshipped at Jerusalem (see 27. 6). Her Greek name was Hebe, Heracles's goddess-wife.

[tellerluna-stories]

i. morax

Years later, the young Morax stood atop the mighty stone spears he had thrown into the sea, the taste of victory still fresh in his mouth. All the world was quiet and still, for the sun had yet to rise.

Sharp were his teeth, horns and claws, honed to a dangerous edge by the catastrophes of war. He was taller now, with fine broad shoulders and amber eyes that shone with intelligence– yet those shoulders were saddled with an unbearable heaviness, and the heart within his chest ached for a time of peace.

Morax’s thoughts wandered to the words of the archon who had raised him like a mother— she was long gone, having faded away into oblivion before the war had ever begun.

"You were right about waiting lifetimes, it seems." He murmured, face tilted upward to the cloudy sky.

War had swept over the land, robbing many of their homes, their joy and even their very lives. Archons raged against each other in a reckless struggle for power, caring not how many lives were sacrificed for their selfish goals. The peaceful land of Teyvat had become a bloodthirsty playground for these so-called gods, and no man, woman or child did not know the pain of losing something they treasured.

And sadly, Morax was no exception to this.

The living treasure he thought he had found bloomed like a glaze lily in the plains of Guili, thriving on sunshine and songs of joy. But just as true glaze lilies do when faced with strife, his treasure withered away and crumbled to dust before his very eyes, unable to withstand the ugly wounds and pain that war brought to this land. His friends laughed with him no longer, for they either perished in the conflict or became his sworn enemies.

His mouth filled with the bitter taste of regret; the war had been won, but at what cost?

“My liege!”

The sound of dragging footsteps came from behind him, and he turned to see you staggering towards him. The fearsome weapon that you used to slay countless warriors on the battlefield now served you as a crutch, and was probably the only thing keeping you from toppling off the edge of the peak.

An ugly, sick feeling wrenched in his gut when Morax realised that out of all the adepti he had appointed to fight alongside you, you were the only one left.

You were all alone, just like he was— and it was his fault.

But your face showed no expression of bitterness or anger upon seeing his face— instead, you gave a weakly smile and raised your hand into a shaky salute. “Greetings, my liege...“

Your ankle twisted from underneath you, nearly sending you sprawling headfirst into the ocean.

Morax barely managed to catch you in time before you fell. “Steady now, friend.”

Panic and worry slithered into his thoughts— was he going to have to watch all over again as someone else he cared about slipped away? “The fighting’s over now. We don’t have to worry anymore.”

Your eyelids fluttered drowsily. “Oh, I know that; I was there on the frontlines.”

“Friend.” He shook your shoulder urgently. “Please, don’t close your eyes— please.”

“I’m not dying, my liege! Just—“ You grimaced and smacked his arm lightly, wincing as you did so. “I‘m so tired. So, so..... so very tired. And sore. I want to take a warm bath and go to sleep for at least a century or two.”

“Are you sure you’re not injured?”

“I already—“ You began to answer back in an exasperated manner, but halted when you saw the expression on his face. “Alright, you can check for yourself.”

Slightly disentangling your arms from his, you held them out to the sides for him to observe. “See? Not a single scratch.”

Morax breathed a sigh of relief he didn’t realize he was holding, and instinctively his arms curled protectively around your form, pulling you into a tight embrace. “.....Thank you, friend. For being alive and unharmed.”

He had already lost so much to this pointless, useless war, and if he lost you, too.....

“....It’s nothing you need to be thanking me for.” You tucked your chin into the crook of his shoulder. “I probably look worse than I feel right now, but I’m just exhausted, that’s all— I promise.”

Morax closed his eyes and breathed deeply, his heart swelling with relief; today would not be another day of mourning and sorrow, after all. “Judging from the way you were fighting on the battlefield, I’d be surprised if you weren’t. I saw you from here.”

A slight hint of dry laughter crept into your voice. “I saw you from down there, too.”

“Is that so?”

“If I’m being quite honest, my liege, you looked quite comedic; what with your majestic horns and hair poking through those tiny holes in your hood.”

He snorted slightly and slung your arm over his shoulder, slowly hobbling with you to sit on the edge of the stone peak. “It seems you have recovered already, friend.”

“Perhaps I have.” You replied, slumped against his shoulder. “Or perhaps I’m trying to ignore the nightmares that I know will haunt me when I sleep tonight. The faces of those who have fallen, the innocent people who I’ve.....” Your voice trailed off, your fingers tentatively nudging their way into his clawed hand.

“....I know.” Morax didn’t need to ask to know exactly what you were feeling— the shame and the horror churning in your head, the tears threatening to spill over at any moment. “I know.”

“Was it worth it, my liege?”

Morax looked down, to where the people— no, your people stood.

Weary soldiers embraced each other, crying tears of joy and relief that this long battle was finally over. Some raised their eyes skyward, giving thanks for the opportunity to come home to their loved ones, while others knelt silently over the bodies of their fallen comrades to honour them as they deserved.

“....I’m not sure.” He said softly. “There was a high price to pay, but I think— I hope— that it will be worth the sacrifice. For our people to have a future where they can live without fear.”

“Then... I’ll stay by your side and aid you, so that you can reach the future that you dream of.”

Morax smiled ruefully at your words and said, “That sounds dangerously like a contract, friend. Be careful of the words you let fall from your mouth, especially around me.”

“So what if it’s a contract? Contract, promise, oath—“ You murmured, not opening your eyes. “It’s what I want to do. You aren’t forcing me or anything.”

“....Thank you, friend.”

He waited for your reply, but you remained silent, your grasp on his hand tightening ever so slightly.

“....my liege?”

“You need not call me that any longer. Just Morax is fine.”

“It feels a bit disrespectful if I don’t... Well, no promises, but I will try to remember that.” You hesitated before saying, “I- well, I actually have a somewhat odd request.”

Morax tilted his head slightly, pondering your question. “What is it that you desire, then?”

“Do you mind if... if I just rest here for a while?”

“....You may rest here for as long as you need.” Gently, he brushed some stray strands of hair away from your face. “You have done well, friend.”

A sigh of relief escaped from your mouth, and the tension in your body dissolved. “Thank you, my l....”

But before you could even finish, you were already fast asleep.

A slight smile spread across his face, and he shook his head in disbelief— it seemed that it would take some more time for you to call him by his actual name.

That day, the sun dawned on a new era for the nation of Liyue and its protectors. The people rejoiced that the war was finally over, and there was much singing and dancing to be heard all over the land.

But oddly enough, in that moment as he sat with you atop the peaks of what would become the Guyun Stone Forest— Morax did not think of the future that lay before the two of you and the responsibilities that were to come with it, nor did he reflect on the memories of the past that would haunt him for centuries to come.

He could only think of how warm you felt, resting against his shoulder, and how snugly his fingers intertwined with yours.

[the-insomniac-emporium]

Mia Deserved Better: An Analysis of RE8's Themes/Symbolism

Foreword: I would like to thank @lepusrufus for posting about both Mia and Miranda, and at one point directly saying that Mia deserved better, which is a large part of what caused me to start examining her role in the canon story. Now, I will say that this post, like some of my previous explorations of Village (such as my attempt to determine Donna's age), will not be the best organized. My ADHD makes such things rather difficult for me. However, I have tried more than usual, and have broken up this "essay" into several distinct sections. Still, I am worried that my thoughts will not be as concise or coherent as they were inside my head.

Under read-more for length and spoilers for RE8: Village.

Introduction:

Village is, inarguably, about parenthood. Is it a horror game? Yes. Is it also science fiction? Also yes. But is it still, at its core, a story, and therefore contains imagery, symbolism, and themes? Yes. Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with Mia deserving better. My proposal is as follows: While Village is overall about parenthood, it is more about motherhood than fatherhood. Furthermore, Mia's background + actions from the previous game tie her story directly with Mother Miranda's, making their potential interactions massively important to the story... and could have served the theme beautifully. The missed potential in her involvement in the story is honestly a little bit absurd.

Now, let's examine each of the Four Lords + their sections, as the beginning of analyzing the game's theme.

Lady Dimitrescu + Castle:

Ah, perhaps the clearest (albeit unimportant) bits of theme within the whole game. We are immediately presented with another parent, with three daughters she loves very, very much. Initially they work as a team to capture Ethan, easily overpowering him. When they do split up, each still has dialogue regarding their family members. Each of the daughters expresses a desire to be like their mother/make their mother proud. Lady Dimitrescu herself gets very upset every time one of her daughters perishes, and delivers some important dialogue about this in her final confrontation with Ethan.

To paraphrase, Lady D says that Ethan has done something unforgiveable, caused damage that can never heal, and deserves to die before his daughter. That last part is interesting, in the sense that Lady D seems to believe that outlasting your own child is a fate so terrible that she would not wish it upon anyone, including the person who killed her daughters.

Throughout her dialogue and actions, Lady D serves as an important figure of a living mother. What do I mean by that? Well, the only other mothers we see in game are Mia and Miranda. The former doesn't show up until almost the end of the game (seeing as the "Mia" at the start is not actually the real Mia), while the latter does not have a living child, and her behavior has (presumably) changed quite a bit since that loss. As Ethan goes through Castle Dimitrescu, he watches (he causes) Lady D to go through what Miranda did all those decades ago. When we see her loss, when we experience her loss, it is something we connect with, even comparing it (as Lady D does) to Ethan's loss of Rose.

For the more visual side of symbolism, we can turn to Lady Dimitrescu herself. She is very tall, is visibly older than the majority of the Village cast, and has a fairly classic (old-school) motherly look. Everything about her reinforces her position as an example of a mother, especially when she's with her daughters and becomes such a strong figure of protection. Her height allows her to seem the caretaker for her children, even though they are scary/intimidating in their own right.

Donna Beneviento + Waterfall House:

Yes, the baby/fetus/monstrosity is part of this. No, it is not the only bit of thematic work in this section of the game.

To begin, you can find out that Donna is officially the adopted daughter of Mother Miranda. Her birth parents are dead, implied to be from especially tragic causes (more than is the norm when it comes to "orphan making"), and she has suffered greatly from it. We see that she has been seemingly neglected by Miranda, and is incredibly isolated. The tragedy of her loss, along with the consequences presented by it, are something to keep in mind further down the road, when we inevitably deal with Ethan's own death.

One of the consequences of the environment Donna was raised in is, arguably, her reliance on Angie. While interpretations of their exact relationship (aka how much control Donna actually has at any given point) vary, the two very clearly have something akin to a mother/daughter vibe. Alternatively an older sister/younger sister sort of thing. This shows in the way that Donna holds/carries Angie, as well as the contrast in their demeanors. Moreso, the fact that Donna gave a part of herself to create Angie is almost enough to make the symbolism nonnegotiable.

We also see that Donna has a strong understanding of family/family dynamics, through the way that she uses her powers to manipulate Ethan. She dissects his connections to Mia and Rose, taunts him with the lengths he's willing to go to save his child, then shows him a grotesque version of parenthood: The aforementioned fetus monster. Does the monster represent Ethan's fears, or Donna's?

What if the monster is how Donna sees herself, in some way, perhaps thinking that it's her fault her parents died? Bit of a stretch, but it's not a keystone of my theory, so I'm just throwing it out there. We could, however, go a step further and ask ourselves if Donna has noticed the way Miranda neglects her, and the fetus monster is how Donna thinks Miranda sees her. A baby, true, but grotesque, so terribly imperfect compared to her "real daughter" (Eva, obvs).

Regardless, the monster presents an ugly side of parenthood. It shows us the blood, the hunger (with the way it repeatedly attempts to swallow Ethan whole), the wailing. If Lady D shows us the love of parenthood, the bond, Donna in turn shows us the hate, the misery. Everything that one must endure to reap the rewards of family.

Lastly, we get one last bit of symbolism with Donna's death: We play a game with Angie. A childhood classic, hide and seek. Ethan chases her down repeatedly, stabbing away, seemingly only hurting the doll. But what happens when he kills Angie? It turns out that he killed Donna. You kill the child, you kill the parent. A reinforcement of the connection that comes with parenthood, along with another notch in Ethan's family-murdering belt (not saying that he's the "true antagonist" or anything, just keeping track for one of my later points).

Moreau + The Reservoir

Let's get the worst possibility out of the way: Moreau, weakest and sickest of the four lords, lives in a reservoir, where he is relatively safe. To defeat him, you have to drain the water, forcing him onto dry(ish) land. Paired with the main ideas of his section (which I will detail after this nightmare), one could theorize that he's meant to represent birth itself. Again, he's safe in his ("womb") water, and becomes vulnerable when he leaves (like a fragile newborn). Kinda gross, in my opinion, and also not a strong enough connection for me to care much about. It was merely an interesting (albeit horrifying) enough thought that I felt it warranted sharing.

Moving on to the big stuff with Moreau: He's a baby. Evidence: Whiny, has difficulty moving around, struggles to adapt to his growth, throws up a bunch, loves his mother very much, cries for his mother when he's in trouble, etc. Although Mother Miranda does not care for him, he clearly cares for her, and plays yet another role of an abandoned child (like Donna). Without Miranda there to protect him, he perishes terribly, crying out for someone who does not care to answer.

Hearing him cry out for Miranda, over and over, only for her to continue ignoring him is a key piece in the build-up to our confrontation between Ethan and Miranda. The game, in many ways, centers around the comparison between the two. In my humble opinion, Mia should have been involved in this comparison, as opposed to supplying the solution to the result of said comparison. Yes, I know that was a lot of words that don't mean much yet, but trust me, I'm getting there.

Heisenberg + The Factory

Ironically, of the four lords, Heisenberg is the most similar to Mother Miranda. In his massive factory, he is alone except for his numerous experiments, the results of decades of playing God. In comparison to Ethan + Mia, Heisenberg represents artificial parentage, or more accurately, the artificial creation of "life". While the others Lords also performed experiments, they used living subjects. Heisenberg instead chose to use corpses, which he then "brought back to life" with cybernetics + his powers, a somewhat futuristic version of Dr. Frankenstein.

Together, Miranda and him show a rotten side of parenthood (whereas Donna + Moreau showed us the uglier side of the children themselves). To put it simply, they are bad parents. They throw their "children"/experiments into the fray, uncaring, using them as pawns for their own greater gain. The most important part of this is that Heisenberg offers to "help" Ethan: By using Rose as a weapon. In his act of refusal, Ethan demonstrates one of several important distinctions between himself and Mother Miranda. Where she is willing to use her "children" (read: lives that she is responsible for) as tools, he is not.

Miscellaneous Symbolism/Imagery:

The old hag is one of my favorite parts of Village. She's seemingly nuts, has a crazy old lady laugh, wears bones that make soothing bone noises when she moves, and she draws lots of symbols in the dirt. If you look closely (I can provide screenshots if anyone desires, but it will take a bit of work to get them onto my computer), she's drawing one of the most iconic images in the titular village: The winged unborn. This symbol acts as the key you build up after every fight with a Lord, understandably called the Unborn Key (which turns into the Winged Unborn Key). Whether this counts as foreshadowing towards the hag's identity reveal is technically irrelevant, but I like to think it does.

In essence, you build up the key, this depiction of an infant, to progress in the game. The more wings it gains, the closer you are to your goal of rescuing your child.

The cadou itself is very clearly fetus-shaped. Furthermore, the only place within the human body that we know it ever gets implanted is in the "tummy" (thanks Moreau), aka roughly where someone's womb is/would be. Every infected person we see presumably had the Cadou implanted there (though I think it would be interesting if implanting it in different spots caused different mutations. of course, that is a discussion for another day). To become immortal, you have to "bear" a "child". Does it get more direct than that?

Mother Miranda gained her immortality in part for her grief at the loss of her child. She embodied the despair that Lady D spoke of, becoming an eternal source of anguish. Just as the loss of a child is a wound that lasts forever, so too would Miranda last forever (well, until Ethan comes along).

Mia is a loving mother, who puts up with the BSAA making her move across the world, deals with the complications of having a mold husband and mold baby, and has proved herself (see her section in RE7) to be an immense badass. Previously I had forgotten that, and even embarrassed myself in the comments of another person's post by implying she wasn't a tough, ass-kicking machine. Y'all remember feral Mia? People talk about "poor Ethan's arms", but sometimes we forget that Mia was one of the people who did a number on them. Furthermore, she's one of the only living people (from outside the village) to have any connections (pun intended) to Mother Miranda. They worked together, although possibly not directly, on Evelyn. If anyone in Village has a chance of really understanding Miranda's plight, or knowing the truth behind it, it would be Mia. Yet we don't see them interact a single time. Which leads me to the next section...

Conclusion On Theme + Missed Potential:

Okay, okay, so it's pretty obvious at this point that, as previously stated, the game's theme is parenthood. Every section has its symbolism, the story is very obviously about a man trying to rescue his daughter, etc, etc, but what's the point? Is there a lesson, or a more focused interpretation of the central theme? Let's take one last step back, and focus on something I've mentioned a few times now: The comparison between Ethan and Mother Miranda.

Recurring dialogue from Ethan, Alcina, and Mother Miranda all point towards the developers acknowledging that the characters are similar, but there's nowhere near as much conversation about it as I would like. Several times we have the antagonists ask Ethan how he's so willing to kill someone else's child, or prevent them from (essentially) doing what he's doing (aka saving his daughter). While Ethan responds with a mix of "well you started it" and "aghhh fuck-a-you, bitch", there's a much more solid, unspoken difference: Mother Miranda sends her underlings to kill, so that she may revive her daughter. Ethan kills (read: does the work himself) to get his daughter. The difference is much bigger, and more important, at the end of the game, when we realize just how far it goes. Ethan dies to save his daughter. Time and time again Mother Miranda has killed others for her work, but in the end she is stopped when someone willingly dies to stop her.

Where does Mia come in? Mia, the badass mother, the one who once worked alongside Mother Miranda, should have been the nail in the coffin. She is the one who survives, who lives on to raise Rose, she is the silent solution to Ethan's sacrifice. Miranda, you fool, what could you have accomplished if you had held onto your makeshift family? Through Mia (and Chris, to a lesser degree), his "loss" becomes a victory. There's a certain poetic justice that comes with Rose's full family being instrumental in saving her, when Miranda so readily spurned her own family.

Mia could have had an actual conversation with Miranda, their history giving the latter a reason to actually listen. I'm not saying that Miranda would have changed her mind/plans, but the conversation would have been a well-needed contrast to Ethan's "arggg what the fuck is happening, I only have two reactions to things. agg fuck you". Additionally, I feel that Mia (who was captured and had to endure who-knows-what) deserves the opportunity to be the one who points out Miranda's mistakes, who delivers the final "fuck you" to her. More than that, she's the one at the end who can say that hey, maybe she can understand some of what Miranda did. Was there anything her and Ethan wouldn't have done to save Rose? As much as Ethan is a foil to Miranda, Mia could (and should) have played a similar role.

When so much of the story and symbolism revolves around Miranda's experience as a mother, it only would have been fair to shine a light on her equivalent. Her better.

There's more I wanted to say/feel like I didn't properly get across, and I might add more to this at some point, but it's 5:40 AM right now, and I'm starting to feel like my brain is slowing down, so... Feel free to reblog/comment and add your own thoughts!

[officialgritty]

How I Would Humble NHL Players

An essay written by bigboigritty. 

I would humble hockey players the only way I know how to, by sending them to Australia. Let’s suppose that they have decided to hold the All Star game over here (forget about it’s usual date) (forget that some players I have listed below might not be invited) (and while you're at it, please forget that Australia’s rinks are Not Good).

I think that they would suffer but in an entertaining way so it’s fine. 

First of all, their biggest concern is getting sunburnt. It would effect all of their dumb asses but I’m particularly worried about Pierre-Luc Dubois and Mitch Marner. Boys are practically translucent. Vince Dunn would be fine, he’d probably wear a shirt most of the time which is a very smart decision. 

You may wonder why I didn’t mention Nolan Patrick because I am a certified slut for him, well I don't think he would have a problem. He would spend most of the time inside and when he joins the others, I think his Virgo ass would reapply sunscreen. Maybe he would burn slightly but I don't think it'd be enough to make him uncomfortable. 

Another thing that I think they will gain from this experience is a higher pain tolerance. Now you’re probably thinking, “Zoe they are NHL players so they can handle pain.” Wrong.

Real pain is running barefoot on cement at theme parks while you race to get to the next ride. Also getting into the car and having to avoid touching every piece of metal to not get branded like a cow. Or better yet, when the heat gets so bad that there’s a black out because everyone has their air conditioning turned on.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that other countries have scary animals but I would pay to see them panic over ours. Crocodiles here can grow up to 5.2 metres / 17 feet. We have a box jellyfish season where it’s advised to avoid swimming or wear wetsuits for coverage. Funnel web spiders can survive underwater for hours by trapping air bubbles around their skin. We have several of the worlds deadliest snakes present across the country. 

Listen, I don't want anyone to get injured but the constant fear that they would have when doing anything would be enough to make me happy.

My biggest question is who would survive in the shady areas, who would survive the eshays?

Under no circumstances can you look them in the eyes or cross their path. They are not to be feared individually but in groups caution is advised. I think the players would attempt to assert dominance and that is simply not an option. You are better off to ignore the eshay.

Nolan would have no issues here if im being honest. He is big and I don't think they’d find it worth it to fuck with him. But you know who they would target? Matthew Tkachuk. “Where are you going pretty boy?” “Oi braa did we hurt your feelings ya pussy cunt?” They would make fun of his hair in particular. 

Travis Konecny would be an eshay. I don't think I need to make further comment. (So would Louis Tomlinson but I am not a 1D account and I will continue to repeat that until it’s true.)

I would also give them a few iconic tasks to get the true Australian experience. Activities for the ‘vacation’ include triathlon events, beach flags, bush walking and climbing the harbour bridge. They could attend a cricket match but they tend to like golf so unfortunately they would probably enjoy this :(

AFL is an extremely popular sport here and I think they would loose their shit when they learn the rules of this game. No protective equipment is used other than mouthguards, that's it. That’s all you get. And jumping onto other players for leverage is encouraged. I would thoroughly enjoy the fights that would break out because of this.

Another task would be to use a map to make their way to a servo for a slurpee. The catch is that they will be required to pass through multiple alleyways. Also, the season is Spring, it’s swooping season mother fuckers. Let’s see how brave you are when birds chase you down the block. Personally I don’t think any of them would pass this test, maybe McDavid because the birds may not be able to detect a heartbeat.

Australian food would disgust them, I just know it. Things that they would need to try are a Bunnings sausage sanga, fairy bread, lamingtons, baked beans on toast, Milo and Vegemite. Because I’m me I would give them no butter with their Vegemite. 

An after thought I had was money so I’m editing this to include it. Everything here is EXPENSIVE so they would need to learn how to budget. Upon doing research, Canadians would be fine but the Americans will be mad.

1000 CAD = 1019 AUD

1000 USD = 1297 AUD

Another after thought was the fact that they won’t be able to drive (or at least drive well) here. We drive on the left and not the right, same goes for walking paths too. I can sense a lot of them bumping into people.

Where I think players would live based on vibes alone:

Carter Hart and Vince Dunn: North Shore Beaches, NSW. Daddy’s money. Carter probably did Nippers whereas Vince was a skater boy. 

Travis Konecny: Darwin, NT. Would 100% live there and enjoy it. He would try to conduct crocodile tours but gets assigned to feeding the baby crocs and doing shows for little kids. 

Tyson Barrie: Perisher, NSW. One of the only ski resorts we have to offer, major friendly mountain man energy.

Nolan Patrick: Byron Bay, NSW. @antoineroussel enlightened me, steering away from my original thought of Katoomba, NSW. Byron Bay is a magnet for hippies and links rainforest to the ocean. Chris Hemsworth and his family also live there.

William Nylander: Perth, WA. I don’t know much about Perth other than they wouldn’t shut up about partying while the other states had to quarantine. For some reason, I also associate Perth with Tik Tok. 

Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid: Melbourne CBD, VIC. These two would live in the same apartment building in the city, Connor one level above Sidney. It’s the most boring looking block of them all and Crosby would send in complaints to the landlord about McDavid pacing during the night.

Tyler Seguin: Surfers Paradise, QLD. Party central, not many people are actually from this area and he would be sure to tell absolutely everyone that he was. I also think he would get a Meter Maid tattoo, specifically on his leg. Has definitely slept on the beach before because he couldn’t find his way home.

Jamie Benn: Hobart, TAS. Tasmania is usually forgotten about. Another one with mountain man energy except he is more creepy than friendly.

Mitch Marner: Fitzroy, VIC. @antoineroussel is responsible for this one too. Hipster central, makes you question how the hell someone so young can have so much money. Would chug $45 wine and not blink an eye.

(honourable mentions include = Sammy Blais: Hobart, Tas. Once again no comment on Tasmania. TJ Oshie: Cairns, QLD. Would do reef tours. Haydn Fleury: Western Sydney, NSW. Haydn would 100% own a ute or a white holden commodore and you can’t tell me otherwise. Roman Josi: Adelaide, SA. Small town history teacher vibes.)

I have attached a handy map for those who may need it.

In conclusion, the NHL should send their players over here to teach them some manners and while they’re at it, management should bring themselves too. Nolan Patrick could pass as an Australian if he built up a tan. (So does Nylander in this picture but we won’t talk about that.) Come over anytime baby, I’m free. 

Glossary

Servo - A service station, also known as a petrol or gas station. Example: 7/11

Theme park - An amusement park. Can be said in reference to both normal parks and water parks and usually means those in QLD. Example: Six Flags

Swooping season - August to October in Australia. When birds attack and chase humans and / or pets for getting close to their babies. Magpies are notoriously bad for this. 

Bunnings sausage sanga - A cheap feed / meal found at the front of a hardware and gardening store called Bunnings. Made up of white bread, sausage, onion and your choice of sauce.

Fairy bread - White bread with margarine and topped with 100s and 1000s / sprinkles. 

Meter Maids - Women who work along the beach dressed in gold bikinis. They top up parking meters to save tourists from getting fined and will often stop for photos. 

Nippers - Surf lifesaving programs carried out for children between 5 and 14. 

Ute - A pick up truck.

Eshay - A person who partakes in drug use, graffiti, listens to EDM and targets victims in groups. Below is the typical style of an eshay. 

Tagging a few friends so this doesn’t completely flop but feel free to ignore if it isn't your thing. I won’t be offended lmao

@scheifefe @ifiwasshawnmendesidslapmyself @d00dlebob @bowenbyram @kempe @prettyboyroope @quintonsbyfield @travisgermy @pitoftrash @kspitehockey @ballsakic @canadianheaters @bricksatlandyswindow @powerblais @brokeninsidebutnobodyknows @jamiedrysdales

[bowieandqueen11]

Time For Reading / Dewey Denouement Imagine

Request: Dewey does deserve to be happy. I can imagine having the sweetest/domestic evenings with him after a long day at work. He seems like he would read to you while sitting together.

I love this man so much thank you for letting me imagine this <3

If you enjoy, please comment!! I may have stayed up writing this oops

Dewey Denouement may not be the kind of man to place his feet up at the end of the day, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t.

It was a cold night, the sort of chill blowing through the cracks in the library’s doors that made you thankful for the crackling fire by your feet. The embers flashed red, hot and heavy before leaving their smoky trail in the October air as they fell back down onto the kindling. You stared at them for a moment, dancing like a circus troupe in front of your vision. A trapeze artist there, some juggling pins in another corner of the pit, and finally, the fiery lion’s roar rises from the middle of the heap, before falling onto the floor in a pile of ash. You snuggle down, burrowing deeper into the suit jacket you had stolen off of Dewey’s shoulders this morning. He had never seen it coming, too busy pressing back against the kiss you had pressed against his lips when you had come in to deliver him his morning coffee. He had smiled against your lips as he pulled away, nuzzling his nose against yours with a twitch of his moustache as you massaged his shoulders, gently levering the jacket down before stealing it away.

You wished he would hurry back, missing him already despite the fact you had only just heard the final, surprisingly pained sounding whistle of the library’s kettle. Although you knew, since his parents perished in that fire you both blamed Olaf for before his fifth birthday, that he would keep his promise to try and spend some more time away with you, rather than his catalogue. He was trying his best, you knew that. He also made it clear how much he loved you, evident in all the old bookshelves that lined the library’s walls that he had filled with your wish list, numerous treasures and memories stuffed into every crevice and nook of this small home he made yours. He knew, and had tried to tell you time and time again, that this was no life for someone as precious as you, but you had refused to leave him to this fate alone.

So instead of one librarian, Hotel Denouement gained two.

You sigh, kicking off your shoes and placing them up onto the old leather chair. You turn your nose back to your book, letting your mind fall back into a similar world of adventure and wonderment. You had only got a few more pages in, the book old and heavy in your tired hands, before you could hear the familiar sound of Dewey’s warm, deep humming swirling through the air as if in a dream. Before you can even place your bookmark back into the worn, crumpled pages before you feel a warm breath of air beside the tip of your ear.

‘I’m sorry I took so long, Y/n. The tea took quite a while to brew, on account of the brewing time of the leaves and the fact... we need a new kettle.’

You grin, reaching over the top of the chair until you grab the collars of his dress shirt. Running a thumb over his maroon tie, you pull his smiling face down until he reaches his lips. When you finally let go of him, he presses a final kiss against your forehead, moving to place the two steaming cups of jasmine tea he carried within the ornate china cups with his fingertips down onto the wooden side table of the living area.

He glances over at you, a glowing, slightly goofy but completely enamoured smile playing on his lips as he takes his usual seat in his own matching leather chair, placed facing towards your own on the other side of the fire. You lift your feet up, the two of you set in a steady and comfortable routine. He wipes the creases off of the front of his trousers, before replacing them with your feet. You beam at him thankfully from over the cover of your leather bound novel, breathing in the sweet scent of his cologne, and the warm feel of his fingers as they dig into the muscle of his feet. He only raises an amused eyebrow at you.

‘Ah, an interesting choice tonight Y/n. A tale of smoke and mirrors, quite fitting, don’t you think?’

You hum, folding your arms down until you could see the fond look Dewey gave you over the rim of his cup. He takes a sip before continuing, glad to finally be able to have a relaxed conversation for the first time today, with all the time spent preparing for the arrival of the Sugar Bowl. ‘It’s been a while since you’ve read a book from the books labelled 818.’

‘I just thought’, you start, leaning further into his touch as he places his now empty cup back onto the table and leans towards you, giving his full attention. ‘Hopefully, we’ll be out of here soon, and we can start again. A real life, a new life for you Dewey, without all these books and secrets and shadows and betrayal. I just thought it would be fun to reminisce before we finally burn all these secrets down.’

Dewey’s silent for a moment, gazing so intensely at you that despite your best efforts, you feel a blush flooding your face. For a moment, you’re worried you’ve upset him, his eyes so thoughtful, heavy and forlorn as they stare unmoving into yours. Your worries sink quickly, though, when that familiar tick of his raises his moustache, and the twinkle returns to his eye - the familiar sign that he’s amused by your words.

‘Yes, we can finally end this terrible series of events once and for all. Then, there is nothing else I would like more than to never be apart from you again, except for when we are at work, of course, but even that might be too much of a struggle.’

‘I suppose, then’, you begin with a slight grin, ‘we shall just have to retire off to some splendid tropical island somewhere, and spend our days drinking from coconuts and growing apple trees instead of having our noses stuck in books.’

As the two of you sit there grinning, hearts fluttering in time in your chest at the look of absolute devotion that lines both your faces, he’s suddenly quick to react. Smiling deeply, he reaches over and knocks the book straight out of your hands and into his own. Ignoring your cries of protest, he shakes your outreaching hands off and instead intertwines your right one within the large, slender fingers of his right. The other hand busies itself scanning over the words, following the paragraphs down until he finds a place to start.

His words, since they are directed towards you, are so beautiful and elegant. There was no other way, he had learnt in all his books, to speak to a lover. To someone who held your heart so tightly in their hands he felt he might drown with the feel of it. There could never be anger, or malice, when speaking to someone who was more of him that he himself was. So he read on, honeyed words pouring from his tongue in the only outburst of love he had ever learnt to give. Each word earned him a welcome groan, and each welcome groan earned you a tug at his lips until he was beaming.

Letting the words flow over you, you gazed up at the old pane of glass that lay above your head. As the night dwindled on, the heaviness of the water’s shade began to cast darker lines across the walnut floor, each specked with a glaring dot of celeste blue. Turning your chin up, you closed your eyes, allowing yourself to feel hopeful for the first in a longest time. Dewey didn’t stop, words gliding from his throat as he admired the way the writhing waves from the pool a world above fell upon your face in an almost otherworldly fashion.

When he was finally satisfied you had fallen asleep, he gently dropped your legs to the floor, one by one. Before heading out, he tucked the jacket he had let you steal earlier tighter around your shoulders, before pressing the most warm, intense and loving kiss he could muster against your cheek, eyes closed in bliss all the while.

He opened them again as he closed the door into the living quarters, leaving all his hopes and dreams locked inside. Instead, he stepped further into the navy shades of glooming water that seemed to envelope his frame.

It was time to prepare for the arrival of the Baudelaires. 

[starcrossedkaiju]

Kingslayer AU: Chapter 14

This took a bit longer than I thought it would 😀 life kinda said lol to me for a while.

“Augh!” Scott cried out. He breathed in desperately, but his mouth filled with water.

Sitting up and rolling to his side, he coughed out a stream of water. Groaning when he finished. Scott sat up wearily, blocking the sun from his face.

It was warmer than usual. He was sitting in a waist high pool of water, around his shoulders as he was sitting down, which was a warm brown color. Behind him he could hear the roar of the river he had floated in from.

Scott rubbed his eyes and gauged the pain in his bruising shoulder. He felt like something was missing when he noticed.

“Tango?” He called out. A twinge of frantic concern escaped in his voice. Scott turned in every direction, scanning the surroundings for any sign of his friend.

What if they’d been separated in the river? What if his friend had drowned?

His anxiety was at its peak when another person sat up from under the water. Sputtering and flailing about, Tango had been hidden under the murky pond.

Scott fell backwards in surprise, his shock eased when he saw his friend, who looked alright enough. Tango seemed satisfied with the amount of water he discarded, looking up he met Scott’s eyes.

Tango’s eyes widened with relief, he laughed, it looked slightly painful, but he pulled the other into a tight embrace.

“Are you alright?” he pulled back, looking Scott over for any sign of harm.

“I’m fine, uh, except for the shoulder,” Scott replied.

“Oh, yeah,” Tango got to his feet. He held a hand out for the other to take.

Once they had waded to the mucky shore, Tango ordered Scott to enter the trees while he ran to the other side of the pond. Tango hastily did so, looking up and around the area. Scott could see a triumphant expression make it’s way onto his face.

“Come here,” Tango motioned when he got back to Scott, “look,” he pointed skywards.

Scott followed his line of sight up into the sky. Right above the trees, a line of grey smoke floated into the sky.

“What is it?” he asked.

Tango smiled, “The Crastle,” he exclaimed.

After a while of enduring wet socks through a lightly wooded area. The Crastle came into view. It was nearly sundown now, and Scott recognized where they were. Almost dead in front of the castle and it’s moat, the drawbridge was still down. For the sun was not gone yet.

Tango crouched in the last bit of trees, surveying the barren, icy field that housed the humble fort. Deciding they had to go at some point, he told Scott to come. They jogged low through the tall stretches of grass, then hastily across the drawbridge.

Kneeling behind a small decorative wall, Tango went to the door while Scott stayed in place. He knocked on the door politely, but hard enough to provoke any inhabitants to answer.

A few moments passed and a small circle of wood slid out of the door. A peephole, and an eye appeared in it. Tango leaned down to make his identity known, which may have been a stupid thing to do in hindsight. What if a member of Dogwarts had been visiting?

The door swung open. Cleo’s already wide eyes were impossibly wider. Although her face could not go pale, one could imagine that it did.

Quickly, all three rushed inside. The doors and windows were slammed shut and locked.

Without even a hello, Cleo whipped around to face the two fugitives. Hands poised on her hips.

“What on Earth are you two doing here?” she seethed. Her eyes were angry, her teeth gritted.

“We need help,” Tango replied. Putting his hands up in mock surrender.

Scott had never been aquatinted with the girl before. Cleo and her friend Bdubs lived a relatively secluded life in the Crastle together. They did not have to ask to be left alone, both were a force to be reckoned with when under threat.

Soldiers by nature, Cleo and Bdubs defended their small claim to a normal life with everything they could. Scott understood their seclusion. Had he not been doing the same?

“Yeah you do,” Cleo nearly laughed. Tango didn’t look very amused.

“Not funny, Cleo, we both almost died,” he said with a tired frown.

She dropped the mirthful expression. Nodding, “You shouldn’t have come here,” she looked away.

“Cleo. Please,” Tango reached for her thin hand, which was worn and frail looking from accumulating years of war and hardship.

Cleo’s eyes met his in a silent response. Not to his plea, she would never have said no to him.

“A week,” she bargained.

Scott felt like an outsider to their relationship. He knew they had been close for a long time. Then he knew of Cleo’s heartbroken anger towards the man for betraying their alliance. Even if he was pretending. Tango hid his truer feelings under various layers of hostility and irony. Now that they were all in the room together, it was obvious, at least in part, what had been eating away at his friend for the past months.

Back in the cow farm Scott always wondered why Tango made such an effort to help him through his guilt of lying to Jimmy. To Scott, there was no way anyone could understand what he was going through. Now though, he knew Tango was feeling the same way about the Crastle Folk.

“Thank you Cleo,” brightness returned to Tango’s eyes. He shook her hand gratefully.

A smile found its way onto the girl’s face as well. She pat him on the shoulders in place of a hug. They turned back to Scott, who was sat on a chest holding his shoulder.

“We should fix that,” Cleo pointed out the obvious.

After a bit of shuffling around in cabinets and chests, Cleo had started wrapping Scott’s arm in a strap of bandages. She talked about healing it up in no time, a healing potion once a day. Good as new. As long as he kept it in the cast.

She wrapped a piece of fabric around his neck to carry his Arm in, then gave him his first healing potion.

It was silent for a while. The three of them doing random tasks to pass the time, sweeping up the invisible dirt on the floor, examining the titles of a small collection of books on the countertop, and using one had to clean a wound.

A knock at the door halted the peaceful atmosphere. Tango and Scott instinctively found their ways to each others’ side. Suddenly aware of every curtained window.

Cleo quietly approached the door. She slid the peephole open slightly, squinting through. Turning around quickly, she whispered.

“It’s Impulse,” her expression was fearful.

Tango didn’t share her concern. At all. He smiled, going to the door.

“Alone?” he asked.

Cleo nodded.

“Let him in,” he said. Cleo looked at him like he had three heads.

He repeated himself and she hesitated, but she opened the door. Only slightly, so Impulse would only see her. They exchanged unintelligible words before Impulse was granted access to the Crastle.

He looked around. Scott and Tango both waved at him a bit awkwardly. Both of them immediately conscious of how haggard they must look.

Impulse sighed with relief. He put his sword down against the wall and went to meet his friends, pulling the both of the into a hug.

“Are you okay?” he studied each of their faces for any signs of being hurt, save for the now patched wound on Scott’s forehead and his broken shoulder.

“Somehow some way,” Scott muttered, retreating from the embrace.

This was the first time he was clearly able to see the other since their squabble at the desert battle. Impulse looked tired before anything else. Before relief or concern, he was clearly exhausted.

Scott looked away, a knowing part of him said “your fault,” which he made no effort to ignore.

“Impulse, I’m so sorry,” he admitted.

“It isn’t your fault. I’m the one who messed up, super bad. I understand how upset you are,” Scott worried with a strand of hair near the base of his head.

Impulse looked like he was forcing various thoughts off of his tongue, he simply said, “I’m glad you’re okay,” patting Scott on the shoulder.

He shifted his attention back to Tango. Scott backed away from the encounter, sitting on the staircase.

“What do we do now?” Impulse asked him.

Tango made a thoughtful face. His duty returned to him as he contemplated a new plan of action.

“Me and him will leave once it’s safe,” Tango gestured to himself and Scott, “we’ll hightail it to the Northern corner, in the border mountains. It will be safer there. Especially if we go underground,” he said.

Impulse nodded along, he asked, “when are we leaving?”

Tango hesitated, “you aren’t,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Impulse replied as if he’d been slapped.

“We’re going. We’ve been exposed, if I haven’t been as spy then I have as a traitor. Neither of us can stay here; but you can,” Tango said.

“You may have defied the Army at the trial today but you haven’t compromised yourself. Go back there and forget about the damn mission. Take care of him,” he ordered, hands coming to the other’s shoulders.

Impulse frowned deeply; but he nodded.

The moment was over seconds later. Impulse asked if he could stay for a while longer, just in case the Red Army showed up looking for them.

“Where should we stay while we’re here?” Scott asked Cleo.

She looked left in thought, then led them over to a double chest in the corner. It was full of many miscellaneous items. Broken pagers, cups, wood, and coal. Cleo lifted the bottom of the container up. All the contents came with it. They were glued to the surface.

Under the chest was a hole with a ladder. It went down some seven feet into what looked like a dark tunnel.

“Secret Tunnel!” Tango pumped his fist in the air, clearly amused.

Cleo and Impulse laughed along with him, clearly over a joke Scott didn’t understand.

Once everyone had clambered to the bottom of the pit, it became apparent what the “secret tunnel” truly was. There were rows of shelves lining the walls, each was stocked with various canned foods and bags of grain.

“Cleo! Have you been hoarding all the non-perishables on the entire map?” Scott exclaimed once he entered the cellar.

He picked up a can of corn, “How much of this do you have?”

Cleo stifled a laugh, “There’s still plenty being made in the village. It’s not my fault I actually take advantage of their generosity,” she said.

She plucked a can of carrots in gravy from one of the shelves, shaking it in his face. Scott grimaced at the prospect of eating carrots in gravy, but Cleo insisted they were fine heated up.

“So, this is home base, I’m assuming,” Tango said. He probably knew about the cellar already, having lived in the Crastle for a short time.

“Yes. For now. We could have given you the attic, but I wasn’t so sure you’d like to share it with the barn owls,” Cleo joked.

It was comforting that despite the circumstances, the small family-like clique could still be humorous with each other. The smiles of his servermates eased Scott’s racing mind. He leaned against a bare wall and slid to the dusty floor, near a furnace.

“It’s getting late, I need to leave,” Impulse piped up after an engaging back and forth about whether or not barn owls were actually in the attic, and if Tango was actually brave enough to go check.

The weight of a “goodbye” soured the mood immediately. Neither Scott, Tango, or Impulse knew how long it would be until they saw one another again. Nor did they know what unfortunate circumstances may arise while separated.

Tango shook Impulse’s hand, pulling it towards him and smiling reassuringly. Although it looked more like a grimace. Neither said goodbye, only good luck and be safe.

Scott’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, but when Impulse turned to him, he hung his head and hugged him; and they just stayed like that for a bit. Impulse ruffed up the other’s hair before pulling away. He shook Scott’s hand as well.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Scott said. Speaking it into existence.

“Soon”, is all Impulse replied before ascending the ladder. Cleo followed him to bid farewell.

The door upstairs shut and locked.

It was going to be a long winter.

[hieromonkcharbel]

Diverting a bit from my approach to the writings of the Philokalia, I wish to put forward a few thoughts about how we often think about illness in our lives and how the Holy Fathers offer us fresh insight into the mystery of evil, sin, illness and their place in our struggle for holiness.

Often, when we are young, we do not think much about physical illness and the spiritual life. Life passes quickly as we are fully engaged in our work, studies and ministry and many of us rarely struggle with ill health except for the occasional flu or cold. But when illness does strike, in one form or another, suddenly our busy and “productive” lives can be disrupted and we are forced, as it were, to reconsider a great deal of things; not merely the meaning of health, that we have perhaps taken for granted, but the nature of our relationship with God, the depth of our faith or lack thereof, the meaning of suffering and how to engage it and not to become discourage even when we have been completely humbled by the burden of our physical and emotional vulnerabilities. When such circumstances arise, we are often unprepared for the trial - never imagining or wanting to think about the possibility of such a cross - a cross the comes to most all of us at some point. When illness plunges us into unfamiliar territory, even to the point of death, what place does it have within our struggle toward holiness? How do we pray when prayer seems impossible and when it feels as though our heart has been turned to stone? Where do we find our hope and with what faith must we enter the mystery of illness and suffering in order to know the healing touch of Christ, the Physician of our souls and bodies?

I offer for your consideration today brief excerpts from “The Holy Fathers on Illness” compiled by Bishop Alexander Mileant; in particular those thoughts from the Fathers on “Illness and Work of Perfection”. Their words offer some perspective on sickness and redemptive suffering as a means of glorifying God. There is much to say certainly about the meaning and origins of illness well beyond the purview of a simple post, but the Fathers show us in word and deed that it can be and often is a privileged way of holiness. Through thankfulness, endurance, and patience one can realize the highest form of ascetic practice and follow a spiritual path to intimacy with God. At such moments, one may exhibit no extraordinary virtue other than to suffer illness and its poverty with patience and so have this as one’s path to salvation. Thus, the Fathers’ words are full of hope and challenge:

“The desert ascetic Father, St. Abba Dorotheus, exhorts his disciples to "take the trouble to find out where you are: whether you have left your own town but remain just outside the gates, by the garbage dump, or whether you have gone ahead little or much, or whether you are half way on your journey, or whether you have gone two miles, then come back two miles, or perhaps even five miles, or whether you have journeyed as far as the Holy City and entered into Jerusalem itself, or whether you have remained outside and are unable to enter" (On Vigilance and Sobriety).

Illness helps us to see "where we are" on life's road: "sickness is a lesson from God and serves to help us in our progress if we give thanks to Him" (Sts. Barsanuphius and John, Philokalia).

No one may use illness as an excuse for resting from the labor of spiritual living. "Perhaps some might think that illness and bodily weakness hinder the work of perfection since the works and accomplishments of one's hands cannot continue. But it is not a hindrance" (St. Ambrose, Jacob and the Happy Life).

In the life of Riassophore-monk John, latter-day disciple of St. Nilus of Sora, we see how bodily infirmity is not allowed to interrupt the struggle for salvation. Riassophore-monk John was a cripple; because of this he had been compelled to leave the Monastery of St. Cyril of New Lake. Feeling sorry for himself, he shortly afterwards was standing for an all-night vigil in the deep of winter. "Suddenly he saw an unknown Elder in schema come out of the altar to him and say: 'Well, apparently you do not wish to serve me. If so, return to St. Cyril.

"At these words, the Elder struck him with his right hand quite strongly on the shoulder. Noting that the Elder exactly resembled St. Nilus as he is depicted on the icon over his relics, John was filled with great joy, all his grief disappeared, and he firmly resolved to spend the rest of his life in the Saint's skete" (The Northern Thebaid).

Even if we are bedridden, we are to continue the struggle against the passions, producing fruits worthy of repentance. This work of perfection demands that we acquire patience and longsuffering. What better way to do this than when we lie on a bed of infirmity? St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says that in suffering we can find out whether our faith is living or just "theoretical." The test of true faith is patience in the midst of sufferings, for "patience is the Christian's coat of arms." "What is it to follow Christ?" he asks. It is "to endure all things, looking upon Christ Who suffered. Many wish to be glorified with Christ, but few seek to remain with the suffering Christ. Yet not merely by tribulation, but even in much tribulation does one enter the Kingdom of God."

To those who suppose that they can only progress in the spiritual life when all else is "well," St. John Cassian replies, "You should not think that you can find virtue when you are not irritated — for it is not in your power to prevent troubles from happening. Rather, you should look for patience as the result of your own humility and longsuffering, for patience does depend upon your own will" {Institutes). Towards the end of his life, St. Seraphim of Sarov suffered from open ulcers on his legs. "Yet," as his Life tells us, "in appearance he was always bright and cheerful, for in spirit he felt that heavenly peace and joy which are the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints."

"You are stricken by this sickness," the Holy Fathers say, "so that you will not depart barren to God. If you can endure, and give thanks to God, this sickness will be accounted to you as a spiritual work" (Sts. Barsanouphius and John, Philokalia).

Bishop Theophan the Recluse explains: "Enduring unpleasant things cheerfully, you approach a little to the martyrs. But if you complain, you will not only lose your share with the martyrs, but will be responsible for complaining besides. Therefore, be cheerful!"

In order not to lose heart when we fall sick we are to think about and mentally "kiss the sufferings of our Savior just as though we were with Him while He suffers abuses, wounds, humiliations...shame, the pain of the nails, the piercing with the lance, the flow of water and blood. From this we will receive consolation in our sickness. Our Lord will not let these efforts go unrewarded " (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk).

The patience we can learn on a sickbed cannot be overemphasized. Elder Macarius of Optina wrote about this to one who was ill:

"I was much pleased to hear from your relation how bravely you are bearing the cruel scourge of your heavy sickness. Verily, as the man of the flesh perishes, so is the spiritual man renewed."

And to another he wrote: "Praised be the Lord that you accept your illness so meekly! The bearing of sickness with patience and gratitude is reckoned highly by Him Who often rewards sufferers with His imperishable gifts.

"Ponder these words: Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed."

St. Ambrose of Milan compared an infirm body to a broken musical instrument. He explained how the "musician" can still produce God-pleasing "music" without his instrument:

"If a man used to singing to the accompaniment of a harp finds the harp broken, and its strings undone...he puts it aside and instead of calling for its notes he delights himself with his own voice.

"In the same way, a sick man allows the harp of his body to lie unused. He finds delight within his heart and comfort in the knowledge that his conscience is clear. He sustains himself with God's words and the prophetic writings and, holding these sweet and pleasant in his soul, he embraces them with his mind. Nothing can happen to him because God's graceful presence breathes favor upon him....He is filled with spiritual tranquility" (Jacob and the Happy Life).

Quite often the most God-pleasing spiritual "music" of all is produced in anonymity, by unknown or nearly-unknown saints. But such holy "melodies" are all the more sweet because they are heard by God alone. One such modern sufferer who lived an angel-like life in spite of advanced and terrible sickness was the holy New Russian Martyr, Mother Maria of Gatchina. Her story is known to us only because it pleased God to providentially arrange for one of her visitors, Professor I. M. Andreyev, to record his memories of her.

Mother Maria suffered from encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and Parkinson's disease. "Her whole body became as it were chained and immovable, her face anemic and like a mask; she could speak, but she began to talk with half-closed mouth, through her teeth, pronouncing slowly and in a monotone. She was a total invalid and was in constant need of help and careful looking after. Usually this disease proceeds with sharp psychological changes, as a result of which such patients often ended up in psychiatric hospitals. But Mother Maria, being a total physical invalid, not only did not degenerate psychically, but revealed completely extraordinary features of personality and character not characteristic of such patients: she became extremely meek, humble, submissive, undemanding, concentrated in herself; she became engrossed in constant prayer, bearing her difficult condition without the least murmuring.

"As if as a reward for this humility and patience, the Lord sent her a gift: consolation of the sorrowing. Completely strange and unknown people, finding themselves in sorrows, grief, depression, and despondency, began to visit her and converse with her. And everyone who came to her left consoled, feeling an illumination of their grief, a pacifying of sorrow, a calming of fears, a taking away of depression and despondency" (The Orthodox Word, vol. 13, no. 3).

"Thus God has acted. Like a provident Father and not like a kidnapper has He first involved us in grievous things, giving us over to tribulation as it were to schoolmasters and teachers, so that being chastened and sobered by these things we may, after showing forth all patience and learning, all right discipline, inherit the Kingdom of Heaven" (St. John Chrysostom, Homily 18, On the Statues).”

Excerpts taken from:

Missionary Leaflet # EA30

466 Foothill Blvd, Box 397, La Canada, Ca 91011

Editor: Bishop Alexander (Mileant)

[stonesparrow]

For the dr.stone x atla crossover I feel that even if Hyoga is or was a soldier in the fire army he wouldn’t have liked the idea of a nations worth of centuries of knowledge pasted down through generations being wiped of the face of the earth.

I just had a thought Hyoga could be a soldier in the fire army but he could also be a master instructor at his own dojo he inherited from his master kinda like master Piandao. He’s still a fire bender though.

Also I think I would be a cute and funny plot twist if he has a daughter who is still young but old enough to help fight and strong enough to thanks her dad training her. I think he’d be the same tough and cold character he is but he’s surprisingly tender, caring, gental, and kind to her in his own way that would just make the characters in the dr.stone universe jaws hit the floor lol.

Ah, you do have a point with Hyoga likely being disappointed that the knowledge of airbending was lost to genocide - all those ancient techniques would probably be really fascinating to him as a martial artist. Though I can also see him buying into the Fire Nation’s imperialist message of “we are the strongest nation, so we should rule over all the weaker nations.”

I like your idea that Hyoga is a fighting instructor, with his values he’d probably be something like Zuko in skillset - he puts a lot of effort into firebending, but also into spearfighting since he deeply respects the nonbender master who taught it to him. At the same time he has no time for people who either don’t take it seriously or are too weak to make a difference.

(More under the cut because this got long)

Him having a kid is an interesting plot twist and while it’s more twisty than I’d expect, I’m kind of intrigued by the potential it has. Though that also brings up the question of who the kid’s mom is, and when the kid was born (I estimate Hyoga’s age in DCST to be around 20-22). Homura maybe? Like...perhaps Hyoga and Homura were both fairly high class and had an arranged marriage, but while Homura fell in love with him as they grew up together Hyoga only respected her as a friend and fellow fighter.

And then if they had a daughter (maybe pressured by both their parents to produce an heir of some sort) it could make them both more complex characters. If the kid was really strong though I’d lean more towards an Ozai-Azula like dynamic with Hyoga impressing his values of “only the strong and skilled deserve to live,” onto her. Plus if we’re keeping relative canon ages then I’d estimate Homura to be 20, Hyoga to be 22, and their daughter to be 2 by the time Team Avatar shows up in the Fire Nation to do their thing.

However...I can see some potential with the kid turning out physically weak, and that throwing Hyoga’s values into wack.

Let’s say the toddler was born healthy and strong and an assessment by some Fire Sages said that she’d become an extremely powerful bender - this pleases Hyoga, since he can’t imagine having fathered a weak child with him and Homura’s combined firebending ability. And indeed, by the time the kid is two she shows signs of firebending power well beyond her age group, with Hyoga planning to train her into an extraordinarily strong warrior.

Except with such a strong fire at such a young age, the little girl suddenly falls terribly ill, having raging fevers and struggling to breathe. Hyoga’s ideals would tell him that such an ill child will die, and that’s that, the weak and ill perish while the strong survive. But he finds himself insisting that the kid will survive, because she’s strong, she has to survive. She’ll recover and become the strongest firebender this side of the Nation, not die a weakling.

Some time later, the Gaang shows up to Hyoga’s town to resupply. Pre-Zuko joining but maybe somewhere between meeting Piandao and encountering Combustion Man? Aang decides to visit the local firebending dojo (rip Sokka’s nerves) because hey, he wants to see some firebending techniques from actual benders, and he can tooooootally handle staying low key this time, honest! He encounters Hyoga and gets a fair bit intimidated by him, though Hyoga seems to approve of “Kuzon’s” highly adaptive martial arts style.

At some point, a messenger comes and Hyoga slips away. Being nosy, Aang follows them and catches enough of the conversation to determine that there’s a sick kid living in that fancy mansion, and relays his concerns to the Gaang. Katara immediately wants to investigate further - Sokka is again very stressed but understands that he can’t stop his sister once she’s made a decision (plus this is post Painted Lady and Katara is even more determined not to let children suffer if she can do anything about it). But when she tries the front entrance, the guards won’t let her in, even when she says she’s a healer. In fact, they deny that there’s a sick child at all, while Aang insists he didn’t hear wrong.

So Aang and Katara, ever the problem solvers, break into the mansion (airbending is super useful!) and find the kid’s bedroom. Katara assesses the patient - she determines that even with her waterbending, the kid will likely suffer from complications her whole life due to the damage she’s already sustained. Hyoga suddenly appears, asking them how they got into his house (he’s actually very curious, since they seemed to enter silently and without alerting anyone). When Katara excuses herself and says she’s a healer from the colonies (Aang’s explanation for how Katara has “special healing techniques unlike any other”) and just wanted to help, Hyoga says that he doesn’t need a healer, and that the girl will recover soon. Katara starts to argue and Hyoga starts insinuating that he could easily beat her in combat, when Homura shows up, pleading with Katara to save her daughter.

Hyoga and Homura start arguing, with Homura saying this may be their last chance and Hyoga saying that a true daughter of his would be able to fight off the sickness alone. Homura eventually asks if he’d rather have a dead daughter than a weak one, which makes him go quiet (Aang and Katara are standing there awkwardly watching all of this). Hyoga then calmly says that since they seem to be at a standstill, the reasonable course of action is an Agni Kai (Aang goes pale at this, while Katara doesn’t actually know what that is).

In the courtyard the Gaang watches anxiously as Hyoga and Homura begin their duel, which results in quite a few impressive displays of firebending. Homura however seems to be holding back slightly, more on the run than attacking. At one point Homura gets thrown on her back and nearly burnt, but Katara calls out to her, saying she has to win for the kid. She gets back up and starts attacking Hyoga with renewed resolve, and even Hyoga is surprised.

Hyoga realizes that as loyal as Homura is to him, she really is doing her best to win, even coming at him with direct shots of flame now. And since this is still Hyoga, he respects that deeply - she’s doing things “properly,” even though she doesn’t want to. He even respects that Katara was so dedicated to her role as a healer that she broke into his house just on the mere mention that there was a sick child there.

And in the very bottom of his heart, despite all the talk of strength and weakness and who deserves to live, he has a hard time realizing that he doesn’t want his daughter to die, even if it means she’ll be weak and reliant on others her whole life. This might be a little OOC for canon Hyoga, but hey, it’s an au and maybe if canon Hyoga did have something small and weak to protect, he’d be less of an ass to Senku and company.

So at a key moment in the battle, Hyoga pauses for a split second instead of dodging a blast from Homura and allows himself to be grazed on the chin, reminiscent of his revival scars in canon. It’s not a bad burn, and those watching closely realize that he let her win. Hyoga turns to leave, only saying that Katara will be compensated for her healing services and that they truly did things “properly.”

Katara heals the girl, saying that the fever is gone but her lungs are damaged and she’ll have breathing problems from now on. She’s paid a small sack of gold by a servant that she initially refuses, but takes in the end since it’d probably be good to have extra Fire Nation currency on hand. The Gaang leaves the mansion feeling...a little conflicted about the experience, honestly.

Meanwhile as Homura sits by the girl’s bedside Hyoga appears in the doorway, having treated his burn from the duel. An awkwardly long silence passes before Hyoga says he’s been thinking about the skills that "Kuzon” and “Sapphire” displayed, and that he’s considering buying a home in the colonies so he can learn about those types of skills (since Aang claimed they were from the colonies). He turns to leave, but not before offhandedly saying that the seaside air in the colonies he’s looked at might be good for their daughter’s lungs.

[startanewdream]

Summer Heat

Summary: James is late and summer heat always brings out Lily’s emotions.

Part of my Jily Lives AU, set during Order of the Phoenix and based on @secretsongdeer​‘s amazing prompt of “James or Lily is late from an Order mission, and the other is worried sick".

It turned out into this crazy emotional roller-coaster of Angst and Smut.

Rated M, so all below the cut or on AO3. Read at your own risk (but if anyone wants a PG version, just tell me that I can post it too :D)

_______________________

James is late.

It is not like it never happened before, it is not like every Order mission has a defined duration of time and it is not like he is on a particularly dangerous mission tonight, but still fear bubbles like acid in her stomach. He is supposed to be on watch-duty with Sirius, and while she trusts Sirius to guard him with his life, she also knows Sirius can be a little hothead too and Sirius hates to stay still for too long.

Also, when they are together, Prongs and Padfoot, things tend to escape control, even for a mission that is supposed to be only guarding a door.

Or maybe she is overreacting. Many simple things could have happened. Tonks got caught in her work and could not relieve them; someone decided to stop by the Department of Mysteries and they had to wait to get out. Still, Lily knows she will never get used to that feeling of waiting for him to come home safe.

Maybe it was the years of relative peace they enjoyed that have made her feel more unacquainted with that waiting. For the last fifteen years, James had not once taken a mission for the Order. Ever since Harry was born, they both had promised to concentrate their energy in protecting their son - and all they had done that first year was hiding, moving from a place to another, until Voldemort had finally found them and -

She blinks, deciding to not let her thoughts wander in that direction - in that horrible night -, and her eyes fall on Harry. He is sitting on the kitchen table, reading a muggle newspaper, his face closed and troubled.

That is not new. All summer Harry has been distraught, demanding they talk to him and yet refusing to say anything himself. Lily can read her son easier than she can read the book she is supposed to be currently studying, and she can see a storm brewing inside Harry, but he insists on staying silent. He hasn’t said a word about that night in the graveyard with Voldemort, nor about Cedric Diggory and not even a mention of whatever dreams have been tormenting him at night.

Her husband is late and her son is suffering and she cannot help any of them right now.

Her head hurts.

Somehow this feels worse than the first time, which doesn’t make any sense. In the First War, she was too young and inexperienced and no matter what they said to each other, they were losing - Dorcas was killed by Voldemort himself, Marlene and her family had perished in a fire, they didn’t trust Remus and they trusted Peter too much, and Harry was the target of a prophecy.

Now they are better prepared. Voldemort is still hiding and they know what he is after and that gives them an advantage. As long as they can keep Voldemort away from the prophecy, they will have more time to… She doesn’t know what they will do with more time. Convince those stupid politicians that Voldemort is really back? Gather more help for the Order? Prepare better her son for -

No. This is not Harry’s obligation, no matter what a stupid prophecy says. Voldemort is still human and then he can die like any other man. Anyone can kill him; she will kill him if she gets the chance. Not her fifteen-year-old son, who is currently crumpling the newspaper as if it offends him, tearing each page with particular vengefulness and throwing it in the fireplace to watch them burn.

‘Harry…’, she begins, her voice as tired as she feels, trying to ignore the buzz in her head.

‘There is nothing here’, he complains, still tearing the pages. ‘Of course, we could actually know what’s going on if we hadn’t cancelled our subscription of the Daily Prophet’.

Lily presses the bridge of her nose to see if her headache gets better. It doesn’t help.

‘We told you the Prophet is not reporting anything because nothing is going on’.

Except for the current attack on them - the silly remarks of Harry's instability, the cruel distortion of her story with James -, but she doesn’t say that. They will have to tell Harry eventually; she just never found an opening for it, because he is always brooding and upset and Lily knows that Harry will feel guilty for causing trouble when he hears it.

As if it’s his fault for witnessing Voldemort’s return.

‘How can there be nothing to report? With you guys all mysterious?’

‘We are not - ’, when Harry rolls his eyes disdainfully, she stops to control her own rising anger. It is not Harry’s fault that she is more stressed than normal today. Where the hell is James?

'Don't pretend everything is fine, Mum. I see you looking at your watch every five seconds. I know you are worried about Dad'.

She forces herself to breathe normally, even though she knows she won't deceive him. Harry and Lily always understood each other too well.

‘It’s just normal Order business’.

‘If there is Order business happening -’

‘There is always Order stuff going on, Harry. We didn’t stay doing nothing for all these years’.

‘You could have fooled me’, he whispers loudly enough for her to hear but to also pretend she hasn't understood him.

She shouldn’t take his bait, but James is not there and how can he be so damn late? She is fearing for him and also a little mad - why couldn't he choose another mission? One that he could do safely at home? And why did she have to stay behind? Someone has to look after Harry, sure, but she is as much capable as him of doing things. Next time he can be the one staying and worrying about where is she and why the hell she is late -

‘And what do you mean by that?’, she asks before she can stop herself.

Harry turns to really face her now. He may look like a copy of James sometimes, but the raging expression in his face is just like the one on Lily’s.

Like her, Harry’s temper rises too fast and too quickly.

‘I didn’t see your amazing Order when I was facing Quirrell. Or when there was a basilisk in the castle. Or -’.

‘Harry -’

‘And a great job you all did last year’, he adds, ignoring her, his voice raising. ‘That bloody Death Eater was just under your nose -’

‘HARRY!’

Lily stands furiously and Harry blinks at her, seeming both surprised and satisfied that she screamed at him.

‘You know, this, right now, is why you are too young to be involved with the Order’.

‘Am I young?’, he asks, baffled, crossing his arms. ‘How can I be too young with all the things that happened to me?’

‘You are fifteen and you don’t get it. Do you think facing Voldemort is enough? I’ve done it four times too -’

‘And I am the one with a scar! I am the one that gets stuck with sphinxes and dragons and that has to escape him over and over again, so no, you don’t get it!’.

She closes her eyes briefly and then she can see, as if she is locked on that moment, the memory of that night, that horrible night, of Voldemort raising his wand to her little baby, of her and James alone and helpless -

No.

‘What I get’, she says, forcing herself to calm her voice, ‘is that you are fifteen and you should be worried about other stuff. School, dates, your pimples. And I am sorry that things keep happening to you and I know it’s not fair -’

‘And still, you treat me like a baby! You don’t tell me anything!’

‘You want to talk about who is withholding information? How about we talk about your nightmares?’

Harry stands suddenly, making his chair fall with a heavy sound, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are blazing with fury and for a moment Lily thinks he will scream at her.

‘I am out’, he says instead, his voice trembling with cold fury. When she opens her mouth to argue, he adds: ‘In the backyard. I know I can’t leave this bloody house’.

He makes the house sound like a prison.

‘You know perfectly well why you have to stay near’, she reminds him, ignoring his bad language. Harry shrugs, indifferent.

‘Yeah, that amazing blood protection’, he scoffs. ‘Helped a lot last month’.

‘You are alive, aren’t you?’

‘But Cedric isn’t’, he says and more than the anger she can hear his sorrow.

Her annoyance suddenly vanishes, and she takes a step in his direction, but Harry turns his back to her and leaves her alone in the kitchen.

Great. Just all she needed. A grieving teenager son and a missing husband.

She points her wand around the kitchen, thinking of making tea for herself - and Harry when he returns from his walk around the garden. She knows her son. He will still be angry, but much less inclined to fighting again. He will accept her tea.

She glances outside the window, fanning herself with her hand. It’s early night already, but the heat did not wave. It's the hottest summer she can remember, which isn't probably helping any of them. Summer heat always brings out your emotions, her mother used to say.

And once more she feels that bitterness of worry for where James is and why he didn't warn her that he would be two hours late - he could have been drinking with Sirius right now as much as he could have fallen into a trap for all she knows and -

The thought makes her feel strangely cold and Lily shivers before she notices it's not only her mind playing tricks with her. Something is off. She can see her own breath condensing in the air. It’s eerily quiet around her and she can’t hear any sound coming from the street, nor the sound of the teakettle whistling - in fact, even though she is three feet away from the stove, she can’t feel the warmth of the fire at all. It is like there is an ice storm coming, inside the house, and she thinks she will never feel happiness again -

The realization comes to her suddenly and it helps shake her senses. Lily raises, gripping her wand in her trembling hand and she concentrates on one thought. Find Harry.

She leaves the kitchen, following Harry’s steps, going almost blindly to the edges of their propriety, close to the small woods that James uses to transform with Remus on full moon nights. It is dark outside as if the lights from the lamp streets cannot reach their house and the sky has lost all the stars. The despair threatens to overwhelm her and she takes deep heavy breaths, looking around - she can’t see them, she can’t see Harry, but she knows they are close… They shouldn’t be here, not here, not with their blood protection…

Except she knows Voldemort was able to touch Harry, so maybe it isn’t as strong as before… maybe Harry is helpless, and she will have to watch her son die before her eyes once more - no, she can’t think about it…

‘Mum!’

Harry’s voice breaks through her reverie and she turns towards the sound. Harry is running, coming from behind the old broom shed, his face pale and sweating. Two dementors are gliding behind him, and for a moment Lily thinks of silly horror movies, of how no matter how much the victim runs, the killer always catches it -

Harry screams for her again and Lily raises her wand, the spell ready in her lips, her mind focusing on protecting him. But Harry is still looking fearfully at her, his eyes opened in panic and it takes her a full second to understand he is not really staring at her.

But at something behind her.

The cold gets stronger than before and it is like a block of ice has dropped directly over her, almost making her heart stop beating altogether. It is not fear - it is the certainty she will never feel happiness again, that this is all useless. All she ever did was delay this moment because nothing could ever stop it - did she really think she could save herself? Or Harry?

The dementor is almost gentle as it grabs her, opening her arms and approaching her face. It does not seem to be in a hurry, and she doesn’t see the dementor’s face, because she thinks of Voldemort during that night. He wasn’t in a hurry either.

She can hear her own voice, how she pleaded and pleaded that not Harry, not ever Harry, they would do anything, her and James, because they loved Harry too much. And Voldemort had laughed, cruelly and happily, and told them to stand aside. But James and Lily had stood, their hands together, protecting their son as if their body shield would be enough - Voldemort had then blasted them out of the way like they were nothing and then he had marched to her son, his wand raised just like the dementor’s hand in her direction - and she had watched helpless, unable to stop, as he cast the Killing Curse on her son - and the world had exploded in a bright green fire and she had thought - she had believed - they all were dead… and Harry who was barely one-year-old, who had died alone because she couldn’t protect him…

But he didn’t die, a small part of her thinks, Harry is alive, your love saved him. And she tries to concentrate on this small hope, even though this time James is not there with her -

‘ Expecto - expecto patronum!’

There is a small wisp of vapour, a light that seems to flicker for less than a second, but her doe does not come out of her wand. This last effort used all her strength, however, so Lily drops her wand and the dementor is upon her now, his horrible mouth close enough to kiss her, taking away her hope and her soul -

‘EXPECTO PATRONUM!’

There is a flash of light and Lily is suddenly falling in the ground, the dementor dropping her. She raises her eyes to see, through her blurred vision, antlers hitting the dementor that was holding her - it’s a stag, she realizes, so James has finally come home…

But it’s not James. It’s Harry and for all they look alike, she never once mistook one from another.

Harry is at her side, his arms around her while he points his own wand to direct his patronus to the other dementors. His face is contorted with fury and fear and his arms are trembling, but Harry makes his patronus draw away all dementors, until his stag patronus comes back to them, circling them as if on guard.

‘They - they are gone’, Harry whispers and Lily knows he is right. The stars are shining in the sky again, there is a sound of life around them and the heat is back. She is sweating, but she doesn’t think it’s because of the summer heat anymore.

‘Thank you’, she says weakly, and when her eyes can focus on something, she finds herself staring at the bright eyes of the stag patronus he had never seen him cast before. Her hand raises, but the patronus dissipates in thin air before she can touch it. ‘He was beautiful’.

‘It is Prongs’, Harry says, his voice still very low. ‘Can - can you walk?’

She nods and accepts his help to stand up; he is almost at her height now. She had not noticed it before.

‘Let’s go back’.

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

Lily hates Grimmauld Place.

It is the darkest house she ever entered and she feels that the house hates her too as if every long-dead Black is watching over her when she is there, judging her, calling her a mudblood and how dare she enter their sacred house. All the pureblood air threatens to overwhelm her, crush her like a bug and she curses the place.

But for all she is unwelcomed there, she hates it more because of Sirius.

She knows Sirius hates that house that was never a home for him and she admires him for offering Grimmauld Place as a safe hour to host the Order of the Phoenix; she knows the place holds no good memories for him and she hears his bitterness whenever he mentions his parents. And Sirius is miserable all the time he is there; he loathes everything, from the house-elf he never wanted to inherit to his mother’s portrait that they didn’t manage to take down.

And an unhappy Sirius is never a good thing. She notices how he always drinks more when they are there in one of their meetings - something Snape always mentions - and how reckless he gets after staying there for more than five minutes as if he is still that teenager who once needed to prove himself so different from his family.

When she mentions it to James, he looks worriedly at Sirius, but tells her that everything is fine - but Lily knows it is not fine, because Voldemort is back and Harry is suffering in silence and everything they fought for in the last fourteen years is crumbling. And she fears that James wants to be a little reckless too. They went hiding for a year before the First War ended and she knows him - he hated standing still, feeling like he wasn’t doing enough, and he is afraid to have to lie low again.

And James always enjoyed taking risks too much - he would never do anything that could harm Lily and Harry, of course, but then things are different now. Harry is older and not a helpless baby and Lily agreed to watch over him, concentrating on more internal missions, all because he assured her he would not be in danger -

All these thoughts come back to her but Lily doesn’t say anything. She feels strangely detached, doing things automatically, without really thinking about it. Some part of her registers when she and Harry arrive in the house, when he offers her a piece of chocolate that she can’t make herself eat despite knowing it will help, and when she hears their laughter.

Sirius’s bark laughter and James’ the-world-is-a-good-place-come-laugh-with-me laughter.

The sound causes a wave of anger through her body and that almost wakes her, but the numbness is still too high.

She watches them entering the kitchen and their smiles dying when they see her and Harry, in the exact moment they register something is wrong. Harry is explaining what happened and James is at her side, his face pale - and she wants to cry, where were you?, but she still keeps silent.

She almost jumps when an owl flies through the open window - owls aren’t allowed, they’ve cut communication -, but it is only an official owl from the Ministry. It shouldn’t be bad - except the Ministry of Magic has declared war against the Potters lately, so it is not surprising when the letter talks about Harry being expelled from Hogwarts.

Harry looks heartbroken and somehow more afraid than when he was running from dementors, so that sparks some life in Lily. She raises, ignoring James’ hand extended towards her - she can’t deal with him, not now - and she puts her hand on Harry’s shoulder.

‘We need to go to a safer place’, she says, her voice rough. It’s the first thing she has said in the last fifteen minutes, even though she knew they had to move ever since she saw the dementors.

‘Grimmauld Place’, Sirius suggests and for once Lily doesn’t grimace at the mention of that house. She will go anywhere if it means Harry will be safe and that was the only place she thought of.

‘But - Hogwarts - I can’t be -’

‘Dumbledore will solve this, Harry’, James promises, and Lily sees his patronus already galloping and vanishing in the darkness outside. It’s a stag, as always, but this vision fills her with more violence than comfort and she ignores him once more when he tries to take her hand.

‘Go pack your things, quickly’, Lily tells Harry, placing a soft kiss on his forehead before letting him go.

‘Lily -’, she hears James calling her but Lily doesn’t turn around. Sirius looks from James to her and then back again.

‘I will go help Harry’, he says, hurrying after his godson and leaving them alone.

There is a moment of silence. Lily flinches when James touches her arm, and he doesn’t insist.

‘Lily?’, he asks again, his voice very soft.

‘Where were you?’, Lily whispers, still avoiding looking in his direction. ‘You were supposed to be back more than two hours ago’.

‘I -’, he hesitates and Lily knows he is considering lying to her in that one second it takes for him to keep talking. ‘It was a very good lead, Lily, I swear -’

‘Lead’, she repeats, without any emotion in her voice.

‘It was the best one we had in months - the sewers -’

‘The sewers? You left me alone to go on a chase for Wormtail?’

She doesn’t need to see his face to know she got it right. She can hear the heaviness in his sighing, the one that only thinking of his former friend causes him.

And she doesn’t need to ask him how the search was. James has been looking for Peter for more than one year now and he never got close to finding him.

He is a rat, she wants to say. You will never find him .

‘I will go take our things’, she says instead.

‘Lily - I am really -’

‘Not now, James’, she cuts him and she leaves the kitchen because she can’t stand to look at him.

It may not be fair, but so it wasn’t leaving her alone.

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

Dumbledore promises he will fix things, but the fact is that Harry has a disciplinary hearing and she can see real fear in her son’s eyes.

And not just that. The anger too. She hears him screaming at Ron and Hermione, obviously unhappy with the fact that he was alone all summer while they were together, no matter in a dismayed place like Grimmauld Place. Harry is feeling betrayed.

Right now, he isn’t the only one feeling like that.

Lily survives through the Order meeting barely registering what everyone is saying. She doesn’t participate in James and Sirius’ heated discussion of how the hell three dementors managed to pass their barriers to attack her and Harry, she doesn’t even acknowledge that Snape is for once glancing in her direction. They end the meeting rescheduling their patrol rounds and for the first time she submits her name, her voice daring anyone - James - to disagree with her participation; but even though she can feel James’ eyes looking intensely at her, he doesn’t say anything.

That’s for the best. She doesn’t want to hex him in front of everyone.

When the meeting is over, Sirius, obviously thinking he is being very nice, takes them upstairs to offer her and James the master bedroom. It’s a nice old room, even if a little dusty and dark, and she realizes that Sirius was late for the Order meeting because he had been fixing the room for them in whatever way he could.

A part of her thinks it was kind of him, especially because he must hate that room that belonged to his parents. Lily glances around, her eyes falling on the elegant canopy bed, but all she feels is loathe, if only by the fact that Walburga and Orion Black once slept there; she never met them and she barely heard the stories, but she saw how much they messed with Sirius to know she would hate them. The feeling would be mutual - they would despise her for her blood.

When she turns around, James is alone with her in the room, in front of the closed door. His expression is concerned.

‘Here. Eat this’, he says, offering her a chocolate bar. She ignores it. ‘You need chocolate for dementors, Lily, you know Remus -’

‘This is your fault’.

She hears her words but somehow it takes a second for her to realize she said them.

It’s irrational, she knows, because James wasn’t the one that sent those dementors she should be able to handle, nor he is the one that threatened to expel Harry from Hogwarts, and for one mad moment, she thinks he will argue with her. But James just blinks, his shoulders slumped and he nods.

‘I know’.

‘No’, Lily whispers, taking a step closer to him, her eyes ablaze. ‘You don’t get to self-hatred’.

James blinks.

'You don't want me to agree with you?' he asks, and Lily can hear the faint amusement in his voice, the one that always looks like an invitation for grinning with him.

Any other day she would accept it, but now there is only one emotion strong enough to break into her numbness: fury, senseless and overwhelming fury.

'You don't get to find this funny, James. You don't get anything, because you left us'.

He frowns and she sees a flash of hurt in his eyes. Good, Lily thinks darkly.

'I would never leave you -'

'You weren't there. There were three dementors and an underage kid but no James Potter'.

'So I was supposed to foresee it?'

'We all knew something was bound to happen. That's why we keep our eyes on Harry, isn't it?'

'It is not like he was alone - you were there with him!'

'Yeah, I was', she admits, defeated. 'And I was useless because there were dementors and you know what I hear when they are around? That fucking Halloween night, every time'.

'That is what I hear too'.

'And all I could think was that at least that night you were with me. We were losing and dying but at least you were there'.

'Lily… I was on a mission -'

'Oh, spare me, James. The Order comes first, we always agreed on this. But your mission had ended and instead of doing the right thing that was coming back to your family you decided to play the hero'.

He gasps.

'What? I wasn't -'

'No, you're right. It was not playing the hero - that’s Harry. You were on your crazy suicide revenge mission’.

'It is not - it was a good lead, Lily, I wouldn't go if -'

'Did you find him? Did you see Peter? Even a hint of him?'

He doesn't say anything, but she knows the answer in his resentful face.

'Your problem is that you forget everything when it involves him'.

'He betrayed us', James spats, venom in his voice. 'Then he bleed Harry one month ago and he held him and he would watch him die without saying anything. He. Betrayed. Us'.

'Yeah, but that's not what bothers you. It’s your bloody ego. It’s the fact that he betrayed you'.

James' eyes are burning now.

'Yes, it was me firstly', he concedes, agony and hatred in his voice. 'But he would give us all up because he never cared'.

'Taking him down won't change that'.

'And what do you want me to do?', James finally screams and she feels a dark satisfaction in making him lose control. 'Let him go?'

'I want you to care more about us than for your selfish need for revenge!'

'I already care!'

'Then prove it!'

She is screaming too and maybe even crying because her vision is blurred once more, but still, she registers that at some point they got closer than ever, their noses almost touching. She can smell his musky scent and she can feel his heavy breath over her face. James is angry, but so is she and Lily won't stand down, won't forget that while he couldn't stop what happened, he should be there, he should be with her.

He promised they would always be together - and his absence hurts and she is afraid and she hates him for leaving her. She only wants them to be safe. How can they be at war again? Why can’t they have some peace?

She hates him right now, but she hates more all the danger they are in and even then all that hate pales in comparison to how much she loves him.

'Fuck, James', she sighs.

'Fuck, Lily', he agrees, and then their lips are crashing and it's desperate and painful how she clings to him.

Her numbness is all gone, replaced by a familiar urge of James - of his lips, of his touch, of knowing he is with her. It’s been a long time since she felt this fear, this adrenaline rush after a battle or a near-death experience, but she knows how it goes.

His hands cup her face, his thumbs drying the tears that are falling there without Lily even realizing, and she feels locked in his arms - it’s a good feeling. James is home, James is safety and love. She wants more of him, all of James. She needs him.

And he seems to be thinking the same about her. His hands fall to her arse, to hold her up and press her against the door of the room, her legs going automatically around his waist for better support, their lips never leaving each other. She grips the hair at the back of his head, as if holding a lifesaver she can’t let go or else she drowns.

They are not teenagers and they are not in that mad sex phase of a new relationship, so Lily knows they should stop and recover their senses. But this was Orion and Walburga Black's room, she thinks incoherently, and they would never accept someone like her there - that was the prejudice that started a war that messed with their lives. And suddenly Lily knows what she needs to do.

Her hands are shaking as much as before, though for completely different reasons, as she fumbles with his clothes, opening his shirt so she can feel his heartbeat and the muscles in his torso. James is always so warm , much hotter than any summer heat.

His lips move away from hers and before she can complain, James is kissing her neck - or sucking it, she doesn’t know. Where his lips touch her skin she can feel goosebumps erupting and it is so fresh that she moans, even as he, always aware of her, keeps bending down his head until he is kissing the top of her breasts, any piece of skin her cleavage exposes.

She attends his silent request. Her hands leave his chest to take off her own shirt and bra, and as soon as she holds his neck, his mouth is covering her nipple and Lily arches her back as much as she can against the door. It’s cool , she thinks irrationally, feeling his tongue teasing her and feeling the wood of the door behind her naked torso. Good. It was too hot .

But she still needs more.

‘James’, she moans, and he stops to look at her. His hazel eyes are dark and for as much as she loves their natural colour, she loves so much when they are almost brown, filled with lust for her. She knows it’s a match for her own desire. ‘Kiss me’, she asks, and his lips find hers once more.

They are closer now, so it’s easy to slide her hands through his chest, following the path of his hair there, until she is opening his belt and his jeans and she is feeling him, sliding her hand through his length. He moans into their kiss and his hands let her down for just the seconds it takes for him to touch under her skirt and take away her panties.

‘I need you, Lily’, he whispers and it is so much a pleading as a demand; she is willing to accept both.

She nods and he raises her again, both hands now under her skirt, one holding her tight and another grabbing her arse, his fingers pressing her skin and she hopes it leaves a mark for tomorrow. She has been hurt and bruised in battles before, and because of that she loves seeing the soft purple of the places James grabbed her rough, lost in their moment together; these are the marks she is proud of.

His lips are once again on her neck, sucking the skin there (good, another mark), his body pressing her against the door and she can feel his hardness against her pelvis and her pulse beating down there.

‘James - please’.

He was never able to refuse her anything, not really, so James complies at once, his hand leaving her thigh just so he can help himself slide inside her - and it’s a familiar feeling that she can never get really used to, that of him filling her. She moans loudly and uncaringly, her hips trying to move for more friction and God bless James, he attends her wishes once more, moving in sync with her.

They are not young anymore and she knows they will probably regret this tomorrow, but right now she just tightens the grip of her legs around him, inviting him to go deeper and he groans, his head buried in her neck. It is a sound that reverberates into her, and Lily opens her eyes suddenly, her eyes falling on the master bed. It’s still a beautiful canopy bed, one that speaks of luxury and expensive fabrics, and she thinks briefly of how she hates that house, hates the people who lived there.

Toujours pur.

‘James’, she calls him, and he stops moving at once to look at her, breathing heavily. ‘The bed’.

If James finds her request weird, he doesn’t say. He takes her to the bed, laying her down gently, before standing to take off his pants. She moves to take off her skirt too, but he stops her, laying over her, his hand caressing her face to keep her hair out.

‘Keep it’, he asks, and then his lips are finding hers and she loses herself happily in the taste of his mouth. His hand bounds hers above her head, and all Lily can do is arch her back as he enters her again, his movement much more desperate than before and all she can do is meet each one of his thrusts.

She wants to giggle of pure joy, but James is still kissing her and as much amused as she is, she needs that kiss more. But still, a part of her sends a big silent fuck-off for Sirius’ parents in whatever hell they are, because there is a blood traitor and a mudblood fucking in their bed and somehow this makes everything better.

‘Lily’, he groans and Lily hears the warning and request in his voice. She frees her hands, but before she can do anything, James lowers his hand to touch her, on the soft wet spot right above where their bodies meet, and she lets out a moan that is lost in their kiss.

She knows he is losing control now, his thrusts erratic and needy, and that’s fine because she feels the same. More, she thinks, feeling the pressure building inside her, and like if he is reading her mind, James obliges instantly, his finger circling her faster, in sync with the movement of his body. More, James, she thinks one more time, and then she is over the edge, her world exploding in a blinding light that sometimes looks a lot like what happened in that Halloween night, but so different - it is colourful (not just green) and powerful and its ache is welcomed and her heart is beating so fast and so alive.

God, she loves James so much.

Almost like in a dream, she feels James pushing inside her one final time and then his body is shaking, his mouth leaving hers so he can cry her name like a prayer. After what seems years and seconds at the same time, his grip over her looses and she raises her shaking hands to cup his face until he opens his eyes.

His hazel eyes are still burning, but his voice is tender when he whispers: ‘I love you’.

She kisses him softly in response.

James rolls to lay by her side and, in a movement she has made thousands of times before, Lily lays her head over his chest, hearing his heart still beating too fast, while her hand plays with his chest hair.

‘I am sorry for not coming home sooner’, he whispers after a while, his hand caressing her hair absently. ‘You are right, it was selfish - everything. I just… I feel so guilty, Lily, it is my fault only -’

She knows he is not talking about the dementor attack.

‘I trusted him too, James. We all did’.

‘But I - I was the one that was his friend first, I was the one that thought I knew him for all those years - I would have died for him -’

‘You are not wrong for trusting people’, she assures him, finding his hand to grip it tightly. ‘Your faith - that is one of the most amazing things about you. He is the one at fault for not living up to your trust’.

‘I just think, somehow, that if I catch him… I can make everything all right, like if that night never happened, like -’

‘James’, she calls him softly, turning so she can look him in the face. ‘We can’t change the past. Let us live today’.

This makes a sparkling shine in his eyes.

‘I say we are definitely living’, he notes, looking around for all the mess of clothes on the floor, and she lets out an amused laughter that only James can cause. He touches her face, looking at her with undeniable tenderness and love. ‘I will be there next time’.

It is a promise and she believes him.

‘Already waiting for the next dementor attack?’, she asks playfully, and he kisses her on the forehead before they get up.

‘Harry is a magnet for trouble’, he sighs, just half-teasingly, as he picks up his wand to clean them up.

Still, she laughs softly, because sometimes laughing at their own misfortune is all they can do.

‘A little bit dusty here, no?’, James says, looking around.

‘Guess we will have chores to keep Harry busy for a while’.

‘I think he will prefer the dementors’, he jokes, smirking.

Their hands are clasped together when they descend the stairs, following the sound of people talking in the kitchen. Sirius is waiting for them, his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised, and he closes the kitchen door to muffle the sound.

‘How old are you?’, he asks grumpily.

‘Same age as you, Padfoot’, James answers easily.

‘And do you have a wand?’

That makes James blink, clearly missing the point.

‘Yeah, you know -’

‘Then why did you forget a basic Silencing Charm?’, asks Sirius, in a hissed whisper. ‘Do you know what I had to endure to go upstairs and cast it just so you wouldn’t further traumatize your son?’

Fifteen years ago Lily would blush at this, but now she just stares at Sirius with pure amusement.

‘That’s what godfathers are for, Padfoot’, she says nicely, raising on her tiptoes to press a kiss in his cheek, while James laughs at her side.

‘Do I even want to know what you were doing with that mouth, Evans?’, Sirius asks, looking at her with an expression torn between disapproval and respect.

‘Probably not’, she chuckles. ‘And it’s been “Potter” for a while now’.

‘Come on’, James says, coming between them because he knows they can lose themselves in their silly banters. ‘I am starving’.

‘Wonder why’, scoffs Sirius, but Lily can see a grin on his lips. Sirius always feels bad when she and James are fighting. ‘Hope you broke the bed at least’.

‘It is a work in progress’, Lily promises, winking at him, and they enter the kitchen.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Refuge”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Welcome to week two of… fourteen? Is that how many episodes we’ve got this Volume? Man, we’re going to be here for a while.

There’s a ton to unpack in “Refuge,” but as promised I want to delve into the opening first. Given the scattered, symbolic nature of our intro I think it’s easiest to just chuck out observations in list form. I’ll segue back into cohesive recapping in a moment.

So, what have we got?

The glitching between a happy, whole Atlas and the burning wreckage we’re now dealing with. That works well given both Atlas’ tech-focus culture and the ways that tech has led to some of our biggest tragedies (hijacked army, framing Penny, etc.)

Ruby looks scared and is standing behind the rest of her team, separated from them by the title. I’m not really feeling that theme so far though, given Yang’s incredibly weak challenge, Ruby’s immediate forgiveness (during her talk with Penny), and the fact that she’s still working with half the team who vocally support her, particularly Nora. Unless something drastic changes, the idea of Ruby being the outsider here is silly.

We get shots of the girls with their past selves superimposed over their bodies and weapons. I like the message here—they carry those versions of themselves with them—just not how it’s contrasted with Ironwood’s image of an earlier Atlas now burning. So that’s all he is now? Everyone gets to embody their growth except for him? His past is erased to focus solely on our current predicament? I’m not picking up any redemption flags here…

Robyn’s hand reaches down towards Clover’s badge, which then circles to show off the Ace Ops. The final image contrasts an angry Harriet with a defeated Qrow. At least, I hope they’re contrasts. It’s going to read as absurd if they somehow end up working together after Qrow helped get her leader killed.

This morphs into Qrow alone who sits, devastated, until Robyn offers him a hand up and they both smile. I’m not a fan of this symbolism after the prison scene we got this episode. It’s like Qrow might have thought about his choices until Robyn’s anger reminded him that, oh yeah, he can be angry at Ironwood instead. These two teaming up, when their last team-up led to a death, is worrisome to say the least.

We get our horrifying image of Salem looming over Oscar as he clutches his head. The group’s weapons fall. This makes sense given this episode’s kidnapping and the team’s sheer inability to do anything to stop it.

Jaune stands determined—also makes sense with his trend of giving “pep talks”—while Ren and Nora stand apart, facing opposite directions. Nora looks back though.

Paralleling them are Winter and Weiss who also face opposite directions. This is becoming a common visual theme: Harriet and Qrow, Nora and Ren, Winter and Weiss. Here though, Weiss looks determinedly ahead while Winter stares down at her feet, unsure. Ugh, I just know they’re going to have her betray Ironwood too.

We get a brief glimpse of Whitley and Willow, not a whole lot to go on. Then we see Salem turning her chess pieces into grimm—literally changing the game—while Ironwood’s white pieces are turned to dust. I could make a quip about how white is supposed to go first, but the initial move was made thousands of years before Ironwood existed and thus he never stood a chance, certainly not when his own allies are actively working against him… but I won’t lol

Watts is smiling at a terminal while at his back Pietro works at his. More opposites. Pietro’s reflection looks to Penny even as his body continues to work, his heart contrasting his head. Penny, in turn, looks upset as her reflection flinches at something off screen and the glass cracks. Watts hacking her, perhaps?

We see the new teams as a cherry blossom (I think?) floats across the screen. It melts in Ren’s hand while escaping Nora’s. Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of that just yet.

Ruby and Yang share a look—undermining their supposed conflict this volume. Couldn’t we have gotten sister unity over the last three years instead?—and a fight against grimm starts up. It freezes as Cinder walks through it, hopefully implying that the group’s attention is on the wrong threat. While they concern themselves with low-level grimm, Salem and her allies are walking free and wreaking havoc.

Then Cinder screams and clutches her grimm arm as things go up in flames. I hope that’s not a death flag given that we’ve teased her death twice already and we only just got a glimpse at her backstory. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning here that there’s a “Summer is the Hound” theory gaining traction which, frankly, I think is 100% unsubstantiated. It’s a fun crack theory, but not something I’m inclined to take seriously until we get some actual evidence behind it. There is, however, potential evidence for people becoming grimm in general: Salem falling into the pool and Cinder receiving that arm. That’s not much though. So while I’m far from convinced that the Hound was once human—let alone that it was Summer—there is something to the theory that Salem may be able to control Cinder via her arm like she controls other grimm. After all, she knew Cinder was alive despite everyone else thinking she’d perished. They seem to have some sort of connection that hasn’t been explained yet and now that Cinder has willingly walked back into Salem’s clutches, she may not be able to walk out.

There are shots of all our other villains, the Lamp and the Staff reflected in Salem’s eyes, and Jinn’s blue smoke, perhaps suggesting that we’ll see her again, or the entity residing in the Staff (if they exist).

Atlas glitches back to normal—a false victory?—before the ice breaks and Team RWBY falls into the darkness below. Volume 3 vibes all around. There’s light above them emanating from the Staff, but as Ruby reaches for it grimm arms circle and pull her deeper. I hope this means that the group will suffer the defeat we need to keep Salem as a legitimate threat, but we had very similar imagery back in Volume 6 and they made it out of that situation just fine, so.

“Happy Ever After” glitches into “Happy? Never Again.” Which isn’t ominous or anything. We finally end on the classic RWBY image of Crescent Rose buried in the snow underneath the shattered moon.

On the whole I think the opening is strong and I like a lot of the symbolism in it, though I do question how much will actually end up being relevant to the story. My only gripes are that there are too many different styles going on—it feels like three or four different Volume openings slammed together—and the fact that it also feels overly long. I don’t think it’s actually any longer than our Volume 7 opening, but it seems that way to me, perhaps because of those varying styles breaking things up.

So that’s what we’ll be watching for the next twelve weeks! Let’s move onto the actual episode.

We open on the image of Clover’s bloody badge in Qrow hand, the same one we got in the trailer. I theorized last recap that we’d be getting the rest of our trailer/promo material this week and I was almost entirely correct in that. This moment, retrieving the bikes, fighting off the grimm, Watts getting hit, Oscar carried away… all we’re missing are some eye closeups and Nora powering up her hammer. As said, it makes me nervous for what the rest of the Volume holds. I can’t decide whether the footage wasn’t ready to be included in promo materials that early, or if RT is just determined not to give us any information past the first two episodes…

Regardless, this is supposed to be a moment of grief and all I could focus on was Qrow’s hand. Specifically, the lack of detail in it. On the whole, I’ve been very happy with the engine upgrade and I quite like RWBY’s animation now, but a closeup here draws too much attention to how, sometimes, they’re just not animating their characters in a way that looks natural. Where is Qrow’s wrist? Why is his palm perfectly smooth? Stylistically that’s usually fine, but when given the chance to stare at it you realize how odd it looks. 

Says the woman whose own drawing skills suck but, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But we’re talking about the important bits in this episode! Out of frame Robyn is heard yelling, “This is your fault. You realize that, don’t you?” We’re meant to think that she’s telling Qrow this, especially with how he’s bent guiltily over the badge, until we cut to reveal Jacques right next to them.

I wish Robyn was saying all that to Qrow. It would mean that she was ignoring her own responsibility in Clover’s death, but at least it would have started an arc where Qrow has to grapple with what he did. Not the awful moment that’s coming up.

Before that though, Jacques claims that he’s the “victim” here who was “duped.” His hands may not be clean, but “at least I’m not a murderer.” Look, I’m not here to absolve Jacques of anything. The guy is an absolute shit stain on the Remnant world. However, he’s right in his overall point even if his words are BS. Meaning, Jacques is not a victim and he is a murderer, but he is not the one responsible for Clover’s death. Robyn has plenty of things to be furious at him for, but this is not one of them. Ironically, here we have Jacques functioning as the kind of villain the show wants Ironwood to be. He is a murderer because the company he runs exploits faunus and forces them to work in dangerous conditions (see: the death of Ilia’s parents). He is culpable because he a) had control over these conditions and b) has full knowledge of their flaws. He’s a racist who cares more about money than lives. His informed choices then led directly to deaths. Ironwood? Not anywhere near the same thing. Overlooking the “Omg Salem is here and I have to do something about it” context, he did not try to arrest Robyn. He did not force Qrow to resist arrest, or Robyn to get involved, or Qrow to break Clover’s aura, or Tyrian to stab him in the chest. Ironwood had no control or knowledge of these events, so he is not responsible for Clover’s death in the way that Jacques is responsible for the faunus’. RWBY is giving the right arc to the wrong character.

Robyn then insists that Qrow didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t strike the blow, but he certainly helped! Look, Qrow is one of my favorites, but I’m not about to claim that he didn’t have a hand in getting his friend killed. I seriously can’t believe the show is ignoring this.

We then segue into some, uh, questionable dialogue choices. Jacques is a “snake with a mustache”? Sorry, I can’t take Robyn seriously at the best of times, but definitely not when she’s tossing out laugh worthy insults like that. Nevertheless, this “snake with a mustache” is guilty because he “helped that man tear us all apart.” That man being Watts.

…why are they all in what amounts to the same cell with barriers dividing them? I suppose we could make the argument that they’re being held in some secret facility, given that they’re in this dark, garage-esque space with no lights and no other prisoners. Some sort of maximum security setup that... doesn’t have any other inmates and no additional security? Hmm. Then again, the power is supposed to be out and I don’t really trust RWBY’s ability to craft consistent backgrounds. I feel like they’re packed together merely because that’s plot convenient, not because it makes any sense in world.

Watts looks pretty comfortable in there though and Jacques is likewise full of confidence. He says that by now Whitley will have already called their lawyers to get him out. Now, non-imprisoned people know that the apocalypse is currently underway, as Joanna will later put it. No one is lawyer-ing at the moment, but it will be crucial to see whether Whitley is trying to get Jacques out despite the chaos. How faithful is he to his abuser? Can Willow start undermining Jacques’ influence now that they’re alone?

Jacque’s confidence thoroughly pisses Robyn off and she screams, punching the barrier between them. Keep this in mind for a second. 

A moment later two guards show up to take Watts somewhere and… oh no. Please don’t tell me Ironwood is going to team up with him now that Penny has written him off? I know the guy has (presumably) already killed someone, and he must assume he’s killed Oscar, so we’re definitely in full villain territory despite the stupidity of it… but please don’t start working with Salem’s henchmen too. You know what? I’m not going to assume the worst until I actually see it. RWBY gives me enough nonsense as it is lol.

What I really want to talk about is that hit. 

I’m somewhat concerned by a lot of the fandom’s reaction to this moment in comparison to another. Who remembers Volume 6? That scene when Qrow punched Ozpin directly into a tree? Now, I’m not keeping track of who says what when—this is a generalized reaction—but I saw a lot of posts defending that action. There were numerous justifications for the punch, but the three big ones were: 1. These characters are fighters and they’re used to it, 2. These characters have aura so it’s not that bad, and 3. Ozpin totally deserved it. Now, the problems here are that 1a. I don’t think punching someone when they’re crying on their knees is justified, whether they’re a fighter or not, 1b. Qrow was likewise punching Oscar, a totally innocent kid, 2. We had established earlier that Oscar was having trouble remembering to activate his aura and didn’t seem to have it active then (no ripple effect, he’s rubbing his jaw afterwards), and 3. Ozpin’s crimes are, as explored on this blog, not nearly the horrific actions that the story and fandom would like to paint them as. The point is that despite all this, lots and lots of fans said it was totally okay to punch Ozpin&Oscar. What’s the big deal? they asked. Now, lots and lots of fans—mostly when the trailer first dropped—say it’s not okay to punch Watts. Despite the fact that he’s also a fighter. Despite the fact that his aura has broken. Despite the fact that he’s not currently a threat (seated on the bed/Ozpin on his knees). Despite the fact that he’s responsible for helping Salem try to take over the world. If we were to make a case for who deserves to get hit, Watts is a WAY stronger candidate in my opinion, yet he’s the one who a lot of fans are scrambling to defend. Why? I assume it’s because hitting him feeds into the generalized police state/dictator theme Ironwood has been thrown into. It helps villainize Ironwood for fans to go, “Poor Watts. He’s done horrific things but no one deserves to face police brutality.” I agree. The only problem is that a lot of those same fans seem to have gone, “Ozpin can get over it. He deserved to be hit! I would have done a whole lot worse to him…” So is the difference only that one attacker is a military professional and the other is… a huntsmen professional who soon after that scene starts working for the military? Yeah. The show continually ignores that the group aren’t the rogue heroes they pretend to be. They worked under Ironwood for weeks, if not months.

The show isn’t clear about its morals and neither are the fans, with both changing tactics whenever it helps blame the character they already don’t like. When Robyn punches the barrier, do we really think she wouldn’t have hit Jacques if given the chance? Why would it be heroic for her to hit the Evil Man but it’s not okay for the grunt minor character to hit the other Evil Man? These morals don’t change just because you like Robyn and don’t like Ironwood. 

Jumping ahead for a moment, we get another example of this hypocrisy with Joanna. A reporter is informing the people that the military seems to have stopped evacuations and there is an unheard number of grimm hanging out overhead, both things that are objective facts. He’s reporting as he should, sticking to what’s known and provable, and thus is, notably, not some lackey of Ironwood’s who is hastily presented as evil. Yet Joanna treats him like he is. She snatches the microphone from him and, when he starts to protest, threatens him with her weapon. After she’s done hijacking the feed, she shoves him on her way out.

Look at how scared this guy is. These are our heroes? This back and forth doesn’t work. Prior to his random killing spree, Ironwood took his fear and frustration out on some furniture, yet the show acted as if he was hurting real people. The mere possibility that he might use violence and intimidation to achieve heroic goals—getting Amity up/escaping Salem—was enough to label him as an antagonist because the understanding was that you can’t act like that no matter what your intentions are. Yet our current heroes can use as much violence and intimidation as they want to achieve their own heroic goal of warning the people? Do we think the story will encourage us to be critical of the group if they start beating up a bunch of Atlas goons to reach the access point? Of course not. And it’s that flip-flopping that’s the problem. Your heroes have to function differently than the villains in order for them to be heroes. Under that logic, our heroes haven’t acted like heroes since mid-Volume 6 and it’s getting harder and harder to watch.

Especially when we take the scene before this into account. Yup, we’ve still got Qrow gunning for Ironwood. Robyn bemoans the fact that they can’t do anything, to which Qrow replies, “We can do something. We can kill the man who put us here.” I… feel like I shouldn’t start repeating myself given how long this recap is—we’ll be here for forever lol—BUT I hope everyone reading this understands precisely how little this makes sense. How god awful a choice it is. I mean c’mon. Robyn attacked Clover unprovoked, Qrow teamed up with Tyrian, he broke Clover’s aura, Tyrian murdered him, Salem is here, and now he’s sitting in a cell with Watts and Jacques… but Ironwood is the guy he wants to kill? REALLY, QROW? THAT’S WHO YOU’RE GOING TO GO AFTER? I really can’t with this show sometimes. RWBY, put your clown makeup on.

We get a cut to Ironwood’s image just so there’s no confusion about who Qrow wants to help kill next and Joanna threatens that reporter who, you know, is also a citizen in need of help and protection… Her “General Ironwood has abandoned you, but we have not” sounds absolutely ridiculous when we just watched her intimidating this guy to get what she wants. ‘You can trust us! Unless we randomly decide we don’t like you.’ I have other things to say about Yang calling out that racist woman later on, but she gets props for helping her regardless. Honestly, I don’t get that sense from the cast very often: that they’d help you even if they don’t agree with you. They certainly didn’t offer that to Ozpin, Ironwood, or the Ace Ops.

There’s a very long shot of a scared toddler staring out the window, just to hammer home how young and innocent Mantle is. Seriously, pay attention to our imagery: Mantle is scared children in homes, cute children fist-bumping Jaune, family photos lost in the street, a stuffed toy run over by hoverbikes. It’s meant to evoke a general sense of domesticity and, again, innocence. Meanwhile, Atlas is only shown via Ironwood and Jacques, the villains. Where are the families living up in the sky? The children? The humanizing details? Our racist woman is an outlier who is quickly silenced by Yang. The rest of Mantle is characterized as victims: scared women, worried fathers, the faunus huddling together in the slums, even another racist who, while an asshole, is supposed to have a point about things like the embargo. Which is all true. These characters are all of these things, it’s just that they’re not unique in this. All this exists above too—from those families, to the faunus slave labor, to the beloved objects that remind you of someone’s worth—but they’re ignored to provide a simplistic look at Atlas as the villain. 

Throughout this entire episode the group tosses out snide remarks about how “They” don’t care about you and it’s just… they who? The other thousands of innocents who have nothing to do with Ironwood? The hundreds of Mantle citizens you already evacuated? The redeemable people like Winter and Whitley? The group fights alongside a Schnee who was one of the most vocal racists a year and a half ago, yet writes off the entirety of Atlas as the bad guys. What a mess.

As Joanna’s voiceover finishes, we cut to Yang’s group going after Pietro’s tech. I already covered this scene in our promo material, but to summarize here: horrible tone. Absolutely nonsensical given the situation. Salem is here and Yang is giggling over bikes. In fact, the tone is off for most of the episode (our end being the wonderful exception): Yang’s joy ride, antics with the Mantle citizens, Blake poking fun at Weiss, the tube scene… none of it fits the context of the series’ big bad here to kill everyone. Arguments along the lines of, “But it can’t be doom and gloom all the time” or “This is a brilliant parallel to Volume 3 with happy times heralding tragedy” don’t erase the fact that our cast isn’t taking this threat seriously. Last week Weiss’ “We’re never going to sleep again” moment worked because it’s humor in the context of how bad everything is. All of this? It’s just the group goofing off despite supposedly being in mortal danger. This?

This doesn’t read well. I’d argue this scene is even worse in context due to lines like “The others are definitely missing out.” In our promo material I assumed that the group just split for the sake of splitting and they were, in fact, just missing out on something cool. But we’ve since learned that they split due to a fundamental disagreement about how to help people, a split Ruby compared to Salem’s plans, a split that Yang started! Why is she now acting like their separation is a funny “missing out” moment? It’s like if half your friend group decided to go to the movies while the other half went to a party with an unexpectedly good DJ. The movie-goers are people who are “missing out,” not the group who went off to take over a military base and everyone left angry.

Keep in mind that Ozpin is also back. Every fun times scene with Oscar in it has the added problem of Ozpin hanging back, not saying anything, not acknowledged, still a secret.

The other issue I brought up weeks back was the lack of grimm. Why are the streets deserted? Shouldn’t the army be overrunning the city? Well, turns out that there’s no army because… Salem just hasn’t bothered to send it into the city yet? When Jaune and Ren take out the low-level grimm Oscar asks if they’ve “already pushed this far in,” to which Yang replies, “No, I think those are from last night.” A few minutes later, last night’s grimm change to new non-Salem grimm as Oscar observes, “It’s the negativity. Salem’s forces aren’t moving in, but it’s enough to attract the stragglers.” Later still, Joanna asks, “…grimm are circling out there. What are they waiting for?” GOOD QUESTION. We don’t know, but it’s real convenient, isn’t it? RWBY redeems itself a bit at the end of this episode with that Hound grimm, but I’m still calling it out for having Salem hold off long enough for the group to evacuate pretty much all of Mantle and infiltrate the base. That’s real nice of her. As the characters keep pointing out, it would be a staggeringly different situation if they were overrun with grimm right now, huh? Kind of like the situation Ironwood (rightfully) assumed they’d be dealing with.

Again, I’m so glad our Big Bad is kind enough to let the heroes do everything they need to before lifting a finger to attack them.

RWBY seems to be setting up a, “See! There was always time to evacuate the city!” accusation even though no one could have known that and it makes zero logical sense. Salem brings an army with her so she can not use the army against Atlas? Right…

This all segues directly into our other promo scene. My initial comments still stand: the tone doesn’t work, the lack of urgency doesn’t work (Jaune playing with the kid, Oscar politely knocking on doors), the low-level grimm are not a threat, that shield is useless against anything not driven by plot convenience, and it’s weird for Jaune to be yelling, “Heads up!” when there’s no one in front of him. As said, this moment really doesn’t sit well given everything that’s going on. I had hoped that it would read better when seen in the episode itself, but that’s sadly not the case.  

After Ren one-shots the grimm Jaune suggests that they use his amplified semblance to get everyone to the crater safely. Ren seems less than pleased about this, but agrees. Right now, it’s easy to say that he’s in a bad mood because Nora is mad at him, but what about the Volume before? Where’s this underlying tension coming from? I can come up with lots of theories, but at some point the show needs to confirm something. The longer we go not explaining what’s wrong with Ren, the less faith I have that it will make sense when we get it.

We see the racist woman upset that they have to go live with the “animals in the slums” rather than going up to Atlas. As said, I like that Yang helps her despite clearly hating the woman, I also think her criticism holds up well (ignoring the simplified ‘They abandoned you’ narrative). The only thing that bugs me is RWBY continually presenting racism as a problem to throw a band-aid on and then pat yourself on the back for ‘solving.’ Racist drunk says shit? Toss him in the trash! Racist woman says shit? Remind her that her survival depends on you! It’s not that these responses aren’t earned, but that we’re given them instead of an actual arc that tackles the complexities of this issue. I mean, Blake has abandoned the White Fang and we’ve barely mentioned the faunus slave labor in Atlas. When they head to the dust facility it’s conveniently run by bots instead of faunus. Can you imagine if Weiss Schnee walked into a group of exploited minorities, hoping to use them to access a military base? But of course, there’s nothing like that. RWBY ignores the actual issues for these simple solutions. Heroes just attack/threaten racists and then it all goes away. Yay.

The other problem with this scene is that we learn the crater is the slums. Um… what? Hold on, Joanna made it sound like it’s a separate place, potentially inhabited by grimm, yet it’s the same area Oscar was in last episode? How is that area warmer? This makes no sense to me.

Also, ha, the crater below Atlas apparently houses all the “animals” that Team RWBYJNR is very protective of. I’m waiting for them to do something that messes with the Staff—Ruby reaching for it in the opening—Atlas crashes down on a whole city of exploited minorities, and then Ironwood is blamed for it somehow. Can’t wait for that episode.

So the group starts making their way there and hark! An Ozpin! I’m always thrilled to hear him, even if he’s treated just terribly by the show. Oscar is at the back of the group and comments that “It should not be this hard just getting people to cooperate.” Except… they are cooperating? Oscar, you are watching them cooperate right in front of you. That one woman might grumble a bit, but she hasn’t made a move or said a word about not doing what you say. Where did this complaint come from? Another example of RWBY insisting something is there when it simply isn’t. More importantly, Ozpin responds:

“And yet, it’s becoming something I’m increasingly concerned about.”

“You know, I really don’t need your additional comments right now.”

Then why did you comment out loud, Oscar? What, do you normally talk to yourself like that? You were clearly speaking to Ozpin! Don’t criticize him for responding. I hate traps like that.

Ozpin immediately says that Oscar has every right to be upset and apologizes for leaving… it’s not apologizing for his entire existence like I wrote on the bingo board, but it’s close. Who’s surprised that Ozpin is the first to offer (another) apology? Not me. Oscar corrects him with, “I’m upset you came back!”

Okay. Here’s the thing. I like the idea of Oscar rejecting Ozpin both because he’s taken over his life and because Oscar has suffered horribly due to Ozpin’s presence (punched, slammed into walls, kidnapping attempts, etc.) That makes sense, it’s actually morally complex, and it’s great groundwork for character growth. The only problem is… this came out of nowhere. Oscar was shown accepting this new life when he left the farm. Then again when he insisted on fighting Hazel. Then again all the times he’s been told he’s acting like Ozpin and seems to accept that just fine. He’s clearly pleased with this new badass self he’s got going on—he even says as much—yet doesn’t want to acknowledge Ozpin as the catalyst for all this positive change. Okay, that’s something we could still work through, but what about the group? Fans are already theorizing that this is why Oscar is keeping Ozpin a secret, because he’s scared of how the group will react, punishing him to get at Ozpin again, and though he 100% has reasons for thinking that will happen, Oscar hasn’t shown that fear before now. Qrow punches him? Bonding moment with Ruby. Jaune attacks him? I made you all dinner. They all smile over his inevitable death/disappearance? He smiles back. Yang is the most scream-y? Happy to have her using him as an armrest. The group continually ignores him and treats him with suspicion? Not a peep of protest. It’s horrifying that Oscar accepted how the group previously treated him, but he did accept it. Where did this fear come from if we haven’t seen it in response to the harm done towards him? Just as importantly, can’t we have an arc where Oscar is mad at the team some too? I’ll admit that the general premise of blaming Ozpin makes sense for the traumatized fourteen-year old, but after two years of blaming Ozpin for everything… aren’t we sick of this? His team has actively hurt him, outside of Ozpin’s ability to prevent, yet Ozpin is the one who takes all the heat for their behavior. “I felt like I was actually part of the team” should lead to the realization of, “Hey, Yang shouldn’t yell at both of us for things outside of our control” not, “Hey, you should stay away forever because others have decided they don’t like you.”

All of this following Ozpin saving Oscar’s life in the airship. Then saving his life again after Ironwood shot him. Our heroes are real grateful, huh. I hate that RWBY is taking another fave and doing them dirty, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. 

Ozpin also mentions his magic—would be nice if Oscar brought that up with the team!—and that he is now “recollecting my longest held memories.” He…is? When? Don’t you think that’s something important to show us? We keep being told that “the merge” is occurring but not shown what that actually means. Seriously, when did Oscar get slammed with that many memories??

Please just use the aura machine and give Ozpin a robot body. RT doesn’t have the chops for writing this situation.

As they continue on towards the crater Ren snaps at Jaune about not needing a “pep talk.” Jaune looks annoyed at the attitude which, fair. It says a lot about the writing the last few years that Jaune is the character I’m least frustrated with lol. Likely because they haven’t had him do anything lately which, given that he’s not one of the title characters and our cast is bloated enough as it is, I’m still totally fine with.

Ozpin concludes the scene with, “We need to find a way to work together. Not just the two of us, all of us” with the camera panning up to look at Atlas. I’m glad someone isn’t ready to throw Ironwood under the bus. Given how the group reacted to him sparing Lionheart’s name though, I don’t think they’ll follow Ozpin in his forgiveness. If anything, I expect this perspective to just be more hate fuel.  

We move to Ruby’s group which now includes May. Woohoo! She still hasn’t gotten half the screen time as Joanna, but I’m really glad she’s here. In fact, between a useful semblance and that adorable courtesy, I love her already. Despite, you know, helping the team break into the base and all that. Everyone has their flaws lol.  

She also frames the Amity plan as getting the world “talking again.” Why is everything presented like a fun romp rather than avoiding death via Salem? Absolutely terrible tone this episode.

The group hilariously waltzes past a sign labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and enters the dust facility with the bots I mentioned earlier. This I do like. My hypothetical scenario incorporating the racism issue aside, I like that Weiss is using her knowledge and connections to further the mission, rather than something conveniently dropping into the group’s lap. Like Amity suddenly being ready for launch…So yeah, it makes sense that Weiss would know of a potential way in.  

Sending someone up through the tubes though? Ehhh… I know they have aura and everything—and that Zwei was once mailed—but are we sure this is safe?? Doesn’t matter because Nora sends Weiss through with a misplaced button press. Good thing that was the tube heading to the base. Too bad Weiss is heading to a guarded military base alone. It should have been May going first with her semblance activated, but no. Chuck this onto the ever increasing ‘Bad Tone’ pile. There should not be giggles over Weiss being in that level of danger, especially with everything else going on. Ruby’s expression is the only one on point.

Before Weiss is yeeted off though, Penny and Ruby have a talk wherein Ruby lies her ass off. Penny says, “I do not like it when friends fight” and when Ruby starts talking about Yang she corrects her, revealing that she’s actually thinking about Winter and Ironwood. “They were our friends.”

I was ready to sing Penny’s praises and really, she still gets credit for being the only one who has acknowledged this, but her opinion is (once again) overridden by Ruby’s. Penny goes, “but then the Ace Ops attacked you” which Ruby doesn’t bother to correct. How would Penny know otherwise? The only information she has about that battle is what Ruby has told her, but Ruby is lying via omission here. The Ace Ops never attacked her. They very explicitly refused to start a fight. Ruby attacked them. Then when Penny is upset that Ironwood said “people were going to die because of me,” Ruby takes her by the shoulders and angrily insists, “That was a lie and he was only saying it to hurt you.”

Ruby… you’re the one lying. You know damn well Ironwood didn’t just say that to hurt Penny. Oh yeah, the general trying to keep a kingdom alive from an immortal witch is preoccupied with hurting Penny’s feelings for no reason other than being evil. That makes sense. More importantly, Ironwood is right. Look, I’m by no means blaming Penny for anything. She fought off Cinder, took the power when there was no other choice, and has now gotten caught up in Ruby’s plans which include incredibly misleading information that Penny has no reason to question. She’s doing her best and deserves that hug. But that doesn’t mean she lacks responsibility here. Ironwood needs Penny to evacuate. Penny—listening to Ruby—won’t help him. Ergo, if something happens to the people up in Atlas Penny will be partly responsible. If I have the key to a door with lots of people trapped behind it as a fire rages, and I refuse to open that door, I have indeed allowed a lot of people to die. As Penny says, she didn’t want this responsibility… but she has it. She has to deal with it. Too bad she’s with Ruby who encourages her to ignore it instead, insisting that nothing bad that happens after their choices could in any way be connected to them. Kind of like Qrow ignoring his own actions against Clover.

Because that’s the takeaway from this scene. Penny had empathy for their friends and then Ruby talked her out of it. She never even acknowledges that those were indeed seven friends that she betrayed. That’s horrible.

What happened to Ruby? I used to love this girl.

Continuing our tone issue, Nora is watching this show like her favorite soap is on. Okay then.

Weiss goes up the tube and then we cut to Fiona saying that… the Mantle police are helping them evacuate? So the military is bad, but the police are good? I need to stop trying to make sense of RWBY’s allegory.

When Yang and the others return Fiona makes an innocent comment about being worried about how they’d fare without the rest of their team. Yang is pissed.

Ah, so we’re back to her giving allies attitude for random observations. Remember the anger at Marrow for suggesting she and Blake try different team-ups? Now here Yang is, in a different team-up, doing quite well. Funny how we never acknowledge who first suggested that. Now, Fiona reveals a totally logical worry that losing four fighters might make a difference when fending off grimm, but Yang is poised to be angry at everyone, about everything, all the time. Which I get is something that a lot of fans like. I’ve already seen a couple of posts praising RT for letting Robyn and Yang be angry without consequences because women often can’t do that and, fair. That is indeed one way to read it. My problem is that their anger is actually irrational, not just called as much because we women are ~emotional~. Their anger isn’t justified: Robyn because she had a significant hand in all this nonsense (that she’s ignoring) and Yang because it’s clear Fiona means no harm here. This is anger that needs to be called out, not ignored because yay women expressing emotion. That kind of defense is reserved for a woman’s justified anger that needs to be expressed without criticism, especially in a narrative that tries to undermine her perspective. But what has Fiona done to Yang? Nothing. More importantly, the show has yet to teach Yang a better coping mechanism than lashing out at people, be it with her fists, words, or angry glares. Yang has been through the ringer and it makes sense that she’s angry, but that doesn’t mean she gets a lifelong pass to treat those around her badly. 

Anyway, Joanna says they have a lot of people to keep warm even though the crater was supposed to be warmer? And they’re stealing dust? So what are they using it for it not heat? We’re not seeing any difference here and frankly all the civilians should be dead by now. Or at least entering hypothermia. (Give me that conflict: how do you keep people safe when they’re not all conveniently up for walking all the way to the slums?) Joanna also says that they’re trying to get the “Old mine shafts into a livable condition” which would take how long exactly? In fact, I’d say our timeline is already wonky. We’ve watched Yang hide the Ace Ops last Volume, fly to Winter and Penny, find the Happy Huntresses, wait around for Oscar to show up, ran off on her own at some point to scout, went to get bikes, evacuated all those people to the (far away) slums, then went back out to fight off the grimm. That had to have taken up a good chunk of the night, though it’s impossible to tell the time with Atlas’ snowy sky. I’m leaning towards a bingo mark though…

The faunus who I thought was a badger or something is… a bear I guess? He has a bear-like paw, but his nails seem too long… I honestly don’t know. But he’s Fiona’s uncle! Cute. She's off to deal with a fight that’s starting while the group goes to fight more grimm. Finally, the episode gets good.

The teamwork to take out the dragon grimm was nice, always glad to see it, but the real fight starts when two more grunts show up and then immediately run away. What could have scared them off?

The Hound. (I’m sorry, all I can think of is Game of Thrones when I write that, but it seems to be the name the fandom is adopting, so…) Remember how I said it was unlikely to be a threat on its own? I WAS WRONG. Holy shit this thing is terrifying. It snatches Oscar and in some wonderfully quick animation absolutely obliterates the kid. Oscar is thrown around like a chew toy, desperately trying to rabbit kick at this thing and it does [checks notes] absolutely nothing. I’d normally say something about our farm boy always getting the shit kicked out of him, but this scene was too good for my salt.

Then it changes shape, growing arms, and starts using Oscar as a shield. Yang can’t pull back in time and is snagged by her head, the Hound tossing her into the wall hard enough to break the stone. She’s still conscious though and warns the others about its strategy.

“But grimm aren’t that smart,” Jaune says. Maybe if you kids (Fiona keeps calling them kids) had stayed in school you would have learned that grimm get smarter with age! Oobleck knew that. Or, just as likely, this is a special Salem grimm. Hard to say at this point.

The point though is that the group is helpless in the face of this monster. I do want to emphasize this. I’ve seen a few people criticizing them for not doing enough to save Oscar and it’s like, what did you want them to do? Yang tried to attack and the grimm nearly had her hitting Oscar instead. Ren tried to attack and the grimm changed so fast his weapon was useless. Factor in that morphing—which the group has never seen before—the horror of Oscar hanging there limp, and the general fighter response of, ‘I can’t just keep attacking head on because that thing might kill me,’ and you realize the group was screwed from the start. They can’t stand up against this thing, not without a good strategy anyway, which there’s no time to think up. For the first time in years, ever since Tyrian, Salem actually made the right, villainous call.

Ren screams, “Give him back!”—which was just lovely in an angsty way—and the grimm creepily cuddles Oscar against his chest. Then he responds, “No.” Yeah, they’ve never seen that before either. Can you blame them for their shock? I’m impressed that they were on their bikes just seconds later, managing to keep the grimm in sight. That speaks to their combat experience. Not the ability to power through a situation where they’re clearly outmatched, but their ability to pick themselves back up and try again.

... Ah, so that’s why Pietro was oh so randomly making them bikes. The plot needed a way for them to keep up with a flying grimm. Got it.

My takeaway? RT should be writing horror. They’re far better at it. The animation, sound effects, voice acting, the grimm’s speech and protective instincts, that splatter of goo on Oscar’s cheek… 

... stellar all around. Like the Apathy, this is the best I think RWBY has been since the lore episode of Volume 6. Granted, action sequences like this aren’t required to grapple with any of the messy morals and character consistency of other scenes, but still. If RWBY had just given me a lighthearted ‘Girls fight cartoon monsters’ show or a horror fueled ‘Girls fight monster abominations’ show, I’d have been happy. This? This is the only redeeming part of the episode. And it’s indeed one hell of a redemption. Look at this thing!

I’m not going to say it erases all the bad we got—it doesn’t—or that it likewise erases problems like Salem not using the rest of her army, but it’s a notable step in the right direction. This grimm is a threat. This grimm is a mountain the cast has to overcome. If this is the minion its master should be Everest. I still think this Volume is going down the tubes fast (it’s going the way of Weiss lol), but if it can give me more scenes like this? It might not be a total loss.

Last thing to acknowledge: What about Ozpin? I’ll admit it doesn’t look good. Given how fast he takes control he should have been able to override Oscar’s will and at least fight back a little with that spectacular magic we saw during the finale. So why didn’t he? I hope we get an in-world explanation: it happened so fast even Ozpin couldn’t do anything (shaky, but I’ll take it in a pinch), now that the merge is farther along he can no longer take control—something. Because I can easily imagine how quickly the fandom, and even the cast, will turn on him for not playing deus ex machina here. In reality, I think Ozpin didn’t take control simply because the plot needed him not to. The writers needed Oscar kidnapped so any potential out from that is conveniently forgotten… which is another knock against their writing, despite how great the scene otherwise was. The point is to take all these potential pushbacks and find a satisfying way to circumvent them, not pretend they don’t exist. RT can still save themselves here by providing that explanation later, so I hope they’re smart enough to do that. Ozpin has been blamed for everything at this point. His own kidnapping doesn’t need to be added to the list.

Also, still no word on Schrödinger's councilman. We’ve got to wait another week to see whether he’s dead or not.

Finally, let’s update the bingo card!

I’m crossing off “Ruby gives an ‘inspiring’ speech built on ignoring facts she doesn’t like” for that conversation with Penny. Yeah, it’s a speech to her alone about her worth, but Ruby mischaracterized the situation so badly I’m mad at her lol

I never thought the story would straight up just not have the grimm army attacking, so I think I’ll hold off on “Army of grimm conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians” until we see if/when it gets involved.

I’ll likewise hold off on the timeline slot until we see how bad things get…

Maria is on thin ice given that we have no idea what she’s supposedly doing while the group is off on their missions. Stay tuned.

Today we’re crossing off “Deadly cold conveniently doesn’t kill any civilians.” They should all be dropping like flies by now.

A friend pointed out that Cinder’s Cinderella flashback counts as an “Overly obvious fairy tale allusion.” In fact, I talked about how much of a shorthand that is, so that’s getting a mark.

From last week I’ve also decided to include Amity for “Retconning previous lore.” Now that the group is fully underway with their plan it reads as even more egregious that we were told it wasn’t ready.

I’ll hold off on Ozpin’s space for a while. See if he apologizes to the whole group and, if so, exactly what for.

“Oscar is finally kidnapped”—check!

Well, that’s a whole lot of headway this week. Can’t wait to see where the next episode takes us... Here’s hoping we spend a lot of time with that Hound. MVP of the episode.

Until next time! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[gloves94]

Kingdom of the Sun [Fire Lord Zuko] 9

Chapter Warnings: Death, SMUT  Story Rating: M   

Pairings: Zuko/OC  Kingdom of the Sun MASTERLIST

Last Airbender MASTERLIST   My MASTERLIST

“You’re an Earth bender?”

Tsai paced around the guest bedroom where her mother was calmly sitting on one of the sofa chairs. Her usual cool and collected demeanor in play. She had always known that her mother was from an Earth Kingdom nationality but this?

She was furiously pacing, breathing harsh as she walked a tight rope bordering on a panic attack. They had just survived the collapse of a temple, they had almost died – hell, they had witnessed the death of dozens of loyal Ozai supporters. Amongst them Mai’s father. Arrangements were being presently made for the quick burial and service of anybody that had perished.

“And what? You were just going to keep this to yourself? Take it to the grave?”  

Her mother remained stoic, cold.

Tsai really wished her brother could be here. Instead he was presently preoccupied consoling a certain mourning girl.

Sanju remained silent at her daughter’s questioning. “Does dad know?” “No,” She finally spoke single word. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? How can dad not know?”

The older woman sighed and relaxed in her seat for what seemed to be the first time since she arrived to the Fire Nation. She uncrossed her legs and lowered her tightly knit hands down to her lap.

“Your father and I… Like most unions of higher tier, it was arranged. Your grandfather always looked out for me and my family. Sencha felt that a union between his Fire Nation son and a woman from the Earth Kingdom would bring unity to Yu Dao and of course, he was right.”

Her daughter starred at her intensely both her eyes wide at the admission. How could her mother speak so calmly about this? “You’re very lucky to have found someone that reciprocates your feelings. I always knew you’d marry well, not the Fire Lord per say. You’d marry someone who wouldn’t be affected by… your background.”

She chose to ignore her mother’s ramblings, still much too preoccupied and lost in her own thoughts. However, Sanju did have a point. It was one of the red-head’s fears that was further intensified by this. What would the Fire Nation be with an earth bending heir? “So, you didn’t love him… dad?” Her daughter asked weakly shifting on to a more present and unavoidable topic.

“I learned to,” she responded. “He respected me and having come from nothing, owing everything to your grandfather, I had no choice but to agree to the arrangement.”

Tsai was in shock. She had never questioned her parent’s relationship. It seemed dull to her and just like every other older couple. For some reason she had just assumed they met at a dinner or something cliché amongst those lines.

It was then that her mother broke the silence letting out a weak laugh. The red head remained mute, still processing what her mother had just said to her. She had long stopped anxiously pacing the room and now stood frozen in shock.

“You don’t know how scared I was when I was pregnant with you. How relieved I was that your brother was born with the ability to ignite fire.”

The room suddenly felt small, asphyxiating, she had to get out of here. She needed space. “I-I need to go clear my head,” Tsai managed as she exited the room. Her mother didn’t reach for her this time.

Tsai didn’t know where to go. Chaos and havoc had been unleashed in the Fire Nation. Protesting citizens were mourning in the streets, chaos unleashed, widowed women crying for their husbands, orphans sobbing for their parents that had perished in the collapse of the temple. The nation was on the verge of an uprising.

It was all too much, too overwhelming. She didn’t want to think about anything. Didn’t want to process what had just happened. She just wanted to be alone and marinate in solace for a moment. And so, she went to the one place where she knew nobody would come looking for her.

She now sat alone a top of a slab carved out of white marble. It was dark in the room, certainly nobody would come down here, not a single noise could be heard echoing the small chamber. The Dragonbone Catacombs were strangely welcoming on this day. Still dark as night, still hosting the skeletal remains of the hunted dragons of the past, and the bodies of the Fire Lords of the past. The chambers dimly lit by rows of warm torches.

Her mind remained blank, numbed to everything as she hugged her knees closer to her body, head buried in between them, eyes shut exhaustedly. The place had been renovated since the bombing incident all those years ago. The scent of myrrh and incense still lingered in the air. Except that this time the room felt cold, empty and austere without the dozens of candles that had adorned it the last time she had been here. She found herself so deep into her own thought she didn’t even hear the approaching footsteps echoing the stone corridor.

“There you are,” a hand landed on her shoulder. She flinched, eyes snapping up. “I was worried,” Zuko said looking concerned. “We’ve all been looking for you everywhere.”  

Of course he’d find her. “I… I just need to be alone for a moment,” she stammered lowering her gaze to the floor. “Are you okay?” He asked kneeling down to meet her eye level.

She debated whether she should tell him the truth or not. Simply utter a dismissive stammered saying she wasn’t and just get it over with. “No,” She admitted truthfully. “Are you?” She met his golden eyes the feeling of concern being mutual. He licked his lips and shook his head slightly. “Don’t change the subject. I’m asking about you.”

She swallowed the barbwire knot that had formed in her throat. “I saw my life flash before my eyes,” she admitted, still avoiding his perturbing gaze. “Last time we were here,” she began lifting her gaze so that she could gaze around the dark catacombs. “I fucked up,” she divulged vulgarly.

She waited for his brass judgement. “It’s not just you,” she looked up to meet his expression with surprise, but instead found that he was looking away with the same shame she was. “We should’ve at least discussed these things. I don’t know what I was thinking.” That’s the thing. He wasn’t. He was the type to do stupidly impulsive things when it came to these things; specially to love. “I am so, so, so, sorry,” She apologized from the bottom of her heart. “To you to me. I should’ve done things differently,” her throat swelled with regret. She should’ve done things differently. They both should have.

“We still can.”

“Still can what?” She looked at him confused. “Do things differently.” She looked breathless as if she had been punched in the gut, which further fueled his confusion. “Let’s do things differently then.” She exhaled out slowly.

He didn’t get a chance to react to her words being silenced by a greedy kiss. She had made up her mind that she would marry this man before death did them part. She had never kissed him like that, with such urgency, with her mouth opening against his and body pressing up against his. Her hands fumbled with his clothes, his warm ones with hers. “This is not a proposal,” he managed to speak against her mouth, eyes closed. She didn’t seem to care if it was or wasn’t. He kissed her back just as hard, as if they were going to die. Her knees were growing weak from the intensity, he stepped forward and she leaned her body against the edge of the marble slab were his marble casket would one day lie.

She let out a breath when he bit her lower lip, parting her mouth open for him. His right hand cradled her jaw in it, the other supported his leaned weight as it rested on the slab where his body would one day lie. She sat on the edge of the marble and his hand traveled down the side of her body reaching her leg and hooking it around his waist. “Right now?” She spoke in between kisses. His mouth journeyed from the corner of hers down her jaw and to her neck. “What if somebody walks in?” She asked meekly still jaded at the memory of her mother and brother boldly interrupting the last time they had attempted to be together.

“I don’t care,” he spoke in a hoarse voice. His voice raspy scratching at her skin before dipping to the crook of her neck in a bite that made her want to melt. All the sudden, feeling hot and bothered, she didn’t care either. Her hands unfastened the sash that tied his regal robe together exposing his toned chest. She almost felt as if his eyes were burning against her skin. His hands lowered caressing the tender skin on her inner tight.

She felt there was no need for foreplay she was ready to go. Urging. Almost starved for his touch. His fingertips brushed her pulsing core. Just like last time she was hot, damp, ready for him.

The edge of Zuko’s lip curved, eager for what was waiting for him. Eager to do unmentionable things to her. He torturously toyed with the opening cleavage of her dress; slipping it down to her shoulders. His thumb reached for the bandeau she wore around her chest but before he removed it, he noted the gnarly scar that was inches below them in between. It was the knife wound from the day of Sozin’s Comet. He felt her hands on his skin and noted that the two had matching scars in their fronts.

Battle wounds from the war. She couldn’t help but smile softly, it was just another thing that connected them. The moment was short lived, his hands trailed up and he removed the fabric revealing her bare breasts. He squeezed both of them in his large hands and she winced a little at his roughness when he leaned down to kiss them. He leaned forward his nose carving the way, his hot mouth kissing her flesh inching down below her breasts. She arched her neck back and sighed at the pleasant sensation. His hands lowered to her sides and down to her bottom which he pulled her body forward closer to him. His lips and heated tongue returned to her chest taking turns between gently nibbling and teasing her plump nipples. She ran her hands through his long hair tangling a fistful of it. She lowered them to remove the robe off his shoulders. His hands continued to explore the temple of her body was which he had sworn to worship.

While Tsai did not want to spare another minute, he wanted to take his sweet time. As if unwrapping a precious gift. He wanted to explore every inch of her with his every sense.

His slender fingers followed a trail which he was becoming acquainted with. They sent an exciting chill down her spine when they wondered to the inside of her thigh closer to her heated core. He removed every obstacle in the way without much care.

“Please,” She pleaded him to ease the terrible hot itch that had formed in between her legs.

He slid in his index finger into her warmth. The sensation made him pause, he bit his lower lip at the sensation. The thought of being inside of her was enough to drive him over the edge. He couldn’t wait to sink himself into her and finally be one. He slid another finger in past her folds and began to wave his fingers in the fashion he was familiar with. “Please,” she whimpered with need for more.

His uncle’s best earnest advice had been to practice his virtues. “Patience,” He towered over her body leaning down and planting a wet kiss under her ear in that spot he knew made her hot. He bit it gently, making her shudder before returning his attention to her sex.

He lowered his head, lower and lower until she could feel his breath hot against her. “What are you doing?” She asked taken aback by the close proximity.

“I want to taste you,” He said through hooded eyes. She flushed at his words and let out a faint yelp when she felt his warm tongue lapping at her steaming entrance. His fingers remained on her opening stroking a clockwise circular motion on her swollen rose bud.

Her back arched involuntary and she opened her legs for him. Tsai bit a low moan at the sensation. Her hips grinded forward wanting more, needing more, needing him. She tossed her head back slightly and sharply inhaled at the pleasurable sensation. Eyes closed in a blinding mist. He kept a careful eye on the language of her body, eager for the next pleasurable sound that escaped her lips, he’d cherish them all. Every mumble, every whisper, every shuddered curse that escaped the prison of her mouth. She leaned back laying on the slab when he raised her legs over his shoulders.

He hummed making his mouth gently vibrate against her sensitive entrance. He continued delving his tongue in and out of her, his fingers moving at a steady rhythm. His eyes frozen on the feverish expression on her rosy face. She struggled against an escaping whimper and moaned out his name, relaxing into the cold marble.

“I’m almost there,” she warned of her approaching orgasm.  

However, he didn’t stop. She felt the coil of aching nerves which had bundled up in her lower regions snap, releasing a pleasurable shock that rocked her body. She came in his mouth. He lowered her legs and met her eyes, her love juices crudely dripping down his chin.

“I’m not done yet,” he said licking his swollen lips.

Fuck. The erotic sight was almost too much to bear.

He hovered over her horizontal body and knotted a hand thought her long locks. He kissed her sloppily, his tongue impatiently exploring the cavity of her mouth. Still sensitive from her orgasm, she moaned into his open mouth, at the strange sensation of tasting herself on his lips. He pressed up against her with wanting. Their lower regions rubbing against each other in want. The confinement of his pants becoming tightly unbearable. Fuck being patient. He tugged at the cord that tied her dress together and tugged it off exposing her flesh to the cold, damp air of the Dragonbone Catacombs.

He stood up desperately undoing his pants with urgency. She sat up, legs leaning down the side of the marble, hands attempting to unfasten the rest of his regal robes and clothes. He exhaled at the freeing sensation when his erect member became exposed, twitching in desperate need to be touched, proudly bouncing against his navel.

For the first time he looked at her with what seemed to be hesitation. She paused, still breathing heavily and nodded in consent. She latched onto him like a tick and kissed the outline of his jaw, arms clinging around his neck.

He stroked himself for a moment, a lustful look on his eyes as he positioned himself at her entrance which was grieving for him, throbbing in heat.

“I love you,” she whispered against his skin. He grabbed her jaw in his hands and kissed her in response.

Slowly, with ease he pushed forward losing his virtue to her. She let out a huff when he filled her fingers digging against the skin of his broad shoulders.

She hadn’t been expecting him to be so goddamn thick.

It took him a moment to adjust to the welcoming sensation. Her sex was hot. It was warm, inviting, it made his heart ram against his rib cage. She fit him like a glove. This felt better than whatever he had been expected it to feel like. “Fuck” he cursed under his breath, something she had rarely heard him do. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he moved again, and again, slowly painfully thrusting into her gaining a steady pace, getting used to the foreign sensation. She placed his hands on her breasts and he greedily explored them, kissing them, lightly biting her skin which made her feel lightheaded. She pulled at the roots of his dark hair in the back of his head.

“There,” she let out a low moan when he hit that sweet spot. He hit again and bent his head forward resting it on her shoulder. “Right there” she moaned louder wrapping an arm around his shoulder deliciously burying her nails into his back, lightly scratching it.

His pace increased and towering over her he pushed her back so that she was once again laying on the slab, he reached for her hips and dug his fingers in them tightly before pounding deeper into her. Each bold trust seemed to come harder and faster than the last. A grunt was trapped in his throat as he leant over and laced his fingers with hers. She cried out in bliss; her eyes closed enjoying the idyllic moment. He rammed harder and harder to the point she was almost at the point of begging for his mercy. She felt her nerves tighten and tightened as a dam of pleasure was about to break lose again. He was close, he could feel himself close to finish and suddenly came to an abrupt stop.

“Why’d you stop?” She asked leaning on her elbows looking up panting heavily.

“I need a moment.” He said taking in a deep breath, pacing himself, his ragged breathing matching hers, heart hammering in his chest as he tried not to get too excited.

“I should’ve married you” she confessed looking at him through her lashes.

“I should’ve done this a long time ago.” He exhaled and again picking up her leg hooking it around his body and leaning over her.

"What did you call this again? Disrespectful? Dishonorable?" She mocked. "Fuck honor," He laughed a little at her shocked expression. He leaned over and kissed the edge of the mouth before he once again pushed himself into her. He trusted hard, perspiring bodies slapping against each other, teeth sinking against her shoulder. She saw red with each stroke. Arms wrapped around his shoulders, legs around his hips. She wanted him deeper if possible, still greedily lusting for more.

Zuko wanted to hear her praise. Her moans, her encouragement, the way she moaned out her name was music to him. It threatened to push him over the edge. He wanted nothing more than to please her.  

“I’m about to finish“ she let out a squeak when she felt herself come undone around him. The dam of pleasure breaking releasing a wave of satisfaction which stretched from the lower part of her stomach reaching the tips of her toes which curled at the sensation. Her walls spasming around his erection, making him swallow his breath. He stood witness to the lovely sight, his jaw going slack at the compressing sensation of her velvet insides.

She cried out in ecstasy and he continued his rough movements. He groaned out her name like a curse as he was about to reach his own end. Eyes closing in bliss, grip becoming loser around her body, vision blurring into a white haze around the edges.

“Tsai, move I’m about too.” He struggled to speak with a strained tone.

“It’s okay,” She breathed holding his face in her hands. He held her close and gave three strong trusts before slightly twitching inside her and coming undone as he too reached his orgasm.

He sighed drained before his body collapsed. He lowered himself to her. Resting his head on her chest. She kept her arms wrapped around him and caught her breath. He could hear her heart hammering against her rib cage. She kissed his forehead hugged him.

"Yes. Yes. Let's get married." She said with glassy eyes, stroking his hair.

"No, no, no, this was not a proposal." He said alarmed quickly sitting up.

"I know. That's why I'm asking you." "What" He looked at her confused and with disbelief.

"We are doing things, differently aren't we?"

Silence. His expression unreadable. There was a pregnant pause on his behald.

"Say something." She begged him as insecurity began to prick at her. Had he changed his mind?

A broad smile cracked across his features. "You've lost your mind."

"Is that a yes?" She couldn’t help but smile so wide it made her face ache.

Smiling, both kissed.

Xxx

The couple returned to the Palace hand in hand. Happy to have one good news amongst the unfolding chaos. Tsai made a note to prepare a stone seed root and thistles antidote as her form of birth control.

Their families all seemed to be in the Royal dining room not very hungry. All wore somber expressions on their faces at the events that had transpired earlier. Thankfully none of them had been hurt.

Both walked in hand in hand, side by side, which immediately caught everyone’s attention. “Tsai and I have something to tell you all,” Zuko began. The couple exchanged an excited look. Sanju raised an eyebrow, Iroh lowered his tea, Ursa and Kiyi turned their attention towards them. “We know there’s been a lot of somber news, but we wanted to share that in the midst of the darkness we have decided to get married,” was what the Fire Lord had wanted to say. Instead he was brashly interrupted when he said the word ‘but’ with a loud: “We’re getting married!” Tsai said excitedly hugging onto his arm.

“Ho! My boy!” Iroh cheered beaming jumping to his feet, his face flushing with excitement.

Ursa brought both hands to hide her wide smile as she also rose to her feet letting out a small squeal. Kiyi looked as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped on her and Sanju smiled a little standing up also approaching the happy couple to congratulate them.

Their parents said their congratulations as they embraced both into their uniting family. “So, did you take my advice?” Iroh asked Zuko wiggling his eyebrows at his nephew. His tone was loud enough that his fiancée heard. “What advice?” She asked arching an eyebrow with a hand on her waist. “Not now Uncle!” The man hissed embarrassed his face turning a deep shade of scarlet.

Kiyi stood before the two of them with a pout on her face and her arms crossed over her chest upset. Both of her eyes narrowed as she glared at both her brother and his lady.

“Kiyi,” Tsai began stepping forward leaning down slightly, so she was at eye level with the younger girl. “I also owe you an apology,” she began in a gentle tone. “I shouldn’t have left so abruptly last time I was here,” she let out a small laugh, “I don’t think I should’ve left at all, but what’s done is done and what matters is that we’re all together and your brother and I are starting our lives together,” she looked back at Zuko lovingly, who was currently distraught by his mother who was touching his face and on the verge of tears.

“I know you wanted to be a bridesmaid and I hate to disappoint you,” she clicked her tongue. The younger girl’s eyes widened slightly. Was she kicking her off the wedding party? “Instead I wanted to ask you- will you be my maid of honor?”

Kiyi’s reaction was immediate as her icy composure melted off her shoulders. “Yes!” She said tackling the older girl in a hug. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” She beamed. “We’re going to have so much fun! And oh! We have to pick your robes! And the flowers- what about the cake?” She began to ramble on excitedly. Just like that it seemed as if all had been forgiven. Everybody was chattering excitedly about the future. It was then that Tsai’s brother walked in. Mecha was just as excited over the news hugging his sister and slapping his future brother in law in the shoulder a little too hard.

“I can’t believe my sister is engaged!” He said excitedly. “Well,” Sanju drawled in an unfriendly tone. Arms crossed over her chest, “I don’t see a ring,” she commented snidely.

“Mom,” Her daughter protested. “Fire Nationers don’t traditionally use rings. You know this,” she rolled her eyes slightly.

Her mother seemed happy but not ecstatic over the idea of their engagement. “So is dad invited to the wedding or what?” Mecha commented. “I hate to burst your bubble, but the New Ozai Society might’ve just been literally squashed, but the Anti-Revolution Movement is now stronger than ever.”

Tsai had completely forgotten about her father. Having been completely caught up with her emotions, her engagement and what had happened in the Dragonbone Catacombs. She hadn’t fully processed the bombing of the temple. The one responsible for so much chaos in the Fire Nation. The bombing… She thought about the one in the Dragonbone Catacombs and the one that occurred in the temple earlier today during Fire Lord Ozai’s funerary services. It was impossible for her father to be roaming Fire Nation lands freely. She doubted he was even aware of the secret underground tunnel system. Whoever had orchestrated both of these attacks had the ability to transparently sneak around the Fire Nation. This person was preparing everything, always one step ahead. Without another word she stepped out of the room leaving behind a room filled with very confused people.

“Where are you going?” Without turning around she felt Zuko join in her side as he trotted to catch up to her fast pace.

“I know who did it. I know who set up the bombs this morning and last time we were in the catacombs.”

Both rushed into a room in the third floor of the palace. Tsai slammed the room’s door open just in time to catch the red-handed culprit packing away his belongings in a rush.

“Going somewhere?” She drawled out, glaring at the man who was sweating bullets.

Zuko’s mediocre assistant, Nezu, looked started at having been caught. Without missing a beat he rushed towards the window, throwing it open ready to leap out. However, his path was instead blocked by the Fire Lord himself who say on the edge of the window cooly, with his arms crossed over his chest. An angry scowl on his face.

His head snapped back to the door where he saw Tsai leaning against the doorframe wearing a similar expression on her features. Instead her eyes were focused into deathly slits. Her hidden blades were pulled out and brightly reflected some of the light they caught.

“I know a rat when I smell one.”

“I won’t tell you anything!” The man spat, raising his hands up.

Zuko stepped down from the window, he held fistfuls of fire on both of his hands an absolutely livid expression on his face.

The terrorist was cornered. Tsai stepped forward holding her blade to the eyelevel of the man. Her menacing eyes never left his as she inched forward until the blade poked at its neck drawing a single string of blood out. The man saw her pause, expression faltering for a split second before she retreated.

A satisfied smirk carved his face when she pulled away and lowered her blade. “Your father was right, you’re a coward you don’t have it in you to kill me.”

“Maybe not… Who am I to play jury, judge and executioner?” She wiped the back of her blade on her sleeve. “I hope the side effects kick in soon, she said looking around the satchel she kept tied around her waist.

“Side effects?” The man uttered out a perplex expression morphing on his features. “You’ve done your research Nezu,” Zuko began as he towered over the man. “You know my fiancées favorite animal is the platypus bear.” “You want to know why they’re my favorite?” The other probed as she continued pulling out several vials and small flasks and powders from her satchel and from underneath her sleeves. “Besides being really cute and the all-terrain predator-“ She finally found a small vial filled with a pale-yellow liquid. “Males have a venomous thumb. The venom a platypus bear is extremely dangerous, it can cause pain that can live out for months, painful hallucinations, convulsions and eventually loss of consciousness and body motors. It’s so rare very few people actually know the antidote for it. Fortunately, I happen to have it, now you’re going to croak or well, you know what will happen.” she threatened.

The man looked around the room nervously. He was trapped, there was no escape. He suddenly felt his heart accelerate in rapid palpitations. The sweat and perspiration began to build on his forehead. He could feel himself growing woozy. He was paranoid as the side effects began to kick in.

“Fine…” He grumbled. “Fine!” The man snapped. “It’s true. I work for the Governor; I work for your father. I’ve been working for him since before the war ended.”

“How many more of are there in the Fire Nation?” Zuko pressed.

“Just me.”

Then came the million-dollar question.

“Where is my father?” Tsai glared at the man holding the vial in between her thumb and index fingers. A more relaxed expression on her features.

“He’s in the colonies, he’s planning on blowing up the palace with the Avatar in it.”

Both of their eyes went wide as the couple locked eyes. It was another trap. Just like the funeral. Did Nezu kill the Fire Lord to set up the entire thing? No, it didn’t fit his style, it was too elaborate, too spontaneous. But this- the blowing up of the palace… It had to be a trap. And why hadn’t he done it already? What was holding him back? The threat of them surviving the bombing of the temple?

Tsai was so distraught, so deep in thought that she missed the man’s quick reflexes in snatching the flask from her hand and in that same moment downing the liquid.

Zuko stood idly watching. He lowered his hands-on offense allowing the man to drink the vial without opposition. “Wait!” She realized looking horrified. The man drank the bitter liquid and cringed before slamming it to the floor shattering it. “I turn in myself in as a prisoner of the nation,” Nezu said smugly ready to embrace the consequences. He raised his hands innocently. His reasoning was that if Fire Lord Ozai had managed to get away with the sentence of life in prison what would they do to him? Surely something not half as bad as that.

“You don’t understand,” she said looking at him aghast. “I didn’t actually poison you!”

Nezu felt his body suddenly grow cold at the realization. “You told us all that yourself,” Zuko backed.

“What you just drank was the actual poison!”

It was then that he began to feel the symptoms again. Not the feeble version his hypochondriac self-had tricked his mind into believing but the actually painful side effects from the venom. Zuko stepped around the room when the man knelt over with a sharp pain in his gut. Thick saliva foamed around his mouth like rabies and the man reached for his throat. The couple looked horrified as the man struggled to gasp for breath or reason and stumbled backwards backing away from them. Neither stopped the man from falling out from behind the window.

And that’s how Nezu met his end.

The couple looked at the open window mildly disturbed. So much death had already happened today. So much innocent blood had been spilled. It was so unnecessary. Things could’ve been done so much differently.

Zuko touched her arm in what she interpreted to be a comforting matter. “What do we do now?”

“We have to go back to Yu Dao. Warn Aang and the others.”

“We’d be walking right into his trap,” he said his brows shaping into a concerned frown. “Not if we’re a step ahead,” she said determinedly slapping a fist on her opposite open palm. Her brain rapidly turning as it crafted an elaborate plan of attack. “I’m flying back to the colonies tomorrow, confronting him and his goons.” “Alone?” He looked at her incredulously. “No way, I’m going back with you. I won’t let you go alone.”

It didn’t take much to convince her. She was going to get all the help she could get.

“Fine,” she agreed. “We leave tomorrow first thing in the morning. Let’s try and get some rest first.”

They exited the room but not before casting one long single glance at the open window behind them. The curtains lightly fluttering reminding them of the traitor’s demise.

Xxx

There was much to do. Close advisors had been instructed to comb the room for anything that might be useful for the strike against the Anti-Revolutionary movement.

And speaking of advisors.

Tsai and Zuko were presently walking back from sharing their condolences with Mai.

When the two ran into Iroh and Ursa in the parlor room. It seemed like both were on their way to pay a visit to Mai during her times of hardship. They were explaining to the two what had transpired with Nezu and how the man had fallen to his death and been poisoned by his own hand.

“I didn’t think he would…” Tsai lowered her head. Still running over the events that had transpired. All she wanted was for less people to die. To keep everybody as safe as possible.

She felt a hand being placed on her shoulder and looked to see Ursa’s hand on her body, but that wasn’t what caught her off guard. What caught her attention were the violet bruises that decorated her wrist. Those looked oddly like wounds of restraint from somebody that was defending themselves. She could hear Iroh speaking but wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. Eyes still engrossed in the wounds.

Ursa noted this and quickly removed her arm, self-consciously pulling her sleeves over her wrist hiding the marks. Tsai looked at her oddly, mouth ajar at the realization.

Whomever had killed Fire Lord Ozai, this person had to be somebody he trusted enough to get close to him. His killing it had to be personal, upsetting. She looked at Ursa’s face. Eyes widening in realization at who had killed Ozai. Neither Iroh nor Zuko seemed to notice the interaction between the two women.

“In happier news, I’m very excited to begin planning for the wedding,” Ursa said switching the subject with a small smile. “Yeah…” Tsai drawled out, unblinking, her mind still in haze at the realization of who Fire Lord Ozai’s murder really was. But why? After all this time.

“Ozai’s service was really a tragedy, but at least it is one less thing to worry about. Right?”

She wasn’t sure if she meant the collapse of the temple or the man’s funerary services, but guessed she meant the latter.

Despite her kind smile there was something painful. Something hollow about it. Ursa had once killed a Fire Lord before. It fit that she would do it again Zuko looked at his mother confused, unsure of what her cryptic words meant. Iroh kept quiet, yet there was a strange glint in his eyes that made Tsai think he knew more than the man was letting on.  

“All I want is for you two to be happy,” she said closing her eyes with a small smile.

There it was, her admission.

Her motive.

She had done it for them. For her son. She knew that Ozai was not a forgiving man and that he would never surrender his ambition for his claim to power. That he would never stop torturing his family. So, she took up the roles of judge, jury and finally executioner.

There was a silent understanding between the two women as they shifted topics with ease. Both with hollow smiles on their faces. Zuko wouldn’t throw his mother in a pit of jail to rot. However, somethings really were best left unsaid.

xxx

AN: Next chapter should be the last UwU

[evabellasworld]

Written in the Stars

For @thecl0wnwars, this is my gift for you as past of the @starwarssecretsanta event. Thank you to @lilhawkeye3 for organising this event. I really enjoyed it so far.

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Summary: Bly and Aayla were stargazing after a brutal battle while longing for the war to end

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Laying on top of the soft, emerald grass, Bly rested his head on top of his arms and focused on the night sky, which was encrusted with sparkling stars and an illuminating sapphire moon.

Two, four, six, eight, he muttered to himself, pointing his finger slightly towards the horizon. The clone commander of the 327th Battalion wondered the exact number of stars that he's gazing at this moment.

With only the crickets chirping in his surroundings and the rest of his men asleep in their tents, Bly thanked the Maker that he gets to spend his alone time counting all the stars in the sky, since he hardly had the privilege to do so.

Though he wished that his Jedi General was laying beside him, instead of resting after a long day at the battlefield, with bodies of his dead brothers and sisters laying cold on the ground and an orchestra of blasters and explosions deafening Bly, who was an unwilling actor in this play, along with his troops.

It was his duty to fight for freedom and justice so that one day, the people of the Galactic Republic will live in peace and prosperity. And yet, Bly finds himself doubting whether the war was worth the lives that were lost during the brutal battle.

Moments ago, Aayla was leading him and his troops to fight against the Separatist invasion on Reza, which was a planet known for exporting corn. The prairie land, with a barren grassland and a small town nearby, was engulfed in flames along with the sea of cornfields.

With the screams of the civilians that were caught in between, Bly could never forgive himself for watching as a child got shot by the battle droids and not being able to save him from the Grim Reaper.

But Aayla, on the other hand, had it worse. As a Jedi, she not only sensed their emotion but absorbed the pain that the villagers had to suffer. It got to the point that a fellow Jedi Knight, Eva Bella Young, suffered a seizure from the intense emotion.

He pines as he glanced at the mesmerizing painting that the Maker has blessed him in the sky. He has travelled from planet to planet and yet, he took the beauty of the universe for granted. 

Growing up in Kamino, the only thing that Bly was taught was to fight until you die. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't until he was assigned to Aayla that he learned to appreciate everything before it was gone forever in his life. His brothers, his sisters, his best friends, and Aayla.

Like the blue moon, he finds her attractive. With blue skin and luscious lips, Bly was struck by her looks, and his feeling for her was more intense when he saw how she treated his brothers and sisters, especially Ahri.

Whenever Bly wanted to speak to Aayla alone, his vod’ika, Ahri, would always be asking her stupid questions, like how to find a book in the library or how to strike a conversation with a woman she met at the bar.

He envies them for trying to steal her attention from time to time, but he knows that jealousy would do no good except poisoning his own heart. He knows that having a sense of entitlement is not the way to have around a woman like Aayla. But yet, he watches most romance movies that his batchmate, Ares recommended to him and he noticed that the characters were constantly pining for each other’s love, ignoring the people around them.

He thought those couples in the movies were selfish and had little chemistry with each other. From what Odd Eye told him, relationships take years to build and seconds to crumble. The thought of losing Aayla in the war scares him as if he has enough of seeing his own troops dying and suffering in pain.

“Bly?” he heard a familiar voice calling him. “Are you alright?” 

The commander turned around and saw Aayla standing behind him, her Jedi robes wrapped with her cloak. Bly glanced at her with awe as her beauty shone underneath the blue moon. Her eyes sparkled as her gentle smile warms his heart, making him unsure of his words towards her. “Can’t sleep?”

“Not really,” she answered honestly as she sat beside him, turning his cheeks deep red. “I’ve been thinking about the battle today. It was horrifying to see the villagers suffer in the middle of the battle.”

“Yeah, it was awful,” Bly let out a sorrowful sigh. “They don’t deserve to be caught in the middle of the battle.”

“Unfortunately, that is the cost of the war. It’s always the good ones that had to die first, and all because we want peace in the galaxy.”

Bly hates to agree with that statement that Aayla but she has a point, even if it hurts him personally. "People don't seem to understand what we have to go through, and yet, here we are."

"That is true, though people have a point about the war. All it does is take lives after lives until there are no more to take. Even the ones that survived aren't the same anymore."

That also rings true to him. Bly himself had gone through so many battles. Day by day, he wished that the Reaper would visit him instead of his brothers and sisters. He felt sick to the stomach whenever he had to list down every clone trooper who perished in his report. They may be engineered to kill droids but deep down, those men and women have feelings as well. All those wishes that they made within themselves, were never accomplished.

“Aayla,” he stuttered. “Do you ever wish that you could turn back time and save everyone you loved from dying?”

“Sometimes I do,” Aayla admitted. “I sometimes wished that I could save my friends from death, but in the end, there was nothing we could do except to mourn for them and move on with our lives. It’s not good if you often dwell with your own grief.”

“I see, but do you always blame yourself for watching them die without being able to do anything at all?”

Through the Force, the Twi’lek Jedi sensed turmoil within Bly. His questions about wanting to save his brothers and sisters alarmed her, though, not in a severe manner. She understood the weight he had to carry as the commander of the 327th Battalion. As a Jedi General and peacekeeper, she felt the same burden as well, even without training in leading an army. 

“Bly, if something is bothering you, you can always talk to me,” she assured him, brushing her hand with his, much to his surprise.

“I’m alright, general,” he cleared his throat and sat up straight, letting go of her soft palms. “It’s just….”

“You don’t have to say it if you don’t feel comfortable about it.”

“No, general,” he shook his head. “You’ve made a good point about moving on.”

Aayla shifted her gaze towards the sky, which were painted with the stars and galaxy by the Makers. She was thankful that she was wide awake in the gloomy night to see the wonders of the universe. With the war raging in the galaxy, Aayla felt like a youngling who was counting stars until she decided to go to bed.

She remembered a time when there was only peace in the galaxy. A time when the only thing she was sad was when an elderly Jedi Master became one with the Force. A time when children were running around in the hallways of the Jedi Temple instead of leading an army of soldiers. 

Aayla wonders if suffering and pain was worth it to achieve peace in the galaxy. She heard a million times that the war would end someday, but that someday doesn’t seem to come any faster as it goes on and on, claiming lives after lives. But for now, she just wants to enjoy the everlasting sight that is laying beside her, counting every star in the sky. “So, how many of them did you manage to count?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Bly asked, clueless. 

“The stars, silly,” she chuckled. “How many stars did you manage to count?”

The clone commander blushed, feeling like an idiot for not paying enough attention to her. “Well, I counted around a thousand stars in the sky.”

“Really?” her eyes widened. “That’s amazing. I’m impressed with your mathematics skills.”

“To be honest with you, Aayla, I was only guessing. I didn’t get to count past 20 stars, actually.”

“Well, it’s still impressive, though,” she shrugged. “At least it’s better than not counting at all.”

Bly beamed, tightening his lips. “H-hey Aayla, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Bly. What is it that you want to ask me about?”

“What kind of advice would you give yourself if you could go back to the past?” he wondered, glancing deeply at her eyes. 

“Well, that is a good question,” she said, moving her eyelids upwards, thinking what kind of answer would she give to him. “My only advice to my younger self is to not be overly attached with everyone you loved, as it is unhealthy and it leads to obsession.”

He nodded at her statement. “Did you have an unhealthy attachment with someone before?”

“I used to have intense emotion with my friend Kit, but he doesn't feel the same way for me. So I had to let him go and respect his feelings towards me.”

Bly couldn't help seeing green whenever he saw Aayla and Kit Fisto interacting with each other. Then again, he also felt the same way when Ahri stole her attention away from him. He knows that he doesn't own Aayla, but he felt that he should stop being jealous towards everyone who talks to her, especially his vod'ika, Ahri.

“Are you and Kit still friends?”

“We are,” she nodded. “He is my best friend and I won’t have it any other way.”

“That’s good to hear,” he gleamed. “It’s no good getting your lustrous feelings in the way of friendship anyways. Imagine what it does to your friendship with Kit.”

“Yes, there would be horrible consequences,” she answered, taking a deep breath of the fresh air in her surroundings. “Has that ever happened to you before, Bly?”

He has to be completely honest with Aayla, especially when it comes to his feelings towards and resentment towards Ahri. “My sister and I have been close with each other since the Battle of Geonosis. And then one day, when we were assigned to one of the most beautiful Jedi General, who is also smart and cautious during wartime.”

Aayla could only blush as she knew what Bly was telling her, and who is the particular person that he was referring to.

“And guess what, my feelings towards the general grew as we fought with each other, side-by-side, and we even began to understand each other as well. So imagine my surprise when I found out that my sister also has feelings for the general as well. I didn’t take it well and I ended up lashing out at her.”

He paused for a moment, before he decided to continue his story towards her. “She ended up crying and retreated to her quarters. I felt terrible. She was my closest sister in the 327th Battalion and I made her cry. I guess envy and possessiveness has grown inside my heart without realizing it, but that doesn’t excuse my behaviour towards her.”

“Later, I knocked on her barrack and I apologize for making her feel this way. She forgave me, but I still felt bad for making her miserable, so we talked and talked for hours, and we strengthened our friendship, without letting our pride and ego get in the way.”

Aayla looked at him in a proud manner, placing her hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad that you and Ahri worked on the issue between the both of you. Bly, I understand that you love me very much but sometimes, we can’t be too attached to each other. Otherwise, our relationship would lead to obsession, which is unhealthy for the both of us.”

“I know, Aayla, and I’m ashamed for thinking this way,” he frowned, avoiding her glance. “I just wished that we’re both allowed to be open about our love towards each other. I’m just sick and tired of keeping this a secret.”

“I know,” she caressed his face as she leaned her forehead onto his. “But as long as we have each other, then you have nothing to worry about.”

Bly wrapped his arms around her waist as he felt his heart pounding gently, his eyes closed. Their love may be forbidden and scandalous towards everyone, but he and Aayla surrendered their fate to the Maker of the galaxy. After all, their love story is written in the stars for their children and their grandchildren to read someday.

[themangledsans0508]

Is this Okay?

Read on Ao3

Summary: Marceline learned a lesson from her mother, the Vampire King, and Simon. Everything Stays. No matter what you try to do to change it.

Words: 1713, Oneshot

Warnings: None

Characters: Marceline Abadeer, Bonnibel Bubblegum, Peppermint Butler

Ships: Bubbline

Additional Tags: fluff, mild hurt/comfort

It had been two weeks since vampires returned to Ooo and Marceline had slain them all again, in the process getting turned again. She thought non-stop about the Vampire King’s words, how their cycle would continue forever if she didn’t try to change their outcomes.

But she did try, and nothing changed. She was still a vampire.

In all honesty, she didn’t care anymore. She forgot how nice it was to be mortal, but how horrible it was at the same time. The cons outweighed the pros, and she was resigned to accept it. She’d live forever, watch all the people she loved die, except for two.

Simon and Bonnibel.

Simon, she had mixed feelings about, because while he was immortal, he wasn’t himself. One day, she’d save him. Saving him might make him mortal, and then she’d lose him.

Against her better judgement, she reached for her phone. She tapped before she could change her mind and let the fish circle her ear. It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey Bonnie,” Marceline said quietly.

“Marcy, what are you doing still up? It’s almost one in the afternoon,” Bonnie asked. Marceline felt under the spotlight, but there was no backing down now. She had called and now she had to ask.

“I haven’t slept. In a few days really. Do you remember a few weeks ago when you said that if I wanted, I could move into the castle?”

“Yeah?” Bonnie’s voice sounded hopeful, and Marceline felt guilty.

“I’m sorry, this is misleading. I wanted to ask if I could drop by sometimes. I like having my own space, but like I also want to be,” she hesitated and cautiously continued “I want to be living with my girlfriend. Sometimes, but just keep my house. In case or whatever.” Marceline heard the clicking of something being put down and the shifting of clothes and she figured she had called while Bonnie was doing an experiment.

“That’s okay. I don’t mind. Honestly, I miss you. Miss how we used to be. Like, domestically. Not everything else. That was bad. You’re welcome over whenever you want, I don’t know if you want your own room or-”

“Bon, if you’re okay with it, I’d like to share your room,” Marceline requested. She braced herself for dismissal or decline but she was met with silence.

“Colour stays in my clothes,” Bonnie ordered. Marceline’s ears perked up and she practically jumped off her bed. “No going in the lab while I’m experimenting, something could go wrong and someone could get hurt. It’s a safety issue, not because I don’t want you there. Unless you’re careful, then you can hang out there.”

“Those are some pretty easy rules to follow,” Marceline stated.

“They’re supposed to be, I’m not going to strap you down and tell you that you can’t do this or that.”

“Are you doing anything important right now?”

“Besides cleaning the last remaining remnants of the King of Ooo ruining my lab? No.”

“So I could come over right now?”

“Yes, except it's daylight.”

“I have an umbrella.” She heard Bonnie laugh on the other end.

“You are so stubborn. Be careful, okay? I don’t need a crisp staining my hallways.”

“Pff, it’ll be fine. See you in a bit, Peebles.”

Marceline may have been too hasty, and in her rush accidentally stuck her arm out of the shade and got burned, but that was fine because of her healing powers. She flashed Finn and Jake a wave when she came across them to raised eyebrows in the Candy Kingdom. She slipped into the castle without the Banana Guards noticing due to their own lack of attention and closed her umbrella, leaning against it.

An angry mint stalked towards her and pointed a gloved hand at her.

“If you are here to be turned mortal again, you’ll have to wait! The Princess has not even begun rebuilding the machine, and I hope you have prepared properly for the potential consequences of your actions after you were poisoned and almost perished! May I also request you refrain from placing the Princess in harm’s way?”

“Move over, candy man.” Marceline nudged him out of the way with the tip of her umbrella. “I’m a vampire for good. If I catch you trying to stake me I’ll drain all the red from your body. Where’s Bonnie?” Peppermint Butler huffed and adjusted his suit.

“She’s organising her lab. If you do her any harm I will make sure your fate is worse than death.” Marceline rolled her eyes.

“Heard that before, Minty.” She walked across the floor, her heels clicking against the solid candy floor. She could hear Peppermint Butler mumbling things under his breath but she elected to leave well enough alone. She navigated by memory to the lower halls, pausing at the lab doors. She hesitated before knocking.

“Come in!” Marceline stepped through the doorway and quickly reacted when she saw a glass beaker falling. She dived down and caught it, rubbing her neck sheepishly when she handed it back.

“You gotta be careful Bonnie, that could’ve shattered.” Bonnie carefully put the contents of her arms into the sink and dusted her hands together, leaning against the counter.

“I have plenty more, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world,” Bonnie said calmly. Her body language was a different story, her hands fidgeted and her eyes looked everywhere but Marceline’s. She tapped the toe of her shoe against the floor. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?”

“Want me gone already?” Marceline joked. Bonnie frowned.

“No, I’d love to have you here full-time, I was just curious how much time I’ll have with you before you go back to your house.”

“I don’t know, I just want to be here with you for a while. Even if Mints wants me gone.”

“Peps just doesn’t trust you, he’s skeptical of everyone,” Bonnie explained.

“I’ve literally been around you longer than he’s been alive, if I was going to do anything I would’ve done it seven centuries ago,” Marceline deadpanned. Bonnie pushed herself away from the counter.

“I know you would’ve and I trust you completely.” She placed a tender hand on Marceline’s cheek. “I’d trust you with my life.”

“Same. And I have multiple times. But if the little dude comes for me I will shatter him into a million pieces and throw him out the window.”

“Please do be careful with him, it’s such a pain to have to put him back together piece by piece,” Marceline grumbled something under her breath and reluctantly nodded in agreement.

~

She was fidgeting.

That in and of itself wasn’t usual, Marceline was typically always moving in one way or another. This time, however, she was nervous.

Not because she was sleeping next to Bonnibel, on the contrary sleeping beside her was actually comforting. It was the fact that she had a question to ask that she wasn’t sure she had her own answer to.

“Bonnie?” she spoke quietly in case her partner was asleep. She felt shifting beside her and didn’t have to turn to know Bonnie was looking at her.

“Yeah?” She took a few deep breaths and felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Bonnie, are you okay with me being a vampire?” The words hung in the air for a time, and Marceline could tell Bonnie was choosing her words carefully before saying them. The fingers on her shoulder tightened its grip.

“Marcy, look at me.” She did, her eyes meeting Bonnibel’s. Her face was unreadable, which was normal but did little to put Marceline at ease. She took Marceline’s hand and held it in between them. “When I first met you, you were a vampire. It didn’t bother me back then, why would it bother me now?”

“I don’t know, I just,” she sighed, leaning back slightly, “I’m a freak. I have to drink the colour red, I can’t go outside during the day, I can’t eat garlic, your butler was so worried I could go crazy he’s been getting things to stake me with! My heart doesn’t beat unless I make it, I’m basically permanently cold, I don’t need to breathe ever. I committed genocide on my entire species except for one other vampire!” She broke eye contact before whispering, “I’m a freak. You’re a princess. At least when I was human, I was able to be normal. Like we could be a normal couple.”

“Marceline, I’ve always loved you for you. I don’t care if my sleep schedule gets thrown off, I don’t care if my entire kingdom goes pale. We haven’t used garlic here in centuries I can barely remember what it tastes like. And us being a normal couple?” she laughed and smiled, “I’m a sentient piece of gum that rules a kingdom she made from scratch that is also a lesbian. You’re a half-demon half-vampire who’s a rockstar and a queen and also bisexual. The word ‘normal’ and ‘us’ go together like two electrons.” Her smile faltered.

“If I’m honest, I didn’t want you to turn human again. For entirely selfish reasons. I didn’t want to lose you one day. But that was unfair to you, and it’s your life. I hate to say it but I was happy when you got turned back. It saved me a lot of work. I was going to try and find some way to prevent ageing, just because of my own fears.”

“That kind of defeats the point of being mortal,” Marceline pointed out.

“I know. That’s why I said it was selfish. For my own reasons I never wanted you to die. Either way, you would be ageless either naturally or by my doing, so in the end, I didn’t mind. Vampire or human, you’re still Marceline. That’s all I care about.” Marceline smiled at her.

“Bonnibel Bubblegum showing emotions?” She leaned forward and pecked her lips.

“Don’t make me regret it.” She started to turn away before pausing, looking back at Marceline with a sly grin. “Actually, there’s one thing that being a vampire has over being a human?”

“What?”

“It’s kind of hot.” Even dead, some hue came to Marceline’s cheeks as she playfully shoved Bonnibel off the bed.

[collectsfallenstars]

WARNING: Absolutely long post

IN DEFENSE OF KIM EUN SOOK'S "THE KING: ETERNAL MONARCH"

The King: Eternal Monarch has been getting mixed reviews 10 episodes into the season and it has boggled my mind as to why this has been happening. It’s a grand project, has a robust storyline, beautiful cinematography the likes of which is done for full-length films, and has a love story between two adults who behave like adults and not in perpetual high school. It is very different from most Korean dramas I have come across, and that alone is reason enough to watch it.

 

Granted, I have not watched many of them so maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But what I am sure of is that I get tired of things very easily when they’ve become predictable.

 

See, before watching The King: Eternal Monarch, the last Korean drama I watched was Something Happened in Bali back in 2004. Then coronavirus happened, billions of pesos were to the government but no mass-testing happened, ABS-CBN shut down, people speaking against the government were being put in jail, and I thought, hmm let’s go to Netflix to escape. K-dramas with beautiful autumn colors should do the trick.

 

I watched maybe one or two series in full but soon found myself giving up on the ones that came next. Watching them one after another made it clear that they were built like romance novels – no matter how different each premise was for a series, they always followed a pattern. And patterns, while they may be dependable, can sometimes be boring.

 

And then I decided to give The King: Eternal Monarch a try even though the binge-watching monster inside me disagreed with it. So there I was last week, Netflix open and a lunch of Sinigang na Baboy with rice laid out in front of me.

 

The series opened with a serene view of a bamboo forest, wind blowing gently through it, and the voice of a man talking about the legend of a bamboo flute back when monarchs ruled Korea. Oh, a historical series.

 

1 minute and 40 seconds later, it cuts to a man covered in blood, in a police interrogation room in modern day Korea. Oh, it’s also detective fiction. Gotta watch out for red herrings then. Oh but wait, the man covered in blood, Lee Lim, is supposed to be 70 years old but he doesn’t look a day over 30. I mean, yes Korean genes and skin care are magical but not to this extent. The idea of immortality is introduced which suggests that the series has supernatural elements too. This means world building for these magical elements and forming rules that govern them. (I mean, Bram Stoker and Anne Rice made their vampires perish under the sun and Stephanie Meyer chose to make them…sparkle.)

 

And then 4 minutes in, we get a flashback to winter of 1994 in the Kingdom of Corea. Uhm. Typo? No? Lee Lim, the bastard son of the former king, murders his half brother, the current king, in order to steal the bamboo flute that grants the owner much power. The king’s young son, 7 year old Lee Gon, witnesses his father’s murder, struggles with Lee Lim, splits the power laden bamboo flute in half, and nearly dies if it weren’t for a mysterious figure coming in to save him.  The mysterious figure drops an ID card with the name and picture of Lt. Jung Tae Eul on it and Lee Gon clutches it along with half of the bamboo flute. Lee Lim escapes to the forest with only a broken half of the bamboo flute. He comes upon a pair of obelisks, passes through it and lands in Korea with a K. Lee Lim comes face to face with the face of the person he had just murdered, except he isn’t a king anymore. He’s just an unkempt unemployed man. We now have the introduction of parallel worlds and doppelgangers. It had only been 18 minutes into the first episode.

 

I put it on pause, finished my lunch quickly, cleared the table, and settled down on the couch to watch. I did all that before resuming to watch it because it clearly wasn’t the kind of K-drama you could easily watch while eating, glancing up and down between the screen and your food, missing bits of the subtitle here and there and not paying any mind. Because of its structure, the kind of story it wants to tell and the breadth of its narrative, it demands your full attention.

 

I get why people find it difficult. I found it difficult. But it was infinitely exciting. It’s as if someone laid out a puzzle with a thousand pieces, a maze, Connect the Dots, Spot the Difference in front of me and told me to play with them all at the same time.

 

What kind of story did the writer, Kim Eun Sook, want to tell? She began with the murder of the parents of Lee Gon by his bastard uncle, Lee Lim, who feels he has been deprived of power for too long and intends to take it all for himself. It becomes a story of both sides seeking justice for their own separate tragedies. To flesh out this story, she has to give Lee Lim a plan for world domination and give Lee Gon a defense strategy in place, as well as an active pursuit to entrap his uncle. She has to give them motivations, conflicts, moments of doubt and triumph. If this were the only story she wanted to tell, a linear storyline with flashbacks and flash-forwards should be enough. Throw in a romance, love triangle, one final obstacle, 2 chaste kisses, 1 passionate kiss, 1 tearful kiss, 1 reunion kiss and you will arrive at your happy ending.

 

But Kim Eun Sook wanted to do more. She expanded Lee Lim’s plan for world domination into two parallel worlds. Adding science fiction to the mix complicates matters because you will have to build another world that is visibly different from the other even if they are parallel to each other. Audiences should be able to tell one apart from the other quickly in order to keep up with the story. The difficulty that The King: Eternal Monarch faces is that the Kingdom of Corea and the Republic of Korea look almost exactly alike. It takes almost a few seconds to recognize the Royal Seal, or the European inspired trams running in the background to ascertain that the scene is in the Kingdom of Corea. But once the characters appear, it becomes easier to tell which world we’re dealing with. Jung Tae Eul and the police force belong to Korea. The Royal Staff and family, Prime Minister Koo and cabinet members belong to Corea. The only ones to traverse between both worlds are Lee Gon and his uncle.

 

Therein lies one of the criticisms for Kim Eun Sook’s work – the pace is too slow. I would argue though that the pace is just right when you’re creating two worlds, with very different characters in each, whose stories run parallel to and interweave with each other. It is very easy to place all evil characters in World A and all good characters in World B. But that’s lazy writing, and also ugly.

 

Kim Eun Sook humanizes and fleshes out a significant amount of the supporting cast with such care, developing them alongside the major characters. Usually in dramas, the side characters will get hints of a back story in an episode or two, and then have just one episode dedicated to them. Kim Eun Sook did so much more and in effect, her two parallel worlds became so concrete, with real, moving characters contributing their bit into the two separate forces of Lee Gon and Lee Lim that are about to clash. It creates anticipation, excitement, and spreads your heart out amongst many characters instead of investing your emotions into just the main leads.

 

But aside from the science fiction element, Kim Eun Sook also takes on the task of writing detective fiction into her already robust narrative. Lee Lim is essentially building an army of doppelgangers from the Republic of Korea and planting them in key positions in the Kingdom of Corea. He then takes the dead bodies of these Corean citizens and dumps them in the Republic of Korea, leaving Lt. Jung Tae Eul and her squad in the police force with a trail of unsolved cases. Detective stories are by themselves difficult enough. You begin with a dead body, a search for clues, weeding out which clues are significant, chasing a lead, failing, planting and then ignoring red herrings, closing in on a suspect, interrogation, a surprise turn of events, and so on until the murder is solved.

 

But Lee Lim didn’t leave just one dead body in Korea. There’s an entire army of them and Jung Tae Eul has to be on the trail for some of them in order for her to work with Lee Gon in order to solve them and in turn, help him uncover his uncle’s evil plans.

 

This brings us to one of the major criticisms of this drama – the romance between Lt. Jung Tae Eul and King Lee Gon. Apparently, there’s not much of it as it has taken a backseat to the struggle for power in Corea by the Prime Minister, Lee Lim’s murderous spree and body switching between the two worlds in a bid for a two-world domination, and murder investigations that Jung Tae Eul and her squad must carry out in Korea.

 

Would I like to see more of the actors Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun on screen? Why, yes of course! But as early as the 1st episode, it was already apparent that this was not going to be the usual K-drama. They weren’t going to meet cute, fall in love, fight their feelings, work on a murder mystery on the side, finally confess, become a couple, fight the final boss side by side, and then live happily ever after. Fantasy, science fiction, and detective fiction all seem bear equal weight with romance. It was different, and I found that absolutely interesting. And just because romance doesn’t dominate 80% of the story does not mean that the romance is lacking.

 

The first episode tricks you into thinking that there is very little romance in this drama. The lead characters of Lt. Jung Tae Eul and King Lee Gon meeting each other for the first time in the last 6 minutes of an episode that was 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 15 seconds long. What can possibly develop and deepen in 6 minutes? Not much, right?

 

But what happened in the last 6 minutes? Lee Gon rides into Gwanghwamun Square on his white horse after having crossed over from Corea and into the parallel world of Korea. He creates a slight commotion what with his royal handsomeness and almost ethereal white horse. Lt. Jung Tae Eul reprimands him. Lee Gon recognizes her as the woman on the ID card his savior had left behind 25 years ago. And in dramatic fashion, he alights from his horse, walks towards her, stops, and then engulfs her in a tight hug. He tells her, “I’ve finally met you” and the episode ends with a shocked Jung Tae Eul in the arms of an almost reverent Lee Gon.

 

In Kim Eun Sook’s other, wildly popular work, Goblin: The Lonely and Great God the first meeting between Kim Shin and Eun Tak also had that moment of finally finding the one they’ve been searching for. But for the Goblin, his bride’s existence was merely functional, as he needed her so he can finally die in peace. So their first meeting was your typical first meeting in K-dramas. There were no feelings yet, but they develop from there. So the whole drama then became a stage to establish the growth of their relationship that would give him the will to live instead of dreaming of death all the time.

 

But now, in The King: Eternal Monarch, the first meeting isn’t an easy blank canvas.

Lee Gon bursts into the first episode, already halfway in love with Jung Tae Eul long before he’s even met her. As a child, Lee Gon had held on to Jung Tae Eul’s image as his a savior. There is deep gratitude.  As a young orphaned monarch, he held on to the idea of her to ease his loneliness. His first duty as a king was to bury his father and learned to cry only in the privacy of his own room when he was 7 years old. But somewhere out there, there was someone who had cared for enough for him to have saved him. This thought sustained him as he grew up.

 

And at this point in the first episode, we’re working with the idea that time travel hasn’t been introduced yet. Which means we’re treating time as a straight line, allowing Lee Gon and Jong Tae Eul to age at the same time. So if Jong Tae Eul had been 25 years old when Lee Gon was 7 in 1994, then she would be 50 years old and he would be 32 in the present year, 2019.

 

Then, as a man in his 30’s, he still keeps on searching for her. But in his head she is frozen in time as the 29 year old woman in her ID picture, and at this point he might possibly be half in love with her already. And when he finally meets her in the flesh, he had spent nearly all his life loving her in different iterations. Finding out that she hadn’t aged as he thought she would have gives him another possibility of loving her as a man would a woman.

 

Now the audience has to grapple with this idea, that he had loved her for 25 years already, prior to seeing her in the flesh. But then if you add the idea of time travel as hinted at by the 10th episode, then this first meeting becomes heavier. Not only would he have loved her for 25 years, but he also would have loved her for 25 years multiplied by the number of timelines he had crossed as a time traveller.

 

That’s why their first meeting had to happen in the last 6 minutes of the first episode. Everything that happened in that first hour and 6 minutes, all the murders, plotting, collision of worlds, and clash of doppelgangers in the past 25 years had to happen in order to bring Lee Gon and Jung Tae Eul to that fated meeting at Gwanghwamun Square. Kim Eun Sook had played with the idea of destiny with Goblin: The Lonely and Great God’s Kim Shin and Eun Tak. Now she takes the same idea of a fated meeting between two souls, Lee Gon and Jung Tae Eul, and proceeds to tear them apart with time loops, parallel worlds, and a frozen dimension to test how their love can endure all of that.

 

There can be no slow burn; there is no chase that starts with attraction, denial, bickering, jealousy, no you-make-me-worry-so-much love confession that is so often found in K-dramas. The lovers don’t even have that poor girl-rich boy/immortal-mortal or whatever uneven power dynamic that’s so popular in dramas. I guess that's what most people inevitably look for because these things were built to be formulaic.

 

But now you have a writer who is trying to build a bigger, more ambitious story, who is willing to take some risks with that formula in order to tell a love story that can transcend time and universes.  The stakes had to be raised higher, the backdrop made grander, in order to hold a love story as epic as this.   How can this not be romantic enough?

 

There are six more episodes left in this series.  Quarantine has been extended. Give this series a chance. 

[uta-h3m-vcd-tbw]

Who Am I?

I have attempted to dialogue the events in my life at least 100 times beforehand but probably more but could never bring myself to be completely honest.  Call this a personal inventory if you will.  I consider myself a better writer than most however when it comes to writing about myself my brain goes blank.  I know what I want to say, it’s just how do you go about telling anyone....”I am a Heroin addict.”  

I have read a couple books about other addicts & have watched countless documentaries, movies, & shows about addiction.  Always paying close attention to how the writer unfolds his/her story trying to translate it to my own with little success.  I eventually came to the conclusion that so much has happened in the two decades of drug use that there is no way fathomable to include everything...at least not in your standard literary fashion.  

A few days ago I stumbled across a new series on Netflix about a girl that liked to blog on Tumblr & suddenly I felt I may have an outlet to format this timeline of events.  Make no mistake about this...everything I write from this moment on is 100% true whether you choose to believe it or not.  Hell looking back....I don’t believe it sometimes & constantly find myself asking God why am I still here & why have so many perished before/besides me?  What makes me so special?

Most stories I read/watch about addiction are pretty generic.  It typically starts with someone who was injured & prescribed pain killers only to get cut off from the doctor & led down the dark & endless path of Heroin addiction.  They tell stories about the terrible things they did to maintain their habit & of loved ones they hurt along the way.  While I did horrible things as well, hurt & lost too many loved ones to addiction...this story is unlike any of the rest.  This is a story of addiction...obviously...but also one of organized crime, corruption, murder, extortion, jail/institutions, & love but mostly death.  

Every addiction specialist or rehab I have been to always had the same fault....they try to find some underlying reason as to why I started, “self medicating,” & attempt to address it.  I’ve had numerous heated arguments with councilors & doctors who insisted I was suppressing something deep down & may not even know it!  While I have heard of such instances to actually be the case I can very well tell you I am as normal as you are.  

I grew up in a child’s utopia in an upper-middle class suburb roughly 20 miles North of Detroit.  Think of the famous Tim Allen show, “Home Improvement.” Not only was I raised in Metro Detroit but I also come from a family of two parents, still married, & was the youngest of three boys.  I know most people’s perception of Detroit isn’t very high however in the 80′s & 90′s it was a great place to start a family.  Before the auto industry tanked most people skipped college to work on the assembly line at one of the, “Big Three,” (Ford, GM, or Chrysler) & lived comfortably.  My dad was a, “Safety Restraint Engineer,” for a subsidiary company with several patents still in use today!  We spent our days riding bikes through endless trails behind our house, building forts, playing back yard football, & camping in the backyard on warm summer nights.  My brothers & I were raised Catholic.  Went to Church every Sunday & Catechism on Thursday nights.  If I could change one thing about my childhood I wouldn’t.  It was that perfect!  My Father didn’t fail to raise a man...I failed to be the man he raised. 

When someone asks me why I started doing drugs I tell them because it was fun....simple as that.  I know it sounds cliche but it’s true, everyone was doing them.  My older brothers were way ahead of me, listening to Grateful Dead & dropping acid in middle school!  I just liked drugs a lot more than everyone else. My mother knew I had an addictive personality because I would take everything I did to the max & always looked for instant gratification.  I never wanted to wait/work for anything.  I think my brothers were aware of this as well because they would NEVER sell me pot in these early days.  They wouldn’t even talk to me about it.  So as far as being as normal as everyone else....maybe that one’s a stretch.  On the other hand I was years ahead of my classmates & understood how things worked much easier than the majority of my class.  

By the time I reached High School I was selling/smoking pot & hanging out with kids my age but it wasn’t long before I caught the attention of the older guys in the neighborhood.  I had already garnished a somewhat questionable reputation through my brothers by default & everyone knew my name from the paper route I had since I was roughly 12 years old.  At first they were intimidating & I hated whenever I had to deliver papers on one of their streets...praying they wouldn’t be outside playing basketball or something.  They always hung around the same two or three houses depending on who’s parents weren’t home that day.  If they saw me coming every one of them would stop what they were doing & aim their attention towards me.  All of them except one.  I knew his face & heard stories whispered about him in the hallways at school.  His name was Franco & he was not just the leader of their group...he was, “Head Fucking Hancho.”  You know the scene from mob movies where people from the neighborhood come to sit with the boss & ask him all kinds of favors in return for their loyalty?  That was Franco at age 15!  He had everyone’s respect....even that of my older brothers who looked up to nobody.  If you had a disagreement with Franco it didn’t go far.  I’ve seen him hit guys so hard they temporarily lost the ability to speak!  After a couple minutes of hazing from the guys he would shout from the porch telling them to leave me alone & they would scatter like roaches! 

These encounters would eventually lead up to my first drug deal.  Up until that point I had been stealing whatever I could from whichever brother wouldn’t notice at the time & smoking/selling it with & to my friends.  They eventually caught me & beat the living shit out of me.  I don’t think they were actually mad about the missing weed it was more about not stealing from your brother.  The same day I was caught stealing weed I planned on meeting several kids from school at a friends house & of course everyone was expecting me to bring the pot.  To this day I don’t know how I got the phone number or the guts to call it but I reached out to Franco’s best friend Mark.  I don’t really no why I chose him....any of the older guys could have found me weed.....but I knew Mark sold it regularly & to pretty much anyone.  There was no cell phones at this time so I had to call his house.  He wasn’t as angry as I expected & told me to wait 5 minutes before riding my bike towards his side of the neighborhood.  I did exactly as he instructed me to & before I could get to the end of my street he was pulling up in a dark green Ford Ranger...Frank was with him riding in the passenger seat.  Mark got out...threw my bike in the back of his truck telling me to hop in the backseat before getting back behind the wheel & pealing off.  The music was so loud I could barely understand the lyrics over the bass let alone what Frank & Mark were saying but it didn’t matter because they weren’t talking to me.  At the time I thought Mark must want to get out of the neighborhood before doing the deal but after getting to know him I learned...that was his, “thing”.  He loved to drive around, blaring music, & smoking weed with whoever was willing to tag along.  He hated driving alone & his truck was like his office.  Frank acted as if I wasn’t even there...holding a cool composure looking out the window while nodding his head to the music.  Eventually we pulled down a random street, where Mark turned down the music before pulling the truck over.  He turned around & asked me how much money I wanted to spend before opening a large grocery bag filled to the top with little, “dime bags,” or roughly a large gram of weed in each bag.  I don’t know if it was how he had them bagged up but it was more than I had ever seen in one place at the time & my brothers always had a lot.  I had a handful of crinkled five′s & one dollar bills I collected from my friends earlier in the day at school.  It came out to around $24.  I remember it was less than $25 because Mark insisted that an 8th cost $25 & that I was a dollar short.  I didn’t even know what an 8th was or how much it cost but didn't want to screw up my first deal so I pretended it was just an honest mistake & he threw three bags in my lap.  Franco asked where I was going & asked if I needed a ride which I humbly excepted.  

From that day on things changed little by little with every passing day.  I hung out less & less with the kids my age to be around Mark, Frank & the rest of the older guys.  They saw me as the kid who could sell a lot of weed since I already had that reputation from my classmates.  I saw them as a ticket to popularity.  In my mind it was an even trade.  My mother had an entirely different opinion.....constantly telling me I should be hanging around with my younger friends.  To me it was harmless....choosing to see it as normal for a kid my age.  I had no idea where this new found friendship would lead us.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  

As I was saying before....so much has happened since this day that I cannot even begin to piece it all together in a manner in which it flows conveniently into a timeline of events.  This is the beginning of my attempt & you will have to stick with me to learn more as I continue to publish.  I will warn you upfront that I will be changing some names, maybe even places or be vague as I am still getting death threats to this day & also don’t want to negatively impact any of the families that have already been ripped apart from unimaginable losses.  Lastly I am still weary about telling my story in it’s entirety.  I am sure those who are close to me will be able to figure out who I am since most of what I am going to tell you has never been a secret save one part.  I have never told ANYONE the FULL story other than my parents.  I feel it is the main reason I have struggled in all my attempts at telling/writing what actually happened.  Please understand that I take absolutely NO pride in the things I have done & only feel I need to document what I went through so maybe the next kid contemplating the path I chose....will rethink the decision.  I can tell you now their is no glory or honor in what we did & the end result was nothing but pain & suffering for our victims as well as ourselves.  I really hope nobody reads this the wrong way & that I am able to accurately portray the pain/anguish we caused so they realize how brainwashed we were & the impact you can have on others no matter how minor you think it is.  You have to stand up against what may seem to be the correct/hard decision at the time or even a harmless one that you know in your heart/gut is questionable & choose to do what you know to be right.  The definition of the word, “popular,” is; liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people or by a particular person or group.  The groups that are using/selling drugs are the minority & in the end you will find most are not truly your friend.  When I go on social media, looking back at all the kids I graduated with, I realize now that those who did well in school & actively participated were actually the, “cool kids.”  They are the ones posting pictures of new houses, nice cars & beautiful wives with blossoming families.  There is nothing cool about being alone & having nothing to show for the last two decades of your life but scars.  It is not romantic in any way shape or form.  You will not find comfort.  

Stay tuned for more to come!