#and jester. well jester was a lonely little girl and she believed so hard in her best friend that he became a demigod

[isenstar777]

I really hope the rest of the Mighty Nein are involved with this solstice stuff because they could add a lot more nuance to this god stuff

[laezelsbaezel]

A Special Kind of Weird; chapter one (cross posted on AO3)

Jester Lavorre is a Traveler fan.

Okay, maybe a lot of folks are fans of The Traveler, but none are as enthusiastic about them as Jessie. She’s read his books since she was old enough to vaguely understand the concept of romance — back when her mother would read her children’s stories, and the little tiefling would steal her books off her bookshelf in the dead of night.

She’s just… a big fan. Yeah. Big fan.

So why is The Traveler making college so fucking difficult?

It’s the first week of September; college is on the horizon, with students just getting into their dorms, meeting their roommates, the likes. It’s a time that, as a child, Jester looked forward to — and now, as she sets a box on one of the three beds in her cramped dorm, butterflies dance around in her stomach. Her roommates have barely arrived too, which she’s thankful for — it gives her a last few minutes with her mom, the Ruby of Nicodranas — famous singer and performer, who Jester wishes she could be like.

She tears into the box as soon as Marion leaves for another… in it are posters of The Traveler’s main character, Garmelie, a satyr who goes on… well, to Jester they’re romantic escapades… to others, they’re sexual flings that would normally result in a bunch of STDs. The poster she first gets out is signed by The Traveler himself — one she was lucky to get in a giveaway online, even though she’s never met the man. The second one has Garmelie and a unicorn — unicorns are Jester’s favorite animal — and the third and forth share The Traveler’s cloaked portrait, with his right index finger up to his lips, as though he’s telling the photographer a deep, dark secret that’s not for anyone’s ears but theirs.

Oh, how romantic…

“Sapphire, did you pack your toothbrush?” Jester instinctively shoves the forth poster back into the box as the Ruby comes back, holding a stack of boxes labeled ‘Jessie’s clothes’ and ‘fun thingies’. She sets them down beside her daughter’s bed before going to give her a tight hug. “I can’t believe it… my baby is a college student. It’ll be so lonely without you, little one.”

“Aww, Mama! I’ll email you like, every single day,” the blue tiefling says through the squished hug. She squeezes her mother back, only to feel sad when Marion backs up after a few solid minutes of hugging. She sits down on the bed, staring up at Jester, who’s… trying hard to be brave. For her mama. For school.

For The Traveler.

“Do you know when your roommates are coming?” Marion takes a look around the small dorm; there’s a small desk to the left, and a bathroom that the three girls will have to share — the three beds are bare, just boxes atop them, no bedsheets or pillows to make it look homey. It almost makes the blue girl want to dig out her paints (that she brought, of course) and paint everything a nice pink or blue… maybe yellow? “I’m sure they’ll be… more friendly than the kids at school.”

More friendly could mean anything for any kid. For Jester, it means ‘kids who don’t pick on me for writing nasty fanfiction instead of going to beer pong parties’.

Yeah… her old friends are a relic of the past.

The girl takes one of her posters and heads to the corkboard above her bed, where she starts to pin it up with pink starry push-pins. “Ah! Oh my, doesn’t he look just so cute ?” I’ll avoid Mama’s statement if I can, she thinks. “Mama, do you think you can convince Bluud to invite The Traveler to the Chateau during the winter break?”

Her mother doesn’t suppress her giggle. “I’ll ask him, little Joy.”

Just as the pair are about to banter on, the dorm door bursts open with a ca-thud . Two girls struggle to go in, each saying “after you”; one looks like a sad poet, and the other looks like she could bench press Jester like she were a sack of flour.

The ‘poet’ is the first to enter. A white haired girl, she’s wearing an Orphanmaker shirt and ripped leggings; she has only a small bag with her, and a pillow under her arm. The other girl, who Jester feels both intimidated by and also… very interested in, has dark brown hair, brown skin, and striking blue eyes; she’s in gym clothes and has three duffel bags in her arms. A little boy no older than three is running after her, yelling, “Beau! Beau! Beau, you’re gonna miss me?”

“Yeah, you shithead, I’ll miss you.” The girl, Beau, says to the toddler as she throws her bags on the bed closest to the bathroom. The toddler simply giggles. “Don’t tell Mom that I swore and I’ll get you a… fuck, what are kids into? — a toy or something, when I get home. Yeah?”

“Okay!” The boy screeches and runs back out of the room, most likely to whichever adult was helping Beau take things in. She swings herself onto the foot of the bed, narrowly missing the bed frame’s wrath.

Beau looks at Jester with peak curiosity. “You one of the new roomies?”

“Yeah…” Jester’s voice goes quiet; she looks over at her mother, who’s helping unpack her clothing and putting it in the trunk at the end of the bed. She takes in a forced breath before turning back to Beau with a plastered-on smile. “I’m Jester! You’re—”

“Beau. Just… just Beau,” the other girl says with a smirk on her face. She looks like she could pick Jester apart just by words alone, and yet— “Oh, you a… a raunchy book fan?” She points to the poster. “Not gonna lie, I’ve only seen the movies, but they’re better than Fifty Shades, really.”

Thank gods… Jester’s forced smile turns more genuine at the thought of someone knowing her passion — and oh, how this series is a passion! She takes a seat at the desk nearby, looking at the ‘poet’. “And you are…”

“Oh…” the girl with the white hair is hanging stringed lights from her cork board and bed frame as she pauses to speak. She’s a good six feet tall, if possible. Jester has to really look up to meet her eyes — colorful ones, too. “Yasha… you’re pretty uh, colorful?”

“Thank you, Yasha!” The tiefling looks down at her own clothes (a pink skirt, pastel, of course, and rainbow Converse — a custom made one she bought recently with money from the café she part-timed at) with a wide, toothy grin. “You look kinda… are you into poetry?”

Yasha stops hanging the lights, holding the strings in her hands for a solid minute… before nodding. “I like… poems. My sibling and I write together, though he prefers, ah, songwriting… he’s also a tiefling, if that means much to you..?”

Tiefling? Another one? “Is he here, too?” Jester inquires, with an ounce of hope in her voice.

Yasha nods, not looking away from the stringed lights. “Yeah… his name’s Molly… er, Molly mauk , but everyone calls him Molly, really. He’s weird, but he’s… you know, a good kind of weird. Like—”

“Like me!” Jester says enthusiastically. The white haired girl chuckles as the blue girl gets up and spins in the tight quarters. Marion beams.

“Sapphire, I better get going.” The mother stands from her daughter’s bed; she’s tall, too, but nowhere near as tall as Yasha. She takes Jester into a tight hug, kissing her forehead, before leaving the room, trying (and failing) not to look sad.

Jester isn’t used to being away from her.

“Man, did she look like she was gonna cry or what?” Beau blows a bubble of pink gum and pops it. “Jess, you’ll be fine. There’s like, no need to cry.”

Am I crying? The tiefling touches her cheeks; her fingers come back damp, and she’s quick to wipe her tears off on her sweater. With a sniffle, then an eye rub, she heads back to her side of the room, grabs another poster, and starts to hang it up…

xxx

“Ja, I-I know, I know, Essek —” click .

Caleb Widogast sucks at relationships. Period. He was in a relationship of three, maybe four years that blew to smithereens by the time he graduated high school… then there was his summer boyfriend Essek, who didn’t seem too awfully thrilled about a long distance relationship with the human boy.

The human throws his phone down on his barely-made bed as his roommates snicker. “Shut up,” Caleb mutters; Mollymauk chucks a pillow at his head, just narrowly missing him. “Molly!”

“Look, I’m sorry Mister ‘I bring three fucking toothbrushes with me to a sleepover’ is mad, but you’re too damn adorable for him.” Molly is a short genderfluid tiefling with spiky black hair that falls to his shoulders, and has a habit of wearing funky outfits to ‘find myself a partner’ (his words, not Caleb’s). His other roommates are a half orc boat lover named Fjord, and a giant firbolg known simply as Caduceus, who’s not really studying anything, but he runs the library at school for tuition. “You shouldn’t waste your time with him! Find yourself a new man — or woman, whatever your little Zemnian heart desires.”

“Please… stop.” Caleb feels his face grow red just in time for Molly to ‘ooooh’ about it; thankfully Fjord elbows the purple circus man in the neck, making him shut up. “I didn’t… think he’d break up over the phone.”

“As opposed to in person?” Caduceus isn’t very versed in romance; he’s more of a ‘watch and learn’ type, whether that be from his years as a ‘homeschooled’ kid or just… general ‘Deuces vibes. “At least it wasn’t in front of your family.”

Ah… family.

How did he tell them about his fucked up family? Maybe he would ignore it; maybe he’d pray that his ‘dad’ wouldn’t show up for band practice or fun days. Maybe…

“Well, it’s over, which is good, ain’t it?” Fjord asks. The half orc is quite short for, well, one of his kind, but it doesn’t stop him from trying to sound big. In all fairness, no man is as tall as Caduceus, so Fjord has little to fear.

The human groans into the palm of his hand. “It’s… I actually liked Essek, though,” he mumbles; prays nobody picks up on what he said. “He was… fascinating. Breathtaking, even. It’s… I don’t know—”

“Can’t you just, like, bone someone and call it a night?” Molly flops onto Caleb’s bed, sprawling his body out like a cat.

Caleb’s cheeks burn red. “I— listen, circus man , it’s frankly none of your business, ja ? Yeah.” He tosses a small box on his bed before deciding, albeit last minute, to open it.

Inside, amongst pictures of Essek, is his favorite book by his favourite author — a known Traveler, who a girl in another hall idolizes…

Here’s hoping Caleb isn’t the only Traveler fan in freshman year…

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-09-15

This caught me laaaate at night gosh I’m tired but I’m gonna get it outta the way so it won’t stick in my craw!  Already saw the first page, so it’s time for:

> CHAPTER 13. The Funeral

Church with chess symbols at the peaks and a Prospit/Derse or Hope/Rage split color theme on the stained glass windows.

JANE: Dearly beloved...

> (==>)

Trolls, humans, and papparazzi.  Oh, hm, this church is RATHER carapacian isn’t it?  Between the chess and the continuing Prospit-Derse themes, like how this corresponds to how they align in the incipisphere top-left to bottom-right if I recall:

(Minus the outlying orbs to the left and right for symmetry.)

That twisted pattern is interesting, and not quite a spirograph.  Is that gonna be important later?  If we’re going to get some sort of class chart later in the comic, it’d be easy for them to hint at the chart’s graphical structure subtly by dropping it places like here.

JANE: Ladies... JANE: Gentlemen... JANE: News outlets... JANE: And other valued members of the Human Nation State.

Technically true, but still odd to hear--  ...oh right, I forgot this was asshole dictator-wannabe Jane, too.

I read an interesting twitter thread recently about the intense psychological distinction between wanting to BE the best, and wanting to be TREATED like you’re the best.  Epilogues/HS^2 Jane is kind of written as a case study on the pitfalls of leaning on the latter instead of the former.

> (==>)

They brought Yiffy WITH them-!?  --Oh right.  The hostage exchange was supposed to happen here wasn’t it.

Yiffy definitely looks like a Harley-Lalonde daughter in this shot.

JANE: Gamzee Makara, High Court Jester, exalted saint of the purple veil, has left us to traverse that grand, gay carnival in the sky, where, I am told by various members of the clownly cloth, he will spend the rest of history, honking in grand tribute to the Mirthful Messiah.

SINGULAR???

Weird.  Is it because Alt!Callie “won” here?

Or is Jane just forgetting because she’s culturally used to monotheism (ironically) and is insensitive.

JANE: And my first memory of our Purple Prince, was his robust codpiece--

Wow.

> (==>)

JANE: --As he offered me his friendly support, along with the sacred blood of his brethren, the holy sacrament--

He STILL killed trolls??! (EDIT: No, a friend points out that she's talking about when she met him first in Act 6 and he tried selling bottles of troll blood to her. EDIT2: -which may be another inconsistency, since Vriska supposedly overwrote that post-retcon.)

> (==>)

It takes Jake a few seconds of puzzled eye contact before he catches exactly what it is Yiffany is tossing down. In his defense, he is distracted by his wife’s speech, which is doing the emotional equivalent of wringing him out like a wet towel, before using that towel to slap the sweaty buttocks of a large, odorous man. Even if he knows everything she’s saying is a load of horsefeathers, it does nothing for his composure to hear her heap praise on that smelly, homewrecking clown.

Bad things about Gamzee deserve to be said here, yes.

Jake wonders what she’ll say about him, at his own funeral.

Now those are some uncomfortable thoughts.

He narrows his eyes in Yiffany’s direction. She’s a lovely girl, really. He wishes he could have gotten to know her under better circumstances. He’d known she existed, of course--Jane had complained about her often enough--but they’d never had much chance to get acquainted. He rather believes her and Tavvy would have been fast friends.

Then again, perhaps it’s better that she never had much of a chance to get to know his family.

He lets go of the leash.

Yep, there’s a plan to set in motion that he’s probably already discussed with her privately.  Gotta unite this four-kid team after all.

> (==>)

Wait, are you ATTACKING?!?  --Of course you’re attacking.  You would even if the plan was something different, wouldn’t you.

JANE: And I know that at times like these it is easy to want to give in. JANE: To throw in the towel, and turn our faces away from the light of democracy and moral fortitude that we, the citizens of the human kingdom, are blessed with from birth. JANE: God knows I’ve had my own faith tested in the last few weeks.

Jesus Christ, what has she turned the place into, a fucking theocracy?

She sounds like the leader of some screwed-up, fundamentalist country!  Like the United States!

*rimshot*

JANE: As many of you know, I did not grow up with the same privileges that all of you enjoy.

Jesus.

JANE: I was born on proto-Earth, that half-finished dystopia mangled by the ravages of foolish leadership and endless war.

Jesus, she really IS a self-evident takedown of hypocritical entitled political figures.  With the bonuses having Jasprose explicitly ADDRESS said entitlement to make things even clearer cut.

JANE: And as for Gamzee, well, his upbringing was even worse. JANE: He was born to a violent and uncaring home, a lonely child with few natural gifts.

...Some natural gifts and status.

> (==>)

She’s just, shaking with fury here isn’t she?  And about to perform an impressive corpse-lob.

JANE: It would be simple to let this disgusting, vile, SHAMEFUL act of spiteful revenge turn us away from the blinding light of the sword of justice that hangs over us all--

This sentence seems suspicious so I’m quoting it to refer to later if I need to, but is probably just platitudes.

> (==>)

JANE: Poised

> (==>)

JANE: Trembling

Okay maybe the sword’s a dick, but what exactly is Yiffany doing??  I’m finding it difficult as usual to tell between some of these image transitions.

> (==>)

JANE: Ready to burst forth--

Bad PR to shock-collar a kid mid press junket.  (Very dicks description.)

> (==>)

Click.  (Did they swap the shock function with Jane’s necklace somehow, that’d be fun.)

JANE: I want to give up, at times. I understand your pain.

While shocking a kid?  GREAT PR.

> (==>)

JANE: I sympathize with your pain.

Wow, those horrified audience members.  She REALLY can’t even see herself anymore can she?  Not even hear herself.  And they’re making sure this is pointed out to EVERYONE watching.  They described this as in large part a PR campaign to defeat her, didn’t they?

> (==>)

Great furious businesswoman-villain look, that art.

JANE: But when that pain! Becomes too hard! To endure! JANE: Remember poor, lifeless Gamzee! Who suffered pain far worse than any of us could ever fathom! JANE: THE PAIN OF BETRAYAL!

Click click click.  This is a fun sequence.

> (==>)

DIRK: Dude, didn’t you lower the voltage on that shock collar? DIRK: Little Red isn’t looking so hot. JAKE: Yes of course i did but the damn doohickys got the kick of a donkey! JAKE: I couldnt remove it completely shed know i was the one who did it! DIRK: Well, if that supervillain cuntwaffle doesn’t stop, she’s going to kill her. Not really the best at hostage management, is she.

Decent plan.  (And of course Dirk would pull out the word cunt.)  When’s the cavalry coming?

> (==>)

JANE: But we cannot allow his memory to be in vain! JANE: For Gamzee Makara taught us that even the most loathsome degenerate can take their place in society. JANE: All they need is the right redemption arc - !

Trying to hammer home some of the Epilogue’s trolly-critical themes a little less bleakly, I take it.

I kind of like the violent vibration in ALL of these gifs in a row.  It makes the scene seem small, slow, teeth-clenching but still full of steady action, emphasizing the importance of the relatively small events from panel to panel while giving them the sense with the animation of them being [i]drawn out[/i] and tortuous instead of just “occurring”.  It feels that way to me, anyway.

> (==>)

If he got up alive here, that’d be hilarious.  (Presumably he’s been treated and done-up like a normal funeral body, not “dormant” and undecaying like a dead god-tier.)

> (==>)

CORPSE PUNT w/ CLEATS

> (==>)

That face is just.  I love that face.

> (==>)

SHE MAD

JANE: Young lady, I am just about at the end of my rope with you. JANE: Throw all the dog bowls you want at the walls of my warship. JANE: But don’t you dare act up in front of a JANE: Live JANE: Fucking JANE: Newsfeed! YIFFY: Grrrrrr

What did you expect to happen?  Do you expect to shout her down from this, Jane?

JANE: After everything I’ve done for you--paying for your education, helping your parents cover up your existence from the world! JANE: Just imagine what Rose and Jade would say if they could see you now, even dissidents can have a little decorum! JANE: Get down from there at once! YIFFY: Grrrrrr

But this is GAMZEE.  --I guess it’s seriously disrespectful to his followers, though.  Still.  If you wanted civility from her, a shock collar, leash, and food bowl wasn’t the way to go about it.

JANE: Don’t you threaten me, young lady. Not today! YIFFY: GRRRRRRRRR

What is your PLAN even, Jane?  You’ve completely disregarded her.

JANE: There’s nowhere for you to go. My agents are swarming this church. Be reasonable, Yiffany. JANE: Ugh. JANE: Disgusting name. JANE: But that’s hardly your fault. You were always just a footnote. Your parents’ little prank. JANE: Honestly, that’s why I helped them all those years ago! I do love a good jape. JANE: But let’s be serious. JANE: You don’t matter. If you did, they would have come for you already.

Can all the press hear her being such an asshole?

Okay, stereotypically, their arrival should be the next couple panels:

> (==>)

Jake, do something useful like hoping harder.

> (==>)

And she knocks the remote away.  Excellent.

And she does. Seemingly at the end of her tolerance for insults toward her name, social status, and heritage, Yiffy performs an impressive backflip off the podium and down onto the church floor. One that, if it hadn’t been happening amidst a sea of other newsworthy events, would surely have ended up on someone’s instagram story within thirty seconds. She gives Gamzee’s corpse one last parting kick: a hard, proper kick that proves those cleats aren’t just for fashion. Although they are certainly also for fashion.

Good, good.

He vanishes into the seething crowd, and we are confident that we will never have to deal with this asshole ever again.

God damnit.

> (==>)

Jake watches this from a safe distance, poised on the edge of intervening to pull Yiffy out of there. But in the end he doesn’t have to. Instead he watches in admiration as she tears the place to utter shreds. An echoing sympathy swells inside of him as she rends apart the funeral flowers and punts Gamzee into the shrieking congregation. Here is a girl who felt the cold, indecent hand of fate wrapping around her, and instead of submitting to it and slowly sublimating down into morasse of boiled doormat, she slapped it away from her with a lively oh, no thank you.

All at once, Jake feels immense affection for his granddaughter. He hopes the two of them can make up for lost time.

Lessons belatedly learned, but learned nonetheless.

> (==>)

JANE: Enough of this. JANE: Seize her!

Kind of Red Queen of you.  (Are those stained glass windows in back of the frame about to burst?)

> (==>)

Yep.

The stained glass window shatters inward, obliterated to stardust. The war is knocking.

Even attacking a disgusting faith’s church is pretty bad form, though.

Tired and busy, seeya next upd8.  <3

[luckyjak]

abandoned fic: Caleb the Time Traveler

I’m not ever going to finish this fic (rest in peace Molly) but I like what I have, so I thought I’d share it with you all. The plan was for it to be an eventual Widomauk piece, but I’m just not inspired to write Widomauk anymore, given that Molly is dead and has been for 2 years now.

In the end, it was all frighteningly simple, really.

Killing Trent had been easy. Most things were for a high powered wizard, which Caleb was at this point in his life. And while disintegration was too quick and too kind of a death for a man who had caused as much pain at Trenk Ikithon had, Caleb didn’t dare try to take any chances.

He would have thought there would be more to it. Maybe the gods themselves would intervene and stop him, or maybe someone else, a mysterious figure from an even worse timeline would try to stop him, but no. One quick spell, and Caleb had altered the timeline for the better.

He sat on his hands for a while after that, not quite sure what to do now that Trent no longer existed and could be the focus of all evil in both the world and in Caleb’s mind. But there was still corruption in the Empire, and there was still darkness, even at the Soltryce Academy. 

So he rolled up his sleeves, and he got to work.

Little by little, he changed the world. By the time a young Bren enrolled at the Academy, it was a legitimate school for magic learners, and the Empire was a brighter, better place. There was an Empress now instead, a distant cousin of King Bertrand, and while she made mistakes occasionally, she had a good heart--of that Caleb was deadly certain. 

After that, he got more selfish in his pursuits. Traveling back to this time had been a one-time deal: he would never go back to his own timeline. Theoretically, such a timeline no longer existed. He would never see his friends again.

Therefore, he did what he could to make their lives better in this timeline.

Bren was taken care of: Bren would have parents and a girlfriend and a boyfriend and hopefully never be any more ambitious than teaching at the Academy for the rest of his days. Honestly, Caleb could hope for nothing more for his younger, alternate self. 

But the rest of the Mighty Nein? He did what he could, for them and their happiness.

He couldn’t stop Fjord from being bullied or from being an orphan, but he could modify Vandren’s memory and make him think he was Fjord’s biological father. It was a lie, but a small one, and it ultimately made both men’s lives better. In Caleb’s world, that was a lie worth telling, a spell worth casting. From there, it took only the wise words of a “friend” to encourage Vandren to give up on the orbs for Ukatoa, and to take an interest in his young son instead. A gentle nudge, a small trade of coin, and the Tide’s Breath would find it’s port in Nicodronas instead of Port Damali instead. Another nudge, another slight but gentle push, and a young Fjord would find himself drawn into long midnight conversations with the mysterious Sapphire of the Sea, standing beneath the window to the Lavish Chateau one evening when he could not sleep, and neither could she. They would become fast friends, and while Caleb could not fix all the world’s problems, he could make sure that two of his friends were no longer lonely. 

He could only help Jester so much: he respected Marion too much to modify her memories, and no silver tongue could convince the woman to let her daughter have just a bit more freedom. So he sent Fjord her way instead, and before that, when she was younger, Caleb would visit her, often, under the guise of night and with a heavy cloak of magic. It was a small thing, keeping a young girl company, and he liked the tricks and jokes she learned to play from him. If she happened to call him the Traveler--well, that was her name for him, not his. As far as the actual Traveler was concerned, he must have found it amusing, because Jester still became a cleric in the end. When she ran away from Nicodronas, Fjord’s father offered her a job on his ship, and she learned all she needed to from a Tortle named Orly. 

Beauregard was a trickier friend to help: he could not make her parents into better people, nor could he ever guarantee that they would love her the way she deserved. So instead he kidnapped her as a baby, and left her with his own parents instead. A rational decision that took little convincing, in his mind. It was surprisingly easy, no more difficult that killing Trent, and Beau would be happier for it. His parents were loving and kind and had always wanted another child, although they had never been able to afford one. They were surprised to find the infant girl and the sack of gold on their front steps, but they loved her nonetheless. And Bren could do with a sister: lord knows it had helped Caleb, in time. The only oddity was when he stopped by occasionally to check in, and heard Beau’s rough voice grow up with a Zemnian accent. 

He fixed other things, too. When Caduceus Clay was eleven, making mud pies in the backyard with his sisters, his parents received a letter telling them exactly what was causing the corruption in their woods, and how to fix it. When the goblins attacked Felderwyn, Veth and Yeza Brenatto were on their honeymoon in Whitestone, an unexpected gift they hadn’t planned on that they had received anonymously in the mail. When Yasha and Zuela ran away to be together, they found they suddenly had the money and transportation and paperwork to make it to the Empire together, far from the consequences of their clan.

Caleb was, at last, at peace. The world would be well. 

He “retired” after that, finding his way back to the Academy in a nice, quiet teaching position, content to live out the rest of his days as a silent guardian of Exandria. It was lonely at times--there was no one he could ever tell his story to, and no one would ever believe him. 

He had forgotten nothing, left no stone unturned, had fixed every problem he could think of. His world was, for once, finally perfect.

Which was why the purple tiefling in front of him startled him so.

“Mollymauk,” he said out loud, on reflex, although the man before him wasn’t Molly, and wouldn’t be for another few years, at least. He was young, tall and lanky, no older than 20, if he was even that old. The man’s hair was shorter, shaved down so that only the barest bit of black fuzz showed, and there was nothing ornate about him: there was no jewelry in his horns, and the clothes he wore were plain and simple and dark. There were no bright tattoos to catch his eye and no flashy tricks or smiles, and yet there was no mistaking it: the man before him was Mollymauk Tealeaf, or would be, one day.

He seemed impossibly young, full of energy, and just looking at him made Caleb feel like an ancient dragon, staring at an impossible, unearned hoard.

(He had forgotten Molly. How could he have forgotten Molly? He had killed Lorenzo and the Iron Sheppards when they were so young and yet he never once thought to check in on Mollymauk. But Mollymauk didn’t exist in this timeline yet, did he? He would be Lucien now, and Caleb had no idea how to find Lucien--except that he was here, now, in front of him. And in his timeline, the one he came from, Molly had been dead for five years, and yet the universe saw fit to send this other Molly his direction anyway.)

“Er, no?” The voice was mostly the same, but different--a different accent, at least, as far as Caleb could tell from what little he’d said.  “Sorry?”

“My apologies,” Caleb said quietly. “You--ah, you reminded me of someone. My mistake.”

Shorter hair, no tattoos, darker clothes--but still fundamentally Molly. The same eyes, the same horns, the same crooked grin--that’s what really sealed it for him. “A good someone?” The non-Molly asked, sharp teeth pointed out of his smile. 

“An old friend,” Caleb answered honestly. “A dead one.”

The not-Molly cocked an eyebrow at that, but didn’t question him further. “Perhaps it’s fortune, then. I’ve been meaning to speak with you, Master Widogast.”

That was interesting. “Oh?”

“I’m told you are the brightest wizard the Empire has to offer,” The not-Molly was certainly charming, he’d give him that, although his voice had more of a Krynn inflection than what Caleb remembered-- “My name is Essek Thelyss--”

“It is not.” Caleb stopped him, not letting the not-Molly speak.

The not-Molly, not-Essek didn’t move, but he didn’t stop smiling either, as if he was used to being caught in a fib and knew how to get out of it. “Oh? What’s my name then?”

“I do not know, but I have met Essek Thelyss, and you are not him,” 

Again, the not-Molly didn’t seem stirred. “How do you know I’m not Essek Thelyss, and whoever you met just happened to steal my name?”

He didn’t have a good or clever response to that. “Something tells me that’s not the case, however,”

The not-Molly’s eyes sparkled as he talked. “Then what’s my name?”

“Lucien,” He took a stab in the dark, the name of Molly’s past life, and that got him a hearty laugh.

“I’m afraid that’s not my name, either, darling, but I do like it more than Essek. Easier to spell. I think I’ll keep it.” He grinned, and held out his hand for Caleb to shake. “Call me Lucien.”

“Mr. Lucien,” Old habits died hard, it seemed; Caleb shut his book, finally. “How might I help you?”

“I’m in need of a wizard of a particular caliber of skill, and I’m told you are the best the Academy has to offer. Unparalleled in his field, they told me.”

“It won’t work,” Caleb brushed him off.

“I haven’t even told you my plan yet!”

“You don’t have to. I know it ends with you in an early grave,” Caleb shook his head. “You are no wizard, Mr. Lucien, and I doubt you have the temperament to start now. Whatever you are trying to do, you’d be better off if you stopped it now.”

“You must help me,” Lucien pleaded, his voice desperate. “If you don’t, I--I know your secret,”

“I rather doubt that.”

“You’re a time traveler, from the future.” That stopped Caleb dead in his tracks. “That, or you are the most convincing seer I’ve ever met.”

It was dead silent for a moment as Caleb’s thoughts raced through his head. How? How did he know? How was it even possible that this not-Molly would have even the slightest idea of who he was?

“Holy shit, I’m right?” Lucien laughed, louder than Caleb thought he might’ve intended. “You are a time traveler. I was just guessing, but I’m right, aren’t I?” He cackled. “Luxon above, you’re from the goddamn future. It’s why you recognized me. You called me--Molly? Mollymauk? Not the best name I’ve ever used for a con but honestly not the worst either. It’s growing on me, actually. Tell me, was I still handsome in the future? It’s a very important question--”

The hold person spell was up before Caleb even though to cast it. “Shut. Up.” A moment, then two, the not-Molly’s face frozen in time as Caleb struggled to catch his breath.

He took that moment, and then he released the spell. He expected another barrage of inane questions, but the not-Molly was silent, waiting expectantly.

“How did you know?”

Not-Molly smiled, not unkindly. “Essek Thelyss is a not even a hundred years old in the Krynn Dynasty. He’s a smart but reclusive boy, doesn’t have a lot of friends and most people wouldn’t know him because he keeps to himself. His mother is currently grooming him to be the next shadowhand, a fact that is not known to many. For you to know him well enough to recognize on sight that I’m not him? He must have an impressive future indeed.”

“What’s your name, really?”

Not-Molly didn’t want to answer that one. “Some call me the Nonagan. That will suffice.” 

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have for you.”

“Hmm,” Caleb sat back down at his desk, trying to appear calmer than he felt. “So what if I am from the future? I won’t help you. I already told you that your plan doesn’t work--it ends with you in a grave.”

“Well, Mr. Caleb--can I call you Mr. Caleb? Master Widogast seems so terribly formal--”

“No,”

“-- from what it sounds like, it sounds like my plan works perfectly.”  The Nonagan batted his eyelashes. “You see, my plan is to die. Permanently.”

“What are you on about, exactly?”

“I am over a thousand years of the Krynn Dynasty’s attempts at perfect consecutation.  I am a Beacon made flesh. I am the Luxon’s divine light, and the closest thing this world has ever seen to genuine immortality. I cannot die.” He paused. “Well, I can, I suppose, as any creature made flesh can die. But I always come back,” he rolled up his sleeves, and showed Caleb a tattoo of a red eye on his wrist. “It takes a while. And I don’t remember anything at first. But with enough time, the memories come back. And I would, with your help, like them to stop, if you please.”

[flowercoasts]

the road to every truth (1/1)

words: 2.6k

When she drops them, Beau is still staring at her. “Are we -” The words get lodged in her throat, and Jester has to fight past the lump, shove the words through the shaking in lungs. “Are we okay?” Beau looks away.

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Beau stumbles in through their bedroom window when the moon is high over the sleepy slatted roofs of the town’s houses. 

The bottle is still by the corner, untouched on the floor where it lays, lonely. Jester pauses in her drawing and watches cautiously as Beau nearly trips over it, her movements more sluggish than usual. Even in the dim light, Jester can see that Beau’s swaying unsteadily on her feet, stumbling a little over the floor as she collapses into bed with a groan.

Jester scoots back an inch to avoid stray arms as Beau spreads herself out over their shared inn bed, practically melding into the mattress bonelessly. Carefully, Jester places her paints and sketchbook on the floor, where she’s sure neither of them can accidentally kick anything over.

Although Beau’s facedown on the mattress, Jester can tell that she’s not quite asleep yet. The monk’s shoulders aren’t quite relaxed like they usually are when she’s asleep, and her breathing is still uneven, and, on a closer listen, a little ragged. Jester shifts a bit on the bed, drawn to her wounded friend and stuck between wanting to reach out and not wanting to disturb the soft peace that’s been missing between them for a while now. 

“Beau?” Jester whispers tentatively, eyes tracing over the tensing in Beau’s shoulders and the way the moonlight bounces over each of her fresh bruises. They’re so horribly new, painting Beau’s body with large purple and blue splotches, reminiscent of the night sky. It hurts to look at - though recently, Beau hurts to look at too. Jester doesn’t know exactly why. Her chest can’t stop from tightening whenever she looks at Beau, not that Beau’s ever around for Jester to look at, lately. 

“Beau, are you awake?” 

There’s a long stretch of silence where Jester stiffly waits, worrying her lip with a fang because, if Beau does answer, what should she say? The words feel too cluttered and muddled to speak them out loud, and really, all Jester wants to do is heal and hug Beau until they both stop hurting but there’s something between them now, like a large wall, and Jester can’t see Beau past it. 

But. On the other hand, if Beau pretends to be asleep, then what does that say about them? Does Beau just hate her now? What can she do to fix this? Can this even be fixed?

Jester’s half tempted to lay down and sleep until this headache fades and the tightening of her throat goes away, but Beau shifts on the bed, so slightly that if Jester wasn’t watching her so attentively she would’ve missed it. Beau hums, quiet in the night. 

Jester breathes in deep. She hadn’t known how much she missed something so simple as Beau humming. “Are you… Are you okay?” 

“‘M fine.” Her voice is gruff, clipped. It’s not so different from how Beau usually speaks but Jester still clenches a hand in the sheets anyways, because Beau never talks to her like that. But it doesn’t matter anyways. Because Beau’s lying to her, when they promised they’d always be truthful with each other, anyways. 

“Um.” Jester brings up a hand, quick, to rub at her hair and scrub at her cheeks, willing herself not to cry. “Okay.” 

It still hurts, anyways. 

Beau breathes out, loud and obtrusive in the tense silence of the moonlit room. She props herself up on her arms, and some part of Jester is hoping, wanting, needing for Beau to look her way, so she can finally see what’s hidden in those blues that she missed for so long. Instead of looking at Jester though, Beau twists around and shifts so she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to Jester. 

“.... Sorry for waking you.” The bedsheets bunch under Beau’s hands, and her shoulders are hunched in like she got punched in the gut. Maybe she did. Jester still hasn’t really seen Beau’s injuries past the bruising on her exposed arms and face, but her breathing is ragged in the way that means she’s really hurt. 

Jester wants to reach out, to just lay her palm on Beau’s arm to tell her about all the words bubbling in her chest but Beau seems to sense this, because she stands shakily from the bed. With a slight limp, Beau begins walking towards the door to their room. Except, it’s still the middle of the night, and Beau is still injured, and all the thoughts in Jester’s head are screaming, so of course Jester stands too, abrupt and loud enough that Beau actually flinches when she hears Jester’s feet hit the floor.

“You’re avoiding me.” 

Exhaling a shaky and heavy breath, Beau jerks to a stop in the middle of the room. The silence that stretches over the two of them is long and painful, and Jester has to cross her arms and dig her nails into the flesh there to keep from reaching out. Something tells her that it’s not a good idea. 

Beau doesn’t turn around. “No -”

“Yes. You are.” Jester takes a step forward. Stops when the floorboards squeak underneath her and just stares at Beau’s hunched back, wondering how long it would take to just close the distance between them. “I know you said you weren’t before, but…”

“I’m not avoiding you.” 

Jester really really wants to believe her. “Why aren’t you looking at me?”

Although she’s already taut like a stretched shadow, Beau tenses further, her shoulders coming up near her ears as her arms move to clutch around her midsection. Jester wants more than anything for Beau to just turn so she can see her blue eyes and really figure out what’s wrong, but Beau’s still turned and speaking to the wall and not saying anything. They’re both just breathing harshly, swimming in their swallowed words. 

“Is it something I did?” Tears fill Jester’s eyes as she stares pleadingly at Beau’s back. “Please, Beau, just tell me what happened so I can fix it because I haven’t seen you in days and you keep on leaving and you tense when you’re around me and you won’t even look at me -”

She shuts her eyes, arms clutching desperately around herself as the tears drip down her cheeks, running like rivers onto the wooden floor.

“Shit, Jester.” 

Jester opens her eyes to find Beau staring at her, wide eyed and terrified. It’s been so long since Jester’s seen her face that a sob rips it way out of her throat, unbidden and wanting as she looks deep into Beau’s blues. 

Beau reaches out, her hand upturned as if to console, to wrap around Jester like she’s done so many times before, except she isn’t moving an inch. There’s still such a large distance between the two of them, and neither are moving to close that gap. 

“Jester,” Beau whispers, so sad and so guilty. “Jester, I’m so sorry -”

“Stop apologizing!” Jester rubs angrily at her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed with a leaden sick feeling, twisting in her gut. It hurts, it all just hurts. Her head, her eyes, her heart. She’s crying and normally Beau would be next to her, would have an arm over her shoulders, would be holding her close, would be saying sweet things to her, would be here except she’s here but she’s still across the room. “Just…”

Beau bites down on her lip, her hand dropping to her side. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell me the truth! Just tell me the truth, Beau, please. I can’t -” Jester steps closer to Beau, breathing in sharply when the other girl takes an instinctive step back. 

She looks down at the floor. The moonlight makes little dancers on the floor, the shadows skipping across the wood intermittently. Normally Jester would jump at the chance to draw them, these pretty little shadows, except they cling to the floor more darkly now, and they look like ghosts by Beau’s feet. They’re the ghosts in the ocean between them as the seconds tick by. Jester presses her hands into her eyes.

When she drops them, Beau is still staring at her. “Are we -” The words get lodged in her throat, and Jester has to fight past the lump, shove the words through the shaking in lungs. “Are we okay?”

Beau looks away.

Tears well up in Jester’s eyes again, but she’s so sick of crying, of this stupid heavy weight in her stomach, making her feel so sick inside. Her head really hurts.

“Is there…” Jester pushes past the broken empty feeling in her chest. “What can I do?”

Blue eyes catch her gaze again, and they’re still so sad, sadder than Jester’s ever remembered. “Jester, it’s not you. You don’t have to -” She breaks off and runs a hand over her hair.

“If it’s not me then why are you avoiding me?”

Beau breathes out hard. “It’s me.” 

“What is, Beau?” Jester takes another cautious step forward, blinking the tears away and reveling in the small victory that Beau didn’t step away. “Tell me what it is and I can help.”

“It’s not.” Beau restlessly shifts on the balls of her feet, eyes darting around the room; but she’s staying, thankfully, in her spot in the middle of the floor, where the shadows still dance around her feet. “It’s not something you can fix.”

Jester takes another step forward. “Then what is it?” 

Blue eyes settle on her, taking her in. Usually, Jester can read what Beau’s thinking, or feeling, but now, with her eyes half-hidden by the moving shadows and so far away, Jester finds that she can’t read her eyes at all. 

“I talked with my dad.” Beau finally settles on, her arms crossing as her gaze shifts to the floor. “Earlier.”

“Oh,” Jester says. She takes another step forward. Then another. She pauses in the middle of the room, still too uncertain to take those last few steps. 

She doesn’t have to. Despite not looking up, Beau closes the distance between them and stops just in front of Jester, still tense and taut like a wire. Jester’s whole body warms slightly at having Beau so close, after so long missing her body heat and steady presence beside her. It was always habitual, always a given, to have Beau next to her, that she didn’t realize how much she wanted it until she didn’t have it. 

Beau’s eyes are fixed firmly to the floor. Jester wonders if she’s staring at the shadows still playing across the wood, or if she’s thinking about something else. 

Jester reaches out hesitantly. “I didn’t know you went to see him.” 

“Yeah. Went with Nott.” Beau shrugs, her lips pursed. “I dunno. Just felt like it.”

A blue hand tentatively wraps around Beau’s warm forearm, the hold just loose enough for Beau to easily break but also tight enough for Beau to feel the weight and pressure of it. “Are you okay?”

Beau laughs bitterly. “Great.”

“Beau.”

“I’m…” Beau coughs. Shrugs again and steps just a tiny bit closer to Jester. 

Jester steps forward too, squeezes Beau’s arm and reaches out with her other hand to slide her palm smoothly against Beau’s cheek. “Whatever he said, he’s wrong.”

“You don’t even know what he said.”

“I know he’s a dick, though.” 

“Yeah,” Beau breathes out, her eyes finally moving from the floor to look at Jester, still sad but softer. 

Jester bites on her lower lip, stares at Beau for a second before nodding and pulling her into a long overdue hug, their bodies melting and molding into each other as Jester’s arms wrap tight around Beau, who squeezes her back just as hard.

“I don’t know what he said, but. You’re good, Beau. And you always have us. You always have me.” Jester hears Beau sniffle lightly, and she holds her more tightly. “Even when you’re avoiding me.”

With a shaky exhale and a wet laugh, Beau pulls away, not enough to break their hug but just far enough to look Jester in the eyes. “I’m sorry. Really.”

“It’s okay -”

“No,” Beau interrupts sharply. “It’s not.”

Jester looks away, the leaden feeling from earlier threatening to creep back up. “No. It’s not.” 

“You deserve better. And I promised myself I’d do better. I never meant to hurt you, but I was being selfish with my own shit and you were. You were hurt. Because of me.” Squeezing her hands around Jester’s shoulders, Beau bites her lip, her eyes serious and clear, for the first time that night. “I never, ever want to hurt you. I’m so fucking sorry I did. You deserve the whole fucking world and I... Shit Jes, I’m -” 

Beau tugs her closer, sighs so loudly like the whole weight of the world’s crushing her chest and the weight in Jester’s stomach eases as Beau’s arms hold her tight. “I’m so sorry, Jes.”

Jester squeezes back twice as hard.

The shadows around their feet are gone, leaving only the streaming blue moonlight seeping through the wood. If she squinted, though, she could still make out the slightest shifting of movement in the way the light filtered in, like it’s still making room for shapes to pass through the light and dance some more. Which suddenly reminds her of something she’d been meaning to address earlier.

Pulling away from the hug, Jester moves her hand up to Beau’s cheek, feeling the pulsing warmth of a new bruise along her cheekbone, fingertips grazing a fresh cut on her eyebrow. 

“You’re hurt,” Jester whispers, the night suddenly quiet and soft in the aftermath of the tense minefield it was earlier.

“Nothin’ too bad,” Beau replies, staring at Jester with an indefinable intensity. She leans into Jester’s palm, wincing only a little when the movement causes Jester’s fingers to dig into the wound. 

Jester just hums in response, focusing in on the Traveler and letting the magic flow through her fingers to seep into the wounds and bruises along Beau’s face, sweeping her fingers lightly across Beau’s jaw too, just to check. Not because Beau’s sharp inhale makes her head feel lighter, and her ragged exhale causes her stomach to flutter. Not that. 

Her fingers tap lightly against Beau’s cheek, searching around for other wounds Beau might have. “Is that all?”

“The others will heal.” At Jester’s raised eyebrow, Beau’s hand comes up to gently wrap around Jester’s wrist. “I’m good, I promise.”

“You’ll tell me if you aren’t?” 

Beau stares at her, soft and open now, exactly the look that makes Jester’s heart flutter. Exactly the look she missed the past few days. “I’ll tell you if anything’s up… I won’t avoid you anymore, either.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Jester sweeps her fingers across Beau’s cheekbone again, smiling softly at the way those blue eyes flutter a bit at her touch. “Beau?”

“Hm?”

“Your dad fucking sucks.”

A sharp laugh draws out of Beau then, clearly caught off guard. “Yeah. He does.” 

“You shouldn’t listen to him. You’re the best person I know.” Jester’s other hand comes up to rest lightly against Beau’s neck, her palm against smooth skin. “I love you.”

Beau sucks in a sharp breath. “I… I love you too.”

The grins they share are wide and untamed, shining bright from the moonlight cascading through the curtains of the dusty inn room. If Jester looked hard enough, the shadows would probably still be dancing across the floor lightly, pretty enough to want to draw. She doesn’t look though. She stares at Beau and breathes out deep, the pain in her chest healing and her stomach lighter than ever.

[c-is-for-circinate]

Ten episodes into Critical Role (starting with the second season, and NO SPOILERS PLEASE), and okay yeah, I get why people like the show.

There’s a lot to talk about and I’m sure most of it’s been said before, but I’m just in love with how nuanced and contradictory these characters are.  And contradictory is exactly the right word, not just because of how they oppose each other (though goddamn that is fun), but how they oppose themselves, how every single character is this mess of characteristics that don’t match up on first glance, except they actually fit together to create such rich characters.

Like Fjord, okay, start with him--he’s not the leader because this group is too much of a disaster to have a leader, but he’s the most consistently calm, solid, reliable, and generally sensible person in the whole group.  Which is not usually how you’d expect your party’s half-orc to behave, but that’s fine, that’s just messing with race expectations, that’s easy.  What’s interesting about Fjord is that he’s so clearly the group’s token decent guy, the honest man.  He has an eldritch nightmare and actually tells the others about it, which nobody else in that fucking crew except maybe Jester would.  He’s a straightforward guy who seems like he was maybe actually normal once, again unique in this group, who also happens to be a warlock with very clearly eldritch powers he doesn’t understand.  And he has no problem whatsoever with using and expanding those powers, or with killing, or with stealing and conning and enjoying any ill-gotten gains the group may collect.  His objections to the team’s plans are almost always practical and logistical (the ‘this seems very complicated and also is likely to end in this very obvious disaster when this logical hole gives way under us’ sort), not moral.  It consistently feels like, if he hadn’t had whatever disaster shipwreck eldritch sea-beast warlock pact experience set him off on this path, he out of the whole group would be obeying laws and being generally decent to the people around him and working a simple, honest job with some hard labor involved, and he’d be happy with it--but he’s on this boat now and he’s in completely, and he’s just as forthright with that loyalty as he is with everything else.

And Jester is flighty and silly and fun and describes a childhood that horrifies the entire rest of the group in blithe, carefree tones, and I love it so much because it makes so much sense.  Sure, she was isolated, secluded, and hidden from the world for years--but it was important for her mom’s business, and her mom loved her, and it was normal, and it was fine.  Because that’s normal to her.  And she’s completely carefree about her childhood, just like she makes a carefree game out of slaughtering gnolls and being entirely willing to kill guards or other sentient people, with the same level of fun as she gets pulling minor pranks.  She would happily and generously give away pastries or money or healing to anyone, and then turn right around and fuck up their entire day just because it’s funny, and not even see a conflict there.  Except that every once in a while we get a glimpse of just how desperately lonely she’s been for so fucking long--and it only comes out when she’s talking to or about the Traveler.  It’s never when she’s talking about home, or the brothel, or the room when she was locked in, because those things were normal and fine.  What’s not fine is the idea that she might lose contact with the Traveler, or maybe her mother.  And of course that’s it.  Because everything that was normal and fine and happy and funny had to be okay, because it was life, and that’s just how it was, but the Traveler and maybe her mother were the things that made it all okay, and if she loses them, she loses everything.

And I haven’t even begun to figure out Nott yet, Nott who seems in many aspects like the most straightforward member of the whole crew--not in the Fjord way of directness and honesty, but in the easy, tropey, simple-to-classify way.  The goblin rogue who loves picking pockets and collecting shiny things, quick and sly and easily intimidated, with quick fingers and a bit of a background in alchemy, it all makes sense.  Nott makes sense.  Except that if you take a step back and look around at context, Nott makes no fucking sense at all.  I have no idea why she’s out here, adventuring with these losers, instead of back home with the other goblins.  We have seen zero other goblins out and around populated places so far.  Even her partnership with Caleb straddles the line between ‘oh, of course’--a couple of criminals who met in prison and helped each other escape and decided it was more practical to stick together? sure! makes sense for a goblin!--and ‘wait, what the fuck?’.  Why was Nott in any sort of prison that Caleb would ever be in to begin with?  If she was arrested by humans, why didn’t they just kill her outright, given the attitudes most humans we’ve seen seem to have to goblins?  She is so friendly and ready to hang with the rest of the group, is so delighted to play with Jester, she’s such a social creature, so how did she ever end up playing sidekick with this socially awkward human disaster to begin with?

And right, speaking of Caleb, the man is a goddamn mess, even putting aside all of his stubbornness and his mysteries and the actual literal mess of him.  He’s shy and awkward and anxious and scared around people, except for when he decides to very intensely threaten somebody with murder and disembowelment, just as a matter of course.  He’s anxious about everything, but he’s okay with monster-hunting.  And he’s fine with murder, so long as it isn’t done with fire, he’s one of the first to go in for robbing corpses, he straight up does not give a shit about the people he and Nott rob, he doesn’t trust or even particularly like the rest of the Nein, he doesn’t (appear to) care about other people at all--except that he would do anything for Nott, full stop.  And he has strong feelings about parents and kids and families, and he gave Jester the money he swiped from the spider lair because he got angry at her for being an apparent spoiled rich girl and wanted to apologize, and because it seemed important to her an he cared.  And all of these truths hang together around the central figure of this one guy with a fucked-up past he doesn’t have words for, who prefers books to people and doesn’t really know what he’s doing, in the world, in general, even at the fairly low level he thinks he does.

And of course Caleb keeps clashing with Beau, because Beau is simultaneously so self-invested and yet also somehow more interrogative of the whole world around her than anyone else in the group.  Beau wants to know all of Caleb’s secrets.  She wants to know everybody’s secrets, but she wants Caleb most of all, because he’s spent the most effort trying to keep them that way.  And she’s so curious about her party members, so curious about things going on in the world--she asks more questions about random shit than anyone, she’s currently spearheading both the investigation into the Gentleman and, with Fjord, the Zadash revolutionary’s club, because she wants to know.  Except Beau never gives off the impression of actually liking anybody or anything she discovers.  (Fjord trying to give her lessons on complimenting somebody without making it sound like a backhanded insult was amazing.)  She has ‘chip on my shoulder’ writ so large across her it might as well be in neon.  She is Out For Herself; she hates the system but she’s not going to go looking for ways to take it down, not when she can drink and fight shit to get cash that she can spend to drink with.  But she can’t stop asking questions.  She Doesn’t Care, but she can’t stop trying to learn more.  And right, the constant back and forth of ‘yes she cares’-’no she’s a self-interested bitch’ could feel wishy-washy, but instead it just feels right, because Beau is very young and very angry and very impulsive, and she is very bad at effectively caring for the things and people she cares about, and it is so clear that she’s been treated so badly and had so little power to fight back.  And now she’s got the power to fight back so she lashes out and she hits things and she’s constantly mean, and she chokes out the little girl she got arrested to protect two days earlier because nobody ever taught Beau how people actually take care of other people, did they.  She needs to know Caleb’s secrets because Caleb having stuff going on that he won’t talk about means that there are factors at play that can affect Beau’s life that she can’t control, can’t even know about.  All I know about her parents so far is that they had enough money to pay a temple to take her away when she caused too much trouble for them.  Which actually appears to say pretty much everything that needs to be said.

And fucking Mollymauk Tealeaf, the one goddamn spoiler I had for this show before I started it and I am simultaneously gutted over him from day one and grateful to be prepared because I do not think I would take losing him well as a surprise.  Molly is so fucking good.  He’s a good character, and he’s such a good person, except he would cheerfully deny it with a grin if anyone ever accused him of it.  He is such a tremendous cynic.  He has been all over and he believes that people in groups of any size are stupid, dangerous, probably corrupt, generally bigoted, probably lazy, and out for themselves at every turn.  No horror anyone does can surprise him, and yet he’s blithe and easy about it all.  Of course people are terrible, that’s just how people are, no sense getting depressed over it.  He’ll just slide his way in with a smile and a deck of tarot cards and a bit of flash and dazzle, use people’s vices against them, maybe run just a bit of a con if it looks to be profitable, and slide right back out again.  Except that by god, Molly cares every bit as much as Beau does and unlike her, he actually knows it.  He was ready to go to the mat for any- and everyone in that circus, called it a family and held on to it as hard as he possibly could even as everyone in it bickered and hated each other and were ready to jump town and leave each other behind.  He is so kind to people with less than he has.  And he’s never forceful about it, he never pushes his care forward, he just makes a few gentle comments to Jester about expectations and disappointment that might help ease the crushing blow he so clearly sees coming her way, without actually calling her out or starting an argument.  He just suggests to Nott that there exist people in the world that shouldn’t be robbed, not because they’ve no money worth stealing but because those people can’t afford to lose what little they have.  At some point he took it upon himself to be the person who keeps an eye on everyone else in the party, whether to try to defuse an argument or pick someone up when they’re down or corner them and take them to task, quietly, out of earshot of all the others.  It’s impossible not to get the sense that Molly is already more invested in this group working and staying together than anyone else here, and he takes that fact as a given, and he’s ready to put in the quiet background work to keep it in one piece.  He’s already brushed off or buried whatever mourning he did for the broken circus family he so clearly loved so well, and it should be a contradiction, but mostly it just feels like Molly is too used to being ready for things to go south and people to leave, because life is just shit like that and you take what you can get.  He treats love exactly the same way he treats money: a thing that’s hard to come by and well worth collecting if you possibly can, to be enjoyed and played with to the very fullest while you have it, because soon enough it’ll be gone again either way.

At any rate, I’m really enamoured of this show that has characters so nuanced by ten episodes in.  (Granted, ten episodes clocks close to 40 hours, but shhhh.  D&D time is different.)  I chalk a ton of it up to, ‘oh, shit, this is why voice actors are the perfect people to put on D&D as a massive serial fiction adventure’.  Every single person at the table makes a living out of putting nuance into characters with just their voice, so of course they know what they’re doing, and they’ve all played zillions of characters (their IMDB pages are so long, jfc) with plenty of nuance to begin with.  They know how to do this shit.

The other thing, I think, is that everybody at the table feels safe with the idea that they’ll have enough time to draw these characters out all the way to the end.  Everybody in this group has so many secrets, so many of the linking pieces that lay out and explain the layers and contradictions, and nobody is rushing to pull any of them out on the table right up at the start, because everybody there is totally secure in the idea that they’ll get 500-odd hours to tell this story and it doesn’t all have to happen yet.  Character death is always a risk, but the only healer isn’t going to up and move to another state, and nobody is going to get married and have no time any more, and the DM’s manager at work isn’t going to suddenly start assigning Thursday night shifts and all of the sudden scheduling is a disaster for so long it never gets fixed.  Nobody is going to decide they don’t care any more and just stop showing up.  They’ve been at this together a long, long time, and also they’re making an actual show about it that they actually get paid for, and they can take as long to tell the story, and make it whatever story, that they want.  It’s a really different kind of energy than any D&D game I ever managed to play, and even different from most shows that never know when the ‘cancel’ hammer might come down from the network.

It’s pretty cool.  I like it a lot.

[sparring-spirals]

Jester is Fine (spoiler she’s not)

aka my long ass Thing about Jester and her upbringing and also why I have so many feelings about her tendency to suppress negative emotions and IDK I JUST WANTED TO WRITE THIS SINCE HER BACKSTORY REVEAL IN EPISODE 8 LET ME LIVE.

Disclaimers: Im not entirely caught up yet but I know the primary plot points and bigger convos (thanks tumblr lov u). Neccesary spoilers will be tagged as I go down the post. Mostly spoils for ep 8? And I guess their Activity post blue dragon.

part 1 because whoops this got looong.

Okay, so we start at the beginning, at the very first backstory drop; because, Jester was the first person to give up her backstory, in its relative whole. Which makes sense! Right? Its not like she has anything to /hide/.  Because everything about her childhood was Fine. Great! actually, great, super great. Her mom loved her! So much! and she got an awesome room and got to play pranks on people and had the COOLEST BEST FRIEND EVER who taught her how to play even BETTER pranks, and like, it was awesome, even if-

even if she couldn’t /leave/ her bedroom and she needed to keep her existence a secret, and her mom sometimes was too busy to tell her stories or sing her to sleep, but sometimes she’d sit by the door and listen, so basically the same!

!!! :)

Even here- 8 episodes in, relationships still forming, a general hesitation to tread on anything too heavy- you see the unease on the rest of the party.

Caleb: So where were you at this point?

Nott: Just trapped in your room?

Jester: Well no, I wasn’t trapped, but you know- (*1)

Caleb: Did you get to go to the park? Did she read you stories, did she do the things that parents do?

Jester: She.. read me some stories! And a lot of times I would listen at the door and hear her sing.(*2)

Beau: Did she tell people about you?(*3)

Jester: *laughing* No.

Fjord: I imagine that would affect her business a little.

Jester: Exactly. I totally understand, she loves me so much. She really, really does. It’s just, you know, people frown upon courtesans with daughters.(*4)

Okay, so before anything else- we unpack this.

1: This is important to Jester- that she wasn’t trapped. Like, cmon, Jester has read books- SO many books, she knows all the stories, about girls being locked in high towers and- she’s not that! She wasn’t /trapped/ because she didn’t want to leave, not really. She wasn’t trapped, it wasn’t against her will, at all. (continued in 4)

2: The positive spin, the pause- and then the of course! In some form, it wasn’t exactly like how Caleb described,, but it happened! It still counts! (Also because this imagery broke my heart: a child jester, wanting to be sung to sleep or told a story but knowing her mom is busy, a young jester, alone, behind a door, listening to a song that isn’t for her but letting it wrap around her because-

because what else is she supposed to-

3: Putting this in because it makes sense Beau, of all people, asks this question. Beau who (Beau spoiler) was never the child her parents wanted, who was the disgrace, who was dropped in favor of a different child the moment they could do it, who was sent away and forgotten and will always live with the knowledge that she was a /disgrace/ to her family, a disappointment- something to be hidden. Looking at Jester; beautiful, bright, sweet Jester who is soft and easy and bright in all the ways Beau has never been- and thinking of her being hidden away, like a stain, like a disgrace.

4: This is perhaps the most important thing- that Jester isn’t upsetwith her mom because how could she be? Her mom loves her. So much. None of this was ever about making Jester suffer- god no, her mom always tried so hard to make Jester happy and comfortable and- her mom did good, her mom did a wonderful job, and she was just making the right decision.

Her mom loves her.

Her mom loves her.

And you know what? She does. So much. I haven’t yet reached them meeting Marion, but I do know that much; that her mom really loves her, so, so, so much. And thats part of what makes this so painful, and part of why its so vital that Jester always speaks of her childhood with a tiptoeing sort of cheerfulness, why she’s always so insistent that it was fine, it was fine! Because, if its not fine, if it wasn’t fine that she grew up locked in a room, no friends, no company, not supposed to ever leave- then its really not fine. It means Jester, despite everything she has tried to tell herself, is not fine. Was not fine. For years, then something was wrong, something was extremely wrong, and that means she has to face that, deal with it. More than that, if it wasn’t fine, then it means that her mom, her mom who loved her so much and tried so hard to keep her happy, failed. Her mom did bad. That not only did her mom do bad things for her- arguably to her, not only did her mom directly play a part in making things not fine-

her mother did bad. to her. This isn’t just about Jester, this isn’t just about how she was incredibly, achingly lonely for so much of her childhood and how badly she wanted friends, how she ached and burned for friends and just wanted someone, anyone, to be her friend, more than an oft-vanishing green cloak, she wanted people and friendship and companionship and she just wanted to not be alone in her room, traveler please please please-

This is about how she would have to know that someone who tried so hard to keep her happy, tried so hard to not hurt her, someone who truly, genuinely loves her, hurt her anyway.

And that, that’s the most painful part, because that’s always such a fucking difficult lesson to learn: That sometimes people can love you, really, genuinely love you, and still do you wrong. And knowing they hurt you will hurt them, and admitting that, admitting that is sometimes just as hard as the initial damage, and moreso for someone like Jester who so badly wants to believe the best in people, especially the people she loves, and who is at her core, a protector (tm Laura Bailey).

She will never, ever face the extent of her own pain if it means she can, even indirectly, shield someone she loves about from that pain too.

….

ok i dont have a good ending for this but uhhhh PART 2, COMING AT SOME POINT: Why Jester Lavorre knowing about everyone’s tragic backstories DEFINITELY means she wont be acknowledging her own issues anytime soon.

[readbythestarlight]

c2e89

The last episode of 2019 here we go

Oh my god our last ad of the year is gonna be anime Gail Force V

I hate this xD

Ashley is my favorite person

I have heard an Aztec death whistle and I both hate and love that

Scrying on our baby biiiiird

I hope she's okay....

LAURA xD

[[MORE]]

The plank king girl really?? xD

Poor Matt

Oh my god JESTER STOP

Is he... thanking her for apparently killing their neighbors??

To... the inevitable end huh? xD

"We will not meet again" that's promising

Jester drawing Beau's dad melting into a puddle... why?

Fjord, Nott, Caleb on a quick errand, okay...

Wandering past Solstrice okay... just to show it to Fjord and Nott.

And now there's creepy music Matt was that intentional.

C: "I was not going to be a soldier like my father and I was... excited. I felt like I was where I was meant to be."

He wanted to be a TEACHER omg

He would be so good

Happy ending where he ends up teaching at an academy in Xhorhas someday

Or here someday after Trent is rotting in the ground

Professor Caleb Widogast guys I want that as his happy ending

"You're a good friend" I always get feelings about Fjord and Caleb when they have little moments like this

Caleb honey do NOT

Oh DAMN Beau has become a master researcher

Aha... so this one is different than the second one Empire had

God that means that if the M9 hadn't taken the first one the Empire would have had all three

Jester: "are you avoiding me? Because I didn't save you?" Oh honey

This whole conversation between Jester and Beau is amazing

Jester right now is how fandom thinks of Molly and Beau is how I think of Molly

Oh no Jester has Molly's tarot cards now this will not end well

Gonna end the year on a brawler episode and I approve

Yasha: "I feel like maybe Beau would want a champion, maybe we do this for her..." Aw Yasha...

Fjord being such a nerd xD

Widogast's vault of amber huh

So he's hiding his books in amber now?

CALEB

WHERE THE FUCK

ARE YOU GOING

COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW

Christ

CALEB. WIDOGAST. Please don't. Please go back to the inn. Please don't go to the front door. Please don't knock.

You fuck your straight up lied when your friends offered to go with you you told them you weren't going to LIAR

god why didn't they insight check him

God what if she hurts him

What if she doesn't touch him but she SAYS things that hurt him

Goddddd

Ugh I love how Liam drops the accent to indicate he's talking in Zemnian now

The tattoos are important. They tie into whatever Trent was doing to them.

C: "I find myself wanting to... apologize. Still. So much of me feels like I... I failed. But... a lot has changed. And I know some things now that I didn't as a boy and... I'm so glad to see you."

A: "I'm glad to see you too, Bren. I mean it's been well over a decade but, we still often... talked about you, wondered where you were, if you were okay."

Okay so Caleb lashed out "that spark seen in you can cause a spark everywhere else" and then she touches some scars oh no he burned her

I don't want to trust him...

Wait, had to subdue him first what does that mean? That sounds suspect.

"You've defied all of our expectations.... if you feel like you failed then, know that everyone's path moves at different paces. You've certainly proved now that you are in no way a failure."

So.... does she know

Like she seems to understand and accept that she does bad things, but she also seems to believe it's out of duty...

Hm. I don't want to like her. I don't trust her.

"The return of the lost pup" I don't like the way she phrased that

This isn't going how I expected at all. I expected that she would be a lot more obviously bad (or good, I guess).

Like I mean she is the obvious choice for Trent to use to try and snare him again

And now Caleb's telling her that Trent is a liar, let's see her reaction

"Bren... I'm so sorry" and she touches him fuck

She seems... genuinely sorry for his pain and suffering, but she's hard about it in the sense that she just thinks it was something that had to happen

"To be gifted in a world full of hardships like this is to sometimes have to do things we're not proud of." I don't like that. We must do bad things because we're ~special. Bad.

"Other people don't have to make the choices we do because we're the chosen few who have to make the hard choices" wow yep hate that

She's totally brainwashed Caleb babe

At least she doesn't seem mindlessly devoted to Trent...

Does she seem to be repeating his name a LOT

Okay so that wasn't as bad as it could have been but I still hate it

Does Jester seem... kinda lonely and desperate for attention?

lol oh Fjord xD

J: "you're doing it with a weapon, right?"

F: "do you think that's important...?"

J: "..........yeah."

Jester is apologizing a lot suddenly and I'm concerned

Okay so at this rate we'll be starting 2020 with a brawl

Oh my god it's someone who fought with them

OH IT'S DARROW

I LIKED HIM

I don't remember his sounding like this lol

Oh this is gonna be so good

Nott

Please don't go where I think you might be going

Nott Nott Nott Nott Nott

PLEASE don't be going where I think you're going

Here I am on 1/9 finishing the episode because for some reason I didn't use the 2 week break to do that

lol Beau fighting some old man

M: "I'm just gonna kinda go pop-pop"

S: "that's funny because that's what his grandkids call him."

Matt: "go pop-pop!"

"He had gingivitis"

"He has pockets full of werthers candy"

"He's resistance to very good scotch"

that fight against the old man was painful xD

Okay Fjord vs Darrow, aaaand for some reason Fjord is going bare-knuckle

HOLY SHIT ALL THAT DAMAGE IN ONE BLOW?!

Paladin or whatever the fuck he is is the way to go wtf!!!

Darrow is a sweetheart and he felt so bad for beating Fjord up that he healed him I love him

Jester: "I missed it", she says, after telling advice to him in the middle of the fight xD

Oh Yasha... honey...

Is Yasha talking to her opponent or herself? Because I know this is punishment.

I want Caleb to be the one that first really recognizes what she's doing to herself here

Everyone's like "fuck how to we address this obvious trauma and self-punishment"

C: "I get it"

Ouch okay I wanted it but it hurt when I got it

"I'm ROBBIN THE HAT STORE"

Sam was just WAITING to drop that xD

Phew, finished 40 minutes before the first episode of the new year.

I hope they get to address Yasha's issues a bit more in the future, and by the future I mean soon.

On to episode 90!

[blackjacketmuses]

hc; og dante 6

TONY REDGRAVE

This is a ssssort of comprehensive-ish headcanon for the years between Eva’s death and DMC3 --- yes, I am using both the DMC novel (since at least a huge chunk of it is confirmed canon, which is the Best because I always loved that novel) and the DMC3 manga. Mind that this is connected to my main Vergil, @multiimuse​.

“You must run. By yourself, alone. You must change your name. Forget your past and start a new life as someone else.” That was all the boy knew --- those words, and his lifeless mother, draped on the front steps of their house in a pool of blood. He’d screamed her name so many times, but she never got up. All he had as that memory, the memory of demons, and the huge sword he clutched to his chest, dragged along beside him. Eventually he almost convinced himself that the sword is what told him those things --- everything was a blur otherwise, even his name. In his daze, the ten year old saw a street sign: Red Grave City, and...maybe an old comic book, one he vaguely remembered loving, a man named Tony...something. It never really mattered. In the end the boy that found his way to another nearby city was calling himself Tony Redgrave, and he knew two things: his mother was killed by demons, and he had to get strong enough to kill them, too.

The years from ages ten to seventeen are pretty much all blurred together. He traveled, fought, got stronger. Coasted by in shelters, in alleyways, sleeping in the streets or wherever he could get a roof over his head whether it was in a gas station or a bathroom of a nightclub or some chick’s bedroom. Stole food at first til he started making money. And making money any way he could (any way) until people started noticing he was good at fighting, good at killing. (He didn’t like killing, but it’s what he had to do until he got his foot in the door.) 

He killed a man for the first time when he was eleven, some creep in an alley who thought he was pretty and had a gun just in case he said no: he didn’t expect him to say no with his sword.

He started getting mercenary jobs eventually, and though he couldn’t discriminate at first, he made enough of a name for himself while traveling that the could be picky. And he was picky --- if he wasn’t feeling a job, if it didn’t seem interesting or feel...right, somehow, if there was too much wanton violence, no thanks. Other than that, if he took a job, it’d get done and done well.

Demons were on his ass constantly, nothing big, but they were always turning up. He got good at killing them, and it felt good. It felt good to be stronger than what killed Mommy.

Tony cultivated his persona --- loud, obnoxious, childish, always ready with a quip or a joke, flashy and flamboyant --- to psyche others out and to keep himself at ease. It was easy to be a joker, a jester, messing around and never taking anything seriously. It protected him. It felt right, too, like maybe part of him really was like that, or had been at one point, but a lot of it was just staged. He was lonely on the inside, desperately so, sad and thoughtful and introspective. Even so, he was childish in a lot of ways, especially his taste for sweets and his crooked smile. That wasn’t all an act, either.

He was a flirt, liked women --- went out on dates with girls that caught his interest, but quickly learned that it was something they liked to tease him about, his nightmares; girls could be cruel and vicious when their big tough mercenary date called out for his mother in his sleep. He started trying not to spend the night after sex, after a while. Easier to keep them off you if they didn’t hear it. (He liked to think he was good with women, but he knew he wasn’t.)

When he was seventeen, he rolled into a new city, the one where Bobby’s Cellar resided, and took up shop there, so to speak. His propensity for mercy and his pickiness with jobs kind of shook the entire underworld of the city, getting the mercenaries at Bobby’s into a loose guild (while making Tony a lot of enemies), and it was there he met an older man named Grue, a scruffy type with three young daughters and a recently-deceased wife. The older mercenary took Tony under his wing, as did the famous gunsmith, Nell Goldstein, who he went to with requests for guns.

Tony liked guns; he was better with a sword, but he’d picked up guns quickly and they were fun to use, but he was too hard on them, and broke them constantly. Nell yelled at him for it, but always made him new ones.

He met two agents at the time, two middlemen who took advantage of the changing atmosphere of the underworld to peddle business at Bobby’s --- Enzo and Morrison. Enzo was his main contact, Morrison handling other people, but they both did cross paths. (Enzo would retire not long after he turned nineteen, and Morrison stepped into be his new main contact; they’ve been close ever since.)

This went on for two years --- the longest Tony had ever stayed in one place, but Grue and Nell were so kind --- until a man named Gilver turned up, carrying a katana and wrapped in bandages. In the month or two that followed, an increasing amount of disaster struck, until Dante had woken, standing alone in the ashes of Tony’s life, staring at the floor where the man that must have been his twin brother had vanished.

Gilver...both was and was not Vergil. He was at first, having finally found his brother and knowing no other way to approach but combat, being supremely awkward, and unable to express his jealousy or other strange feelings towards the brother who had forgotten him, but who had a life. Yes, that victim of the drinking contest was Vergil. But so was the man who took the job for the Oz Club and killed them all after the Club put a hit on Tony. However, he was not Gilver for very long after that.

Mundus had sent a trio of demon brothers, demon monkeys named Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru, to kill both sons of Sparda while they were in the same place. The leader, Iwazaru, set up a rift in the basement of a sanatorium, slowly leaking demons and demonic power into the city as it grew a despair tree --- this was the tree that devoured the eldest daughter of Grue, the tree Tony burnt to the ground as he killed Iwazaru --- but the other two brothers had their own jobs. Kikazaru went after Gilver, distracting and harming him and dragging him away from the city, while Mizaru took his form.

Mizaru was the Gilver that murdered Grue, hurt Nell, destroyed Bobby’s Cellar. Mizaru was the vicious Gilver, the one that slaughtered wantonly. Mizaru was the one that opened a rift in Bobby’s with the blood of the mercenaries there, the one that nearly ruthlessly slaughtered Dante. It played on the memories and appearance it received from stealing Vergil’s face, tormenting Dante with the perceived loss of his brother as the demon died. 

By the time Vergil killed Kikazaru and made it back to that city, everything he’d known was in ruins and Tony...Dante was gone.

Dante fled that city after it ended, finding another city --- Gainsmouth, a city near his hometown of Red Grave --- and setting up shop there, eventually opening a storefront with money he scraped together. He was working on the name when an incident (the Alice job) occurred, leading him to cross paths again with Vergil, who had just met Arkham. Believing Vergil to have been Gilver the whole time, Dante was hurt and angry, but their reunion was short-lived. They would reunite at Temen-ni-Gru a few months later, a year after the Gilver incident.

Other Notes:

Enzo retired soon after the Alice job, and Dante met Morrison then, and formally began working with him after Temen-ni-Gru.

Because of the incident with the sanatorium, Dante has a mild phobia of hospitals in general. 

Dante used the last of his savings as Tony to open up bank accounts for Grue’s other daughters, Nesty and Tiki, and a chunk of his earnings every month goes to them. He hasn’t been back to see them since he’s persona non grata in that city, but Morrison visits, and he passes on well wishes both ways.

Dante as himself is far more comfortable in his jokey and flippant persona, but it really isn’t all he is; he’s still quiet and thoughtful at times, consistently melancholy when alone, and after Mallet prone to bouts of severe depression. Coping is easier was the jokey, casual, sarcastic asshole, though, and it isn’t like it isn’t genuine, so it helps him to keep that up much of the time. He’s still somewhat less--- intense about it as Dante than he was as Tony, though. DMC3 Dante was the closest to Tony, still, with so much overlap, but he grew into something a little more mature and toned down, if still. Like That.

[unendingexhaustion]

Not As Dark

As prompted by @angusgibson, who gave me: “It was a dark and stormy night, and Jester was having nightmares again. Fjord, who was lying down on the opposite side of the shed, could hear her stirring.” This got pretty fjorester-y, so apologies if that wasn’t what you were looking for!

on ao3 here

Middle watch was always miserable. It seemed like the sky was trying to pour an entire ocean’s worth of water down on Fjord and Beauregard’s heads and made seeing even more difficult. At least nobody would be able to tell if he woke covered in seawater again, Fjord reflected miserably. Beau was scowling hard next to him, as if she could make the rain dissipate with sheer force of hatred alone. It was a long, cold few hours, only interrupted by the sudden boom of thunder. Nothing seemed willing to brave the storm, especially not to attack a small band of bedraggled adventurers. Fjord had never been so grateful to be startled by Caleb’s timid tap to his shoulder as he and Mollymauk came to relieve them. The tiny, ramshackle shed they were camped in had been a godsend with its intact roof, and as Fjord stepped over the threshold, he was forced to admit that it was...cozy. Probably cramped, really, if he was trying to share with anyone else, but this? This was his family. It was cozy, damn it!

Beauregard immediately flopped down onto Mollymauk’s bedroll, claiming his residual body heat for her own and snagging the prime real estate directly beside Yasha, who was breathing deep and slow. Nott was bundled up in both her and Caleb’s bedding, snoring quietly. Jester was nestled in on Yasha’s other side, her face calm and relaxed in sleep save for a slight furrow in her brow. She was always so animated while awake, he reflected, stripping off his sodden tunic and fixing his own rumpled bedding. When she slept, he could see echoes of the Ruby of the Sea’s famous beauty, the kind that inspired paintings and sculptures and brought kings to her bed, but when Jester was awake, he couldn’t see anything but her. The way her nose crinkled when she laughed, the mischievous sparkle of her eyes… she was so full of life and light. Lulled by the drumming of the rain on the roof and the breathing of his friends, Fjord tugged his blankets higher and began to drift.

The slight whimper from the other side of the shed cut through his doze as surely as a scream. Had something slipped past the two on watch? Was somebody hurt? His question was answered as across the room, Jester sat up abruptly and buried her head in her hands. Fjord’s gut twisted. She was hurting. Shit. Should he say something? Offer some kind of comfort? What if she didn’t want anyone to know? His internal musings were abruptly cut off as a choked sob issued from Jester’s curled form. Before he could even think, his mouth was moving.

“Hey, Jes’?” he whispered, already half-wishing he could catch the words before they reached her.

Her already uneven breathing hitched sharply in a small, startled gasp. “Fjord?” She turned towards him, her eyes shining slightly in the dark.

“Yeah. You, uhh, you ok?”

“Oh. Um. Yes! Yes I am definitely ok Fjord thanks you can go to sleep now!”

“Y’know. It’s ok if you’re not? I mean, if you wanna talk about it…” He trailed off, uncertain.

For a moment, the silence stretched between them, broken only by the breathing of their companions and the drumming of the rain. Abruptly, Jester stood, gathering her blankets, and began carefully picking her way around the tangle of limbs on the floor towards Fjord. A few moments and a minimum of stepped-on fingers later, she was beside him and settling into the space left by Caleb’s stolen bedding.

Fjord cleared his throat. “So. Uh, do you? Want to talk, I mean.”

Jester didn’t respond, instead continuing to adjust her blanket nest. Great. Now what? Should he say something? Do something? His musings were interrupted by a weight suddenly pushing against his side. Apparently satisfied with the arrangement of her bedding, Jester had leaned up against his side, careful to avoid goring his shoulder where she rested her head against it. When she spoke, it was almost inaudible.

“Do you remember when I told you about meeting the Traveler for the very first time? Well, I was very lonely back then. Not that the Traveler isn’t a great friend! We still do all sorts of fun pranks and things like that together and I hide pamphlets in places and it’s all very good!” She paused. Fjord couldn’t see her face, but he could feel the slight hitch of her breathing against his skin. He felt her next words more than he heard them, the vibrations carrying through her body and into his own.

“He is very good, but...being with you guys is different. You’re here, in a way he isn’t. The Traveller doesn’t share pocket bacon, or lend me a button when I can’t find the one that popped off my second-best dress, or, y’know, this.” She leaned a little more of her weight against him. “I don’t think I would be ok, anymore, if I only had the Traveller again. That’s what the dream was, that all of you left me behind. I was all alone again.” She sniffed. “I don’t want to be alone. Can..can I stay here? Just for a little bit?”

There wasn’t a reality Fjord could conceive of where he’d answer that with a ‘no’. Especially not coming from her. “Of course.”

Thirty seconds later, his brain caught up with what he’d just agreed to and the awkwardness set in. Cheeks blazing, he laid back down in his bedroll and attempted to get comfortable, all the while pointedly not thinking about the fact that she was right there, settling in beside him. Gods help him, if Beauregard’s numerous complaints were to be believed, Jester was a cuddler. He took a deep breath and slowly released it. She needed him. If he died of embarrassment tonight, it would be for a good cause. Still, it was getting towards morning and it really had been a long day, even before the storm started. With the warm weight of Jester’s body up against his, Fjord finally let sleep claim him. In that hazy space between, he thought he heard her whisper something, indistinct but heavy with emotion. But then again, maybe it was just the edge of a dream.

When he woke the next morning, Fjord was beyond grateful that he tended to be an early riser. Beau’s warnings rang true, and sometime in the night Jester had tangled herself around him like a particularly affectionate octopus that smelled faintly of pastry dough. He managed to extricate himself from her grasp just in time for Molly and Caleb to enter, avoiding what would have surely been a lifetime of teasing from his usual roommate by the grace of a few seconds. As it was, the morning peace was shattered by Mollymauk unceremoniously yanking his bedroll out from under Beau. She woke with a shout and a wildly thrown punch, and after that it was nothing but chaos. Beau’s flailing woke Yasha, who yanked Molly into a headlock, and Caleb barely managing to convince a still half-asleep Nott that no, they were not under attack, it’s just Beau and Molly being themselves at “far too early of an hour, thank you!” Beside Fjord, Jester blinked awake and arched her back in a stretch, seemingly unaffected by the commotion around her. She surveyed the scene she’d woken up to for a moment, and then turned to Fjord with a small smile. He was really only half paying attention to her, most of his awareness focused on Beauregard’s flailing. Mollymauk was using her bedroll as a hair towel, getting it thoroughly soaked. Something about turnabout being fair play and all that. Jester took the opportunity to dart in and plant a kiss on Fjord’s cheek before getting up to help prepare the group’s breakfast.

If there was an extra spring in his step as they loaded up the cart? Well, the storm’s cleared up and that’s reason enough for anyone. (The pretty tiefling girl making his heart do somersaults with those little smiles of hers was just an extra bonus. Really.)

[mnemememory]

here stand giants

Beau is the perfect fucking picture of mental health.

Fuck you.

(or, the life and times of beauregard in three and a half conversations)

It doesn’t come to much, in the end: just a man, standing in a broken room.

Beau can’t hear him. She’s knocked out on the ground, hair splayed, skin black and bruises. She’s breathing, but it’s a close thing.

There are people next to her – two kneeling at her side, and another two in the edges, waiting. They’re silent in a way that makes the man’s skin crawl, cobalt blue clothing a stark contrast to the austere brown furnishings. His wife is upstairs. She hadn’t wanted to see this.

“We’ll be taking her, then,” a woman says, brisk and professional.

The man doesn’t say anything as they drag away his daughter’s unconscious body, as they pack her into the prepared cart and start the long, lonely journey away from town. His purse is lighter, but his shoulders certainly aren’t.

“You need to sit down.”

Yasha glances up from where she’s wrapping fresh bandages around her forearm, back held up by the trunk of a large tree. They’re camping in the middle of a forest, with a canopy a good twelve stories above their heads and the sun a distant memory. Light filters down in green-grey streaks, illuminating the hollow gaps between the enormous trees that space out at even intervals. The roots are thick and ropey as they dig into the ground, easily reappropriated into functional – if slightly uncomfortable – seats.

“I’m fine,” she says, not sounding particularly bothered by Beau’s aggressive tone.

“No,” Beau says, shouldering her way over to Yasha. “You’re not – you need to sit down, you’re shaking –”

“I’m not shaking,” Yasha says patiently, knotting the bandage and letting her arm fall to her side.

“Yasha,” Beau says.

Yasha gives her a dubious glance, but after a few minutes she lets herself be manhandled into sitting down on one of the roots, long legs just barely brushing the dirt ground. Beau hops up onto an opposite root, so they’re facing each other.

“Oh, look. How cute,” Nott says, coming over to stare up at both of them. “They match.”

“I’m about to throw something at you,” beau says. “Something very pointy, and very sharp.”

“There’s no need to be rude about it,” Nott says, crossing her arms over her chest. “In any case, I just wanted to come and let you know that we’re heading off in about ten minutes. Caleb doesn’t want to stay here too long.”

In the distance, something howls.

“I don’t want to stay here too long,” Beau says.

Yasha says nothing.

Nott waits around for a few seconds, probably expecting more of a response, before huffing and leaving. Caleb is with Jester and Fjord, both of whom look bruised around the edges but otherwise alive. Beau has to keep reminding herself: they’re alive, they’re alive, they’re alive. That’s going to balance out any sleeplessness concerning Jester’s new habit of waking up in the middle of the night to squeeze Beau’s arm bloodless.

Beau turns her attention back to Yasha.

She had been…very calm, upon hearing about Molly’s. About Molly. She hadn’t done anything, just blinked and stared and nodded, like yes, of course, that was only to be expected. My best friend is dead. It was only a matter of time – look at him.

Dead man walking.

“Lorenzo is dead,” Beau says, and she’s trying so hard to be tactful, but Fjord hasn’t had much of a chance to pick up where their lessons left off.

Yasha’s face remains slack and expressionless. She reaches up to pull at the new bandage. “Yes,” she says, and that’s it.

Beau blows out a frustrated breath, fingers itching to do something, anything. Sitting still and trying to talk out trauma isn’t on her bucket list (she has a bucket list now, apparently). But it’s niggling at her, the way Yasha’s eyes won’t focus, the way the larger woman’s presence seems cut in half.

Molly had said, I left every town a better place than I found it, and Beau wonders how much of that included his best friend. He had certainly left a mark on Beau, and they’d only know each other for the last few weeks.

Eight months, Yasha had said, a world away. That’s how long she’s been out of Xhorhast, into the Empire. How many of those months had included Molly?

More than ten minutes passes, but Nott doesn’t come back to grab them. Jester looks like she’s fallen asleep, head nestled into the crook of Fjord’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to mind, so much, though Beau is going to have a talk with him, if he intends to kidnap her roommate.

“I’m leaving,” Yasha says, soft as a dreamless sleep.

It’s like something’s cut all of Beau’s strings – her shoulder slump to the ground, and she struggles to keep breathing past the sheer relief that sings in her chest. Now that it’s been said – now that it’s out in the open – there’s a kind of intenseness that bleeds out of the air. The elephant in the room has been killed. Thank god. Beau was tired of cutting out her tongue, anyway.

“I thought so,” Beau says, and she leans back and tries to smile past the knowledge of it. She can’t look into Yasha’s mismatched eyes, so she stares at the spot just above her head. “I’m surprised you stuck around for so long, this time.”

Yasha shrugs, picking at a small scab on her right thumb.

Beau breathes in, and in, and in. “Are you coming back?”

Yasha’s eyes jerk up to meet Beau’s, and the air liquifies around them. Beau’s lungs protest as she’s buried under the weight of – of something, something dark and lonely and clawing. The nothingness echoes in her head, the lack of noise deafening.

They both look away at the same time, and the connection severs. Beau tries to keep her breathing even and not focus on the dead thing between them.

“I hope so,” Yasha says, and she sounds so horribly small.

Beau rolls her shoulders back to stiffness, stretching out her arms and staring at the darkened silhouette of a sky. “Okay, then,” she says. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

Beau comes to the Cobalt Soul with manacles weighing down her wrists.

“If you cooperate, things will go much easier for you,” a woman with sharp teeth and sharper eyes says, tinted blue hair falling in a fringe around her chin. “You have such potential, Beauregard.”

Beau spits at her.

Her skin is raw, and blood occasionally trickles down her arm every time she re-opens a welt with her struggling. One of her kidnappers looks distinctly uncomfortable at the sight of it, and she makes sure to struggle around him the most.

Damaged goods, she thinks deep into the night, looking down at herself and laughing.

Three days out from the decent-sized city, Fjord pulls the metaphorical short straw when it comes to watch.

Beau flashes a grin at him as Jester pouts at having both of her person-shaped-pillows out of reach. Still, she curls up around Nott happily enough when it comes time to get some sleep. Nott puts up some token grumbling, but they’re all bundled in one spot, so Caleb is trapped by the flailing blue arms as much as she is. If anything, Beau would say the little goblin girl looks satisfied.

Fjord settles himself next to Beau, eyes trained on the enveloping darkness. Beau snaps on her goggles for the first hour or so, but has to take them off when her eyes start to ache from the strain.

“So,” Fjord says, accent thicker off his tongue than before. He clears his throat and glances at her, dividing his attention. Not too much, though – Beau’s noticed that he can’t quite keep still, these days. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Me?” Beau says.

Fjord gives her a look of tolerant amusement. “Yes, you. You almost bit Jester when she tried to volunteer with me.”

Beau crosses her arms and pulls a tired smile over her teeth. “Well, maybe I don’t want you two on the same watch.”

Fjord sighs heavily. “Beau.”

“The last time you were alone together, you were kidnapped!”

“We had Yasha with us.”

“Well, let me tell you, you three aren’t ever allowed to take watch together ever again,” Beau says. “There’s only so much bad luck this group can take.”

Fjord doesn’t look terribly amused – though he hasn’t shut her down, which is saying something. A gentle word would get Beau to drop the whole thing, because she has realised over the course of this horribly cursed trip that she is attached to these people. Almost inadvertently, they had managed to burrow under her skin and wrap around her ribs, pulling her in all different directions. Yasha’s string is taunt and uncomfortable, thin enough to snap. Fjord, though – Fjord is made out of wire, enough to enough to slice through bone.

“I think this group has had plenty of bad luck as is,” he finally says. “I don’t expect we’ll get a reprieve just because of who we put on watch.”

“There’s such a thing as tempting fate,” Beau says. “Not that I believe in fate, but if I did, I wouldn’t want to piss it off.”

Fjord swipes a hand through his hair. His tusks are poking out from his lips, just a little bit. They haven’t had much time over the course of the week to be still, and before that Fjord hadn’t been – well, he hadn’t been present enough to bother with his appearance. Beau wants to reassure him, but no matter what she says, it never comes out right. Someday, she’s going to just stop trying, before she sends someone off a cliff.

They settle into silence, letting it draw out towards dawn. Beau thinks about the last watch she had with Molly, and thinks about all the things that she’ll never get to say to him.

“I missed you.”

It comes out in a panicked rush, and the moment she says the words, she wants to take them back. They feel clumsy, open, far too personal for Beau’s state of mind. Fjord side-eyes her, not saying a word.

Beau takes in a shaky breath, trying to focus. She very deliberately doesn’t look at him.

“I’m really – glad” – that was the right word, wasn’t it? – “That we got you, uh, out of there. We were all really worried” – wait, no, was she supposed to keep this group-related or personal? Gods, she should have taken a page out of Keg’s book and written this down – “I mean, I was really worried. We were all worried! Including me. And Caleb and Nott, of course –”

Ah, what a mess!

Fjord is smiling at her, though, soft and sad and real. Beau breaks off and stares at her clenched fists. Why was this so hard? Why did she always have to make things like this so hard?

“I knew you three were going to find us,” Fjord says. “Jester and Yasha knew, too.”

Beau clenches her jaw and doesn’t say anything else.

“You know, I don’t think any of us have said ‘thank you’ yet,” Fjord muses.

“We were a bit busy,” Beau says. And then – and then Yasha had asked after Molly –

“In any case,” Fjord says, ducking low so he can look Beau straight in the eyes. “Thank you for saving us.”

“You must learn discipline,” Xenoth says, eye twitching. “Or you will become nothing.”

“I’m already nothing, asshole,” Beau says, knees cracking the floor, staff sealed to her hand with sweat. She’s breathing heavily, but that’s nothing new. “You’re going to have to find me some better motivation.”

Xenoth looks down at her, frustration warring his face. After a few seconds, he shakes his head and moves onto the next person, correcting their form with his staff. Beau stares after him for a few seconds, fury winding through her veins, and then collapses down to catch her breath.

“She will be coming back,” Jester says, with a child’s faith.

Beau doesn’t know how she can do it. She honestly doesn’t know how Jester can stare at her with bruised eyes and a missing tooth and scars (there are so many scars) along her arms and says, She will be coming back, and mean it. Beau doesn’t have that much faith in anything, let alone Yasha.

Beau just shakes her head. “You take the bed.”

Even with Fjord bunking with Caleb and Nott, the two rooms they’d managed to snag at the head of a particularly nasty-looking snowstorm hadn’t been equipped with separate beds. Because the other half of their group was larger (and because Nott had called dibs, much to Beau’s annoyance), Beau and Jester were stuck with a single, while the others shared a double.

“No, no,” Jester says, though she does sag onto the bed with something akin to relief. She rubs at her ankles as she pulls her legs onto the bed to sit cross-legged, while Beau knocks her back against the wall and slides down to the floor. “We are going to have this conversation, Beau.”

“Please don’t,” Beau says. “I’m tired. You’re tired. I think we can put this off till morning.”

Jester rolls her eyes, pulling her sketchbook out of the bag and flipping it open to a random page. Grabbing a pencil, she begins to draw something in broad strokes, all the while keeping her body aligned towards Beau.

“You are being very silly,” she says. “I am fine. Fjord and I are both fine.”

That’s a lie.

Beau clenches her jaw and says nothing.

“Beau,” Jester says, scrunching up her mouth as she tries to find the right words to say what she means. “You are worrying over nothing.”

Beau presses her lips together tighter.

Jester makes a big show of putting her sketchbook flat on the bed, and then rolls so that she’s splayed out on top of the covers, arm flinging out to smack Beau in the face.

“What the fuck!” Beau says, ducking away.

“I think you want a hug,” Jester says.

Beau’s eyes widen in horror. “What? No!”

“Yes, I think you need a hug,” Jester says, scooching further over to the side of the bed. She’s got both her arms out, now, and her grin is as wide as Mollymauk’s. “You’ve been grouching around for the past week, and I think a hug will make you feel better.”

“Jester, don’t you dare,” Beau says. She starts to get up, but Jester is too fast for her, grabbing onto Beau’s shoulders and pulling her against the side of the bed. Beau flails ineffectually as Jester squeezes her tight, and then it’s too late, she’s trapped.

Grudgingly, with something like relief, Beau surrenders to the hug.

“You’re good.”

Beau’s head jerks up to stare at her instructor, shock electrifying her body still.

“You’re good,” she continues, oblivious to Beau’s surprise. “But you lack the proper form. Keep practicing, though. You could become better if you put your mind to it.”

(Beau wakes up, snow whiting out the windows.

Yasha is leaning against the far wall, skin pale stone, hair covered with frost, eyes closed.

Huffing out a small laugh, Beau rolls her eyes and gets to her feet).

[sockablock]

Here’s Chapter 4 of my Critical Role backstory fic, this time featuring Beauregard! It’s the longest one so far; I had a lot to write about the Disaster Lesbian™ (check out Fjord, Caleb, and Jester too!)

Word Count: 4686

From Where We Came: Chapter 4, Beauregard

Beauregard is born in the early morning hours of the 18th of Brussendar, in the height of summer, to parents glowing with immense pride. Beauregard is hastily handed off to her nurse in the early morning hours of the 18th of Brussendar, in the height of summer, by parents who don’t even do their new daughter the kindness of hiding their disdain and disappointment. She is whisked away, down the hall, to a different room furnished in soft blues and filled with little wooden toys and plush animals. She is placed into a wooden crib. The nurse leaves. In the lonely quiet, the newborn girl begins to cry.

“No, Beau, dearest, stop fussing with your dress,” her mother scolds quietly. “This is a very important tour, and you mustn’t behave this way. It would look absolutely terrible for your father if you caused a scene.”

“But, Mama,” Beau protests, “I hate wearing this dress. The lacy parts are itchy and the sleeves are too long.”

 Her mother pats her on the head. “Don’t worry, darling, we’ll get you another one made.”

 Beau pouts. “Mama, I don’t want another dress. I don’t want to wear a dress.”

 Her mother tuts quietly. “Don’t be silly, dear. Look, Mummy is wearing a dress, isn’t she? Don’t I look pretty? You look so pretty too.”

 Beau considers her mother. Then her eyes wander a few yards away, where her father is proudly showing off the brewery’s newest oak barrels to group of tall, very important-looking men. They are dressed in long coats, with their trousers tucked into sturdy, but well-made and needlessly fashionable boots.

“Why can’t I wear what Papa is wearing?” Beau asks. “He’s not got a dress on, so why do I have to wear one?”

 Her mother laughs. It’s a soft, twinkling sound, like a little bell. Beau knows this laugh. It’s the we’ve-got-company-and-my-child-is-talking-too-much laugh. Beau knows this laugh well.

 “You can’t wear trousers,” her mother says, “you’re a girl. You could if you were a boy, but you’re not, are you?”

 Beau knows the answer to that question. “No, Mama,” she says.

  Darien is a boy, and one of the most exciting people Beau knows. He’s eleven, two years older than she is. He’s the son of another winery owner, as renowned and as wealthy as Beau’s parents. The edges of their lands weave together easily enough, and he frequently slips away from his duties to go hang out with the rowdy girl next door. Together, they pester the workers and write cuss words in the dirt paths and chase each other through endless rows of gleaming purple grapes. During peak harvest season, one of their favorite things to do is steal the fattest grapes off the vines and meet in the woods between the properties to compare their loot. They sit together in one of the tallest trees and munch on grapes and talk of benign, childish things.

 “I could beat you up,” Beau says between mouthfuls.

 Darien considers the muddy hem of her dress, her rolled-up sleeves, the leaves in her hair. “Yeah,” he says, “You probably could.”

 “Probably could?” Beau raises an eyebrow.

 “Definitely could,” he admits. “But I’m not that strong.”

 From six feet up in the branches, Beau leans against the tree trunk. “That’s ok,” she says in a rare bit of open friendliness, “you’re good at other stuff. Like climbing trees and stealing things from your dad.”

 Darien shoots her a grin. “You won’t believe this,” he says, “but I picked a lock yesterday!”

 Beau’s eyes go wide. “No!” She exclaims. “Really? How did you do it?”

 His grin broadens. “I can show you when we finish these grapes!” He lowers his voice conspiratorially, even though there’s nobody around for ages here. “I lifted a set of thieves’ tools from one of the sheds,” he says, “and I’m not really sure why they were there, but it was probably fine because nobody goes in there ever anyways. And I was messing around in there but then I knocked some stuff over on the top shelves and it hit the door and then the door locked and then I was like oh, Pelor, I’m gonna die, but then I just shoved some of the hooks from the set into the lock and then it opened!” Darien takes a deep breath to refill his lungs. “And now I’m an expert rogue,” he concludes.

The pair stand in front of the door. “It’s not locked,” says Beau. “It was just rusty. I think you probably just messed with the inside hard enough to unstick it.”

 Darien gives her a reproachful look. “That’s basically lockpicking,” he says.

 “Nuh-uh,” Beau says.

 “Uh-huh,” he replies with scathing wit.

 “Nuh-uh,” Beau retorts eloquently.

 “Uh-huh. It wouldn’t open before, and now it does.”

 Beau considers this point. “Alright,” she says eventually, “I’ll give you that one. But it’s not lockpicking like real thief would lockpick.”

 Darien points a finger under her nose. “Then just you wait!” he declares. “I’ll learn how to be a real thief and then you can’t tell me what’s what anymore.”

 Beau grins. “Oh yeah? What if I do it first?” And she cuffs him over the head and scampers off, shouting about how real thieves could move quick as the wind. Darien gives chase, whooping loudly behind her.

Beauregard stares out the window, and chews on the end of her quill. The clouds look quite fascinating today, and the fact that she even had that thought must be a testament to how godsdamn bored she is. Father and Mother are making her check the books again, and even though her tutors have praised her mathematical skills (“When she applies herself she really is quite good,” the one with the annoying mustache had said.), Beau really can’t be bothered to even try and be interested in numbers. Even though her parents have hinted numerous times that she should be stepping up and helping out more with the business, Beau doesn’t want to. It’s boring. She’d rather run around outside or pick grapes or do almost literally anything else.

 She sighs and glances down at the page. Only a few rows left.

“You spoke out of line again, Beauregard! That tour was incredibly important, and your comments disrupted my guests and made me look like a fool!”

 “I’m sorry, father, I’m sorry! I won’t do it again.”

 “If you do, you know what the punishments are.”

 She does.

So when Beau accidentally lets slip to her parents that her clothes are always filthy because she spends all her free time traipsing through the woods with the neighbor’s son, she expects the worst. There are grave punishments for doing boy things. For being disruptive. For being ungrateful and ruining the lovely things we give her and being a bad, bad girl.

 What she doesn’t expect is for Mother to scoop her up in a big hug and cry tears of joy. What she doesn’t expect is the flicker of impressed surprise that flits across her father’s usually stoic face.

 “Oh, my darling, this is wonderful news!” Her mother gushes. “And you’re sure this is young Darien? You’re sure he likes to spend time with you?”

 Beau makes a face that neither of her parents notice. “Mama, of course I’m sure it’s Darien. And, uh, yeah.”

 “Oh, this will be absolutely fantastic for your father. Won’t it, dear?” She asks with a glance at her husband.

 He gives the slightest nod. “How old are you, Beauregard?”

 Beau looks down at the ground. “Twelve, Papa.”

 “You are rather young,” he muses, “but this opportunity…”

 Beau’s mother nods enthusiastically.

 Her father nods again, this time more firmly. Then his frown returns and he says, firmly, “But pleased as I am with this match, you two cannot keep spending time the way you currently are. No more of this running through the forests and getting into trouble. You are a young woman, and should compose yourself as such.”

 Beau can feel the weight of his gaze. She doesn’t like it.

“I can’t believe our parents are making us do this,” Darien groans. We’ve never had to be fancy around each other before.”

 Beau grumbles, misery dripping off her slumped shoulders. “This sucks ass,” she says. Swear words are still rather new to her, but she has a good feeling about them. She makes a mental note to ask the servants for some more.

 Meanwhile, Darien risks a glance over at where his mother and father are talking with Beau’s at the other end of the garden. They’re seated around a polished wooden tea-table and passing each other the weird little sandwiches that grownups like to eat. Between bites, they discuss (probably) the best way to ruin their kids’ lives. A maid hovering behind them, striking empty cups with the teapot like an eagle diving for heron. To the side a butler stands, staring at pink lilies, artfully pretending not to be waiting for commands while also waiting around for commands. Birds chirp in the flowering trees above them. A few bees hum softly in the background.

 Darien turns back to Beau, whose scowl has somehow gotten even deeper. “Hey,” he says, “do you think they’re doing this ‘cause they want us to…you know? Get married and stuff?”

 Beau sighs and gives a shrug. “That’s what they were talking about yesterday.”

 Their eyes meet, and they consider one another for a moment.  

 “No,” they say simultaneously.

 They both nod in acknowledgement of a good decision and slide further down on the bench. Beau’s dress, a horrific, daffodil-colored poofy nightmare, prevents her from achieving optimal slouch. Darien fidgets with his coat. They are basically in hell.

 Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Beau hops to her feet. “Okay, I’m done now. Let’s go.”

 A slow grin spreads across Darien’s face. “The birch tree by the river?”

 They wait for just the right moment. And while the parents are preoccupied with one another and the maid is busy fielding refills and the butler is distracted by a particularly unruly-looking begonia, they slip away, adults none the wiser.

Beauregard stares out her window. Her cheeks are sticky from dry tears, and the sniffling hasn’t quite stopped yet. Her face is still a bit puffy, and her eyes are bloodshot. But the worst relic from the last half-hour are the words, which she are trying desperately to bury so far into her subconscious that nothing would ever be able to bring them out again.  

 Horrible, useless child, how could you be so ungrateful—This was an incredible opportunity and your selfishness has ruined it—His parents were appalled at your behavior—How could you just run away like that and wreck everything—We raised you better—

 —Oh, for Pelor’s sake, stop crying, you’re nothing but an embarrassment. Get out of here, Beauregard. Get out and stay in your room while your Father and I try to fix the damage you’ve caused.

 Beau hits her forehead against the glass.

“Father is sending me away,” says Darien from outside the open library window. “I snuck over here so I could tell you, but I have to go back before he notices. He’s kind of still super pissed about our disappearing act.”

 “Yeah,” Beau mutters. “My parents are too. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

 Darien smirks. “The sticks up their asses are pretty lodged in there.”

 There is a brief silence. Then, “Where to?”

 “It’s an academy in Rexxentrum, if you can believe it. Apparently lots of young nobles and wealthy hoity toity assholes go there to learn…whatever it is they learn.”

 “How long?”

 “I don’t know. Father says it’s until I can ‘behave properly enough to live up to my duties,’ which I think is a load of shit.”

 “How long do you think that’ll take you?”

 “…I’m not sure. But I think he wants me to be there for like…a long time. A really long time.”

 “Will you come back?”

 The answer is instantaneous. “Yes,” Darien says. “I’m his heir. He said so himself.”

 “Alright then,” Beau closes the ledger she was working in. “I’ll probably be here when that happens. It’s not like my parents are going to do anything with me.”

 Darien leans through the window and reaches around Beau’s shoulders rather clumsily. “You’re my best friend,” he says.

 “You’re my brother, dumbass.” Darien doesn’t argue. And the next day, he is gone.

“Papa,” Beau asks tentatively at dinner, “am I your heir?”

 He continues to skim the documents in his hands. “No,” he says.

Beau continues to work the books for the brewery. It seems like the times she quietly retreats to the library to manage ledgers are the only times her parents don’t make their displeasure with her quite as overt.

 At least you’re good for something, goes unsaid.

 She also keeps up with her studies, though she really would rather not. History is about boring dead guys fighting in stupid wars because they do stupid things. Geography doesn’t matter; it’s not like you can do anything about it if you don’t like it, and it’s not like you need to keep an eye on it in case it runs away. She finds marginal interest in the stories of the gods from religious studies, but could do without the constant, underlying our gods are superior and nonbelievers are scum. Math has always just been math, and she couldn’t care less about the politics of the Empire.

 The only things she really enjoys reading are the tales of adventure she finds in the dustier sections of the library. She steals them from the shelves and hoards them in her room. At night, she’ll pull them out and reread her favorite parts by candlelight. She absolutely loves The Mountain Range of Gold, and almost cheered out loud when the protagonist resurfaced in Part 2. She delights in gratuitous descriptions of kick-ass fight scenes, and sometimes tries to reenact them with that a particularly kind onlooker might call “enthusiasm.”  

 There are also many, many romance scenes. Beau is unprepared for the sheet amount of…canoodling that some of these adventurers get up to. She’s rather annoyed by the unfortunate tendency of the broad-shouldered, handsome male characters (heroes) to sweep the beautiful, helpless female characters (love interests) off their feet. Beau could do without ever reading about a Sir Diggory and his seemingly endless muscles again. Usually she’s also disgusted by the way the women are portrayed, as gorgeous damsels with hearts of gold and not enough clothing and apparently very soft skin.

 Though sometimes, a small part of her is absolutely delighted. Beau isn’t sure what to make of that yet. Yet.

When she isn’t raiding the libraries or being forced to learn things, Beau continues to run through in the vineyard and the nearby forests. Doing so does feel a bit empty without Darien around, and the loneliness would never go away, but the sharp edges of solitude had smoothed down into soft corners over time. Besides, Beau has to do something, and stir craziness does not sit well with her. 

 So rather than mope around all day in the manor, which is probably what her parents would want, Beau climbs trees and wades through streams and throws pebbles (unmaliciously) at squirrels. She also has the clothing for it now. A while back, in a stroke of genius, she asked the one of the more slightly-built workers for a pair of trousers, a linen shirt, and a hefty pair of worker’s boots. Despite her worst fears of being reported to her mother, the boy didn’t seem to mind. And after a while of hanging around their quarters and volunteering to do chores and refusing to bugger off, the servants move from tolerating her presence to inviting her for drinks (non-alcoholic) and stories. She hears about daring adventurers from ages past, brilliant and bloody battles, and learns quite about the various criminal elements of the empire. One day, an older worker teaches her how to really pick a lock, which comes in handy on the nights she stays out too late and has to break into her own home. They help her touch up her disguise, which allows her to hang around outdoors when her parents expect her to be in the house doing ladylike things. They let her hide her outfit with their belongings, and even occasionally pass along other hand-me-downs to her.

 She has never been so free.

“You’ve gotten rather fit, haven’t you, Beauregard?” asks the dressmaker as she measures Beau for another terrible ensemble. “Just look at you!”

 Beau considers herself in the mirror. “I suppose so?”

 “I can’t imagine how,” says the dressmaker, “with you being home and learning to be a proper lady all the time.” The comment is pointed. It indicates that at any point Beau’s mother can be brought into the room and also shown how rather fit Beau has gotten.

 Beau sighs. “I promise I’ll stop squirming,” she says.

 “Don’t worry, dear, it’s refreshing. Too many young ladies these days look like a light breeze would blow them over.”

Beau can now successfully hang upside-down on a tree branch by her knees. She considers this one of the greatest achievements of her young life.

“Her tutors are quite impressed by her abilities,” her mother says to the guests in the drawing room. “Aren’t they, dear?”

 “Yes, Mother,” says Beau. Her hands are folded in her lap. This dress is blue, at least, but that only helps so much.

 The other ladies are speaking. They sound like birds tittering ceaselessly outside a bedroom window in the early morning.

 “Not too impressed, I would hope?” says one, louder than the rest. Beau doesn’t like her. She’s got hair that’s obviously going grey, though the woman tries to hide it under an ostentatious hat. There’s also a mole growing on the edge of her nose. It’s got more personality than she does.

 “A husband wouldn’t want his lady to be too clever, after all,” says the terrible woman. “Can’t have her getting too controlling of his household.”

 Beau’s mother laughs. It’s another tinkling laugh, the I’m-richer-than-you-and-we-both-know-it-so-don’t-you-dare-lecture-me laugh. “Of course, Deannie, she’s properly educated. She just excels at what she’s taught. Why, she was almost betrothed to young Darien. It’s just that his father decided the boy should be sent to school before committing to anything.”

 The women sip their tea in a manner that indicates how impressed they are. Beau wants to pick up the tea cart and use it to smash the window open.

Beau receives another letter from Darien. She crumples it up shortly after reading it. Then, immediately filled with regret, she picks it up and tries to smooth it out best as she can. Her fingers trace over the words.

 Beau,

 I’m sorry to say this but I won’t be coming back. Father is having me stay in Rexxentrum to be the face of his company in the capital. I know I promised I’d see you again, but there’s nothing I can do. Believe me, I tried to fight him about this. But he said that with him in Kamordah already, there’s no need for me to be at home. He wants me to be a businessman. You and I both know he won’t change his mind. You’re my sister, Beau, and I’m so sorry—

 She puts the letter in a drawer and goes to bed.  

There’s a new maid at the manor.

 Her name is Mariel. She has dark, curly hair and freckles across her nose. She moves like a storm through the Quarters, cussing loudly and joking cheerfully, and old Reddick tells Beau she’s from one of the rowdier coastal cities. She’s seventeen, and Beau is thrilled to finally meet a girl her own age. But Mariel makes Beau nervous, and she isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s her unrestrained spirit. Maybe it’s her wide smile and mischievous eyes.

 Maybe it’s the loud, echoing laugh that dances through the halls when she watches Beau—who had scaled the manor to the third-floor and tripped over the windowsill as she tried to sneak in—spill onto the floor and land on her ass.

 “Ow.” Beau rubs her head. She looks up at Mariel. “I’m not a thief,” she says.

 Mariel snickers, and Beau is struck by complete lack of decorum in the action. “Yeah, a real thief wouldn’t have fallen like that.”

 Beau scowls. “I mean I’m not a thief ‘cause I live here.”

 Mariel leans against her broom. “Yeah, right. Mister, you’re wearing worker’s clothes two sizes too big for you, and you’ve got dirt all across your face. And haven’t I seen you around the Quarters before? I could have sworn you were playing cards with Reddick yesterday.”

 Beau freezes, and swears inwardly. Of course, someone new would think she was one of the servants breaking into the Boss’s house for some gold. Over the years, the help had welcomed the muddy-faced and loud young lady of the house into their fold, and largely ignored her antics. She had gotten so used to making a fool of herself and breaking rules in front of everybody except her parents that she’d forgotten how unacceptable her behavior really is. She sighs, and figures there’s no good way out of this situation.

 The truth, then.

 She pulls her hair out of its messy bun and does her best to wipe the dirt (fresh from the forest) off of her face. She tugs at the sides of her pants, trying to flare them out like a dress. “I’m Beauregard,” she says. “Please don’t tell my parents?”

 The broom falls over, and Mariel almost does too. She hastily picks it up and tries to curtsy with a four-foot wooden stick in her hands, which only makes her almost drop the broom again. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” she says, and when she rises her face goes red, “wait, fuck, I mean…oh shoot, dammit. I’m sorry, milady.”

 Beau tries to suppress the smirk threatening to split her face. “Nobody warned you that I do this sometimes?”

 Mariel swears under her breath and curtsies again. “No, ma’am.”

 Beau fails, and when Mariel resurfaces from the curtsy, she is met with an absolutely shit-eating grin from Beau. “I kind of hang around the Quarters and run around in the woods a lot. I think everyone thinks it’s funny, and I always loose a lot of money when we play cards, so nobody really cares. Except my parents. Who can’t know,” she adds.

 Mariel stares at Beau, and bursts into laughter again. After a while, she wipes the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Wow, when I heard that the daughter of the house was a troublemaker, I thought they meant you were shitty to the servants or something. I didn’t think they meant you dressed up in boy’s clothes and lost at cards to us.”

 Beau rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. “Well—”

 Footsteps echo down the hall. Then, “I’m sorry, Madam, but I really don’t think it was a servant.”

 There’s a scoff. “It had better not be. Honestly, I pay you all well enough to keep quiet and keep out of trouble. If I found out it’s a servant making noise this late at night I’m docking all of your pay.”

 It’s her mother. Beau freezes.

 Mariel quickly looks around. Then she grabs Beau by the wrist and yanks her down the hallway and into an empty guest bedroom. She carefully clicks the lock shut, then squeezes Beau and herself against a wardrobe just beyond the doorframe so their shadows don’t peek under the door.

 Footsteps go past, along with an angry tirade by Beau’s mother.

 They breathe a sigh of relief. Then Beau notices how the other girl has both her arms around her to keep her still, how she’s still holding her wrist and how well her body fits into Beau’s. How soft her hair is, and the way her chest rises when she—

 “See something interesting, Milady?” whispers Mariel. Beau’s face colors. Her head snaps upwards and their eyes meet.  

“You’re eighteen. And though our previous efforts failed thanks to your actions, new arrangements can always be made. It’s high time we planned for the future of this business, and it’s not as if you’re completely undesirable. Marcus would be a nice match, I should think.”

 Beau carefully helps Mariel into the branches, then swings herself up the trunk and lands next to the her.

 “Nice of Syra to cover for you today,” she says.

 “Personally, I think Syra is on to us, and I think she’s doing her best to keep us together.”

 Beau pulls out a book. “Perfect! That means we can keep going. Now, where were we?” she asks.

 Mariel grins. “I think Sir Diggory was just about to compliment Lucianne’s tits in a much-too flowery manner.”

 Beau snickers. “Oh, you’ll love this part.”  

She leans against the pillow, breathing heavily. “Mariel?” She says.

 “Yes, Beau?”

 There’s a pause.

 “I think I love you.”

They let their guard down. It’s a mistake.

“Your father and I have decided to send you to Zadash,” says Beau’s mother. “You’ve left us in a very…difficult position, and it was extremely hard for us to find a place for you. But Archivist Xenoth has agreed to teach you, and we think learning from the monks will be a positive influence on you.”

 “Why?” asks Beau. “Because monks do what they’re told and don’t have sex?”

 Her mother’s face turns a scandalized crimson, and her fists clench. “Beauregard, you have caused enough trouble for this family. You’ve always behaved extremely poorly, and you’ve never listened to your father and I when we know what’s best for you. You destroyed your own chances at a future with Darien, and got him sent away by his parents. You continue to mess about with the servants when you should be mingling with the rest of dignified society. And now you allow yourself to get tangled with this common girl, and—”

 “Don’t you talk about her like that,” Beau says through clenched teeth.

 “—and you get caught and you’ve scandalized the entire family—”

 “Nobody needs to know! And why does it matter, anyway? Why does it matter what I do?”

 “—you have duties to carry on this legacy your father has worked so hard to create for you—”

 “I didn’t ask for it! I didn’t want any stupid legacy! This would be fine if I were a boy!”

 “—shut up! You are not a boy, as both of us are well aware, and if you were one then everything would be so much easier for us! But you’re a girl, even if you seem incapable of acting like one, and we cannot have you soiling this family by continuing to stay here and being the way you are. If you aren’t going to do what we wanted you to all along, you’re going to go to the Cobalt Reserve and you’re going to become a monk, and maybe you’ll learn some respect and come home, or maybe you’ll just stay there and keep studying. But whatever happens, you’re going to become respectable, and you’re not going to ruin our name. Is that clear?”

 Beau is biting her lip. There are tears running down her face. Her mother is shaking with anger.

 “Is that clear?”

 “Yes.”

It could have been worse, Beau thinks. At least they gave her some neat robes. At least they let her swear. At least they taught her how to fight. And she was really good at that last bit. But all this crap about “preparing her mind” and “preparing her soul” and “being the truth” learning about patience and sorting shelves and reading books is…is all crap. Beau doesn’t give a fuck. And so when she packs a bag and slips on her uniform and cracks open the window and slides onto the balcony, she moves quietly. And she doesn’t look back.

[appxssionato]

Bloody Shadows - A more detailed verse info.

name: warren obuolys age: 200+ birthplace: russia homeplace: romania occupation: wanderer species: turned vampire

warren is a vampire that despite all of his suffering he keeps being friendly and charming, believing that the change starts from himself. even though, he dislike the idea of living an eternity, reason why he desires to be human again.

born as a human, warren lived with his mother in russia. he grew up like a normal kid, and the day he finally started his own life happened. in his twenties, warren became an aristocrat, becoming the imperial court’s jester because of his talent with love stories, music, tricks and gimmicks. a troupe from romania came to the imperial court, being ailess cardia’s troupe from his own theater. that was when warren and ailess met for the first time and started spending tme together. sharing a strong bond, warren kept going to romania, visiting ailess, being a dear friend. one day, after returning to russian and visiting his mother, he found out a group of creatures torturing her mother, sucking the blood out of her and being killed right in front of his eyes. in the attempt to save her, he was attacked too, but instead of the creatures taking his entire blood, he became one of them, being kidnapped and taken to romania to be their prisioner. 

it was the start of a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse, becoming more heartless as the time passed, forgetting about his own humanity and just going along with it until one day he finally was able to break free and kill those that hurt him. warren escapes, and finds a forest in which he sees another vampire, realizing that it was ailess cardia. ailess congratulates him for escaping and asking him to join him. by knowing that he had nobody, he decided to keep ailess on his side, not to mention that they did share a bond in the past. little by little ailess taught him things about vampires, and at first it was hard to adapt. warren mostly fed up out of animals but it was ailess the one that made him taste his first human, reason why he finally let out that cruelty that was actually in his nature.

warren started going to the village, learning about the situation that there was a sacrifice every full red moon. he didn’t care, after all it was food for them. warren was charming, very popular among the villagers though they didn’t know he was a vampire. entertaining woman and engaging sexually with them, they were often his prey, not caring about feelings or emotions. it was until one day, one of the woman tried to escape, she injured him and he finally killed her, but the injury was too deep that it took him long to heal. a young girl found him hurt, and she came for his rescue, healing him. this made warren to develop a strong bond with her, falling immediately in love due the warmth of her heart, he claimed that she was an angel.

warren kept with his routine, but nobody seemed to find out about his real nature. he started talking to the head’s village’s son, masaferry albastri, who was a timid and lonely boy that often came asking for advices. warren helped him with everything, giving him advices and claiming that he had a lot of knowledge, reason why masaferry considered warren his best friend, often saying good things about him and warren asking him to stop because he made him look like a good person, when he actually wasn’t but warren didn’t let him know that he was a vampire. 

one day he visits masaferry on the day of his wedding. masaferry had a crush on a certain girl for so long and she became his fiance due an arranged marriage between both families. masaferry looks sad, explaining that she didn’t have a choice, so warren tries to cheer him up telling him that at least he can be with someone he loves, unlike him. masaferry’s fiance happens to be the same girl that healed warren once, but he keep it as a secret. masaferry thanks him and tell the girl how much he loves her, but at night he realized that she is the one chosen for the sacrifice, that happens to be the same night as his wedding.

 warren finds out, and tries to calm masaferry down but the preoccupation shows in himself as well, telling masaferry to run away with her so they both can be saved. masaferry explains that he did so, but that the girl refused. warren tries to convince him to save her even if it’s by force, but masaferry breakds down saying that it’s his duty to protect the village and that there’s no another way. warren says that he will make sure she is safe because an angel like her can’t be killed in that way and that he wants her to be happy, letting masaferry realize that she was the woman warren was talking about before.

warren becomes aggressive, grabbing masaferry while he tells him that he can’t let her die. masaferry asks him to calm down, telling him it hurts in which warrens responds that he can’t be calm when he believed him that he was going to make her happy, yelling that he won’t let ailess to kill her. masaferry asks who is ailess, asking if it’s the vampire and questioning warren about knowing his name. warren tells him is nothing of his business, disappearing into the darkness. warren goes to see ailess, telling him that he wants to talk, and asking to change the sacrifice getting a negative response because is the moon the one that chooses, not him, explaining that the moon chooses the girl filled with the most light, so they can gain more magic that way. warren says it’s cruel because she is getting married, causing ailess to mock him. ailess keeps questioning warren, realizing that he was in love with that human and telling him it’s just an illusion.

ailess then makes warren to remember after he first came to the forest, when he served many women in the town, refreshing his memory and thoughts about love being an illusion. warren said it was different before he met her, and that she made him change his mind. ailess tells him that the other option is turning her into one of them, and warren refuses as he explains she makes him remember the humanity he has lost. ailess tries to knock some sense on warren, even though he comes off as cold, telling him that they don’t have the right to exist in this world and that they only have each other. warren finally agrees with ailess, telling him that indeed they are together forever, and he decides not to fight anymore and letting the girl to be killed.

the moment of the sacrifices finally comes, and the girl approaches him as ailess greets her. ailess starts to intimidate her, reason why she tries to go against him making ailess to tell her that it’s time to finish with this. at this moment, masaferry stands up, telling him to let her go. ailess can’t believe that the chief’ss son broke the rules and the girls tells him to leave, but masaferry is willing to fight and points ailess with a gun filled with silver bullets that could kill a vampire. the girl keeps refusing and ailess points out at that, masaferry tells her that she can hate him but he wants her to live. at that moment, ailess calls warren, telling him is his chance to save the girl. masaferry looks confused but he finally sees warren coming out of the shadows, he asks what’s going on, which warren replies that it’s obvious that he is a vampire. 

masaferry refuses to believe it, saying that warren is his best friend, warren makes fun of him because of that declaring that he didn’t mean to deceive him but he was trusting him, claiming that human are foolish species. warren walks towards the girl, telling her that she was foolish too because her kindness didn’t mean anything to him, masaferry is confused again and he isn’t able to move his body, warren laughs at him and asks him if his father didn’t teach him not to look into a vampire’s eyes. ailess explains that they don’t hate humans but it’s a way to survive, he explains that he has been taking care of the villge and that this is a good exchange, but masaferry refuses saying that it can’t be someone he loves. ailess seems tired, and asks the girl if her life is more important than the village, she replies it’s the village so ailess claims this is gonna be fast.

masaferry struggles, warren warns him that he is going to break his own body. masaferry tells him that it’s impossible for warren to kill someone, in which warren tells him that he doesn’t know his real identity. masaferry says he does, claiming that the real warren is the one stuck with his stupid complaints, that think about his own problems and understand people’s feelings, a man that deeply loved just one woman. warren mocks him, taking it s a joke as he was able to say that even after realizing he is a vampire. warren walks towards masaferry and violently grabs him, telling him that the days he was his “friend” were fun, because he made him think he was human again but that was nothing but an illusion, and then, he takes his gun.

ailess tell warren to shoot masaferry, but instead, he decides to shoot ailess, telling him that his original plan was to runaway with her but that he didn’t want him or masaferry to have her. but he realized that he was a vampire and that he couldn’t be with a human. warren asks ailess if he is not tired of eternity, so he thought it was time to finish it, but that he didn’t have to worry because he was going to stay forever with him as he promised, telling him he was going to join him soon in death. ailess’ bullet hole starts to heal and he says that it will heal in no time if he drinks the blood of the girl, telling warren that they should live together again, just the two of them. masaferry offers his own life in order to save her and warren, and warren tells him he is out of his mind. masaferry says he knows what he is saying and asks ailess to heal the injury with his blood and that it is not enough, he will become their slave. warren tells him it is painful and that he doesn’t understand what he is doing but masaferry says he understood something by looking at him.

masaferry tells the girl that even though they didn’t have a ceremony he will think of her as her wife, but tells her that he can’t ignore his friend either. he tells ailess to live together and take his blood, so they can stop with the sacrifices. ailess starts having memories on when he became a vampire and finally accepts the deal. they both turn masaferry into a vampire.

three shadows, non-existent anywhere, without any happiness or a heart beating hurt by sadness, without love and wandering around the world.

[aion-rsa]

Mank and Amanda Seyfried’s Quest to Save Marion Davies from Citizen Kane

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Amanda Seyfried is a fan of old school movies and classic Hollywood. Considering the Mank star has been acting since she was a teenager, this isn’t a surprise. In her mind it’s a prerequisite, something that comes with the territory: each young actor is obligated to “study film on the job” when starting out. So she’s seen Citizen Kane, of course, and knew the stories of Orson Welles’ masterpiece taking on newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. And yet, even she was barely aware of Marion Davies, the once popular movie star from a century ago whose image Kane left like roadkill in its wake.

Perhaps that’s the dark magic of the movies though. Seyfried can recount early memories of Davies’ contemporaries like Charlie Chaplin, who loomed large in her childhood. But the shadows cast by these legends have a way of obscuring everything else.

“I grew up with a father who was obsessed with projectors and old movies,” Seyfried says over a Zoom call. “We have nitrate film still in our basement, and I can’t believe our house hasn’t blown up yet. I grew up surrounded by Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, and Laurel and Hardy. I just watched everything with my dad… that was my childhood. And I still didn’t know about Marion Davies.”

To Seyfried, Davies was just a name, another glamorous Hollywood film star from the ‘30s who was renowned for her beauty and style—and like so many other women of that era, was overlooked for anything more. Yet after the early 21st century star was cast to play her 20th century counterpart in David Fincher’s Mank, Seyfried became astonished by a talent that’s been largely forgotten, and determined to do it justice.

“She’s effortless,” Seyfried says of Davies. “She is immensely watchable, really funny, and clearly for me, [a] really talented comedian. She’s got the timing all right. She’s like Goldie Hawn. She’s fantastic, and I don’t think she got the respect that she deserved.”

That frustration stems in part from how Davies came into the industry. Once a chorus girl who ran away from a Catholic convent education, Davies had a natural ability for Vaudeville comedy and Broadway theatricality, appearing as one of the Ziegfeld Follies while still a teenager. And it was as a Folly that she met William Randolph Hearst, the much, much older (and married) media tycoon who became enamored with Davies, and soon her suitor.

Says Seyfried, “I think a lot of people assume that it was just one of those situations, a May-December relationship with the billionaire man and the young woman. And it just wasn’t that. It might never have been that.”

It was, however, what brought Davies to Hollywood, with Hearst grooming her for stardom in first the silent era of the 1920s and then the early talkies of the ‘30s. It also simultaneously provided Marion with opportunities and obstacles. Her natural knack for comic timing was often mitigated by Hearst’s desire to see his mistress in respectable period fare: as Mary Tudor in When Knighthood was in Flower (1922) or as Marie Antoinette in a film MGM eventually made—without Davies, much to Hearst’s chagrin.

Many, including Seyfried, believe these career choices limited Davies’ potential, and hid her genuine talents. However, the bigger blow to her legacy was due to something entirely out of her hands: Orson Welles and (more painfully) screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Citizen Kane. As a thinly veiled satire of Hearst—especially in Mankiewicz’s first draft—that film followed a fictional newspaper baron who becomes obsessed with a young entertainer played by Dorothy Comingore. Like Davies, Comingore’s Susan Alexander has a thick New York accent, but unlike Davies, Susan is a talentless singer who feels trapped and resentful of Kane’s possessiveness.

Says Seyfried, “A lot of people when they think of Marion, when they hear her name, they think of Susan Alexander. So that’s not helpful. It’s a myth. They’re very different careers.” For starters, Seyfried sees talent and incredibly hard work in Marion’s filmography, as well as a brutal intelligence that Seyfried knows was misunderstood. “It’s sad she has been misunderstood for so long, in a lot of ways,” she says. But that misunderstanding is in no small part because of how oblivious Susan Alexander is depicted in Kane.

It’s one of the biggest acts of betrayal in Golden Age Hollywood, and it’s a treachery at the heart of Mank’s drama. Seyfried plays Davies, thick Brooklyn accent and all, as a bon vivant. She’s the life of the party and lady love of Hearst (Charles Dance), whose old age is a seemingly endless party at his and Davies’ castle like home of San Simeon. There Marion and Hearst hold court, including with their favorite jester, screenwriter Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).

It was Mank who had the idea to turn Hearst’s life into a source of drama and tragedy when meeting with Welles, and it was Mank who made the choice of depicting Charles Foster Kane’s lover as a lonely, self-absorbed neophyte imprisoned in his palace. It wasn’t the Marion whom Mankiewicz knew, which Mank demonstrates by showing an actress of scathing wit that’s every bit as quick as Mank’s. Yet that unflattering image of Marion was the one Mankiewicz felt compelled to give the public. He knew how to find a good story.

Perception, even among industry insiders, is everything. And those pressures are ones Seyfried is acutely aware of, particularly given how little they’ve changed in the hundred or so years that separate her from Davies.

“You always encounter people who want to tell you what to do and where to go and how to do it,” Seyfried says. “Agents, managers, publicists, you have these people that are meant to help you and guide you, and when done well, they do really well, and you have a good relationship with them.” In that sense, Seyfried doesn’t believe the industry has changed much at all from the days of Hearst demanding Davies appear a certain way, which Seyfried believes “put her in a box [and] was partially why her career petered out.”

Says Seyfried, “There have been times when I have argued over my own career path at one time time or another, and also the powers that be in Hollywood sometimes want to put you in a box. It’s really hard to push through that in the beginning of your career, and you just have to be strong-willed and know what you want. Luckily I didn’t get trapped at any point too much, but it’s hard, especially to be a woman and feel like you have a voice and that people actually want to listen to you.”

The way Seyfried sees it, there are things about the industry that weren’t going to change for decades or more, “maybe a century, sadly.” And there remain other challenges as well. Citizen Kane might make Davies’ experience with being misunderstood singular, but Seyfried is all too aware that “anybody who’s famous is misunderstood immediately because nobody can ever know the real person, every dimension of somebody.”

Seyfried came to understand those similarities, and appreciate Marion’s full talents as soon as she began preparation for Mank. That process included reading Davies’ autobiography, The Times We Had: Life with William Randolph Hearst—a series of recollections as much about Davies and Hearst’s mythic parties at San Simeon as her film career—as well as diving into old movies like Cain and Mabel (1936). But at the end of the day, it always boiled down to finding Marion’s voice as imagined by Fincher’s singular eye, and his father Jack Fincher’s painstakingly authentic screenplay.

Coming to work with David for the first time, Seyfried was obviously aware of the stories about him shooting many, many takes for every scene—Mank even apparently set a record for the director during a climactic sequence at a Hearst party. And Seyfreid has a story of her own. It involves Mank’s recreation of Davies’ infamous exit from the MGM lot (a reaction to the studio passing her over for Marie Antoinette), which itself was a reshoot that included Seyfried’s Davies driving away with a full size house on a flatbed, dozens upon dozens of times.

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“I don’t know,” Seyfried confesses when we ask exactly how many takes she filmed that scene. “I will tell you, I definitely fell asleep a lot in the back of that car. Many, many naps.”

However, what surprised Seyfried most about being inside Fincher’s process is that his penchant for multiple takes is the thing that gets most publicized.

“I think it’s surprising to me that he’s not immediately known for other things, that it’s the takes,” says Seyfried. “I feel like enough people have spoken about him, about working with him, that I think it’s still funny that people are still hanging onto the multiple takes thing. Having worked with him, I don’t feel like that really characterizes him at all.”

Instead she thinks what does characterize him is the warmth and freedom he gives actors to play.

“What I really loved finding out was that he’s incredibly respectful of his actors because we are the people embodying his characters, and we all need to feel supported… He gives us huge space to evolve and grow within the scene or the work, or the moments, even.”

It also gave Seyfried the space she needed to luxuriate in the language crafted by Jack, and his sometimes old-fashioned dialogue. Indeed, before writing Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz cut his teeth on Hollywood comedies in the early sound era, helping write scenarios and gags for the Marx Brothers around the same time that screwball comedy was being invented. And in Mank, Mankiewicz and Davies’ scenes especially crackle with rapid fire exchanges.

“We have a spark,” Seyfried says of her and Oldman’s scenes. “Gary and I have worked together before and we get each other. I think we’re perfectly matched to play anybody if we’re doing it together. I think we work very similarly and that spark you hopefully feel when you’re watching the scenes with us is actually based in reality.”

Yet at the same time, Seyfried credits Jack’s screenplay, which she compares to being “like cake for us,” as a chance to imagine what it might’ve been like if Mankiewicz could have ever written a comedy for Davies.

“If the powers that be could have made that happen, I think that they would have made such wonderful music together,” Seyfried reflects. “They’re cut from the same cloth. The chemistry that’s there was, I do believe, very authentic… He clearly had deep feelings for her, platonic feelings for her, a deep respect. And I think she felt the same for him. It would have been amazing to see that, to see him write for her.”

With Mank, it’s as if he finally has. And in so doing, Seyfried has helped Davies take a spotlight free from Kane’s deep shadows.Mank premieres on Netflix on Friday, Dec. 4.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2VD93Ko

[sparkesink]

Chapter 7:

Wake Up

Wake Up.

Wake Up TJ…

(Wake Up.)

The Lights Flickered, 

My Irises Fumbled Through Focus.

 Wake Up.

 Why Can I Not Break This Consistent Dormancy?

I Have Been Stuck Here,

In The Dusk Of A New Day,

(Waiting For The Sun to Rise, 

Stirring The Everlasting Slumber I Battle To Escape.)

 Wake Up.

 My Blurred Vision Ceases To Encase My Apperception.

 “Hello!”

 Jade, 

(Wide-Eyed,)

Nearly Brushing The Tip Of My Nose With Her Immortal Eye Lashes:

Exasperated In Glee Of My Cognizant Acknowledgement,

(Her Existence Before Me.)

 “Jade, Where Am I?”

 She Hesitated, 

(Dawdling For The Correct Definition Of Which I Currently Reside.)

 “Um…Well…This Is My Home.”

Jade, Seemingly Nervous,

“The Others Won’t Find You Here, 

This Is A Reality, 

(Only I,) 

Allow Myself To Access.

I Wouldn’t Have Brought You Here,

But I Couldn’t Find Anywhere To Take You,

At least, 

Nowhere She Wouldn’t Find You.

 I’m Good At Hiding. 

I Have Been Doing It My Whole Existence…

I’ve Perfected Realities For This Soul Purpose!

(You Know, Hiding From Monsters And Such.)

 The Round Top Is My Pride And Joy,

Everyone Really Seems To Exist Well Within That One…

You Know! 

You Are The Only One To Come Across Realities With Me!

That Is Quite Something!

We Should Celebrate!

Do You Want Some Cake?

I Haven’t Any Here…

But I Could Certainly Go Get Some…

Somewhere Else…

And Bring It Back…

If You’d Like?

 You Can’t Come With Me Though,

Not Until Your All Healed Up…

I Nearly Killed You Just Transporting You Here In The First Place.”

I Began To Explore The Room Surrounding My Being…

 “Is This… A Hospital Of Some Sort?”

Jade Lowered Her Voice To That Of A Rodents Whisper,

 “The Infirmary.”

 She Began To Shuffle Through The Ash,

(Scattered Across Every Inch Of Open Surface.”

“I Have To Go…

I Have To Leave…

Right Now…

You Want Cake?

I Will Get You Cake!

We Will Celebrate!

I Will Get You Cake…

Yes,

Yes,

Cake.

Cake…With Ice-cream…

Ice-cream,

Ice-cream…

And Cake.

Cake. 

Cake.

Cake.” 

Her Demeanor Shuffled, 

(Lost In Thought,)

Terrifyingly Absurd…

(Lost for Words,)

Timorous To My Avowal Of “Her Reality”.

 She Giggled, 

Discordant In Nature, 

(A Sound I Could Never Expect This Beaming Beauty To Produce.)

She Made Haste Toward The Opening Of The Room,

(Leading To An Abandoned Hallway, 

Lined Florescent…

Flickering As A Light-bug,

Once More.) 

She Turns,

(Body Unrecognizable,

Contorted Within A Vibrant Vortex,)

Showing Only Her Face As She Evaporated.

 “I Left Your Book Upon Your Night Table,

Beware Of The Nurse,

She Is The Puppet Master,

Teeth Stained In Blood Fable.

Do Not Believe The Coroner,

His Smile Is Warm,

He Will Try To Play Games,

Make You Feel Weak,

He Is Only Filled With Lies And Deceit.

 I Love You TJ, 

I Will Be Back,

But First You Must See The Story Through My Eyes

That Is, 

If You Desire Truth, Through Fact.”

A Glimpse Of Her Silhouette Wreathed Within My Soul,

This Beautiful Young Girl Was Melted From Right Nose, To Ear.

Her Prevalent, Grinning, Acquisition…

Now Pinned With Fish-hooks,

From Ear, To Ear…

This Sight Shivered Through My Spine, A Transportation Toll.

 The Ash Rained, 

(Unfaltering,) 

Without a Doubt.

My Book,

Lying Stagnant, 

Upon The Side Night Nook.

 My Fingerprints Graze,

Across This Wooden Cover,

A Lyrical Maze,

Imprinted With An Alternate Wonder.

Soot, 

(Now Smudged,)

Across The Pages Of My Thought,

Slowly,

(Timidly,)

Opening A Labyrinth,

A Battle Separately Fought. 

“Chapter 9: Hot And Ready…”

Jade’s Story,

Pieces Of The Puzzle,

An Emancipation Of A Lost Girl’s Muzzle.

 The Pages Feel Like Home, As I Finger Through The Folio.

A Stagnant Sickness, 

Equivalent, Death By Polio.

The Nurse Will Wait,

The Coroner Will Get His Turn…

Responsibility Ten Years To Late,

The Cause Of This Young Girl’s Burn.

 The Laceration,

(Splintered Through Victoria’s Constant Control,)

Throbbed In Consequence Of My Perpetual Cowardice.

Wreathing Within My Caudal,

Slithering As A River Throughout My Skull.

Her Voice Whispering,

(An Aside,)

Valid Only To Those Who Listen.

“You Should Stop.”

“You Won’t Finish.”

“No-one Cares.”

“You’re Going To Fail.”

“Why Would You Even Continue To Try?”

“It’s All Shit.”

“You Will Never Matter, Anyways.”

 Stop.

“You’re Such A Fucking Coward!”

 Stop.

“You Are Sloth. A Waste Of Brilliant Potential.”

 STOP.

(Grinding My Palms Amongst The Ratted Mess Upon My Head.)

“You’re Going To Fail. You’re Worthless. Everyone You Love, Would Benefit From Your Perish.”

 STOP.

(Stumbling, Collapsing Upon The Cold Laminate Floor.)

 STOP.

(Scurrying, Grasping, Closer, Closer Towards The Bathroom Shore.)

 STOP.

(Climbing, Shifting, Comforted Within The Walls Of The Clawfoot Tub.)

 JUST FUCKING STOP.

(Shivering, Shaking, Slamming My Mind Against The Porcelain, Drub.)

 “YOU WILL NEVER MATTER. YOU’RE WASTING YOUR TIME. JUST FUCKING GIVE UP!”

 I Scour For The Faucet,

(Water, Hot As Flame.)

 Her Voice Starts To Wither,

Thoughts Manageable, Tame.

 I Sat Under The Scorching Rain,

Allowing The Shivering, Come To Bay.

 Tears, Masked, Within The Droplets: Surround.

There Lie A Beaten Woman, To Demented To Say.

Jade’s Skeletons Lay Within This Porcelain Drain,

Reaching Out,

Attempting to Ensnare My Ankles As I Pull Away,

Chilled Quiver Shoots Through My Veins.

 I Scrub My Eyes,

(“This Is Just A Bad Dream,”)

Pulling Myself Together,

“This Has To Be Some Grand Scheme.”

I Crawled Out Of The Bathtub,

Blood Covered In Fear,

Floundered Through This Nightmare,

Pulled Myself Up, Into The Mirror.

I Saw My Own Reflection, 

Though Warped In Some Sick Game,

I Wasn’t Pretty,

I Was Drenched In Shame.

The Mirror Wrote Back,

“You Will Always Be Thick,

Now Go, You Sad Little Girl,

Go Make Yourself Sick.”

 I Ran,

(Back To The Bed, Jade Left Me, Once Before.)

What A Horrible Place,

(Such Glamorous Gore.)

It’s Time I Face My Suppressed Past.

I Opened Her Book, 

Make Peace At Last.

 “Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Just… Write It Down. 

Just Write It Down.

 Strings Are Fun And Interesting,

Strings Keep You Flowing “A-boot”

These Things On Your Strings Seem Tantalizing,

And I’m Off On A Tangent, To Boot.

These Things You String Are Compromising,

Your Shadow Of Spire Compare

For These Strings Of Things Come Promising

Golds To High To Compare.

Oh, These Interesting Things, 

Surely, Keep You Flowing About.

These Tantalizing Things, 

(You’re Reassuring,)

Pouring Such Emptiness, 

(Such A Jester: He Sings;) 

The Contents Of My Mine, 

(Flourished With Doubt.)

These Compromising Doubts,

(Filled With Hatred And Despair:)

Backed Only With Superficial Lies,

(To Weak To Compare.)

 I Found A Way, To Escape Your World;

A Vortex Of Purples, Yellows, Blues…

(Such Birthed Realities To Be Whirled.)

Conceived Through Strengthening, Thoughtful News,

You Cannot Find Me Within My Beautiful Round-top,

Your Strings Cut In Such Transfer Of Belief,

You Cannot Survive Where I Am Going, Pop;

No Longer Forced To Grin Bloody Teeth. 

Running, I Am Aware, Will Never Solve My Problems.

They Will Not Be Going Away,

Though, For Now, I Find Solitude

In A Land To Complex To Sway.

Greed: 

Pulling, Stretching, Contorting;

(Everlasting Impoverish Fear;)

Once Humble, Such A Soft Façade,

A Longing, 

Such A Ponder; What Blinds Your Mirror?

(A False Pretense Of Covenants From Your God?)

I Cannot Follow In Footsteps So Sheer,

For Your Deadly Sins Will Not Be Masked,

When Faced When Mortality Come Near.

Such Money Saved… A Dollar Earned Mad,

A Lost, Disowned Kin…

Are You Proud Of Me Now Dad?

{Silence, *Keep Face}

Stop Talking, You Mustn’t Be Sad.

Such Things Are Not Allowed; 

Put On Your Mask, Covered In Lace. 

Our Blood Runs As Water, Transparently Fair,

A Thank You Towards Wavering Support: 

A Book, In Fact, ‘A Simple Silly Dream’, 

Here For All To Stare.

 Dear World,

I’m Sad Today.

(Regardless How Hard I Cry,)

I Cannot Will These Pangs To Wash Away.

My Skies,

Always Grey…

I Cannot Help But Beg For This To All Go Away.

Every Moment,

Every Fucking Lonely Second…

A False Smile, Permanently Painted.”

I Set Down Her Thoughts,

Feet Cool, Pressed Amongst Unfamiliar Substructure,

(At Best.)

Checkered Appearance,

Providing Loss To Sanity’s Capture.

One Foot Amongst Another,

Towing A Chain,

To A Mind With Substantial Fracture.

Down Toward The Corridor,

Elevator Marking It’s Deadline.

One Room, One Passage, 

One Floor, One Entrance…

(The Office Of The Medical Examiner.) 

 A Click,

Stilettos:

Tap,

Click,

Clock…

The Clock: 

Scurry Little Mouse,

Back To Your Bed,

The Nurse Is Coming,

She Will Fill Your Head.

Fun,

Run,

Pretend To Sleep.

Close Your Eyes Tight,

Don’t Whisper A Peep…

“Grab Our Book,”

Jade’s Voice Transparently Singing:

“We Mustn’t Let Anyone Steal A Look.”

 Hide Your Head,

(Beneath The Covers,)

Time For Bed.

[readbythestarlight]

c2e76

HEYYY BABYFACE! I thought I’d miss the beard but he’s just cute no matter what

It’s Brittany bitch

Oh no xD

Aww they’re doing a shoutout for conservation for the rainforest! Good for them!

RIP Nott you will be missed

[[MORE]]

Also Marisha’s hair? Amazing. Flawless. Stunning.

"SOMETIMES DRAGONS COME AFTER YOU" Jester your experiences are not universal

Reani knows everyone and has so many friends who clearly thinks she’s absolutely reckless but love her anyway

"Why would they call it root beer? That’s fucking stupid."

Goats milk with chocolate lol

Reani girl slow down lol

N: "I’m already plastered and that seems excessive"

Nott honey no you’re gonna die of alcohol poisoning at this rate

Thaumaturgy to make chocolate milk lol

Throwing contest woooooo!

The M9 invent root mead pong

Sam, joint about how Marisha played Caleb last week: "you were so attractive!"

Matt: "I agree!"

lol they’re all bad throws

B: "I feel like This is a consolation prize. Am I being pitied?"

F: "Yes."

B: "Do you want it?"

F: "Yes."

lol Caleb makes the best throw at the end when no one is paying attention that was cute

Matt making sure to point out that this is how he is doing the rules in HIS campaign to stop the rude people from criticizing

lol Fjord you’re too skinny for plate mail

Squishy wizard less squishy yayyy!

We’re off to steal from nobles!

Pu-bat Sol?

This is amazing I’m crying

Caleb really wants that bread

"Until tomorrow" Aw poor guy. He lonely.

Awww Samiel guiding Reani to be her own person <3

Aw bb :(

That was sweet

Also I’m convinced at this point that Reani is never leaving she’s just gonna tag along with the M9 forever now

Fjord being like "I cannot do all that exercise it hurts me" is a MOOD

Y’all are gonna randomly murder a guard?? When you’re doing something illegal??? What if he has a family??

Fucking HELL

Yeah y’all better not let Reani find out about this

They are such disasters I stg

C, whispering: "Nott says they murdered someone."

F, also whispering: "THEY WHATED SOMEONE?"

They’re all such nerds

Cad: "I’m built for espionage today not for healing" that’s a first

We need a counter for the number of times Jester has done something clever to get them in

F: "don’t worry about me, I have items and stuff, just go."

Poor Fjord left alone :(

WHY DID YOU TELL REANI GUYS FFS

M: "nextomantic"

Everyone: "ooooooooo 😬"

They’re all exploring a house and poor Fjord is just downstairs. Alone.

Nice job Nott!

I have some concerns about how they get out now

A book, of course

It’s time to leave guys. Go.

Them trying to gently encourage Nott not to drink is so soft and sweet

But they are pushing their luck

TIME TO GO

Please get out please

"Disguise self-elf"

Oh that’s a cool ring, but also very dangerous probably. Can easily be used for manipulation.

Well at least they got the glass

I’m gonna miss Reani she’s been fun

Cad: "Thank you for taking care of him" that’s a feeling

Caleb checking up on Fjord <3

Also it’s amazing how it actually took me 0% time to get used to Fjord’s real voice. I thought I was gonna miss the southern accent but nope.

Caleb shared a boooook :D

Gasp Nott turned down a drink I’m proud of her

Jaggentoths...?

Oh FUCK they were people who hired Lorenzo and the Iron Shepherds

R: "Will you come back to visit?" Don’t imma cry

WELCOME TO THE MIGHTY NEIN BB GIRL

Cad: "the head of a god"

C: "small."

Cad: "aren’t we all? well, you all are."

C: "alright tallboy."

I choose to believe that banter is canon

Awww Fjord trying to meditate and talk to Wildmom on his own <3

Awww getting a hug from Wildmom!!

....or is it

MATT that’s RUDE!!

That’s gonna be a TWO WEEK CLIFFHANGER

Reani gonna make out with Beau do it

Do it for all of us

Okay the rose is good too that’s sweet

Beau no xD

R: “I think you’re pretty.”

B: I grab her by the back of the neck and kiss her

YAS BEAU

THANK YOU

I was very much crossing my fingers for that

Ohhhh Caleb and Nott gonna have a discussion

Caleb just checking in Fjord and Nott and stuff makes me happy

He’s been working really hard to be encouraging and supportive and stuff and you know what that is? Growth.

Team Mom Nott

Oh sweetie, you don’t have to do that for everyone. :(

Alright everyone group hug Nott immediately

She’s scared HUG HER IMMEDIATELY

N: “I know you all have my back, you all care for me. But no one has my front.” ouch.

N: “This flask is my shield. It allows me to do these things, to go forward and protect all of you.” Ouuuuch.

Sam Reigel coming in with the feels again.

C: “How can you protect us if you are not protecting yourself?”

N: “Well there is a bit of a trade off. I just worry that I won’t be brave without it.”

C: “You don’t have to be brave alone. I am not, without you, Nott.”

C: “Listen I don’t have faith in much, at all. I don’t have faith in myself, either. But I do have faith in this group.”

A’IGHT LIAM AND SAMI DIDNT ASK FOR THESE FEELS AT 1:30 AM SO THANKS FOR THAT

Please hug and

C: “I really wish I could see you right now.”

N: “Yeah, well... I don’t know. I don’t.”

Oh honey you’re not disappointing him

N: “I’m sorry if I disappoint you again.”

C: “Nott the brave. We may both be messes. But at least we’re messes together.”

Nott, and then she takes a sip, while he can’t see, and “I’ll try to make you proud”

C: “You already do.”

And I’m crying.

Thanks for that little hint of humor Jester

Cad’s just like “I just like to listen in lol”

Boy just gonna have emotional talks tonight huh? Cad complimenting Jester and making sure she understands that she’s appreciated even if they don’t say it as much as they should.

They’re just spying on Caleb together

And now off to eat cupcakes

Awww the Traveler “he’s right, you know; you deserve all the cupcakes, Jester.”

How does sleep come to Fjord Matt

What happens to Fjord Matt

AYYYY THE SWORD IS DONE

“Except for you” FJORD??

Listen I’ve been anticipating the sword thing for ages but

Fjord??

Matt what’s wrong with Fjord there’s not an M9 episode next week Matt you can’t do this to me Matthew

IS HE GONE?

WHERE DID HE GO

MATT

MATTHEW

oh my god

WHERE

IS

MY

BOY

MATTHEW

IS HE FROZEN??

What’s happening is he about to get a new class??

Oh shit what’s happening

A slightly less scrawny Fjord lol

Caduceus looks very proud

AHHHH IT WORKED

HE’S BACK

“Eldritch blayst” now that i did miss

IM SO HAPPY FOR HIM

Please hold it I want so much art of him holding the sword for the first time

I’m so emotional I’m so proud of him guys

OH my god that was AMAZING

Reani come back soooon

“I get a day of extra life for every tear so” lol Taliesin

LOVE YOU TOO MATT