#and sort of ended up tying back into slavery?

[satohqbanana]

Aveyond Divergent Fate Part 14-2

A/N: A part involving tying up some loose ends and making a small detour to Veldarah, Lars edition.

--

While Rhen is touring with Danny, Dameon, and Steph, Lars meets Reina on his visit to the Empress. As the two wait for their turn to speak with the Empress, they catch up with each other. Reina remarks that Lars has gotten kinder, which she likes.

Lars suddenly remembers his conversation with Rhen back in Ghedahre and asks if he's too mean. Reina agrees, but that only applies to the old him. He remarks that he must have been a lousy fiancé, but he swears he'll become a worthy man.

...worthy of what? He asks himself, as Reina reassures him that being open to change already makes him a man better than most others in the Empire. He's not reassured by Reina's words; he's more alarmed at the realization that the Empire is lacking kind men.

Their talk is cut short as Lars is called to speak with the Empress. He promises Reina that he'll keep up with the communication.

Once he stands before Telin, Lars pushes all personal thoughts aside and updates the Empress of their journey so far. As he is granted extra funds, the Empress reminds him that it might be difficult to transfer Empirial currency through banks. However, if he and his companions are willing to work for it, there are multiple mercenary guilds around the world that give money to anyone who is willing to do all sorts of quests. It might also be a good way to hone their skills, be it their prowess in magic and battle, or their wits and judgment.

Lars then asks his cousin if he's gotten softer. Telin agrees that he did, but in a good way. If he can veer further away from the Empire's old customs and traditions, then that might be nice, as the pro-slavery Tenobors will have to make peace with the Veilwings, who serve as leaders of the anti-slavery movement.

Telin makes a small remark about how Lars' father set up the engagement. Lars remembers Agas, so he asks Telin about his father.

The Empress tells him that the Empire has not seen a single trace of Lawrence Tenobor since the night he left with a slave only identified as a Candarian woman. Telin personally knows her uncle as a man so lonely that not even his siblings could make him smile. The only time she ever noticed him being happy was when he studied in Thais' School of War and Magick.

She did not know of any enemies he'd made, and he barely even had friends, save for a certain Isabella Silvertrail, whom he met in Thais. He had an affair with this certain Isabella, but the conservative Tenobors forced him to cease the relationship and marry Rona instead.

Lars leaves the palace filled with thoughts of his elusive father, but he could not refute Telin's musings. Their house in Ghalarah barely had traces of the man’s personal touch, so if he wanted clues, he had to look elsewhere, right?

He spends the rest of the day reading books on demonology, seeking knowledge of this demon called Agas. His research proves futile, and he's in an even worse mood when he rejoins the party and their guests. He'll have to deal with this once they reach Thais, huh?

[conchshell]

I saw that post you reblogged about being obsessed about something and saw your tags about being obsessed with Victorian architecture and now I'm really curious about it. So, tell me anything and everything you know about it!!

You really don’t know what you’ve unleashed here. I could honestly talk for hours about the subject, so in an effort to rein myself in, I’ll talk about an architect who changed both the appearance and ethos behind architecture today within his short and fantastically bizarre life; Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 - 1852), who I’ll refer to as ‘Pugin’ in this. Just to warn you, this is long 😂 although I have put some photos in there to break things up!

To first understand him, it is probably best to first delve into his unusual childhood. Born to free-spirited French refugee Auguste Pugin, and wealthy but austere Catherine Welby, his parents were 50 and 43 respectively when he arrived. Auguste was a draftsman, and with Catherine being the brains behind the operation, the two ran a drawing school out of the attic of their London townhouse. Auguste would regularly sneak out into the dead of night and climb up on the rooftops of public buildings, tying ropes around the waists of his students and lowering them through the rafters to study how the building was constructed. At one point they went to France and accidentally left a student behind. Whoops! (don’t worry, they went back to pick him up).

Pugin showed great promise from an early age, creating architectural designs aged 9, and going on to design furniture designs for Windsor Castle aged 12. He then tried to set up his own company, went bankrupt, and then spent time in a debtors' prison. Following his brief stint behind bars, he then tried to become a Sailor but failed miserably, after he was washed up on the Scottish coast and dragged out of the water by an elderly woman. It was there when he met Architect James Gillespie-Graham, who advised him to abandon sailing in favour of architecture.

Aged 19 he got his first professional job, designing the set of Kenilworth for the Royal Opera House (seen above). And it was there where he met the first of his three wives, Anne Garnet, a stage actress. She fell pregnant, they had a swift marriage, but then she died during childbirth. This was swiftly followed by the death of his father, and then his mother within a matter of months; and 19-year-old Pugin, alone with his newborn daughter, chose to devote his life to architecture to change the trajectory of his and his daughters' life.

Only he did more than that, as he also changed the trajectory of architecture, and the many buildings today (across the world) still show his influences. Pugin converted to Catholicism in 1834, a bold move in a society where discrimination against dissenters from the Church of England was rife. But despite his controversial move, people still contacted him to design buildings. At one point he was commissioned a wall and gateway to a college, but the decision was changed at the last minute as they didn’t want to be seen working with a Catholic. Unhappy with this decision, in the middle of the night Pugin and his men built the wall brick by brick under the cover of darkness - like some sort of guerilla building.

Considered one of the biggest advocates for a revival of medieval styles, Pugin threw himself into the lifestyle; he collected medieval books, studied medieval carvings, and he even dressed in medieval styles. His buildings were whimsical and fantastical, with gargoyles and asymmetrical designs, a stark contrast to the symmetrical and simplistic Georgian styles. But he didn’t stop there, he created designs for wallpapers (seen above), for fabrics, for jewellery, for locks and hinges and keys. If something could be designed, he would do it. It was during this period that his eccentricities began to become more apparent; he was prone to “hysterical moments” and would only work with a select few designers. The most famous of these partnerships was with a man called Herbert Minton, with Pugin persuading Minton to make him a particular type of glazed tile appropriate for his buildings. You’ve probably come across these types of tile before;

It was estimated that by 30 Pugin had built 22 churches, 3 cathedrals, 3 convents, 6 houses, several schools, and a Cistercian monastery. And it didn’t end there; alongside fellow architect Charles Barry, he won a competition to redesign and build the Houses of Parliament following its destruction in a fire. The building itself is a Classical base (due to Barry) with applied Gothic detailing, but it is in the interior of the building that showcases Pugin’s expertise. Sadly, due to his Catholicism, and anti Industrial-Revolution and slavery views, Pugin was noted only as a builder and was paid little for his work, with Barry receiving praise for the construction.

Already struggling with anxiety and depression, Pugin then would regularly see and hear things others couldn’t. He would frantically draw gothic designs, and would only eat foods shaped in the medieval pointed arch. Barry, struggling with demands for the Houses of Parliament, reached out to Pugin and managed to persuade him to design the Elizabeth Tower (known as Big Ben, pictured above). He designed it in a state of mania, and then swiftly fell into an episode where he didn’t recognise his own family. Against the wishes of his wife, he was forcibly drugged and restrained, being placed in the infamous Bedlam Royal Hospital under the listing of “mania without psychotic episodes”.

His third wife, Jane Knill, was the biggest advocate for her husband’s architecture. She fought hard to get his achievements recognised, and created a public petition for her husband to be removed from Bedlam and moved back home. Despite all odds she achieved it, but only a few weeks later he slipped into a coma and died. His funeral was attended by only a select few, and his name slipped from the history books. And sadly, he was swiftly forgotten.

Jane (pictured above with the black parasol, with her daughters-in-law) devoted the rest of her life towards recognition of his achievements, publishing his letters and correspondence, alongside his architectural drawings and contributions. Sadly he didn’t achieve recognition for his effects during her lifetime, but publications regarding him started appearing in the 1970’s. His work changed architecture across the world, and as an advocate against the Industrial Revolution and unfair working conditions, many companies changed their viewpoints towards child labour. His ‘Gothic Revival’ gave birth to the Arts and Crafts movement, and his designs for tall church spires were reused in the skyscrapers of the Art Deco periods. His contributions far exceeded architecture, and thankfully now, people are starting to see the importance of his contributions.

[chaoticspacefam]

🖊🖊 for Ni'kasi and an oc of your choice 👀

Thanks for the ask, Pinky! apparently my brain has decided “gush” means “throw lots of random fun facts at everyone” today so here we go! Here’s your favourite tomato gal! :3

-She and Saarai were always twins and I’d always intended for them to be close, and the bare-bones basic premise of how I wanted their relationship to work was “Saarai is the brawn and Kas is the brains”. While this is still true, it did evolve ever so slightly in that Saarai is now also the (more reliable) moral compass. Kas isn’t particularly Dark-sided, but she’s not Light-sided either, she’s inherited a lot more of mom’s “I will do what I have to to get a job done even if that means I have to kill a bitch” attitude XD

-When I first came up with the idea for the twins, Kas’s name was originally going to be “Jen” which is the High Sith word for “hidden, or in shadow” (”Saarai” is the High Sith word for “Truth”, for reference ;) ) ; so their names joined together would have meant “Hidden Truth”. I don’t remember where Ni’kasi came from because it isn’t an “actual” Sith word nor does it have particular meaning (though I might try to make one up, we’ll see :P), but the very first time I went to write down solid bios for them I ended up writing “Ni’kasi” instead of “Jen” for her and it’s stuck ever since then.

-Initially, Kas’s colour pallette was a lot lighter, which you can see in all of her screenshots up till now (cause I forgot to change her when I changed the design earlier this year oops :’D) and also in this art piece I ordered of her last year, here:

(art is by @/cerculor on deviantART)

and the twins were very darn near close to being identical, but I decided that I actually rather liked their dad’s more purple-ish skintone earlier this year and that it was a shame neither of the twins looked a bit more like him, so I changed Kas up a bit and gave her dad’s skintone, jaw spurs and eye colour. She’s got mom’s red-tinted hair and (mostly) mom’s ridge/browstalk structure though :D

-Great with her own kids and direct blood relatives (e.g. nieces, nephews, grandchildren), but kinda iffy with other, random children. She won’t hurt them but she’s very much D’leah’s child in that respect, she’s very “Sith-y”, and liable to be abrasive, unsympathetic and so on. Generally not the sort of presence you’d want around your kids... there will definitely be tears hahahaha

-The scar on her eye was originally going to be caused by D’leah in the same fight that she gets Saarai’s nose, when Ni’kasi got between them to try and break up the scuffle, but I retconned that instead when I re-thought some stuff about that so now she gets it from the Inquisitors after they figure out who killed Ty’s dad and come after them.

-This is also how Kas ends up in the slave pens, after they kill D’leah they throw Ni’kasi into slavery (which is a bit of plot armour/oversight on the Inquisitors part, I admit but shhh XD) and figure y’know “she’s never gonna get out of there again”. A lot can happen, and be forgotten, in 60 odd years tho so eventually they do throw her back into the Academy much to Kas’s surprise.

-She has a lot more scars other than the one on her eye, just that most of them are on her back, or the back of her neck, so you generally can’t see them (I haven’t drawn a scar ref for her yet, it is also on the to-do list lol)

And we random-rolled Aria for this one, so more Tiny Sith nonsense!

(art is by @/ocellifera on deviantART)

-Aria’s hairstyle and general appearance actually came about because it was based on my second-favourite “portrait” choice for the PC in KOTOR II. She wasn’t how I saw my version of the Exile looking, but I really liked the design (including the little blonde fringe streak) so I decided I wanted to do something with it! <3

-We don’t get to see it much because usually when I draw her she’s back with the Sith and fully into the “Dark side” portion of her story and therefore her eyes are amber, but here you go, a nice glimpse of Aria’s natural eye colour! As mentioned on Myla’s ask, she has heterochromia as well, though her grey is “lighter” than Myla’s as she inherited the grey from dad and the brown from mom (yes I know technically it doesn’t work like that but basically I couldn’t decide which one I liked better so instead of agonising over the choice I went “one of each, problem solved” XD)

-Aria was actually the very first SWTOR-era OC I made, very closely followed by her dad, Roan, and then Vano, then her mom when I worked on her backstory, and followed by everyone else haha. I created her for an RP on an RP site that got a couple of posts in and then died/my partner ghosted me for whatever reason (I’ve never found out nor does it matter really), I was disappointed because I really liked Aria and didn’t get to “do much” with her, so I recycled her when another RP popped up, used that to build her backstory and prompt me to start the Subterfugeverse and then threw her into the Zephyrverse AU RP with my buddy k-christine once she got back in touch and we started RPing again :D -Aria gave me the most trouble (other than maybeee Saarai) in terms of finally nailing down what her sexuality was. I had no idea what she’d be at all when I first made her, other than I knew this binch wasn’t straight hahaha. So first, I defaulted her to bi, but then that didn’t seem to fit her much (I didn’t know pansexuality was a thing at the time), then during my self-projection phase I considered leaving her as just a lesbian but she wasn’t happy with that either and eventually I figured out pan is a thing and she started jumping up and down and screaming HELLO YEAH THAT ONE!! at me. The only thing that was for sure obvious to me was that she’s demiromantic, because while she can get around and doesn’t care who with (insert “will fuck anything (humanoid) with a pulse” joke here), the romantic feelings often attached to that for other people take a long time to develop for Aria.

[gabriel4sam]

Hi! I’m so sorry you’ve had this news. If you need distraction, how about Carry On by Fun. For Cody/Obi-Wan, Rex/Obi-Wan, or Cody/Obi-Wan/Rex, whichever you prefer!

Thank you for the prompt! 

Under the cut, a little CodyWan ficlet!

 Cody remembers Obi-Wan on a space station, just at the beginning of the night shift. For a moment, it seems the pain will break him. And not only emotionally: his heart is determined to beat itself out of his chest, his stomach is revolting, his skin is clammy, and his guts are tying themselves into knots.

For a moment, Cody thinks of not carrying on without the man he loved until Order 66 put his soul offline. He doesn’t think about blasting his brain out alone in his bunk, no, but he thinks of going to the machine rooms and taking the entire ship with him in an explosion worthy of the Team, or to arrive on the bridge and kill the Grand Moff they are transporting to their new posting.

For a moment, he thinks of revenge, and the sweet oblivion of death and the desire for an end is so intense he can taste it on the tip of his tongue, the moment he will spat blood and his last breath.

But he doesn’t. He simply takes his shift hours later, and when they disembark the Grand Moff in the Outer Rim, quietly slips out and loses himself on a planet which name he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t care where his feet upon its foreign ground take him only that it’s away from slavery.

Little by little, Cody learns that he can carry on, despite the ghosts roaming his brain. Despite the memory of Obi-Wan’s body falling in that fourth-damn canyon and despite his brothers lost free will and not knowing what happened to so many friends.

He doesn’t search for the Rebel Alliance. It’s still a burgeoning movement, and he could help build something, but he knows himself too raw yet. He knows his first engagement against the Empire would be the last one.

Cody build himself up, pieces after pieces. He finds a job, for an herbal tea vendor in the market, and doesn’t smile when thinking how Obi-Wan would find that hilarious, since Cody always classified his own beloved teas as dirty water. After a time, the former Commander even develops a taste for some of them. But only some of them.

Cody carries on. He learns who he is. Not the Commander, not the vode, not Obi-Wan’s lover, or Rex’s friend, or the older brother, or the soldier, or the warrior.

He learns who Cody is.

Cody loves the scent of spring on his new world and hates rain.

Cody loves shellfish but has no particular taste for meat, whatever the animal.

Cody falls asleep when he tries to read poetry, but can watches dozen of not-so different plots in Rhodian soap operas without getting bored.

Cody adopts a little singing lizard with blue scales and a missing leg, which he rescues one day of a band of little miscreants in the market.

Cody learns gardening of his old landlady, a charming Mon Calamari.

Cody, twice a month, authorizes himself two drinks, no more, at a local cantina, and sometimes he even lets people picks him up. Whoever tries that night and is aesthetically pleasing. He learns that he loves all sort of gender and species and that what Obi-Wan and him explored was only scratching the surface. He refuses to feel guilty. If he was dead and Obi-Wan alive, he would wish for him to move one.

Exactly four years after arriving on the planet, Cody packs his belongings and his lizard and goes in search of the Rebel Alliance.

He has learnt that he can live without war. He has also learnt that he can’t live letting the Empire grows more every day.

He has learnt more about Cody. He has learnt that Cody can stand on his own. That Cody can carry on without Obi-Wan and build a life. That he isn’t just a half, a lover, a missing piece. He’s a human being, no matters how unorthodox his birth.

Of course, the first person he sees in the freshly founded Alliance HQ, when he arrives with Rex, Gregor and Wolffe, is Obi-Wan, greyer, more tired, something he didn’t think possible, but very, very much alive.

Cody almost goes back up that ramp and into the ship.

But he’s strong and is own person. If he can carry on thinking he killed Obi-Wan, he can do too, if Obi-Wan doesn’t like that new person he discovered inside himself. And if Obi-Wan does, they can learn together who they are in this new world, not a General and his Commander, but two rebels, simply two men.

Cody descends from the ship and carry on.

[dailyaudiobible]

01/18/2021 DAB Transcript

Genesis 37:1-38:30, Matthew 12:22-45, Psalms 16:1-11, Proverbs 3:27-32

Today is the 18th day of January welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian, and it is wonderful to greet the new day and move into this brand-new week, how yesterday as we began this week the Psalms and the Proverbs gave us such practical wisdom. And the way the life is to not let wisdom and understanding out of our site. And, so, let's build upon that. Let’s carry that with us into this week continually. And let’s continue this rhythm that we have started, oh, just 18 days ago…well…17 days ago. We’re just getting’ started but so much has happened and so much has already been spoken over us and into us and we’re starting to see the rhythm that the Bible in our lives each day in community brings. So, we’re reading from the New International Version this week, picking up from yesterday. Genesis chapter 37 and 38.

Commentary:

Okay. Let's catch ourselves up in the book of Genesis because we covered some ground and we’ve met a bunch of people and read a lot of different names. So, let's just revisit…revisit the story we’re telling and the family story that we’re telling. Abraham and his wife Sarah, right? Abraham had two sons, Ishmael through Hagar. And the Ishmaelites spread out and became the land or the nation of Edom. That region today is like southern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. And then we read of his offspring, his progeny. They’re spread forth. And we read of the different chiefs and we…we have and will read of the chiefs of Israel. So, one thing that we can say that we are clearly rooted in is a tribal time upon the earth, an earlier time, different customs, different convictions, different things that matter in different ways than they do today. So, when we try to back read 21st-century culture into something that’s thousands and thousands of years old upon the earth we can get lost. We have to read into the time and try to get ourselves into the time and just understand what was going on so that we can glean from the stories, right? It’s easy enough to look at some of these stories and go like, “ugh…I can’t imagine that they did that like that. I can’t imagine that that's in the Bible. We would never do that today.” Fair enough. We’re thousands and thousands of years…like thousands and thousands of years in the future. I mean we can look back just as century just 100 years and look at things that we would not do that way ever anymore and “why would they think that? And why would they do that?” They did what they did because that's how they did things when they did things in the time that they were in. And believe me 100 years from now or 500 years from now are a thousand years from now should the Lord tarry they will look back upon how we did things now and wonder why we did the things that we did because aren’t we wondering it? Aren’t we wondering why we do some of the things that we do? So, we just have to let the time be the time and the culture be the culture and what's going on be what's going on and look at the heart of the matter as we go forward. So, Ishmael and then the son of promise, Isaac. Isaac had his firstborn, Esau and his second born, Jacob. Jacob and all of the conniving that went on ended up having the birthright and having the father's blessing and basically everything that Isaac owned. Lots of problems happened between Jacob and Esau. In fact, Esau wanted to kill Jacob, so he had to flee, and he was gone for decades. During those decades he had 12 children. We've met all of those kids. They are pretty much all grown and now where we’re at in the story Jacob's name was changed by God to Israel making his children the…the children of Israel. That's how we have the children of Israel. And each one of these men will be tribal leaders of tribes that are named after them because it's their progeny. And over the top of all of what we just said, and all of the people there is a promise of a land. We know it as the Promised Land. God entered into a covenant with Abraham and gave the land to him, telling him that through him the nations would be blessed. So, that is the trajectory. Like that is the thing that's tying all of these people together. There’s this promise. So, God reveals this promise to Abraham then he reveals it to his son Isaac and then he reveals it to his son Jacob or Israel - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, right? We will hear them mentioned together as we continue forward into the Bible - the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These are known as the patriarchs. So, one of these children of Israel his name is Joseph and we met him today. He's a 17-year-old kid, good-looking guy, full of all of the things that a 17-year-old guy would be full of including arrogance and fearlessness and no way to assess the risks that they might be taking with the words that they're using. And, so, he has some dreams. These dreams…actually this is very important that he is beginning to have dreams. And trying just to begin to maybe understand how to think about what these dreams might mean, that is going to play a huge role in Joseph's life and in the entire story of the Promised Land. But right now, where we are in the story, he’s…yeah…I mean his brothers just…they know their father favors him. And he's probably being a 17-year-old little punk, right, to his pig brothers, enough that they hate him anyway, enough that they grow to hate him. And when they see him coming, they hate him enough to decide to kill him. And, so, they throw him in a cistern. Now, not all the brothers are on board with killing their brother. Some of them aren't. One of them wants to get him back to his father. In the end they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites. And we just talked about who they were. And what we see in the Bible here now, is Joseph's brothers selling Joseph into slavery. We see the first act, at least in Scriptures of deliberate human trafficking. And we will at length be spending time with Joseph and his story after he is sold by his brothers and ends up in Egypt.

Okay, and then we need to talk about Matthew because Jesus talks about something that is like unforgivable, like the unpardonable sin. That's…that's what it was…that's how it was known as I was growing up. He talks about something unforgivable and the unforgivable thing is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. And the context of this is that Jesus now…I mean we’ve been traveling with Jesus. We've found out his family line. We…we saw His birth. We’ve seen his baptism. He's been ministering. We've seen His kind of posture of wanting to keep when He does a healing or a miraculous thing to keep it on the down low. Like, we’re just learning His personality. But Jesus keeps getting in trouble. And we’re watching what He's doing and should…we should scratch our heads and go. “why would you get in trouble? Why would He be in trouble for making the blind see? Like why would He be in trouble for throwing out the oppressive spirits that were tormenting somebody? Like why?” Why would that… and…who's getting Him in trouble? Like who is against Him? The religious people. The religious people, the Pharisees are against Him. In fact today for the first time we see them deciding to find a way to kill Jesus. So, there is an obvious disconnect. Jesus is upon the earth doing the will of God and saying, “something great is happening. Something great is among you.” He is revealing that the kingdom is already among them and with them. And He's operating in that kingdom which is how these things are happening. And all they can do is try to frame Jesus and His power as power coming from beelzebul, coming from the devil, like coming from the forces of evil, that Jesus is doing good by the forces of evil. And He almost laughed, He’s like, “how can a kingdom divided like that even exist? Like what you're saying doesn't make any sense.” Of course, when Jesus filets what they're saying, when He…when He basically calls out what's really going on, we talked about this the other day - when light shines into the darkness what is squirming into the darkness does not want to be exposed. It wants to shut out the light. And that's what we see happening here. And the irony is its not people just people trying to live their lives. It's the religious leadership that wants to do away with Jesus. And, so, it's kinda in this context of them accusing Jesus of doing what He's doing or having the power that He has because He's a disciple of evil and…and what He's doing is being done by the dark powers of evil. That's when Jesus basically says, “you can…you can say things about me. You say things about the Son of Man but if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit and hold that conviction then there’s…it’s a nonstarter.” So, what is blasphemy? Let me just read the definition out of the dictionary. Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity or sacred objects or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. So, Jesus is basically saying, “you can say bad things about me but when you begin to declare that the work of God that is coming through me and the outflow of that power that is bringing the kingdom by healing the sick, when it is clear that what God is doing is good even though it rewires your paradigm and you don't understand it when you call it of the devil you are blaspheming the Holy Spirit. You are calling God's work among God's people the works of darkness.” Where this gets close to home is when we use words like, “that is of the devil.” Now it might be…it might be but when we just sort of say it flippantly like…we don't understand how God could be working through that person who’s an obvious heathen of some sort like, or that we just don't agree with theologically, and we think that they are just deceiving people but God's good still is happening, God still is working and we say…we just dismiss them, they are of the devil. That's pretty scary stuff friends. We better think really, really clearly if we’re gonna make those kinds of declarations because that is exactly what the Pharisees were doing to Jesus and that is exactly why He said what He said. One thing that we’re going to find out, and it will be a fairly common theme, fairly relentless all the way through the Bible is that the things that we say, they matter. The power of life and death is in the tongue. And we will find that our words are the way we tell the story, right? And this is how we’re writing the story of our lives. And if our lives are full of cursing people made in the image of God or cursing the things that God is doing because we don't understand them, well that's not going anywhere.

Prayer:

Father, we enter into that. But it's not always easy to know. And this isn’t even a category we’re normally even paying attention…but You’ve brought a brand-new category that's pretty significant in the way that we live right front and center. Like we watched You Jesus do this in the time that You did Your ministry a couple of thousand years ago. But what You were bringing front and center is no less in need of being front and center now. The things that we do matter. We are all connected. And this transformative process that we are in is making us one. We will see this. We will pray this, that we would be one as You and the Father are one. So, this transformative process is knitting us together as Your body in this world. And we cannot…we cannot keep cursing parts of the body because we don't understand it. We need Your discernment. We need the voice of wisdom in our lives and we probably need to bite our tongues a whole lot more than we are. Come Holy Spirit into this we pray right here at the front part of the year because this can transform the year. Like this…if we pay attention to what we are saying and what we are blessing and what we are cursing, if we pay attention to this the whole complexion of the year's gonna change. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

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dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is…it's the web address, it's the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And, of course, the Daily Audio Bible app brings us all of those things as well.

And shout out for the app. Like if you’re not using the app, that is definitely the best community experience and that is definitely where we continue to build and develop the experience of community and moving through the rhythm of the Bible in a year. And, so, once you’ve registered for the app then you…it helps you keep track of what days you're on and how far…the progress that you're making. And as we move through different sections of the Bible it…it…it awards us. It like, it lets us know, “hey you just completed the Gospels” or “you’ve just completed the Torah.” As we continue forward then we’ll…we’ll just be able to mark the sections of the Bible as we move through them. And the Prayer Wall is there of course. It’s just a…yeah…if you don't have the app, or if you haven’t used the app in a very very very long time…yeah…come back. Come back and check out the out app. It is definitely the way to stay connected. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com on the web but you can also do it in the app by pressing the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. And I thank you. I Thank you with all my heart, truly. It's…I mean there are days that I'm just in awe that like we’re in year 16, seven days a week doing this because we've been in this journey…on this journey together for…for all these years and we’ve been in community. And, so, thank you for your partnership. So, talked about the website, talked about the Give button in the app. If you prefer mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button. That’s in the app as well no matter where you are in the world, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello neighbors this is Lisa the Encourager I’m calling today to wish all of our newcomers in 2021 a very happy welcome with tons and tons of virtual confetti. I’m throwing up in the air and it’s landing on your head and I hope you have a big smile on your face because this is absolutely gonna change your life from this year going forward. I never realized when I first turned on the Daily Audio Bible and made it a goal that I just wanted to read through the Bible or listen to the Bible in a year. And five years later I’ve never stopped. It is just amazing that the way that Brian presents the word of God to us. It becomes such a pattern in your life and such an amazing force that will absolutely change your life. And I’m looking forward to hearing from all of you and hearing your stories and how God has blessed and change your life. I also wanted to reach out to Radiant Rachel and just give her some kudos that last year when you were reading all those prayers over your husband and sharing them with us in different types of areas of improvement for your…for your husband. And I was saying them over my husband as well and I’ve seen such a change in his life and I just wanted to thank you so much and I believe Ben is your son and he’s just so adorable. And I also want to thank him. So, I thank you all so much. I love you all and I pray that you all have a wonderful 2021 and blessings and that the Lord will shine His face upon all of you. God bless. Lisa the Encourager.

Hi family this is Biola from Maryland. Happy new year. We want to thank God for bringing us into 2021. We want to thank God for His goodness in our lives as a family, Daily audio Bible. I have been a part of this beautiful community the year Jill was pregnant with Ezekiel. And I was there, you know, praying along while she was in labor and Brian had told us to pray and all of that. Well, over the years I’ve been faithful. And just, you know, listening to the Bible over and over and over again is addictive you know? Well, I just want to say God bless you all. Welcome to all our new members. Everyone that found Daily Audio Bible God bless you. I want to reach out to my sister, my new sister in the Lord in London Zinab. Zinab welcome. I pray in the name of Jesus that the Holy Spirit who drew you even to Christ to come to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and then to find this app. That Holy Spirit will help you to grow. I pray Philippians 2:13 over you my dear sister, that God will continue to give you the desire and the power to walk…to…to walk in Him as His child, to learn, to hunger and thirst for Him, to learn more and more about Him so that you will grow in your faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is not a religion my sister this is a personal walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And I pray that He will delight you at every turn in Jesus’ name. The other sister who is new hat called in. She’s in her final year in college. Sister, I pray that God will help you, that He will give you the spirit of excellence and wisdom and understanding and you will not be stressed anymore in the name of Jesus. Lastly, family I want to encourage you this is a new year. Give to Daily Audio Bible through your...

Hey, my name is Karis I am me from South Carolina I am 17 both my parents listen to this. So, hey. Yeah, this is my first time calling in. I just started listening at the beginning of the year. I listened to DADB Chronological a while back but this my first time here and I am just so shocked at how…how close this family is and how vulnerable everybody is being with their prayer requests. So, I wanted to come on here and just give Alexis some encouragement. You were talking about just…you needed some prayer for fear of man and getting over that. And, so, I wanted to read you this Bible verse. It’s from Matthew 10:28. It says, “don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” I am also in high school. I’m a senior. And I get it. I get not wanting people to talk about you, not wanting people to think bad things about you. You want to please everybody around you. I really understand that. And, so, I just want to give you encouragement and let you know that you’re not alone in that. And then I wanted to let Steve from South Carolina know that I’m praying for you and your daughter who has breast cancer. That is a really scary thing. And, so, I’m just praying for you. Thank you all so much for being so vulnerable.

Good morning this message is Yvonne from New York. I heard your message about caring for your elderly mom and I’m here to encourage you. Since then, you’ve been raised with Christ. Set your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand. Set your mind on things above not on earthly things. Therefore, as God’s chosen people holy and dearly loved cloth yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgive you and bind these altogether with love. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to be…called to peace and be thankful. Yvonne, I’m praying for you that you will take in all of this word. You are dearly loved. You have been given a new heart and it is soft. You are not what you see. You are not what your mom is. You are what God says you are. And, so, you receive this word Yvonne and go on and read this. It’s Colossians chapter 3. Read it for yourself and take it in. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And whatever you do whether in word or deed and in caring for your mom do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. You are blessed Yvonne. You are blessed. You are an inspiration to me and so many others. So, I’m rejoicing in the Lord for you. I love sister. Be blessed.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is All the Treasures from Wyoming. I’m calling…I’ve actually been wanting to call for a while. Still don’t have my thoughts completely wrapped around what I want to share but at the end of last year just a couple weeks ago Brian challenged us when he was talking about New Year’s resolutions. And the words that he spoke kind of stopped me in my spiritual tracks. And he talked about what if my New Year’s resolution would be to have God delight in me. And I still don’t know what to do with that because I realized that thought had never in all my years of being a Christian, that thought had never entered my mind. I love Jesus so much like you all do and I love the gift of being able to delight in Him. I love loving Him, but I’ve never really thought about Him delighting in me. And I still can’t imagine that yet. But I think mostly it’s because I see myself through the eyes of my failures. I know I’m forgiven. I don’t live in failure. But I still have deep sorrow and regret over them. And, so, I envision Jesus loving me but I can’t imagine Him delighting in me. So, I have been wanting to call and to share that with you guys and maybe there’s others who feel that way. If so, we can just pray for each other to get his eyes to see…

Hey DAB family this is your sister Julie in Idaho and I just wanted to share something really cool that happened yesterday. Unfortunately, the winds were pretty powerful up in the panhandle of Idaho yesterday and it blew some trees over on the power lines and so we were without power for a good 24 hours. And what was really cool about that is that I happen to have the God of Your Story and I thinking, “I’m gonna miss my DAB today. What am I gonna do?” And then I remembered I have the God of Your Story by Brian. And I bought it last year. And I’m telling you it was such a treasure to have yesterday because I missed all of you so much but I was able to get out my own Bible, my paper Bible and the God of Your Story and I felt like you were still there with me around the Global Campfire. So, if that happens to you or if you’re in a place that gets a lot of power outages you might want to think about investing in the God of Your Story. And even…even if your power isn’t going out to just invest in that and maybe go through it every day after you listen to DAB and actually physically read your own paper Bible. It really brings another dimension into the God of our story. So, Brian I thank you for your resources. They have been treasures to me ever since I started about…I think I’m going on my sixth year now. But I can’t even imagine not doing this every year and I can’t imagine you guys not being there with me around the Global Campfire. You are my family. You are my church and I love you. And welcome to all my new brothers and sisters. And those of you that are sitting on the fence, please get off and come over and sit by the fire. Put a log on. We love having you I love hearing voices from all over the world. I love you and I can’t wait to all be with you someday around the real campfire, the heavenly campfire.

[shieldedsouls]

The death of Freyja 

warnings for the following: murder & genocide, victim blaming, abuse, child abuse, slavery, war, child marriage, domestic abuse

please take care of yourself first. this background has heavily mature content, triggering content, and may be intense. it will be placed under a readmore for initial posting but the post will eventually be made fully visible to the dash later on. if you do not want to read the actual content but would still like a summary, please let me know and i’ll figure out a more sfw/friendly-ish way to explain without going into detail.

please please message me if additional warnings or tags are needed.

please do NOT reblog.

     Freyja is a child, one of the younger ones in Vanaheim. She’s raised intensely tied to the magic of her people and their realm, learning quickly and adapting quite naturally even for those close to her age, and her skill develops fast. Once it’s safe and not unwieldy she begins training with weapons as well, finding a particular taste for daggers and curved short blades that match both her speed and are easy to tie with her magic. Her parents, her people, are proud of Freyja for being so powerful without abandoning her own self.

        She’s still a child when the war happens. Old enough to know the dangers if her people lose but too young to be considered part of the fight. She sees friends give their all to try power defenses and buy time, sees family fall to an army that seems to never end. Sees her world burn as the Aesir chase Vanir out of places good for ambushes, and them driven away from temples that are dismantled and destroyed. The circle that closes around them proves to be a noose, the Aesir army choking off her people and cutting down those she used to be sure could never fall to anything but perhaps age.

    Freyja is part of the children that are rounded up and captured, a rather final way of making the adults that are left to surrender. She kicks and screams with an unforgiving hand holding so tight to her hair that some is certainly torn out, her feet barely touching the ground. She feels sick when she sees the way the Aesir leader looks at her, can feel the way her magic tries to protect her from the gaze and the way it breaks when her parents are swiftly deposed right in front of her. Odin there calculating and indifferent as the leather of her clothing soaks in the blood now covering her. 

                           He’s the one who says taking a bride would end the war. 

     Again with the gaze, and he doesn’t seem to notice or care about the tears down her face, though he barks out an order when her brother moves to try protecting her like their parents had wanted to. Only then does Freyja’s voice find words that aren’t half-nonsensical curses, desperate to protect her people. Herself for her people wasn’t so bad a trade after all, was it? She could stop the murder. Could save their world from a complete wipeout, give the rest a fighting chance to recover. She could protect everyone left; she knew what he wanted, of course.

                                                        She could save her people.

   Freyja pretends not to hear her brother’s protests or angry oaths, offering herself on the singular condition that the rest of the Vanir, the rest of the realm, be spared. Part of their magic is their word, so if he accepts there’s no running. She knows he knows, can see the way Odin considers very carefully, but still there’s some note of victory when he nods and holds his hand out to her. Expectant. Demanding. The last thing she ever does as a free girl is give an apologetic look to her brother, keeping her eye on him until the pair of them have walked too far for her to still see him. All she can think after that is how small her hand feels in the Asgardian’s, how many steps she has to take just to keep up with him. How her entire being cries out when her feet leave the ground of their realm for the final time and she can feel the pain of the forest at losing another daughter. The king doesn’t even let her see Vanaheim fade into the distance as he takes his leave.

      Mere hours later Freyja has been scrubbed clean and dressed in fineries she’s never seen the like of before, in materials she’s never touched in the past. The few tattoos she already had are covered up by first some sort of concealing make-up and then again with glamours she can’t undo herself, every braid undone and every bead removed, and by the time she sees her reflection there’s no recognition of the girl staring back. She looked Aesir, she realises miserably, and feels hollow inside. Is this what it feels like to die?

   Freyja looks Asgardian for the wedding, for the horrid ceremony she’d already bound herself to go through because of her word. Can feel herself choking as each vow ties her being to Odin and his control, shrinking her magic to be contained in some tiny disposable box. Then he calls her by name and every fiber of her being both wants to tear away in disgust and come closer in obedience. He waits until the seal is nearly complete, tying her to this foreign name in this foreign world and to a foreign people while erasing the last connection she was going to cling to Vanaheim with.

       He calls her Frigga. He calls her his. She wanted nothing more than to cut his head off.

  But by then it’s too late. Word has done it, magic worked its power, and he was now her husband and king. The taste that thought leaves in her mouth is bitterer than any poison could be, but there is now nothing to do but obey her newest duties. She is now a queen by title, but she knows she’s not more than a play thing in a gilded cage, and he had just clipped her wings off completely. There would never be any escape for her unless he dies, which the Aesir do not do according to the same laws of living that mortal beings do. She falls asleep that night in pain and sure this is what death feels like. But she’d protected her people.

                                                 So she thinks until the next morning.

     Some high-rank soldier came to the king with news of a bloodied realm and a handful of leftover living Vanir who had been threatened into submission. She wants to scream and fight, to declare Odin bound by their vows the same way she is, but nothing more happens than a trembling lower lip. He’d stripped her of innocence, of power, of voice. He’d made her a husk that her own people weren’t going to recognise after less than a day apart.

                                He had killed Freyja and buried her in Frigga the Queen.

        The Allmother, companion to his being Allfather. Proof he had defeated Vanaheim and taken what he wanted, evidence she would never again trust him even if she couldn’t act against him. Queens don’t cry in front of slaves, and though her broken heart tries to reach out to what remains of her people, even her brother doesn’t recognise her as she stands. Then he’s bound from ever seeing her again so long as Odin reigns, and it’s only as he’s being dragged away that horror strikes in seeing what the Aesir did to his baby sister, only as he vanishes from sight for the final time with a scream of a dead girl’s name that Frigga drops her gaze.

        It’s sad, isn’t it, to die and be forced to continue walking around as though uninjured.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Fairy Tail 100 Years Quest Chapter 12 Review

Oh my god... What the heck is even going on?

So our cover page is Natsu and Lucy, and Natsu I hope you enjoy that brain freeze.

So we open on Jellal confronting Touka. We learn like how Avatar was devoted to black magic there was a group devoted to white magic. Now this is cool, but literally if you watch the anime recently, that arc was done in 5 episodes. So this feels really odd on how much effort is being put into it.

Like if there was like something tying into Tenrou or hell edolas, that make more sense, given all thee time on it.

So Jellal describes White magic as a philosophy of nothingness, which that doesn’t make sense. Fans of yugioh gx might compare this the darkness and light in that series and how darkness led to creation while light was subjugation. But Black magic is clearly about ending life or manipulating life. I guess you could dumb it down to all life, but literal Ankherseram black magic is portrayed as nothing but death. So wouldn’t white be about life? I guess nothingness as life without personality isn’t wrong,  but this feels like a stretch.

Also, Mashima said anyone could learn any type of magic. So why is that an abnormality? Like if this was Black Clover where you are assigned a single affinity that be one thing.

Suddenly Laxus steps in, and want to make this clear. I don’t exactly hate the idea behind this. That Laxus wants to defend someonew ho is a part of his family, given his new found view on FT, and its using the family aspect of FT on its head. Someone bad could be using FT’s family mentality for personal benefit. Which is interesting.

Okay, well Jellal has a reason, she is  suspect and as a guild master he has authority to take her in. However, Laxus you of all people know that people in your guild will still harm it.

On the one hand im torn, the shounen loving half of my brain wants to see this fight. But the logical half says that these two are mature adults with enough common sense to take this to the run knights. And confrontation is over after this page.

Yeah for a chapter named after the two, its got very little to do with theem. Instead.... The worst thing in the chapter happens. We cut to Diablos’ ship and we see this.

Yes you are seeing this right. For people who were saying I was to harsh, calling this a submissive Erza fetish that Mashima is putting out, I ask you read this chapter.

You know I can’t tell if Skullion means this is temporary as in terms of magic, or temporary as Kyria will grow bored, but I do know that this is nothing but sick and tastess. Also props to Madmorel for having some class to be disgusted by the perv in the group. Like that is becoming a rarity these days.

We are guided down to the lower deck where natsu and wendy are being held, the motion sickness keeping them in check.

I’ve been putting this off long enough, its time to rant. This is bull shit. People told me, i was too harsh on mashima, but at the least I thought this was some sort of temporary thing that was meant so Kyria could get a win in a fight, but this might be some permanent magic effect feels disgusting.

Now, people say that this happened cause people would rag on Erza, called Erza fights awful, and that now Mashima is going in the complete opposite dirction. You didn’t like strong erza, fine! Here’s weak Erza, you happy cynics?

But that’s not the case. People didn’t like Erza because she was “too strong” she was someoone who went from this amazing badass female character, to this static friendship speech spewing tool that never truly got any development. Its painful for people to see a character like Erza not grow after she had developed so much in ToH, but it just was never followed through. All the times she won just felt like a poor spectacle without any character behind it.

Now you could say an erza who needs to get her strength back could be character development. No. Cutting away a person’s strength with “magic” is not character development, its forced regression. Its the author literally creating an unrealistic situation bcause he has no idea what to do with her  after ToH, hell he can’t even fully commit to a love story between her and jellal.

When Erza came onto the scene, she was cool, in control, yet could over react at times. To see her be pushed to her lowest by ToH and then recover and face midnight in OS, is peak Erza character shining through. That this is how erza’s development deserved to be treated. But Watching Erza crawl on the ground, be spanked, and cry for mercy like a hentai doll, all because of plot convince magic is so gross to me. Its ejecting the Erza that we all love and stripping her of all that personality just for this.

So if you blame this development on people who were too hard on Mashima about how he was writing Erza, I, a critic and very judgemental person, find this worse than any of the nakama power or skimpy armors.

Erza being trapped in Kyoka’s sex dungeon was bad, but you know what, EErza actievly resisted it. She didn’t want to be there aand tried to fight back. It wasn’t handled well, but that t least felt like whatt her character would do in this situation. But this was forced upon her and this is nothing more than an Erza made for this arc.

Also, lets step out of this and look at this from the meta perspective that this is also extremely lazy. In Eden’s zero there’s a villain who is all about subjugating women right now, and Mashima couldn’t be bothered to not let that bleeed into his other work. If that doesn’t scream creately lazy, than I don’t know what will. Also that frog thing in Eden’s zero is actuaally better giveen the fact he’s not mind bending away personality, he’s forcibly turning them in statues to do with what he pleases against their will.

Im not saying this cause im anti ecchi or that im anti  mashima, im anti such a hack story writting device that weather you stuck it out as a fan of erza’s till the end of FT or liked her at first but than soured on her, I ask, would you tolerate this? I’m not claiming ownership of the character of Erza, but I am asking do you think that this is worth a character arc because our author couldn’t think of anything better to do with her. You know if you knew Erza was so strong,Ad that in actuality she would sweep away most threats, why did you bring her? I honestly would’ve preferred Jellal and Erza being out of the action cause they had a kid or something. Erza having to pick between biological family and her guild family seems like a better direction to take her character in than this.

To see Erza cry because someone’s magic made her into a slave is so lacking in power than say the sheer emotional weight of watching simon die. Like this is shit is just awful.

We cut to Luccy and here is where I get to credit thee art. Sure Lucy is in a bikini, but what matters in frame is the wounds on her legs. Which is a nice us of having aa skimpy dress and not sexualizing it.

We get a flashback of Lucy realizing Kyriaa took her friends and this is where I give Caramille a big fuck you. Oh sure, this did happen after they showed up, but Diabolos clearly was going to find the place eventually and more importantly, you did fuck all. Like, go screw cause you have contributed literally nothing.

We find out that there is another ship in the area and that Gray is okay because he was saved by you can guess who...

Okay on the one hand, this definitely seems like Brandish’s kind of entrance, but on the other. Fuck you, Hiro. Like she just passed by and saved Gray? Hw? The entire ocean was either freezing or evaporating, what is your range? Also, who is in charge of Alverez? Yajeel? Oi...

Post Chapter Follow up: Its easy to say why I don’t like this chapter. I feel so sick by the sheer amount of laziness and disgust in the slave Erza plot. Like, my god this is so wrong. Not because of the subject, human slavery makes sense in a series aimed at teenagers, but the sheer disrespect that Hiro treated this character, made my blood boil. At the very least in Alvarez, Erza still seemed like she was the same character from beginning of the series.

People who follow me weekly on this review series are probably going to ask when I will stop harping on this Erza thing. Well each week, it  somehow get worse and more gross.  First time it felt like a cheap win, second it was bad use of domination, now this is full blown fetish material.

As for the brandish thing, I know why she is here, Lucy is literally not strong enough to handle 3 DE’s by herself with a few exceeds, and I’d accept that Brandish reentering the series. But maybe leave out Gray? I guess you could say that this is a subversion of the Musica captured by Doryu, but this feels lazier. You could’ve just made this a big “step up Lucy plot,” but no, had to save Gray, even though Skullion should’ve notice when his magic didn’t actually ash up Gray. Plus think about, if they save save Natsu and Wendy this arc and beat these three dragon eaters, wouldn’t some added bit of tension to the quest be finding diablos’s hideout and saving Gray from the “dinner table?”And I was cool with the kidnapped gray thing, but no, we had to have kidnapped everyone else.Also if he was made small how did he survive the water? Like he’s the size of a pin, he’d drown.

Now the stuff with Laxus and Jellal is actually fairly good Its an interesting take on FTs standards vs the consequences of their past when we are suppose to be rooting for Touka to be extracted. And involving two characters that really have been in the moral gray spectrum make them the most qualified for this subject matter. While i definitely didn’t like the Touka plot at first from how disconnected it was from everything (and it really is kinda shoed in on this point) it still is the more interesting plot. It has more intresting ideas than, “more dragons” and is involving the characters that come off as the most interesting.

Final Verdict: 3/10

There is clearly some interesting idea at work here

However, the way the plotline for the dragon portion of this arc has become a mess

I don’t use this phrase lightly, “Erza literally deserves better than this”

Plot convince playhouse at its finest

[obiternihili]

Something about property rights

I felt like I needed to rant yesterday and decided to adapt the discord messages into a tumblr post.

I spent most of a class this morning thinking about the Anglo interpretations and notions of property rights, trying to actually contrast it with workable alternative notions of property rights and feeling kind of hopeless about it and finding it hard to actually come up with anything that isn't literally communism.

And in retrospect it made the whole “philosophically questioning the whole notion of property rights” feel more, idk, respectable than it had before, when it just sounded like the USSR and China opposed its inclusion in the UDHR for technical reasons or pure self interest in covering their own atrocities.

The whole thing started with thinking about the Zapatist slogan “la tierra es de quién la trabaja”. “The land belongs to those who work it.” To me, the Zapatistas were pretty cool guys, who sided with the little guy and the indigenous peoples of México. But I thought immediately about how a colonial American might react to it, and I couldn’t escape the idea that they’d hear the slogan and go, “ah, yes, we should kill the savages and steward the land correctly”.

As much as the magna carta is held up as this great precursor to democratic rights in this country, its origins are far more dismal and petty. It wasn’t really a democratic impulse, it was more like a bunch of petty-kings coordinated to overwhelm a high king. But it doubtlessly had a strong effect on feudalism and came to be a part of English identity before that even really made sense from a modern perspective. In short it came off almost as a promise that “every man is a king of his own home” and that helped to make property itself sacrosanct.

So when capitalism changed the people’s relationship with the land, the serfs were “liberated” as the commons were siezed by their de jure owners. The collapse of the commons fundamentally changed people’s relationships with property, exacerbating the whole “every man is a king of his own house” issue, and making property the be-all-end-all of basic needs like shelter. To the degree that the Magna Carta made property sacrosanct, in a literal “this is a divinely appointed right” sort of sense, the collapse of the commons codified exactly what that meant, making that sacrosanctity intrinsic to thriving.

So because of tying these issues together so deeply, it made sense to steal the lands of people “not working it” according to how you might work it. So that it made sense to go to war because the yankees were stealing your chattel, and horror of horrors not even repurposing them! So that telling South Africa “hey, no, black people are people too” was unholy, violating their sacred authority to clean their own house. So it makes sense that Australia continues to break promises to its Aboriginal communities, if, say, their homes have a potentially profitable mine to work. So it makes sense that Canada breaks promises to its indigenous population, if there’s an oil pipeline they can lay. So that it made sense, paradoxically, for the US to strong arm México into changing articles of its constitution about indigenous land rights in order to pass NAFTA and be able to threaten to go United Fruit Company on the people for not being profitable to the corporations. And the EZLN, which formed directly because of the anxieties of these moves as the Maya genocide was still very fresh on everyone’s minds, are neo-Zapatistas; the land belongs to the one who works it! The Maya who always has, or the companies that want to (exploit it)? 

I remember once as a teen confronting the attitudes this bears on a small chan.

Before the BLM stuff, actually regarding OWS and those "rich punks arguing for socialism with their iphones" and shit;  I'd made an off hand comment about things not being worth more than lives at some point and someone replied "I'd totally kill someone if they stole my phone".

I made a comment in utter exasperation (this was on a board that was like /pol/ before that was really what it is now and there was no reason to believe they weren't serious), saying something like "Is, what, a month's pay really worth a human life to you?" ($800 really was more money than my mom was making at the time, let alone taking out rent and shit first, and I gave them benefit of the doubt that they weren't rich first world fucks who could afford to take a hit. At that point I’d learned that most people in India, even dirt poor people who couldn’t afford water, generally had smart phones in order to help with work and things; conscientious of this, the fact that I know and knew dirt poor almost homeless people in the US who needed phones for work, I was trying to allow for “if I lose this phone, I lose my job, my home, my health, and my life” which is a reality a lot of people live with, and at least somewhere to come at this issue with).

(But) the commentators, both the user I was arguing against and several people using trips, proceeded to mock me for apparently living in a 3rd world country for thinking a phone cost more than one paycheck.

To these people a phone wasn’t even worth a week’s pay, let alone two. And yet, to them, another person’s life, no matter how desperate they were, no matter how hungry or sick or anything they were, they were worth less than that.

This exchange was about the time I started nurturing (or giving in, depending on your perspective) the idea that "maybe some people aren't just, mistaken, or seeing something I don't, or have some complex network of beliefs making them bite a bullet, but like, actually goddamn legitimately evil in terms of their fundamental values". I gather absolutely that there’s a lot going on with this; that you could understand the guy to mean “I think thieves should be killed” as opposed to ““humans”“ or whatever. But, like, still.

Traumatizing is an overly dramatic word for what that conversation all those years did to me, but maybe it was. And it’s not like a phone’s *nothing*. But the way the users undercut me, and revealed not only how worthless the phone was to them, but how little human lives were worth to them in relation to the phone just kind of knocked the wind out of me

This made the rounds recently. This is the legacy of that property is sacrosanct bullshit.

And, like, fuck, this is the whole cultural underpinning of what’s been going on with the gun shit here. It’s why guns are so important to us. Why we feel it’s absolutely justified to shoot a kid in the back for lifting a $2 bottle of beer from a convenience store and leaving him to bleed to death without so much as calling the police. The entire fucked up thing we got going on w/r/t race here in the land of the free? It’s because of our relationship to property rights.

At the same time, you get climate change from people who feel it’s their right to do whatever to their property. Oil’s money. Dairy farms, meat, cash crops like almonds. You don’t like your water dirtied? But I’m only fracking over ma plotte!

What’s going on in Brazil? Some natives won the right to their lands against farmers who wanted to clear the forest, and mysteriously within a few weeks everything’s lit on fire. 𝅘𝅥 Dark torrents shake the airs, as black clouds blind [São Paulo] ♫

You even get the nimby zoning shit out of this. How dare you let colored people into my neighborhood! That’s stealing from my property values! A tall building? That’s stealing my sunlight!

In a more mixed sort of way, you got homeless shelters, oil wells, chemical plants, industrial parks, military bases, fracking, wind turbines, desalination plants, landfill sites, incinerators, power plants, quarries, prisons, pubs, adult entertainment clubs, concert venues, firearms dealers, mobile phone masts, electricity pylons, abortion clinics, children's homes, nursing homes, youth hostels, sports stadiums, shopping malls, retail parks, railways, roads, airports, seaports, nuclear waste repositories, storage for weapons of mass destruction, cannabis dispensaries, recreational cannabis shops and the accommodation of persons applying for asylum, refugees, and displaced persons - a list i just lifted from wikipedia’s articles on nimbies. Looking at that, there’s some clearly sympathetic issues too. I mean do you really want a train cutting through your farm, no matter how well you’re recompensated, no matter how much it will objectively improve the lives of the people in the cities, no matter much better it is for the environment to commute together?

But, like, what exactly are the alternatives?

We could look at other cultures. What did Belgian property notions look like? Leopold of the Congo? What do French notions look like? Forcing Algieria to pay back the “investment” France made by colonizing them? Well, the English and the French go back a long, long ways, maybe we could look at Germany?

The first genocide of the 20th century is often recognized to be that of the Herero, in Namibia’s, Germany’s biggest steal  in the struggle to carve up Africa like the Black Dahlia.

I already mentioned Brasil.

What about China? Surely they aren’t western!

By some notions they were the first feudal nation in the world, and yet only left the system really in the 20th century. That’s a lot of cultural baggage that underlays the reality the Chinese live under today.

The early republican period saw the rise of warlords and other petty bastards effectively continuing the feudal reality in much the way sharecropping and jim crow continued chattel slavery in the US. The successor states aren’t pretty either; Taiwan, continuing republican ideals, cleared out much of its indigenous population for the Han in ways analogous to what European powers did to the natives of their countries; the PRC, which was born to challenge the ideals of the old republic for its own, took back “what was theirs” with Tibet.

The PRC, explicitly rejecting property rights as the west understands it, doesn’t even have a legal analog to eminent domain, and in effect can seize property on a whim without compensation, forcibly engaging in actions like people moving, which I feel it should be known when done to a community often results in genocide.

Something else illustrative of the conflicts of interest in the problem lies with the 3 Gorges Dam project. Ostensibly to control flooding to villages downstream, over a million residents of the Chongqing area were forcibly relocated, with rumors of people who resisted the project being explicitly drowned and because everything’s just hopelessly corrupt the money actually provided for recompensation never made it to the hands of farmers now stuck in a big city without the education for work.

Similar stories to Taiwan’s play out in other capitalist countries; similar stories to the PRC’s play out in countries that reject those notions.

Generally you just reinvent the same concepts drawing from the lord and serf mentalities of old. There’s shit like this going down in the Muslim world, in East Africa, South America, South Asia, whereever. It’s not just an Anglo thing, even though I’ve let myself believe it were, because of how I was taught about history, from my culture’s perspective.

Then you have to ask yourself, when there’s no net, when you have to provide for yourself first, do the commons necessarily make sense?

Is it even viable, economically or politically, to abolish private property and return to the commons like people have advanced? Would, to enjoy the benefits of something evidentally only stable under feudalism, we have to return to some kind of practice of feudalism? Is that even worth considering?

There are more people alive today than ever before. And that didn’t happen just by accident. We really, actually, seriously have made incredible improvements to agricultural yield and safety, ensuring that the only places on the planet that starve are those that are being starved, by monsters like the Saudis. But the scale we need, the scale we want, the scale we have - is much more than just what one farmer can provide for himself. And the fact that we do have other farmers do the mass farming with their bulk fertilizers, machinery, pesticides, and such, means that most of us don’t have to spend time every week tending to our gardens making sure we have enough staple foods to survive, so we can pursue our own hopes and hobbies and dreams and undertakings and services and so on.

All of it sort of leads to the question, Who deserves the land?

The worker whose blood sweat and tears are wrought into the soil? That could lead to the issue of killing my Yokuts friends' gatherer ancestors for stewarding their lands, husbanding their ecosystem and managing burns and wild populations, instead of raping the lands, burning everything to ash to farm foreign crops that aren’t even adapted to the water issues here. And it doesn't proclude the workers from choking us with smoke, if they feel they need to. The guy on the oil rig isn’t doing it because he endorses what the oil companies do or because he thinks it’s necessarily a good thing, he does it because it makes him bread. Why would worker’s self management solve that? Shareholders and workers alike would only care about taking home what they can.

The "owners” in the English sense? Taking subsidy after subsidy, fighting actively to drain our rivers, collapse the formerly self-renewing resources entirely, bringing us droughts, feeding even the lactose intolerant among us the lie that we need fatty heart clogging cheeses to be healthy? Illegally hiring, exploiting, and deporting the vulnerable? Big farms are just any other business, their owners are the same venture capitalist vultures preying on anything else in that world. South of me used to one of the biggest lakes in North America, virtually the entire south valley was lake Tulare. It’s a bunch of cities now.

So, the people who need it?

Maybe but who decides that? War for territory is a fundamental struggle built deep into us; war is even practiced by chimps. Military ration planning like we saw in the USSR and PRC cause Holodomors. United Fruit and their entire coalition caused the Silent Genocide. Abolishing private property entirely would, what, return us to the times when the lands were unclaimed? That would just lead to petty struggle after petty struggle, like a chimp disemboweling another.

And now, having written this a second time, I’ll end with what I wrote earlier

[every-last-inch-of-me]

Brew Buddies || Marginally Catholic

Backdated: 29th July - shortly before the bar re-opened

Gaston reveals his most recent project to Claude.

[tw: alcohol]

@hellfire-damnation

GASTON: 

The brew was coming along quite nicely. Sure, Gaston wasn't expecting the first run to be amazing. He'd tried to follow his father's recipe as closely as possible, or as close as his blasé response to existence would let him. But it was the sort of thing that you perfected with time and found your own way with. Nevertheless, he expected it to be good, at least. And regardless of the taste, it was the thought that counted and, with any luck, the end result too.

Plus, he was kind of looking forward to the look on Claude's face as he revealed his grand idea.

He tied the blindfold around the priest's eyes. It was no more than an old, long sleeved shirt, but it did the job. Of course, he did own an actual blindfold. But it wasn't the kind he thought would be appropriate for a member of the clergy. Or appreciated, for that matter.

"No peeking," he said as he tightened the knot at the back of Claude's head and checked the eyeline to be sure the other man couldn't see. "And tread carefully. I don't want a dead blindfolded priest in my pub. That would look dodgy."

CLAUDE: 

Gaston had called him after one of his last masses and asked him to come down to the pub when he was through. He hadn't explained why, just that he needed him to come 'round. The priest had gone once the church was closed up for the evening. 

At the back of his mind, he was expecting something about renovations. Perhaps a bit of haggling about the horrendous animal heads all over the walls. But, no, he had not been expecting a blindfold. 

Claude snorted quietly, a hand curled around Gaston's bicep as the other man came around to check his sightline. The material of the shirt was soft, granted, but it gave no room for light to peek in. It was a tad disconcerting and, with anyone else, save for maybe Sally, his skin would be crawling. "It looks 'dodgy' now Gaston," he muttered, tugging a bit at the knot where it was digging into the back of his head. "Why all of this? I feel like I am being marched to the basement to be murdered." 

GASTON:

In hindsight, Gaston thought as he felt the priest's fingers tighten around his arm, perhaps this was not the best way to do things, considering Claude's history. Of course, he thought he trusted him. Or hoped he did at the very least. But the voice in the back of his head wondered briefly if it wasn't all that  good for the other man's anxiety.

Ah well. He'd done it now.

He let out a quiet huff of laugher and shrugged his shoulders. "Murder's a bit much. But I've had enough of you so I'm selling you into slavery," he said as he began to lead the way through the bar and into the back room where the door to the cellar waited. "Hope you don't mind." A smirk pressed into his lips and he twisted the key in the lock until it clicked open. "Or maybe I'm going to show you my brand new sex swing, because I know just how much you'd be interested as the most sexually active member of town," he teased, hoping the sarcasm sank through the blindfold. It would be unfortunate if it didn't.

CLAUDE: 

Despite the anxiety that bubbled up under his skin, Claude found himself laughing and shaking his head. It was a rather off-color quip but it had done the job of making him relax. "I am afraid I do. So sorry to spoil your plans, mon cher. I would be terrible at it anyhow. They'd bring me make, ask for their money back." 

His laughter only got louder as he followed the other man, wrinkling his nose at the mental image assaulting his brain. A key turned in a lock and it was entirely too loud in the quiet, with his eyes acting as good as they would have if he were blind. That is to say, not at all. 

"Oh, oui? The new one with the ropes," he shot back, brows arching as he grinned and nodded his head in mock understanding, "I thought you would never, Gaston. A truly awful crime." Shaking his head, Claude let the comments on his sexual history roll off his shoulders. He was a priest. Of course, Gaston was right, but that did not mean he'd never had sex before becoming ordained. A wicked little smile spread across his face before he spoke again. 

"Ties work just as well, Gaston. You did not have to go to such trouble just to ask to be tied up. Some people would probably gag you for free." 

GASTON:

A huff of laughter escaped him and he shook his head. Gaston was well past the point of being scandalised by anything the priest said or did, if Gaston was capable of being scandalised by anything at all. Those kinds of jokes were, he had long realised, a simple attribute of the man's personality and not one he was going to turn his nose up at. After all, he'd said far worse and, in the end, priesthood didn't ban a person from having a sense of humour. Not that he'd care if it did.

"Painful reality of being this good looking: everyone wants to do kinky things to me," he shrugged as a smirk teased at the corner of his mouth. "Besides, who said anything about tying me up?"

He tucked the key back into his pocket, stepping away a moment as the door peeled open and a curl of cool musty air escaped into the room. "Mind out." Stepping in front of the other man, his hand lay gently on his elbow to guide him down. "There's stairs."

CLAUDE:

The priest snorted at the man's quip, feeling the shrug against his side as Gaston moved. A creak followed the movement and Claude shivered again, the cool draft of wherever they were headed sending chills down his spine. The hand at his elbow didn't make him flinch because he was expecting it. His own hand came up to feel for a railing, knowing that there had to be one if there were stairs. 

Unless, of course, they were out of code. Then he could very well be plummeting to his death. 

"You know," he said conversationally, "this would be much easier if you took the blindfold off. Or let me. Or, better yet, I took it off for the stairs and then closed my eyes so you don't yell at me. And so I don't break my neck." 

GASTON:

His arm offered itself forward as he watched the man grasp for a rail that wasn't there. The stairs to the basement had been huge, stone things, made before people thought about health and safety. His parents had never installed one because it had always been just them. And he'd never installed one because he was too damn lazy.

"Why would I do that? Ruins the fun of a blindfold if you take it off when things get difficult," he said, stepping backwards and guiding the man with him towards the quiet whirr of the drums. "Watch out." He braced his arms a little for extra support. "That step has a brick missing."

CLAUDE: 

Heaving a sigh, the priest left off on his search for a hand railing when all his hands found was empty air. Instead, he curled one around the arm at his side, something to balance on when he took a step down the stairs. 

They made it a bit of the way down before there was a subtle shift and Gaston's arms were twitching, his voice warning him of a missing brick. Claude felt himself nod, edging a toe over the edge of the stair to feel around for the next, hoping to bypass the missing chunk altogether. He would have considered jumping it but not knowing where he would land, or how, made the choice difficult. Claude felt a frustrated whine building in the back of his throat and sighed again. 

"Why could you not employ a trust fall and team building exercises like a normal employer, Gaston? Oh, no, that was too easy wasn't it? Of course not. Instead, you had to walk me down the stairs with a blind fold." Claude's gripping was half-hearted at best but the breath that caught in his throat when his foot slipped and the curse that echoed around the room there were descending into was not. 

Any other complaint, however, was stopped by the whirring of machines. Claude recognized the noise, magnified through the loss of his eyesight, but he could not place wear. Tilting his head, the priest listened for a moment, chewing on his lip as he tried to place the sound. 

GASTON:

"Don't you trust me already?" He laughed, quicky grasping the other man's sides as he slipped. Though, if he'd been any closer, Gaston reckoned he'd be deaf by now, as the sound of his voice reverberated around the room. Really, he probably should have warned him that his foot wasn't on the step properly, but he'd been too busy smirking at the look of concentration on the priest's face.

"One more step and we're there. You can listen all you want when you're not on some damp stairs, yeah?" He said, lowering himself onto the basement floor and gently pulling Claude with him. 

Hopefully the priest would be impressed. He hoped he would. This was possibly the first time in his life that he'd actually tried for something. It was definitely the first time he'd studied for it. Even if that was with someone else's notes.

CLAUDE:

"You know if I did not I would not be down here," he grumbled, fingers still tight where he had a grip on Gaston's forearms. "I just don't particularly like the feeling of falling." Even if he hadn't it was still a shock to the system. Blind as he was with his eyes covered, everything else was doubled, including that sensation. 

Huffing a bit at the comment, Claude nodded and allowed himself to be pulled down the last stair to the ground floor. Removing his hands from where they'd been balanced, Claude reached up to loosen the blindfold, fingers edging the cloth down his face to hang around his neck. 

Allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom, the priest sought out the sound he'd been listening for, edging forward with a glance at the other man when curiosity got the better of him. He could see the hulking mass of what appeared to be equipment of some sort. Running a hand down the side of one of them, Claude tilted his head to peer at the labeling stamped on it's side, eyes widening in surprise. 

"Where did you get all of this," he murmured, turning back to the other man with a look of surprise on his face. 

GASTON:

For all his dramatics, the barman had rather been hoping to do the bit reveal himself. Rip the blindfold off and expose to the world his amazing idea. But, as it were, a simple 'taa daa' sufficed, as the makeshift blindfold slipped from the man's face and hung against his shoulders. His eyes followed him to one of the tanks and he tucked his hands into his pockets, leaning a shoulder against a damp wall.

"My dad had some before. He used to do most of the brewing for the pub so I thought I'd give it a go. Just looked up the brand and got some new ones delivered," he answered, as his eyes flicked between the great, whirring barrels and made his way to one end of the room where they kept some free glasses. "Want to try some?"

CLAUDE:

Claude felt his mouth curl into a small smile at the other's quiet 'taa daa.' Fiddling with the fabric around his neck for a moment, the priest listened as Gaston moved closer, hands in his pockets, explaining.

"Your father was a brewer, then. Did you follow his recipes, Gaston?" Looking at the barrels, it was not a hard thing to picture. Claude had learned that, while the other man did not often speak of his family, there were things there that Gaston could never quite rid himself of. The bar, and all of its contents and responsibilities, was one of those things. 

So, he nodded, offered the man a smile and followed behind to the room with the spare glasses. 

GASTON:

Gaston paused a moment and quirked his lips. "I guess you could say that," he called over his shoulder, as he plucked two empty glasses and made his way back. It wasn't entirely accurate. His father had brewed. But he'd also made wine from time to time - the kind that could take off your teeth and strip the paint from walls. And above all, he'd loved to cook. Most of the plates on the menu had been decided by his father, and they'd stayed - for all but the fashionable foods, that came and went with the seasons.

Really, in Gaston's eyes, there wasn't a single word to describe his father. He had simply been a lover of all things consumable.

He went to the nearest barrel, the first batch, which had already soaked the hops and been settling for just under a week now, and poured the glasses, watching as the beer came out a glistening gold. It looked good. And smelled good, which was a start, at least. 

He passed Claude his cup, as he put his nose to his glass and took in the aromas. "If it's any good," which he expected it would be, "I'm thinking of selling it for about a fiver. Give half the proceeds to charity. Like the church and that."

CLAUDE: 

"Could I? I did not know him. I would not know if it was accurate." He gave a little laugh, shook his head, and sucked in a breath. "My father grew wine grapes. He was a vintner, but I remember so little about him I would not know where to start. I was told once, by an older woman I used to live by, when she came into the church, that I reminded her of him. She said he was always so quiet, looked at things before he did them. I do not know how accurate that is either but," he shrugged, "I suppose that is what I have."  

Still, he watched as Gaston plucked a glass from the wall they were suspended on, walking back over to the nearest barrel. Watching curiously, Claude accepted his gold-filled glass with quiet thanks. The beer smelled good, hops apparent, though Claude drank so rarely he would not have known how much or how little of it was there. 

Raising a brow at the price, the priest raised his glass in a half-toast before taking a swallow, nearly choking on it when he truly registered the rest of what Gaston was saying. Eyes widening in surprise, Claude wiped at his mouth after his coughing fit, shaking his head. 

"Gaston--what? Why? You do not need to do that. If you give it to anyone, give it to a charity only. The church does not need it." Well, perhaps they had, or would, but the notion that he may not be there to allocate the money to what it truly needed to be put towards soured the idea. "At least...not now. Choose a charity and send it to them or change it every month. Allow the patrons of the bar to choose, even. Allocate it towards town." Anything else. 

GASTON:

Gaston lowered his glass and folded his arms as he listened. "You? Quiet?" He let out a soft huff of laughter. He might have agreed that Claude was pensive, perhaps. But never quiet. For as long as he'd known him - which, he'd admit, wasn't massive amounts of time - Claude hadn't shut up once, for all the comments and the quips and the teasing. 

If quiet came, it was a mauldin thing, heavy with sorrow and past memories. And even then, the quiet was fairly loud.

For a moment, his brows furrowed as the man choked into the drink. Really, he'd thought he'd been doing a good thing. For all Claude's efforts, the church was an old thing that he imagined would always need refurbishments. And he'd slipped in at the wrong moments enough times to know the sheer sum of support groups it held.

"What so they can use it to fund a bunch of murderous werewolves? I was going to give it to you because at least you'd know what to do with it. I don't. The pissheads who spend all day in my bar don't."

CLAUDE:

Rolling his eyes and sighing through his nose, Claude elbowed the other man with his free arm. "As a child, yes. It was a new place, new people. You learned to adjust but...the quiet always stayed." He shrugged a shoulder a bit, eyes focused somewhere around Gaston's collarbone. He sipped at the drink in his hand for a moment before peering into the brew. 

"How long have you been brewing this?" The machinery was loud. Granted, so was the bar, but after everything was quiet it should have been audible. He was going to ask another question but then he stopped, turning to look at the younger man for a moment. Trying to gauge him, his words, to understand why he was giving him all of this. 

"Give it to a charity for abused children in London, then," he murmured, watching Gaston's face. 

GASTON:

Gaston crinkled his nostril and took a sip of his drink. Whoever this Quiet Claude was, he'd certainly never met him and frankly, he didn't want to. In Gaston's mind, quietness was not a virtue but a hindrance. In some ways though, he supposed he should be flattered that the other man felt comfortable enough around him to be a talkative pain in the arse.

"About three and a half weeks." It still needed to be properly kegged or bottled - depending on how he decided to sell it - before he started making another batch. But with any luck, if it sold, he'd be able to keep the cycle up for a while. Perhaps buy more tanks if it was necessary. 

"But ok. Child abuse charity it is," he said, raising his glass to the prospect. "Santé."

[1nkweaver]

For your boys.

Opal

1. How do they want to be seen by others?

Opal wants to be seen as someone that can be trusted above all else. He understands that the first impressions of him are normally people who are either afraid or unsettled, and his strange nature normally means the unsettling thing stays for a while. But in all truth, he really is just here to try and help absolutely every person that he can. Obviously this becomes hard when the party is going against “bad guys” but Opal understands that the world is like that sometimes, mortals fight each other and some people are trying to do good and some are definitely trying to do bad but most people are just scared or confused. For some people though Opal definitely takes advantage of fear in a sort of “scare them on the right path” sort of way.

When you just get down to it though, Opal just wants to be trusted, he wants to be confided in, and he wants to be -believed- So many people think he has lied to them when he hasn’t, and it’s caused more than a few problems in his past when people dont believe him.

2. If they could only save one thing from a burning house, what would it be?

I’m going to write off things like “himself” or “people” for this one because I feel like it’s too obvious. Opal was in a burning building once and not much made it out, but what he went for was his shield in that moment. His shield bore the symbol of Zemtris, and when Opal first connected with them, it was the sole physical item representing that connection, the only mark of Zemtris’ presence on the mortal plane. When the building was burning down, Opal went for the symbol, and it being emblazoned on a shield did not go unnoticed. As long as Opal held that shield, he did not die even as the flames ate up his body. I’d have to believe that such an act of faith that shook him to his very core would leave a lasting impression. Opal can restart from the ashes of anything, but he can’t lose that shield, that symbol. It’s too important.

Would Opal leave the shield to save a person instead? That’s a different question :)

3. What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person?

Opal believes that causing someone to “die” in his understanding of it, which is so much more than killing the body. What Opal refers to as a spiritual death, or the literal killing of someones soul, is worse than actual death. Things like slavery, manipulation, or oppression, things that force people to go through their lives in a meaningless way- even things such as menial jobs, it’s those things that sap the happiness and excitement of life from you that Opal feels is the worst thing to do to a person. To leave the body and kill the soul is a horrible thought to him, and his heart reaches out to those that are walking, talking, breathing, but to him are already dead.

4. What is their perception of the concept of redemption?

Opal is a believer in the fact that mortals are more powerful than gods, and it is because they are mortal that they are so. To be mortal to Opal means that you can choose, you can change. He believes that mortals are shackled to fate but it is their responsibility to fight against those shackles and free themselves with their own strength. Opal believes that immortality can be achieved through just a sheer unwillingness of a mortal to resist death, to -want- hard enough. He feels that Gods in this respect are limited, bound by their nature, and so weaker. This all ties perfectly into the concept of redemption. Opal does not believe that something like a God can be redeemed because they are unable to change, whereas a strength of mortals is their ability to always change. As such, not only does Opal believe that redemption is always possible for anyone, but it is one of the core strengths about being a living being that you can have.

Pick

1. How do they want to be seen by others?

A lot of Picks feelings are always torn between two opposites, and for Pick it’s an inherent want to be the center of attention that was ingrained into him in an unhealthy way, and a want to be completely ignored. Theres good and bad aspects of both of these, he likes to make sure everyones looking at him which can do things like make a group of people laugh, or protect someone in a fight, but he also can sometimes become overwhelmed with the stares and the attention, and starts to get angry with it. He understands that his being a goblin plays into this, and theres attitudes towards goblins that he doesn’t want to be associated with. He’s a ball of hypocrisy because he likes to be confident in his personality but then sometimes feels he’s too predictable. He gets caught in a constant loop of “look at me, look at how different I am, hah!” and “please ignore me, just see me as normal, I just want to be normal.”

On more simple notes though, he definitely wants to be seen as mature, competant, smart. He doesn’t believe he’s made it this far in life by not being those things and so he wants to be recognized for it.

2. If they could only save one thing from a burning house, what would it be?

Though I said “themself” would be cheap for Opal, I think it makes a lot more sense for Pick. He’d sooner leave all items in there if it was to ensure his own survival, because his whole life has been about what you need to sacrifice to survive.

If there’s other people it’s hard, and he’d most likely just freeze up not knowing if he should risk himself to save someone or gt out. I like to think in the moment he’d try to be the hero, but he’s also not someone who considers himself one.

If we’re just talking about items, he would either save the [redacted] that he keeps on his back, bc he feels it’s important, or perhaps Anders letter to him, as its the last words Anders gave him and also has information that he needs to continue on his search. Either of those. He’s mostly committed the letter to memory tho so more likely he’d save the [redacted].

3. What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person?

Pick believes that the worst thing you can do to a person is reduce them to something less than a person, it’s really as simple as that. The concept of some people just being “better” or “more important” really pisses him off, and when he sees people referred to as things like “undesirables” or “property” that really sets him off. A big part of it is how goblins are treated like just vermin to be exterminated, but another part does come from goblin society itself, where your worth is measured by how many people you can push beneath you.

Things tied to this hatred would be things that restrict ones ability to do things such as tying them up, putting them in small places/locking them up, being grabbed or held down, physical things like that- and then also social situations where you feel you must be forced into a lower role. These all tie back to just the concept of removing someones autonomy.

Pick doesn’t understand politics very well so he thinks the ideal world is where everyone has an equal chance to fight for what they want? I guess? Fuck big pharma.

4. What is their perception of the concept of redemption?

Revenge is taken, redemption is given. If you’re searching for it from someone else, or a higher power, friend, family, enemy, whatever, you might not get it, it’s not gaurenteed. You also shouldn’t just always give it to someone else, some people dont deserve the forgiveness that would grant them redemption. In the end it’s about whether you can do it for yourself, if you think you deserve to be redeemed. Pick is not seeking redemption, he’s seeking retribution, and in his book he deserves it, and that he isn’t a bad person at all for what he’s going to do.

Pick’s outlook on life is he prefers to think that people are inherently evil rather than good. Because to him that means that people that do evil things are weak and giving in to their base instincts, whereas the people who do good are the ones that are really trying to overcome something. It’s a..pessimistic optimism. He’d rather be born evil and try so hard to do good, than just be born good and do what’s expected of him.

[unofferable-fic]

UNOFFERABLE: 25 - ESCAPE

Summary: The unexpected arrival of an injured Midgardian child clinging to life causes a ruckus on Asgard. The princes, Thor and Loki, are somewhat intrigued by this unusual guest, unsure as to how and why she ended up in such a state. What they did not expect, however, was the turn of events her appearance would inevitably cause.

Originally posted by iceybooks

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Set Pre-Thor 1

Pairing: Loki x OFC

Inspired by this imagine

Warnings: Language, angst, graphic violence, attempted rape, death, referenced kidnapping/slavery, fluff.

Word Count: 6,561 (laaaawl)

Previous Chapter     Next Chapter

Playlist: “All of Them!” — Hans Zimmer

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A/N: Also available on AO3  and FanFiction.net. If anyone wants to be added to the taglist just let me know. This is one of the longest chapters of this fic, and I hope it lives up to expectations! Also, be forewarned, there are some serious trigger warnings for this chapter for graphic violence and non-con, so be cautious while reading if needs be. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the next instalment! Feel free to let me know what y’all thought. Happy reading!

The Bifröst left the Asgardians in a dense section of forest on Alfheim. Thankfully, it was completely deserted, so the noise of the rainbow bridge went unnoticed. As soon as Loki landed, he took the lead, gathering himself and getting the attention of the group.

“Alright,” he began. “Heimdall said he would show us the way to this structure.”

“Allow me to communicate with him,” Thor suggested, then shut his eyes and focused. A moment passed before he opened them again and pointed into the distance. “To the east, which is that way, until we come to that ridge. Then we follow the mountain face around until we come to a clearing. The structure is being disguised as a cave of sorts, but there is a guard stationed outside.”

“A guard? Would that not rouse suspicions for the cave’s legitimacy?”

“He is apparently dressed as a simple huntsman to avoid such a response.”

Loki peered through the foliage and saw the ridge his brother was referring to. “That looks to be some distance away.”

Thor nodded in agreement. “Heimdall said it would take a few hours, but it was best he left us in the middle of nowhere to avoid detection.”

“If it prevents a risk to Ellie’s life, then he’s right. We will simply move as swift as possible on foot. Keep your heads down and stay quiet. I know it may not be your forte, but we must approach this with stealth in mind.”

“Of course,” Lady Sif agreed, and drew closer to them both. “If it is stealth that will ensure the little one’s safety, then stealth it is.”

“Do not worry, Trickster,” Volstagg cut in with a positive smile, excessively large battle axe in hand. “I know it does not look like it, but we can be stealth experts when the occasion calls for it!”

Loki looked the massive bearded man up and down. “Yes, evidently.”

“Well,” Fandral announced cheerily. “Considering it is your handmaiden we are rescuing, I think it is fair that you lead the way.”

“An excellent idea!” Thor cheered and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “And along the way, we can discuss our plan of attack. You are a master of illusions and stealth, so you can instruct us on what to do.”

Loki nodded in agreement, as Hogun spoke up. “We should get moving.”

“We do not know how much time we have,” Sif agreed. “Lead the way, Prince Loki.”

“Right,” Loki began, and turned to face the distant ridge. “Then let us get going.”

The group headed off together, following Loki’s lead as they went. If he wasn’t so preoccupied with getting to Ellie as fast as possible, he probably would have taken a moment to relish in this change of dynamic. For once, he was at the forefront of Thor and his companions. But, as of right now, he didn’t care. For once, he also wasn’t affected by their attention because his mind was focused elsewhere.

As Heimdall had promised, no one in the group spotted any light elves along the way. The forest they were dropped in was well and truly deserted, so it was safe to assume they were some distance from Ljosalfgard or any of the other cities in Alfheim. Hopefully Odin and Frigga would keep Frey and Freyja occupied long enough so that they could rescue Ellie.

They weren’t walking for long when Loki spoke up again. “It may not be a bad idea then if we dress more inconspicuously. If we are to infiltrate the brothel, we may pass as…customers.”

Thor cringed at the thought, but nodded in agreement. “I suppose that is our best bet.”

“It certainly would be less conspicuous that two princes and a group of warriors showing up for no apparent reason,” Fandral said. “Other than, you know, liberating a prisoner.”

“If this is an illegal brothel,” Lady Sif explained. “Is it possible that there are other prisoners?”

Volstagg raised his brow. “Are you insinuating that Frey and Freyja may be running an illegal sex ring made up of prisoners from different realms?”

“It sounds even more ridiculous when you say it aloud, but yes.”

“That is quite the insinuation,” Hogun said. “Especially given those involved.”

“Hogun is right,” Loki murmured, looking at his feet. “But if Frey and Freyja are involved, they did orchestrate the abduction of a royal handmaiden from within the palace itself after placing a spy within the staff. So the idea of them abducting others is not exactly outside the realm of possibility.”

Thor shrugged. “When you put it that way, it actually sounds quite reasonable.”

Sif replied. “Then we will deal with it when we come to it. It was just a thought, but we should focus our attention on the task at hand.”

“Which is Ellie,” Loki added firmly. “As you said, Sif, if there are others there, we will figure that out when it happens. For now…” He snapped his fingers and instantly the group were each shroud with a dark cloak. “It is best to hide the armour and look like paying customers.”

“Delightful,” Thor muttered, wrapping the cloak tightly around his massive frame. “I cannot wait to look like a patron for an illegal whorehouse.”

“It is certainly a better disguise than a Jötunn’s blushing bride,” Fandral snorted earning a scowl from the older prince.

“Now is not the time for jesting, boys,” Sif said dryly. “We have a young woman to find.”

* * *

Ellie had no clue whether Heimdall had seen her when the structure’s barrier fell. Judging by the sun’s change of position in the sky, about an hour had passed since she sent her signal, and all she had done since then was slowly pace around the room. Frey had said just before he left that he and his sister would return in due time, but she had no idea how far she was from the castle in which they resided. While she knew there was a lot of responsibility in her friends’ hands, she couldn’t sit idle and let her life be their sole burden. Surely she could do something, even if she was locked in this room wherever the hell she was…

The rattle of the lock in the door broke through her thoughts, and she froze in the spot as it opened to reveal Frey and Freyja, back sooner than she expected.

“So… your council fell through?” she asked dryly.

“It did, actually,” Freyja replied. “Not that it is any of your concern.”

“But it does mean,” Frey drawled, slamming the door behind them. “That our schedule for the rest of the afternoon has been blown open.”

As the god and goddess stared at her, a shiver ran up Ellie’s spine. It wasn’t in the same way Loki looked at her — this was purely predatory and aggressive. Against her better judgement, she took a sly step away from them.

“Would you look at that, brother,” Freyja said with a menacing grin. “Suddenly her sarcasm is nowhere to be seen.”

“That is a shame,” Frey mused, rolling up his sleeves. “I was hoping you would hold on to that attitude while we had our way with you.”

He took a swing at her, and Ellie dodged it swiftly. She hadn’t, however, expected Freyja to grab at her as well. The hostile goddess wrapped her hand around her hair and pulled hard. Ellie’s scalp burned.

“Scream, please,” Freyja hissed, and roughly grabbed her chin with her free hand. “Scream all you want. No one will help you, little mortal.”

“On the table,” Frey demanded and grabbed her by the waist. “Let’s go.”

As soon as he grabbed her, Ellie fought back. She managed to swiftly elbow him in the face, which brought her immense satisfaction, but Freyja was quick to grab her arms, effectively subduing her. The young woman thrashed as much as she could, despite the two gods exerting very little strength to hold her.

“Keep fighting, you little bitch,” Frey hissed as she slammed her down on to the table. “I love it when they struggle!”

Ellie’s back smashed into the cold wooden surface of the table and she yelped, pain shooting through her hip and spine. She kicked out violently, making contact with Freyja’s shoulder. The woman growled, but simply grabbed both her ankles and tied them together  with a rope connected to the table. Before she could fight back, Frey grabbed her hands, tying her wrists to each side of the table. As the gods stood back to inspect their handiwork, Ellie struggled against her bindings, the rope burning into her bare skin as she furiously pulled against them. She tried to channel some seiðr to gain some extra strength, but she was worn out from the whole ordeal. Her chest pumped as her body slumped against the table. Her eyes darted around for a weapon while the pair began to laugh.

“This is half the entertainment,” Frey chuckled, hands on his hips. “You can see the panic starting to set in.”

“I think that is because she has realised how hopeless her situation is. How would you like to go first, dear brother?”

“Why, sister, that is very kind of you to offer.” Frey kissed her post-haste before moving around to the end of the table, while she took her place at the other end behind Ellie’s head. Unable to see Freyja without stretching her head backwards, Ellie began to visibly panic, watching Frey undo the belt buckle of his tunic.

“Please, don’t,” she pled without thinking. “Frey—”

“Beg all you like,” he chuckled, shoving his pants down. “It will not change your fate. Come now, you are no longer pure after your relations with the prince anyway. You may as well enjoy yourself.”

“I am sure you will,” Freyja added, lightly touching Ellie’s cheek. “I can guarantee he will leave you far more satisfied than Loki ever could.”

Trying her best to steady out her breathing, Ellie glared back at Frey. If this was to be her fate, and she could do nothing to change it, then let it be swift. However, she would simply have to remind them both of what she would do to them when she got the chance.

“I just wanted to let you know,” she began, hands shaking in their restraints. “To let both of you know, that I’m goin’ to kill you — the pair of you — unless Loki gets to you’s first. And God fuckin’ help you’s if he does.”

Frey looked back at her in mild amusement. “Your threats are empty, mortal. Far more empty than you are about to be.”

There was an unexpected knock at the door.

Everyone in the room froze. Frey and Freyja shared a look.

“Who the fuck is that?” Freyja demanded.

“I don’t know,” Frey insisted, just as the door swung open.

In walked the doorman Ellie had seen earlier. He seemed completely unfazed by the scene before him. “My Lords, sincerest apologies for my intrusion—”

“It best be for good reason,” Freyja spat. “What is is?”

“The Allfather and Allmother have arrived at the castle in Ljosalfgard,” he explained, a slight quiver in his voice. “They are asking to see you both.”

There was a deafening silence in the room, during which, the siblings looked at each other in confusion. Ellie’s eyes grew wide at the mention of Odin and Frigga, and a small amount of hope bloomed within her chest.

I knew it! I knew someone would be lookin’ for me! Surely they know where I am? Does this mean Heimdall got my signal?

“Why are they here?” Freyja demanded as Frey pulled his trousers back up.

The doorman shrugged. “They said they wished to speak with you about their victory on Vanaheim with regards the Marauders.”

Frey growled as he fixed his belt. “Oh, for fuck sake…”

“Do they know?” Freyja asked, gesturing to their prisoner. “Could they know?”

“There is no way,” he replied surely. “This place is completely hidden from their eyes. How would they ever see it? You would have to know of its existence first to even reveal it.”

So they have no idea about my magic abilities? Ellie realised. This is the lifeline I’ve been waitin’ for. I can use this to my advantage if things go my way.

Frey grumbled and readjusted his clothing. “Well then, I suppose we must keep up appearances.”

“What about her?” Freyja demanded, grabbing Ellie by the hair so hard that she winced again.

“What about her?” Frey shrugged his shoulders. “They could not find this place even if they tried.”

“The fact they have come here at all is still risky. At least move her to the basement.”

“Would you be more comfortable if I did?”

“Yes!” she insisted and clicked her fingers at the doorman. “You! Move the mortal to the basement and guard the door until we come back.”

“Of course, My Lady,” was his reply, accompanied by a small nod, as he quickly approached Ellie.

“I really do not see the need,” Frey said, shaking his head. “But if it would ease your mind then fine.”

Ellie watched the pair as they began to walk out the door, bickering impatiently as they went. The doorman promptly untied her right arm and she let out a small sigh as the rope strangling her wrist fell to the ground. The burn on her skin relaxed somewhat, but she longed to rub it and soothe the pain. As the siblings disappeared from the room, the doorman halted in his movements. Ellie awkwardly turned her head to look at him in confusion as he scurried to the door. He peered up and down the hallway outside before he quickly shut the door to the room. The look he gave her as he locked the door from the inside did nothing to settle her nerves. All she could do was stare back him as he slowly approached the table, a smirk growing as he studied her. Another shiver ran up her spine as she noticed her skirts had bunched above her thighs in the earlier struggle, so she tried to kick her restricted legs and cover herself.

“There’ll be no need for that, girlie,” the doorman snickered. “No need for modesty in this whorehouse.”

“Girlie?” she repeated, laughing slightly to hide any worry she felt over what he may do.  “Who the fuck actually calls people that?”

“You better watch you mouth,” he growled and grabbed her face in his meaty hand.

“Or what? Is this kip the only place you can get off? Because I sincerely doubt the performance of any man who uses the term ‘girlie’.”

“Shut your fucking mouth or I’ll have to fill it to shut you up.”

She wasn’t expecting his hand to connect with her cheek with a ear-splitting crack. It knocked the wind out of her as her other cheek smacked into the table’s cold wooden surface from the sudden force. This sensation was previously known to her.

It had been a long time since she felt the familiar sting of a hand striking her face, but she would never forget it. She could hear the screaming in her head.

“Look at the fuckin’ mess of this place!”

“They will be gone a long time,” the doorman explained, clambering up on to the table on his knees, forcing himself between her legs. “And I’ve always wanted to take a crack at a mortal.”

“I can’t go to fuckin’ work for one day without you’s fuckin ruinin’ the house!”

Her hazy mind struggled to focus on what was happening as she felt a hand close around her neck and squeeze. Her attacker’s mouth was moving, but all she could hear was her father and her own screaming.

“I’m sick of this! All I do is try t’look after this family and pay the bills and this is the thanks I get from you? I’ll fuckin’ kill you, I swear to God—!”

She struggled to breathe, the pressure on her neck growing. Above her, the doorman grinned in delight, revealing a set of yellow teeth.

“Don’t you dare lay a hand on either of them!”

The panic in her chest welled, as did anger. Her feet struggled against their restraints,  rope cutting into skin, knees trying to shove him off the table.

“Dad, leave her alone! Stop!”

Suddenly, the rage Ellie felt outweighed the panic. Hazy memories of seeing her mother being strangled, of feeling the brutal kicks from her father, of seeing Shane’s still body on the living room floor next to her.

“Get off her!”

Whatever energy that remained within her body exploded, her chest burning with exertion. She screamed in anger.

Her lungs burned.

Her ears rang.

Within her free hand, something solid formed and her fingers wrapped around it automatically. Without knowing what it was, Ellie swung her arm with all the strength she had left at the man above her.

The dagger in her grasp plunged into his neck.

The retaliation surprised him, but not Ellie, who took the moment to tear the dagger out only to stab him again in the chest. And again.

And again.

And again.

An inhuman scream tore from her already raw throat as she ripped the dagger through his gut and his intestines spilled from the gapping wound. With a harsh shove, he fell to the floor with a tremendous bang, eyes bulging and hands shaking as the blood poured from his various wounds and pooled on the floor. In the time it took Ellie to cut through her restraints, he had bled out and ceased moving. With shaking arms, she slid off the table and tried to stand. Slowly, she got to her feet and noticed that her clothes were now soaked with blood; even her feet were stained red from the puddle building on the floor. As a bit of the adrenaline left her, she stared down at the corpse in surprise and looked at the dagger in her hand. She had conjured it. Finally, she had managed to do it, and now it had left her completely drained. Realising she had no time to admire what she had created, she grabbed the keys from the dead man’s belt loop, unlocked the door, and shakily tiptoed out of the room.

There’s no time to panic. No time to mess around or think ’bout how I just killed a man. I need’ta get out of here before they kill me.

Dagger in hand, she slunk into the empty hallway, curious as to whether the earlier commotion and screams would draw attention. That was of course dismissed when she heard the sounds coming from different rooms along the hall. The place was nothing to look at, that was for sure, in terms of decoration. It was dilapidated in places, but still held on to some sense of liveability with severely lazy decoration and a stained carpet. She didn’t know where she had been dropped in this apparent brothel at first, or even whether it was an actual functioning house of prostitution. The moans and screams coming from the other rooms were enough to confirm her suspicions of its legitimacy. At least that meant she had some time before anyone came to check on her.

Keeping close to the wall, she snuck along the hall and around the corner, carefully seeing if there was anyone waiting ahead of her. She spotted another man — presumably a guard, leaning against the wall and facing away from her. By the looks of things, he was happily counting some gold coins. Ellie didn’t think twice about sneaking behind him and slitting his throat. He gurgled as she shoved her hand over his mouth and helped to lower his body down to the ground. The coins fell crashing down as well, but thankfully the noise didn’t seem to draw any attention. Finding a nearby deserted room, she quickly dragged the body and loose coins inside and left him in there for whoever to find. Wiping her dagger on her skirts, she sighed, turned, and snuck down the hall. Rounding another corner and seeing no one, she pressed on and quickly came to a door, one from which no sounds came. Peaking through the keyhole, she saw nothing. Considering her options, she took a deep breath and turned the knob, finding the door unlocked. She pushed it forward slowly and peered around the opening. When she looked at the sight before her, she opened the door fully and stared in shock.

“Oh, my God…”

* * *

As Heimdall promised, they had some distance to walk to get to the structure in which Ellie was being kept.

“There it is,” Loki said, pointing in the distance to a cave that came into view. “That’s the brothel, disguised as Heimdall said.”

“Right,” Thor exhaled, surveying the scene from their hiding spot. “I am still surprised there is only one guard outside.”

“With a magical barrier like that one,” Sif began. “There is no need for more guards. They would only draw unwanted attention.”

Loki nodded his head and made sure his weapons were hidden under his cloak. “She is right. And we do not have time to dawdle. It is time we went undercover, as it were. Thor and I shall approach to enquire after their services. You four will wait here until we dispose of the guard.”

“Delightful,” Fandral groaned.

Volstagg mirrored his displeasure. “I too am not looking forward to this, but if it is to save the Midgardian then let us be off.”

The group followed Loki and Thor’s lead and hid in the brush as the brothers set off and casually approached the man at the mouth of the cave. Upon their arrival, he looked them up and down from his seat on a tree stump and spat. “Can I help you?”

“We wish to avail of your goods,” Loki replied simply, as if it were obvious.

“What goods?” the man asked, playing dumb.

“The ones Lord Frey informed us of. We have heard much of their…quality from him. He said we must see it to believe it.”

For once, thank the Norns, Thor kept his mouth shut and let Loki’s silver tongue do the trick. He was half expecting some sort of outburst, but it seemed that Thor trusted him to do it without his help.

The guard eyed them for a moment, eyes flitting between them as he assessed their legitimacy. He didn’t seem to recognise either of them, which was already a good sign. As he squinted at them, he slowly nodded his head, seemingly accepting Loki’s explanation. He got to his feet and stood with his hands on his hips.

“Coin,” he demanded, hand open expectantly.

Without flinching, Loki reached into his pocket and conjured a convincing illusion of a small but heavy sack of coin and then handed it to the guard. “Will this suffice?”

“It’ll do fine,” he grumbled, judging its weight in his hand. “You may both enter. When you do, head straight down the hall and you will be greeted and allowed to select whatever product you wish to pay for.”

“Fantastic,” Loki said delightedly and clapped his hands together. “Thank you, my good man.”

Loki swiftly stepped around the man and headed towards the entrance to the cave, but felt a hand grab his arm.

“I must search you before you enter,” the guard explained, his tone already short. “It is protocol.”

The God of Lies looked at him in mock dismay, frowning deeply. “Really? Come now, there is no need to search me.”

“I would beg to dif—”

Quite swiftly, Thor drew Mjölnir from under his cloak and, with the guards back turned, smashed the hammer down on to the back of his head. He was killed instantly and dropped towards the ground, but Loki caught his body before it could cause any more  unwanted noise. He shared a look with his brother, whose face now wore speckles of blood and brain. The sack of money quickly faded from existence.

“Did you really need to do that?” Loki snapped, lifting the man from under the arms. “I could have slit his throat, or something else less…messy.”

Thor shrugged casually and picked up his legs. “I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

The Trickster merely rolled his eyes and chose not to argue further as they quickly carried the man’s body towards the brush and hid it from plan sight. At that moment, the Warriors Three and Lady Sif appeared from their hiding places.

Sif shook her head. “You two cannot go in there covered in blood.”

“Done,” Loki answered and, with a snap of his fingers, he and Thor were clean again. “Now, when we enter, we go in two groups. Thor and I will go first, then the four of you shall enter after five minutes. That should give us enough time to subdue the guards involved in the ‘selection of goods’. Then we split into twos and search every inch of that place for Ellie. Subdue any guards you see — how, I care not — but do not harm any of the workers; we do not know yet as to whether they are here of their own free will. Everyone ready?”

With unanimous agreement, the Odinsons hurried inside, leaving the others to wait before they entered. The pair went through a wooden door and, as soon as they crossed the threshold, the illusion of the cave faded away and they found themselves standing in an empty lobby of some kind. It was certainly not a fancy place by any means, but its carpeted floors gave way to some small amount of sophistication.

“Straight down the end?” Thor asked, repeated the guard’s instructions.

Loki nodded, gazing down the long hallway that led to a set of unguarded double doors. “Straight down the end.”

As they began to walk, Thor spoke up again. “What is our plan when we get inside?”

Loki shrugged. “To subdue the guards.”

“Yes, but how exactly?”

“However you want, I do not particularly care.”

There was a short pause before Thor looked at his brother hopefully. “Why don’t we do Get Help?”

“No.”

“But, brother—”

“Why in the Nine Realms would we ever do that?”

“Because it works every time, and it is fun!”

“It is not fun.”

“Yes it is.”

“It’s humiliating.”

“Do you have a better plan?”

“No.”

“Let’s do it.”

The pair arrived at the door and Loki turned to point his finger at his brother. “We are not doing Get Help.”

“Yes, we are,” Thor said, grinning back at him as he quickly grabbed him and kicked the doors open. “Get help!”

“Oh for the love of…” Loki was quick to play dead once he got a look of the room before them. There were three armed guards, each standing at a corner of the room, but they came barrelling towards the pair as they burst into the place quite unceremoniously.

“Please!” Thor rambled on. “My brother; he’s dying! Get help! Help him!”

All Loki could do as he was flung across the room was go limp. Thankfully, Thor’s throw was precise and he flew into the guards, knocking them all out as he landed on the floor with a painful thud. He muttered a number of profanities as he got back to his feet.

“I told you it would work!” Thor declared with delight.

“It is still humiliating,” Loki growled and finally noticed the other inhabitants in the room. On the far side of the room on a couch sat three women and one man, dressed in clothes that barely left their bodies covered at all. They didn’t scream out at the sudden intrusion, but merely stared at the two gods in complete surprise, mouths open and eyes wide.

“Perhaps they have seen Ellie?” Thor suggested and waved awkwardly. “Hello.”

“Are you workers in this establishment?” Loki asked and squatted down in front of them.

One woman nodded her head slowly. “W-who are you?”

“I am Prince Loki of Asgard,” he explained as his brother got down next to him.

“And I am Prince Thor of Asgard, God of Thunder. Son of Odin, the Allfather.”

“Thor?” the man exclaimed, his eyes darting between them. “And Loki?”

“Oh, thank the Norns!” another woman, a light elf, nearly wept.

“Are you here to help us?” the first woman asked, gazing at them in disbelief.

“You are not here of your own freewill?” Loki asked carefully.

She shook her head. “No! None of us are. We were all taken from our old lives and forced to work in this squalor and service these rats.”

“I fucking knew it,” Thor hissed, gritting his teeth.

Loki’s tone remained gentle as he spoke with the victims. “Who took you? Who did this to you?”

“Those bastards up in the castle! Frey and his whore, Freyja!”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” The Trickster looked at his brother and shook his head. “It would seem Sif’s theory was right. We will help you get out of this place, but first, we are looking for a woman.”

“You are going to have to be more specific than that, Prince Loki.”

“She is young, mousy haired, slim build, about this tall. She has a scar on both her lip and brow. She is a Midgardian, you might have heard guards discussing her mortality—”

“The young woman?” the man suddenly asked, eyes large with realisation. “Yes, I saw her. She was brought her yesterday. Frey and Freyja seemed to delight in her arrival.”

“Brother, she is here!” Thor cheered, a smile nearly splitting his face.

Loki had for force himself not to breakdown. She was here. They might have made it in time. “Where was she taken?”

“Upstairs,” he said urgently. “That door there will bring you to the staircase. I do not know what floor, but the twins like to keep their most prized product on the top floor.”

“She is important to you?” the elf asked Loki, as he swung around to look at the door to the staircase.

The God simply nodded in response and Thor answered. “She is his handmaiden, but also our dear friend.”

Before anyone could reply, their companions rushed in through the broken double doors. Fandral noticed the unconscious guards and immediately began to tie them up with Hogun’s assistance.

“What is the plan?” Sif asked the brothers, carefully looking over the prisoners.

Loki pointed to the far door. “Thor and I will go upstairs where Ellie is apparently being kept. I want Volstagg to remain here and protect the prisoners from any more of Frey and Freyja’s men that may arrive.”

“Prisoners?” Sif repeated, looking grim.

He nodded. “You were right, they are not working here of their own accord. I want you, Fandral, and Hogun to search this whole floor before following us up each floor at a time. We will work from the top downwards and meet you in the middle. All of the prisoners are to be brought back to this room alive.”

Sif nodded firmly and then gave Thor’s arm a squeeze. “Of course. Stay safe, you two.”

“And you, my friends,” Thor answered before he took off after his brother. “We will see you soon.”

Together they ascended the stairs as quickly but also as quietly as possible. On any other occasion, Loki would feel anxious about ignoring the two middle floors and whatever people may be held captive on them, but he needed to get to Ellie first. She was his priority, and nothing was about to change that. As they reached the top floor, the hallway went off in opposite directions.

“Well?” Thor asked, surprising him. “What would you like to do?”

Loki blanked for a moment, needing to shake his head to gather his thoughts. He was in no way used to this side of Thor, the one that was asking his opinion and acknowledging his ability, but he could not spend his time thinking about it with so many lives at stake. “I say we split up. You go that way, I go this way. When we have the floor covered, return here. If we find Ellie, keep her safe, clear the floor, and find the other as quickly as possible.”

“Right.” He nodded and quickly grabbed the back of his younger sibling’s neck in a surprisingly gentle manner, even for him. “Stay safe, alright? Make sure nothing happens and that you get out of here alive.”

Momentarily moved by the gesture, Loki sent a smile in return. “Trust me, I have made no plans to die here today.”

“Good. Now, let us find the little one.” With that, Thor snuck down the hallway and left Loki alone.

He didn’t delay and hurried off in the opposite direction. As he crept along, he carefully avoided any squeaky floorboards or unstable side tables. The first few rooms he found were dingy and empty. He wasn’t sure whether finding them unoccupied was a relief or a worry, but he pressed on. The further he explored, the more occupied rooms he found. Some contained prisoners, who he told to run down to the selection room if they didn’t need to be first cut from restraints. He killed several guards who were otherwise occupied assaulting the workers, distracting them with duplicates or slitting their throats before they had even realised he was in the room. He felt no shame in it, for once he saw the horror and the faces of the captives, he knew they deserved little mercy. And yet, as he searched the rooms, he saw no sign of Ellie, until he found a dead man in one of the empty spaces. The sight surprised him. Had Thor come this way? Upon closer inspection of the bled-out corpse, the stab wounds lay waste to that theory. His mouth went dry and he quickly left the room. When searching another room, he found yet another body with its throat cut. Growing more anxious and impatient, he rushed his search along until he rounded a corner and came to what seemed like the last room on the floor. He listened and heard muffled voices on the other side. With a deep breath and a dagger in hand, he gripped the handle and pushed open the door. What he found knocked the wind from him.

“Loki!”

There was his Ellie, sat on the rag on the floor with two men — captives by the dirt on their faces, skimpy clothes, and cut restraints lying on the floor — staring up at him with wide wet eyes. Beside the door lay another dead guard, his throat cleanly slit.

He couldn’t help himself. The relief poured from him before he could even attempt to stop it. “Ellie…”

She stumbled to her feet, breathing heavily as she threw herself into his arms. The feel of her in his arms once more was the most joy he had felt in years. Here she was, his little Midgardian, alive and mostly well. He locked her in his grasp, burying his face in the crook of her neck as she sobbed into his chest. “You found me! I didn’t know if you were coming. I didn’t know—”

“Shh, all is well,” he reassured her, even through he felt his own tears soaking his cheeks. “Of course I would come. I could not leave you.” He reluctantly pulled her back a tad, cupping her face to check her over and noting the blood stains on her dress. “What is…? Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

“Nothin’ that won’t heal,” she assured him. “It’s not my blood. Just some cuts and bruises, and I’m knackered, but I’m fine, I promise. Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I am fine. I am just so relieved that you are alright, by the Norns.” He hugged her again, clutching her as tightly as he could without doing her any harm. “I missed you so much, Ellie. I am so sorry this happened.”

“No, stop. It’s not your fault. I missed you too.”

“All is well now, I promise you.” He embraced her, feeling comfort at finally being able to hold her again.

“Loki, the workers,” she spoke suddenly, looking at him in desperation. “The people in this brothel — or whatever the fuck it is — they’ve all been taken from their homes like I was! None of this is legal. Frey and Freyja — they’re monsters. They took all these people here and forced them to work—”

“I know, my love,” he whispered gently. “Thor and I encountered some of them downstairs. They are leaving this place with us too.”

“Thor is here?”

“And the Warriors Three and Lady Sif. We all came to help.”

“I take it this is the prince you told us about?” one of the men spoke up as he stood up and then helped the other up as well. “Your employer?”

“It is an honour to meet you, My Prince,” his friend said, an Asgardian by the sounds of his accent. “Are you here to help us?”

“Yes,” he replied, hands still holding on to Ellie firmly. He knew he wouldn’t be able to embrace her like this once they were in the other’s company again, so he would savour the closeness for now. “Today we are all leaving this place and you will all return to your rightful homes.”

The men looked completely shocked by his admission, but thanked him profusely as he began to herd them out of the room. At that moment, Thor appeared from around the far corner of the hall, followed closely by six prisoners. Upon seeing his brother and Ellie, he nearly shouted out, but still ran to meet them and squeezed Ellie in his arms.

“He found you! Are you well? They did not hurt you, did they?” He made a show of checking her over, noticing the cuts on her wrists and ankles, as well as the blood all over her garments.

“I am fine, Thor, now that you guys are here.” She smiled at him in delight, eyes still spilling with silent tears.

“Then we best leave now,” Thor said, unable to wipe the thankful grin from his face. “Today, no one is getting left behind in this place. Follow me.”

For once, Loki was glad to let Thor take the lead as they retreated down the stairs to meet their companions. This was because his attention was solely focused on the woman at his side. He couldn’t take his eyes off her and stared unabashedly at her dirty, swollen, and bruised face. This emotion was new to him, but he refused to hide the happiness he felt knowing that she was alive and well. The anger would certainly come later. Once he had a moment to sit and find out what they had done to her, he knew he would see red. But, for now, he simply held her close. She was finally safe again.

Loki kept Ellie firmly by his side as they descended the stairs, although she too had her  bruised arm locked around his waist, and it didn't seem as though anything could tear her away.

Taglist: @jonsaiscomiing @wrappedinlokisarms @unseelie1963 @talinalani @fightmelight @spookass @myinnerkemono @tumbler-bumblr @jclements919 @ao3-hipster-fangirl-trash @proactiveturtles @iamthered @tlbrooks-68

[chaoticspacefam]

Character Traits Meme: The Ahaszaai Twins

I was tagged by @stratosara​ (thank you!) I shall tag (no pressure, as always, feel free to ignore if you don’t feel like it!) @pauletta-00​ , @commander-kulan​ , @mercurypilgrim​ , @a-muirehen​ and anybody else who feels like doing it!

We’ll start with the Ahaszaai twins (of course, they are my favourites), but I’ll probably do this for a couple others and throw it in the queue too, cause this one is fuuuunn :D

Bold for currently applies, italics for formerly or sometimes applies, strike for never applies (AFAIK, that’s what I’m using anyways XDD)

MANDATORY REMINDER THAT MY FICVERSE IS CANON DIVERGENT BECAUSE THERE’S ALWAYS GONNA BE SOMEONE COMING TO COMMENT “ThAt’S NoT CaNOn!” I KNOW! THAT’S THE POINT XD

SAARAI

[WEALTH ]

$ Financial : wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

[Could technically count as “wealthy” but since most of what they make goes right back into the Alliance I’m gonna call it moderate. When she fled to Rishi with Ty, though, they had very little, she was able to make enough doing odd jobs knocking pirates around etc. for them to get by, but it was a little rough.]

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / transient / slave / unsure 

[If Valkorion hadn’t killed most of their family and she’d stayed as the heir to the Sith throne, she would’ve been considered upper class. She’s not sure what to call herself while she and Ty were on Rishi and once she becomes Empress of the Eternal Alliance she’s technically upper class again, but Saarai doesn’t like to consider herself “above” the other Alliance members and prefers to see them as equals with different viewpoints so she’s not going to label herself as “upper” class]

✔ Education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other

[Technically finished training at the Sith Academy, but because she didn’t stay for long after becoming a Lord it doesn’t count. She has plenty of knowledge of the Force though and is always learning new things when she can (though she’s not the smartest, she tries!) so she gets by.]

✖ Criminal Record : yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / classified

[Doesn’t have one, because she ran before it could be traced back to her. If her sister hadn’t taken the fall for her, though, she would’ve suffered the same fate (or worse), for murdering one of Arkous’ apprentices.]

[ FAMILY ]

◒ Children: has a child or children / has no biological children / wants children / has adopted children

[Has a son, Ty. In an ideal world where there was nothing stopping her, she’d want more kids because she loves them. But trust issues and being one of the main figureheads of the Alliance means she doesn’t really have time to be on maternity leave to raise a baby. So she makes do with helping teach the youngsters and/or babysitting her nieces, nephews and grandchildren instead :3]

◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

[Saarai only has one sibling, her twin sister Ni’kasi, and they are very close, so close that they have a Force bond, in fact!]

◔ Affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent(s) / not applicable  

[Father was killed when she was a very young child, she only has vague memories of him. Was raised by her mother for most of her life, till things (which she still blames herself for) caught up to them and her mother was killed too. Though they don’t reunite officially till Iokath, the twins are adopted by their uncle Vowrawn and his husband Abaron after their mother dies.]

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between

[Saarai is careful and guarded (but polite, unless you give her reason not to be) with strangers, but with those she is familiar with she is very vocal and extroverted.]

♦ dis-organised / organised / in between

♦ closed-minded / open-minded / in between

♦ calm / anxious / in between

[Only gets anxious in specific situations, otherwise is generally pretty calm.]

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between

♦ cautious / reckless / in between

[cautious in certain very specific situations, but when it comes to the battlefield and protecting her loved ones or allies Saarai is very reckless. She operates under the principal of “if they’re hurting me then they’re not hurting you and I can take more beatings than you can”, much to Lana and Koth’s dismay XD]

♦ patient / impatient / in between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between

♦ leader / follower / in between

♦ empathetic / unempathetic / in between

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

[Since the trauma in her past, Saarai had to learn the hard lesson that she can’t assume someone isn’t going to try and hurt her, so she tries to be more critical of people, but her first attempt is always to see the good in someone.]

♦ traditional / modern / in between

[Holds more to the old old Sith traditions she learnt from her mother (and the few memories she has of her father), than Valkorion’s Empire’s traditions. Is relatively open-minded about adapting and changing her views, within reason.]

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between

♦ cultured / uncultured  / in between

[Has a generally dignified air most of the time. But on the battlefield or when she gets really angry, she’s fucking feral. She has teeth that can crack bones and she will use them on you if she has to.]

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual / other*

[*Polycurious, and strongly woman-leaning, does end up in a closed poly relationship with Lana and Koth mid-way through KOTFE.]

❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favourable / naive and clueless

[Had to work through some stuff after her trauma, but has managed to work through (most of) it now through the years and is all for it.]

♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favourable / naive and/or inexperienced

[Saarai is one of the sappiest romantics you have ever met. If she loves you, she’s not afraid to show it in any way possible: cuddles, kisses, dinner dates, stay-at-home-and-watch-movies dates, random flowers, anything you can possibly think of, if it makes you smile, she’ll do it.]

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

[Absolutely knows what she’s doing (and can certainly give you a good time ;)), but isn’t particularly adventurous.]

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

[After her bad experiences with Ty’s father, she’s not comfortable with any sort of intimate contact with men, not even Koth (and she trusts him more than anything - they have it all worked out between the three of them though and everyone’s happy with the way things are). Sticks almost exclusively to women, would probably be okay with fem-presenting people of other genders, but masc-presenting people would worry her.]

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

[Heavily female-leaning, but not adamantly against a romantic relationship with a man...it will just take her longer to trust and feel comfortable with them, but as long as they respect the boundaries she sets out (thank you, Koth!), she’s fine!]

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none  

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[Do not let her near a computer or explosives, for your own safety, please. Even she will warn you as such and refuse to touch it. She’s not good with them LOL Saarai can do very simple things like plug something into a navcomputer, or scroll through files on a datapad/in an archive but that’s about the limit of what her abilities allow.]

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[Social drinker, but never over the top.]

☁ Smoking: trying to quit / never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

✿ Other Narcotics: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[Assuming this refers to kolto and whatever else they put in the medpacs etc. Then yes. Sometimes if she gets hurt and Lana or her sister isn’t around to fix it for her.]

☻ Indulgent Food: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

♣ Gambling: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

NI’KASI

[WEALTH ]

$ Financial : wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

[Formerly a slave with nothing to her name, but since rising the ranks of the Dark Council has made quite a name for herself, even after leaving the Empire to join up with her sister in the Alliance.]

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged

[During her time as a slave she was deliberately kept sickly/weak to stop her from fighting back properly or trying to escape, but once she was re-entered into the Korriban Academy and started training she gradually re-built her muscle tone. She’s still less bulky than her sister because of this, but she’s got decent enough muscle by mid-way through her canon storyline.]

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / transient / slave / unsure

[Like Saarai, would have stayed upper if Valkorion hadn’t happened. Spent almost half a decade in slavery, but gradually worked her way up again to make it back to upper class.]

✔ Education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other

[As a Dark Council member (and eventually Alliance Council Member), Ni’kasi is very much one of the leading authorities in her field. That doesn’t mean she’s stopped studying though, not in the slightest. She’s always looking through the archives to expand her knowledge base so she can use it to help her family and allies.]

✖ Criminal Record : yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / classified

[Was on the books for Tsâhis (Ty’s father)’s murder, though this was wiped after she became high ranked enough within the Empire as she’d earned that much. What no one but their family knows, however, is that though she confessed to the murder, Ni’kasi wasn’t the one who did it. She simply said she was so she could protect her sister and ensure that she could get her nephew, Ty, out of harm’s way (otherwise Ty would’ve had nobody to raise him).]

[ FAMILY ]

◒ Children: has a child or children / has no biological children / wants children / has adopted children

[I haven’t named them yet (or gotten that far in their part of the story), but she has at least two with Andronikos, maybe a third later on down the line. I haven’t made my mind up yet.]

◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

[Her only sibling is her twin sister, Saarai. They’re very close and even share a Force bond. There’s nothing in the universe Ni’kasi wouldn’t do for her sister. If Saarai says “jump”, she asks “how high?”.]

◔ Affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent(s) / not applicable  

[Father was killed when she was a very young child, unlike Saarai, Ni’kasi has very few memories of him. Was raised by her mother for most of her life, till things caught up to them and her mother was killed too. Ni’kasi reunites with their uncle Vowrawn and Abaron much earlier, and they adopt the twins as their own since their mother’s passing.]

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between

♦ dis-organised / organised / in between

♦ closed-minded / open-minded / in between

[Ni’kasi, too, sticks more to the old old Sith ideals taught by her mother, but is far more openly critical of Jedi views. She won’t completely throw them aside but it will take a lot of convincing to get her to come around.]

♦ calm / anxious / in between

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between

[Mostly agreeable...but is still not fond of Jedi. Where necessary, she will tolerate them, but she makes it clear that she can’t wait for it to be over when that happens.]

♦ cautious / reckless / in between

[This woman has a back up-back up plan for the back up plan for the back up plan. She thinks through everything before she makes a decision or follows through an action and very rarely reacts on impulse.]

♦ patient / impatient / in between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between

♦ leader / follower / in between

[Usually a leader and quite bossily so. Except where her sister is involved; she will follow her sister anywhere and listen to any order Saarai gives her, no matter what, because Saarai’s the boss.]

♦ empathetic / unempathetic / in between

[Comes off as unempathetic, but is in fact simply very literal/logical and has a bit of resting bitch face XD.]

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

♦ traditional / modern / in between

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between

♦ cultured / uncultured  / in between

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual

❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favourable / naive and clueless

[She’s a Sith, it’s like...one of the most important “rules” they teach XD.]

♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favourable / naive and/or inexperienced

[”Repulsed” is  a strong word, I’d more call it “hesitant”. Ni’kasi is demiromantic, so she needs to know a person well enough before she can actually fall in love with them. When she does, though, and she accepts that that’s what it is, she’s alright with it and comes to enjoy little romantic gestures here and there. Though she and Andronikos are certainly more private about their affections, she prefers it that way (:]

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

[Relatively experienced and open to try new things, within reason. Won’t do anything too crazy.]

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

[Kas is demiromantic, strongly leaning towards men because that’s who she prefers in bed.]

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[Good on the battlefield, as long as she’s not close-range, her footwork is sloppy and she’s incredibly clumsy, despite being the less bulky between her and her twin, Kas is the one that trips over her own feet while duelling.] 

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills : excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[Kas is a lightweight, she can’t hold her liqueour well and gets drunk very easily so she prefers not to drink if it can be helped, but is occasionally persuaded to have a glass or two by Andronikos or some of her other companions.]

☁ Smoking: trying to quit / never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

✿ Other Narcotics: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

☻ Indulgent Food: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[Didn’t get much of it as a slave, Andronikos likes to surprise her with nice things like chocolate on occasion because her face always lights up when he does (:]

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[Not often, due to coming out of slavery, she understands the value of money and is somewhat picky about what she spends it on, but isn’t above picking up something nice if she knows she can afford to spend on it.]

♣ Gambling: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

[grifalinas]

So I was thinking about Forte and the Dragon Symphony (I seem to have dropped “Prince” from the title) and none of the three stories I’ve come up with (so far) seem to be a full length novel type story. In fact, they seem more like novellas or short stories.

So I decide that what I’m gonna do is condense them into one anthology, “Forte and the Dragon Symphony (and other stories)” or something, and have them be three stories with a loosely connected plot.

The first story is how due to a misunderstanding, Forte was sent to slay a dragon and rescue his prisoners, but after getting there found that the prisoners were actually refugees from an island kingdom that had sunk for some obscure, never elaborated on reason, and the dragon was a friend of theirs who brought them, in small, easily carried groups, to an abandoned castle to find their new lives. (They’re very understanding about how that must have looked; it was an easy mistake to make.) The dragon in question also turns out to be the cutest boy in the world (at least according to Forte), and in the process of figuring out how to sort things out with the refugees, Forte falls in love with him, and brings him back to home to be his betrothed.

The second story has Cadence going out to where her kingdom used to be to see how it’s getting on (still sunken) and to see if she can acquire anything left over from her people and their culture. She hires what turns out to be a pirate to help her; while she’s on ship doing her search every day, the pirate is taking a portion of her crew onto the shore to track and trap a unicorn that lives in the woods on shore, because she reckons she can get a good price for it in from some rich merchant looking to buy their kid some exotic pet or whatever. However, the unicorn keeps getting out of their traps, because surprise! Unicorn is a shapeshifter and a teenager, and boy oh boy is he angry. Forte and Symphony go out to check on Cadence and get involved when they run into the unicorn boy before finding her, so when they meet her pirate friend they don’t hit it off, since she’s (from their perspective) trying to trap a sentient being and sell it into slavery. However, they get everything sorted out in the end, and Raptorr goes home with Forte and Symphony. (Cadence also gets to smooch the cute pirate lady, but that’s another story, that’s if this story was about Cadence.)

The third story is Forte being given his own command over a small squad of trainee palace guards, and the task of capturing a chicken thief in a nearby village. Among his squad is a boy who looks twelve and talks like he’s thirty, who looks... odd... in ways that no one can put their finger on. Turns out the boy is in fact a Fae! Who are all girls! Holly (the Fae) is part of a recent movement involving some Fae declaring themselves Men Actually, and since Fae society don’t yet know what to make of them and the conservative element is bucking, he decided to go live with the humans. Also they stop an underground chicken stealing ring, which is a hilarious thing to say. Then they go home, and Forte gets to keep his new squad, who are all quirky fun characters in their own right and I can’t wait to meet them.

Possibly the tying-together element of the three stories is Forte and Symphony getting things ready for the wedding, because the entire anthology takes place over a year (with implications of other adventures in between), and ends with them finally getting to have their wedding, with Symphony being made a true prince of the realm or something. (Idk I just want my gay fantasy anthology to end with my gay trans prince actually getting to marry his love interest for real.)

Anyway there are probably a  lot of other stories in this world (I mentioned centaurs a couple of times) but for now I’m going to focus on developing those three.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 7th April 2019 (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande)

We actually have a pretty busy week to cover today, with five new arrivals, one of which is in the top five, another of which is a total meme that just hit #1 in the States. There’s also a tragedy less lighthearted we’ll have to talk about, but for now, let’s discuss the top 10, because there’s been somewhat of a shake up.

Top 10

That shake-up isn’t going to affect Lewis Capaldi still at the top of the charts for a sixth week, as “Someone You Loved” continues its reign. I hope it gets overthrown pretty quickly because the song is pretty painful on its own and it does not bear well with me after the overplay.

Our shake-up starts just at the runner-up spot, however, as from her worldwide #1 album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, debuting at number-two is “bad guy”, her fourth UK Top 40 hit, second Top 10 and first ever top five. We’ll talk more about it later.

This means that Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and Calvin Harris’ “Giant” is down one space to number-three.

Tom Walker was hit with an identical loss, with “Just You and I” down to number-four...

...as was “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, also down to number-five.

Thanks to the album, “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish had a large boost up 14 positions to number-six, which is a new peak after its debut at number-seven.

Speaking of number-seven, Dave’s “Location” featuring Burna Boy is down one spot this week.

Steel Banglez’s “Fashion Week” with AJ Tracey and Mo Stack doesn’t suffer nearly as much as I thought it would this week, just moving down one position to number-eight off the debut.

Ariana Grande, the only real competition for Billie Eilish within the top 10, seems to have been hit more than anything else here, as her song “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” has been pushed down four spots to number-nine.

Finally, we have “Piece of Your Heart” by MEDUZA and Goodboys rapidly moves up the charts, up a whopping 22 spaces this week to #10, becoming each artists’ first top 10. I don’t know why, but I’m not necessarily complaining, it’s a good song, I’m just kind of confused about its incredible boost in popularity this week, maybe a commercial placement. That seems to help a lot of these EDM tracks from relative nobodies rack up chart points.

Climbers

There are literally no climbers outside of the two already discussed in the top 10.

Fallers

On the other hand... sigh, let’s sort this by genre as I try to do whenever we have a massive amount of losses.

In pop and dance, “Walk Me Home” by P!nk was walked down five hills to its home at #14, “Don’t Feel Like Crying” by Sigrid is also down five to #18, as is “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #21, while “Dancing with a Stranger” by Sam Smith and Normani is down six to #27. Ariana Grande’s “7 rings” also continues its fall down nine to #38.

In hip-hop and R&B, NSG and Tion Wayne’s “Options” is down seven to #17, “Wow.” by Post Malone exits the top 20 finally, down five to #22, “Disaster” by Dave featuring J Hus loses album release steam down eight to #23 (as does “Streatham”, also by Dave, down 11 to #33), “Keisha & Becky” by Russ splash and Tion Wayne is down six to #25 off the debut and “Please Me” by Bruno Mars and Cardi B is down seven to #32.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

“Nights Like This” by Kehlani featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #33, “Kitchen Kings” by D-Block Europe is out from #34, “Think About Us” by Little Mix featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #35, “MIDDLE CHILD” by J. Cole is out from #36 due to cuts to its streams’ importance on its chart placement, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee is out from #37 and “How it Is” by Roddy Ricch, Chip and Yxng Bane featuring the Plug is out from #40. Good riddance.

Also, Billie Eilish’s “wish you were gay” returned to #13, reaching the top 20 at a new peak. Since this is the lowest Eilish song on the chart and it was released prior, that means there is no album bomb from Eilish; this, “bury a friend” and “bad guy” are the highest-performing songs and that’s all the UK chart allows.

IN MEMORIAM

On March 31st, 2019, a man named Ermias Joseph Asghedom was shot six times in the parking lot of his own clothing store, once in the head. Approximately 30 minutes after he was transported to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. That man was Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle, murdered fresh off of the release of both his single “Racks in the Middle” with Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy as well as his album, Victory Lap, which had failed to grab the Best Rap Album Grammy Award the month prior, having his life at the peak of his career cut short unjustly by gang violence which he had since made incredible efforts to put in the past and distance himself from, making positive and charitable contributions to his hometown ever since, to the point where the Crenshaw and Slauson intersection has been named Nipsey Hussle Square in his honour. His memorial service has been held today, April 11th, and he’s since been buried, at only 33 years old, leaving two children from a long-term relationship with Lauren London behind to carry his legacy. While I was not amazed with Victory Lap, I thought I’d discuss one of my favourite tracks from his last ever record released in his lifetime.

“Dedication” – Nipsey Hussle featuring Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Mike & Keys, Rance and MyGuyMars – Peaked at #93 in the US

First off, this oily beat is pretty beautiful, with reversed and manipulated soulful vocal samples backing some really slick keys and piano loops, giving off a great West Coast vibe that was Nipsey’s signature style. Nipsey’s first verse is an intense way of introducing the listener to the subject matter, with an intricate depiction of Nipsey’s life as a youth trapped in the ghetto, with a nice beat switch-up in the last few bars. The short chorus is barely a hook, but Nipsey gives a surprisingly great singing performance on the track, and it has a drop of sorts where Alexandria Dopson and Garren Edwards show off some vocal power in the midst of Nipsey’s frustrated grunt-screams, which I like to think are representative of how he felt when he thought he could never make it out of the streets, but the chorus is about how he finally broke himself free of its chains – dedication, hard work plus patience, invoking imagery of the abolishment of slavery used as wordplay throughout Nipsey’s third verse. Kendrick’s great albeit oddly-mixed verse references his come-up as well, but also the death of his grandmother how when he was suggested to make a song with Nipsey Hussle because of how they were both Crips, he responded by emphasising how he’s not just a gang member, but a man too, and after his death and some of the negative comments I have seen about Nipsey mentioning his past, is a stronger message than ever. The best part of the track is when Kendrick’s verse is interrupted by some 808 stabs, and the instrumental transforms into a semi-chopped and screwed shell of what it was, with echoing vocals from Dopson fading out before Kenny comes and sings in a janky flow that is trippy yet also pretty elegant and makes sense considering how it transitions from Nipsey and Kendrick talking about their history in gangs and Nipsey’s final verse about how satisfied he is with how his music, or what he says are is spirituals, have brought him into fame and luxurious life after about 30 years of barely making it by. I love the line where he references not only his friend YG’s album but the popular local saying, “Stay dangerous”, as he was educated by the hood into believing that he had to be feared to be safe, as well as his bars about how him owning his own masters is his way of abolishing what had shackled him as a teenager and as a young adult. The song ends with another repetition of the anthemic hook as a book-end, as we are treated to a relaxed instrumental featuring piano melodies layered on top of each other and Nipsey laughing in joy as he’s finally “Made it out”, with sound effects of dogs barking and general civilian life surrounding the melodic finish to a fantastic song.

This the remedy, the separation / 2Pac of my generation, blue pill in the f***in’ Matrix / Red rose in the grey pavement / Young black n***a trapped and he can’t change it

RIP Nipsey Hussle, August 15th 1985 – March 31st, 2019.

Now, on a lighter note...

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “MONOPOLY” – Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét

Produced by Social House and Tim Suby – Peaked at #6 in New Zealand and #70 in the US

Why Ariana Grande seemed it fit to release this song as a non-album single on Monday, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to blag on about that as Grande released this single and its amateurish video as seemingly a joke, right? It was on April Fools, and was coined “a treat for the fans”, with a video that had a budget of less than $10, as well as being both sonically and visually meme-heavy, so I don’t think it should be taken any seriously and rather just as a fun celebration of Grande’s success, featuring rap verses from her lead songwriter and best friend for some reason. It’s Grande’s 20th Top 40 hit over here and Victoria Monét’s first ever credited appearance on the Top 40, and you can tell their level of success by just their performances on this song, as Grande gets to show off the vocal prowess and is provided with both the intro and outro as well as all the multi-layering, while Monét’s expressions of her personality are relegated to the singular actual rap verse (Which she still shares with Grande) and Auto-Tuned ad-libs that are literally just sped-up sentences, as well as a messy Nutty Professor reference. The beat is pretty lightweight, with a couple vocal samples and cloudy synths hidden behind a trap skitter, but it’s fitting to back the nonsensical lyrics here, all of which only work because of the charisma the girls ooze from their vocals, despite the imbalanced vocal production. And, yeah, the lyrics here are awful, as expected. First of all, the refrain/pre-chorus rhymes “Where you been?” with itself three times, barely fitting the lyrics into the meter by scrambling the word “GPS” into a Twista-like chopper flow for like a second until going back to the droning, saccharine delivery. Let’s look at some highlights.

Bad vibes, get off of me / Outta here with that f***ery

Sorry, I just love the visual in the music video of Monét and Grande literally swatting away the “F***ery”, it’s pretty cute.

I swerve both ways, dichotomy / I like women and men

This painful, forced reference to Monét’s bisexuality is so blunt and to the point that when Grande says it, it’s hilarious. Imagine coming out in a loosie trap single that barely counts as a song and not an interlude. I do kind of like how straightforward the line is, to be honest, it’s almost anthemic... maybe I’m thinking too much into this.

Then we hit the bank, making dumb investments, for the win

“For the win”? I didn’t expect a song saying, “For the win” to make the Top 40 ever, but, sure, let’s roll with it. What does Ari say?

And if they try come stopping me, I’ll show them my discography (Yeah, yeah)

Okay, that’s kinda clever—

Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win, go!

Nevermind, they said, “For the win”, again.

This been buildin’ up, I guess this friendship like Home Depot

Yeah, nope. Next song.

#39 – “Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X

Produced by YoungKio, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Peaked at #1 in the US

Oh, great, another meme song. Well, at least I can say this – where were you when a country-trap fusion from a former Twitter comedian turned rapper that samples a Nine Inch Nails guitar loop and was later remixed by Billy Ray Friggin’ Cyrus became the most popular song in the entirety of Northern America thanks to TikTok memes and a racism scandal? The whole situation is so loony to me, but I respect Lil Nas X and YoungKio for being so relaxed and chill about the whole fiasco, especially when it started getting bigger and bigger, becoming the shortest number-one song in America since 1963, with a runtime of only one minute and 54 seconds, disregarding the remix of course. Is it a country song? I mean, obviously, it’s a country rap song, nobody’s arguing that, and that’s got country in its name so yeah, in my opinion, if Nelly and Tim McGraw count when they released what was essentially an R&B song, this counts, even if it’s essentially just a trap song about horses. It actually paints a pretty interesting lone cowboy story inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 but, who cares? It’s a meme, alright, and for now it’s pretty funny. It’s got a really catchy hook/intro, with an effective refrain as well as verses that much like “MONOPOLY”, were probably written in less than five minutes but they work, and that’s all that really matters. I like how his voice sounds in the muffled outro, but really, there’s not much to it. It’s a fun beat with a great sample that Billy Ray Cyrus takes advantage of entirely and bodies. His flow is stiff but so is the stunted beat so it fits together quite nicely, and the additional choruses add some needed meat to the track, as does the banjo and the whistling at the tail-end of the outro... but we’re not judging the remix just yet, and on its own merits, “Old Town Road” is nothing all too special.

#26 – “Better Man” – Westlife

Produced by Steve Mac – Peaked at #2 in Scotland

Westlife released a second single in 2019, after their last single three months back debuted in the Top 20 and did insanely well in radio and sales... in 2019. This new single, produced by Steve Mac, has an orchestral version, and is set to be on their new album Spectrum which was announced to be released on 6th September, 2019. This new single is their second to reach the Top 40 in 2019. It nearly peaked at the top spot in Scotland, in 2019, and has had success all over Britain in the week of release, which may I add, was in March 2019. I refuse to believe Westlife will have a resurgence in 2019, and although I mostly believe that charts are ran by impressionable teenagers, this proves that Mom-pop is safe in the midst of the new British trap-rappers who talk about murder and drug trafficking, and of course Gothic art pop starlets that aren’t even old enough to drink yet... and I’m not here for it. No, the orchestral version is not better, get this manufactured waste of time off the charts.

#19 – “Your Mrs” – JAY1

Produced by Coolie

So, just as I was actually starting to lighten up on British trap-rap – seriously, Tion Wayne’s stuff, especially “Options”, has been growing on me immensely and I loved Dave’s debut studio album – this  comes out and debuts in the top 20, and it’s bloody awful. It’s literally one piano chord. It’s literally ONE. FREAKING. PIANO CHORD. Through the whole song. There’s a trap skitter as well after the beat doesn’t transition to the drop after its intro and instead just fades out with a cheap pitch-shift effect, until we get to a developed version of the beat, and by that I mean it has two annoying high-pitched beep sounds and a bass that clips through the mix thanks to the vocals that are louder than everything else. For the most part it feels like it’s just JAY1 rapping over a hi-hat, and to be fair, that’s what most of it is. It’s not menacing, of course, because even if it was, literally in the first bar of the song, he’s joking. He won’t actually be luxurious enough to take your missus, as he says, and would rather just let the women watch him, I guess. He’s not interesting, and although there switch-ups to the instrumental that help make it more interesting, the more stretched-out flows he uses are absolutely painful. The subject matter is nonexistent, apparently he has an Australian side chick and NAV helps transport his cocaine. Oh, but do you hear that? There’s a flute... no, seriously, can you hear it? Because I can’t, really, I mean it’s just a pathetic loop probably stolen from some Creative Commons musician that somehow ended up in an official release, and it doesn’t last long. It comes back in the third chorus, where he’s multi-tracked with a pitched-down vocal and this would actually be menacing if he wasn’t just talking about how his girl has a big butt. If that voice was whispering about cold-blooded murder, then this song would be awesome... but it’s not. It’s weak flexing and bragging with a nonexistent beat from an incredibly uninteresting dude who doesn’t know to mix his bass properly. I hope to see this gone quickly, because this is dreadful.

#2 – “bad guy” – Billie Eilish

Produced by FINNEAS – Peaked at #1 in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Norway and Slovakia, and #7 in the US

This is the big #2 debut, the one I’m supposed to care about most, but mostly I’m just feeling lukewarm on both the big single and Eilish’s album as a whole, which felt structure-less and lacking of much substance as she gets wrapped in her own metaphors. This new song has got a vivid, shocking and quirky video, but Dave Meyers stole it from an indie magazine called Toilet Paper’s photo shoot so I suppose that has helped this song increase in popularity – nothing like some good controversy. The dark, bass-heavy and reverb-drowned groove here is actually really nice, and I love Billie’s vocal melody, especially when it’s multi-tracked with the fake finger-snaps in the background that are incredibly flat, and that bassline when it hits in the chorus is insane. The lyrics are kind of funny if anything, as Eilish references her melodramatic, emo image as she claims herself to be a “make-your-momma-sad, might-seduce-your-dad type”, priding herself in the cynical bad guy personality among pop music’s cutesy stylings we’ve been accustomed to. The eerie flute-like synth melody is pretty creepy and I love how it takes itself way too seriously despite the lyrics that are basically just Eilish being an edgy teenager, even with a post-chorus where she says, “Duh”, in a deadbeat manner followed by high-pitched gliding chopped-up vocal samples, and it’s all good, right? But then there’s a beat switch that just doesn’t freaking work. The pause from the original beat lasts way too long, so the transition feels incredibly forced, and the trap breakdown/drop means the song loses all momentum, especially with that annoying bird chirping sound that starts it off. There’s no real transition here, so Eilish’s offbeat delivery isn’t interesting and endearing, just kind of janky, with the whispering not being creepy but forced and tryhard. Without the drop, this’d be pretty cool though.

Conclusion

Wow, what a mixed week. Sadly, I can’t give Best of the Week to “Dedication”, so it goes to Lil Nas X for “Old Town Road” because it’s probably the most fun song here, with Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét snatching Honourable Mention for the so-bad-it’s-good mess, “MONOPOLY”. Worst of the Week should be obvious as it goes to JAY1 for “Your Mrs”, but Dishonourable Mention is harder, so I’ll give it to Westlife for the sake of tradition. See you next week!

[theworstjedi]

Local Sith Lord Ruins Family Dinner

“This might sound strange coming from a Sith –” Lord Ignolis said as he cut his steak. The scent of watery copper spiced the air as though the wound was fresh. “– but you and Uktaizia have been a good son and daughter to me all these years growing up in my house. You serve me loyally in the place my own son cannot for little reward.”

Even though his seat at the Pureblood Lord’s table hand been naught but a skillfully woven fairytale cooling into acceptance, Elutherius’ spine grew long and his chin tipped, like a Hound that enjoyed the strokes of its master. Lord Ignolis’ son at his left hand and directly across from Elutherius bloomed into flame.

“You have something to say, Tansilm?” Elutherius asked under a thin guise of deference.

A rogue smile caught his cut lips and twisted his Glasgow smile into a smug shape. At the address of the childhood pet name from his former slave, the flames licking Kurt Wax turned into cold coal. Elutherius’ cheek burned until it was frozen under Kurt’s glare. Elutherius bit the inside of his lip to hinder the progression of his smile from amused to cheeky. This colored his sass with suggestions of arousal, but vaguely interpreted allure was par for the course for Elutherius. He briefly caught Taizi shaking her head next to Lord Ignolis’ wife. He imagined her rolling her eyes in the fragments of her face she’d allowed him to piece back together.

“No, nothing to add,” Kurt replied in his stiff military cant. The cut of his eyes  reopened one of the scars on Elutherius’ cheek. “I know Elly more intimately than most at this table. When he is passionate about something, you won’t find a more ambitious worker, my Lord; it is natural his determination would pay off.”

“Thanks, Tansilm.”

Without Force sight Elutherius couldn’t see anything of Kurt but a pale hued red that moved bodilessly in his color desaturated vision. It was as though someone had tried to paint a figure, but the color had bled into a formless shape that carried traces of resemblance to what the artist intended. Barely ovular arms, something of a head and neck that sucked into a void of darkness; Elutherius supposed that Kurt was wearing black clothes. Perhaps his Imperial officer uniform left on after clocking out. Paltry but... preferable to the hallucinations.

Elutherius also supposed, from the way the air grew taut and hard to breathe, that his lip had started to curl. The human readjusted himself on his seat.

“It’s good to know you share the same sentiment, Kurt –”

Elutherius reached out with his legs until his toe brushed on something. He sussed out the line of an instep and flicked delicately up the ankle so as not to scuff Kurt’s polished boots. The air slackened all at once, like a sigh. Kurt’s boot tapped Elutherius’ foot curtly twice.

“– You wouldn’t have your successful career in the Imperial Army if not for Elutherius’ advice, wouldn’t you?” Lord Ignolis’ voice danced in false revelation, and the room on Kurt’s side snagged into a pinch. “Not only for me, then but for my eldest son, you’ve done so much. Although Uktaizia is my late brother’s child, I’ve always loved her like my own. It is remiss that I’ve left you titleless and her without a future or security as my gratitude for having you both in my lives, Apprentice.” Taizi was no longer shaking her head; she was no longer eating. “One day I will give you your true name, your Sith name, but I’d also like to give you my old title. Would you do me the honor of being a husband to my daughter? I can think of no happier option.”

No one was eating now.

The watercolor figure of Taizi’s brown skinned arms dripped with maroon, but she felt crimson to Elutherius’ eyes. That was the tone of her words - a low blood red husk.

“Is that what I was invited back here for, Khaûtimak? So you can pretend I’m your daughter, then marry me off to the biggest Dorian passion fruit in the galaxy?”

Elutherius chose to divert his attention to a particularly interesting part of the ceiling blob. Ah– the detail. He bit the inner corner of his cheek and hoped no one would ask him to clarify on Taizi’s most recent disclosure about his private life, but if Kurt’s anger made the room hard to breathe, Taizi forced all the air out of it and dared anyone to complain as they suffocated; nobody had the capacity to be concerned with it as she launched into a soft-spoken, voice shivering tirade.

“Taizi, please let us carry on dinner,” Lord Ignolis said in a long suffering voice that reminded Elutherius of the sort of smile people had worn in public when their children were making a scene.

“Me? Me? I’m stopping you from having dinner, Khaûtimak? That’s rich. That’s rich when this is a thinly veiled attempt to hide your shame that I’m not a proper little kriffin’ lady. You won’t even stoop to marry me to a proper Pureblood Lord  or a Darth because you’re afraid I’ll embarrass you. No, I get the human slave boy–”

The words hit Elutherius like a slap in the face.

“–who you molded into your perfect–”

And it wasn’t as though he didn’t know that Taizi spoke in inferiorities that existed only in the mouths of Imperials.

“–little Sith Lord he never would’ve been–”

It was the reminder the Empire had lashed into his skin with raised edges that he would never been more valuable than his own complacency.

“–because your perfect son didn’t want–”

He forgot that she saw him as less than.

“–to bec–”

“Shut your mouth.” Electricity snapped around the tendons of Elutherius’ flexed hand. “Before I have to remind you that your mother was a nobody human slave too, Half-Breed.” The words were a touch too hyperextended, too throttling, too venomous for a Sith that most considered mellow.

The Force filled Elutherius. At first he thought it was a breath that sank too deep, but it overextended his lungs past the point they’d pop inside his throat and rib cage, like fleshy balloons. His body was open and he swelled out of it so that where the universe began and he ended was where the impossible started. The Light in his muscles, and bones, and eyes whimpered  as Darkness took him a little too far, sheltered by the deep gorges of Elutherius’ matted scars and tugged by the puppet strings of Ignolis’ Force presence. He pushed a little when Elutherius wobbled and suddenly falling off the cliff wasn’t the Sith Apprentice’s choice anymore. It was his master’s.

“Elly.”

What Elutherius had and would always know as Kurt’s voice wrapped around him with a pair of gentle but firm claws. They bit into his shoulders and Kurt pulled him away. 

“May we be excused?” Kurt didn’t wait for an answer. He dragged the smaller man back, and Elutherius stumbled with him. 

The last thing Elutherius remembered was his Master’s aura darkening before they hit open humid air of the balcony. Condensation immediately clung to the skin as the nocturnal sounds of the rain forest did to the ears.

Kurt shook his claws off of him, and Elutherius felt... lost without the grip or the Force. He breathed in, and Dromund Kaas’ darkness breathed back a millimeter from his face. It was present but merely patient - not insistent, like Lord Ignolis’ pull.

“Congratulations are in order, then.” 

Kurt’s voice came from the direction of the balcony. Elutherius tracked to it in the nil light. He walked until the toe of his sandal met the void that descended into darkness and then placed his hands on the rails to balance out the cosmic sense of dread in his stomach. It was wet against his burned palms.

“Taizi won’t marry me.”

“It’s quaint that you think she has a choice.”

Elutherius tasted bitter amusement on Kurt’s tongue.

“Ignolis wouldn’t touch her.”

“No, no,” Kurt sighed. His clothes squeaked against the metal as he leaned forward. Elutherius was already flicking through plans to catch him if he fell. “He wouldn’t, but my father’s authority is final as the head of our House; if he arranges a marriage, she cannot refuse it.” Kurt exhaled hard through his nose. “Besides,” Elutherius tensed in preparation for the ‘Dorian passion fruit’ comment. This hadn’t how he imagined Kurt finding-- “you’ll be good for her, and I’d like to see my friend and sister happy.”

Elutherius untensed and stared into the abyss of trees below. That dense, huh? He found himself chuckling deep in his belly and didn’t stop until it reached the base of his throat and threatened to spill from unguarded lips. 

“Quirt-- you-- Ha--”

“What?” Kurt asked cautiously. Elutherius could see his eyes narrowing in the recesses of his mind and wished that the darkness wouldn’t render Force sight unusable.

“I... Taizi isn’t who I want.”

“Is that what she meant by Dorian passion fruit?”

Elutherius blinked. Clever. His stomach started tying knots with itself. There wasn’t any going back now.

“Yess--”

There was silence for a moment. “Funny way to say you’re interested in another woman,” he muttered in his intensely analytical way. “I thought she was saying you were too soft for her because,” Kurt cleared his throat. “Slavery weakens the mental constitution of those in its service. Though you were never like that, so it struck me as overly harsh.”

Elutherius started to laugh. The railing pressed into his stomach as he genuinely and loudly laughed until he started to feel sick.

“You know, I’ll take this from Taizi, but from you it’s just tiring, Elly.”

“Quirt, you’re so stupid,” Elutherius wheezed.

Kurt tutted and gently plucked his father’s apprentice back so Elutherius stumbled into his chest. Elutherius’ stomach ate itself.

“I’m not the one doubled over a safety rail.”

Elutherius relaxed into Kurt’s chest and closed his eyes, trying to feel close to him. He was solid, warmer than the jungle. Elutherius felt like he was spinning on solid ground, but that wasn’t a bad feeling. He closed his eyes as an affectionate arm wrapped around his slight waist, engulfing him. With anyone else, he might’ve been doing social calculations, but he knew Kurt well enough to not misinterpret the man as anything but painfully platonic. Elutherius could accept that for the rest of his life if he had to, but this... It felt nice.

“I’ll tell you why someday. Promise.”

Kurt shook his head. His tendrils brushed the top of Elutherius’ head unconsciously. The little beings on the Pureblood’s chin wound into Elly’s hair.

“Should I care why people are trying to leap off of safety rails now?”

“Kind of. You never know. The reason they might be falling is you.”

Elutherius could feel the eye roll and the utter lack of comprehension.

[tardisgirlepic]

Ch. 1: “The Eaters of Light” Analysis Doctor Who S10.10: OMG, the Meaning of the Doctor’s Hair! & Tying in Season 9

Note: I wrote this and posted it on ArchiveOfOurOwn before seeing the airing of “World Enough and Time” and the Doctor’s OMG REALLY long hair!  This post refers to the Doctor’s hair from “The Eaters of Light.”  The really long hair in “World Enough and Time” just adds to the reference I mention below.  I’ll talk about how it is supported in the “World Enough and Time” analysis.

Things Not Happening Like They Appear

Once again, we can’t trust what we know on the surface about this episode.  There are multiple oddities.  Here are a few examples:

The Old Man with Pictish Tattoos

After the Doctor threw the popcorn on the fire and it started exploding, there is a quick couple of shots (one shown below) of an old man with Pictish tattoos hiding behind a boy. There were no adults, so who is this?

Something Is Wrong with the Doctor

Once again, the Doctor is swinging back and forth in personality, which is a big red flag that says something isn’t right.  One of the most obvious not-right-things this week is that a women screams, but the Doctor and Nardole just stand there.  Why? 

The Eye of Harmony & Harmony Shoal: The Doctor Vs. Himself

When Bill first encounters a Pict, we get to see the tattoos on Kar’s face, shown below.  Because the tattoo crosses the bridge of her nose (red arrow), it’s reminiscent of the incision lines in the scar-faced people in TRODM.

In fact, in “The Eaters of Light,” the Doctor says

DOCTOR: Listen, you are all very, very angry, but really you're just very scared. For now, would you mind awfully all just jumping out of your skins and allowing Nardole and I to escape in the confusion?

“Jumping out of your skins” is a reference to Harmony Shoal, but this is opposite to what he said in TRODM to Dr. Sim and Brock at Harmony Shoal when they were talking about capturing The Ghost:

DOCTOR [on screen]: Boo! I'm talking to you live! (the lights come on) DOCTOR: In person! You can jump back in your skins now. Except, of course, they're not your skins, are they?

So this has to do with the Eye of Harmony and the Matrix.

Since the 12th Doctor represents both the Scottish people and the Romans (Caecilius and Roman Rory – both were slaves of a sort), the Picts and Romans represent the 2 sides of the Doctor’s war with himself. 

This gives Nardole’s comment, “Death by Scotland,” new meaning.

In the end, though, the 2 sides come together to try to stave off the inevitable.  The Sun going out.  We’ll see this in some form in the finale.

More Mary Celeste, But There’s a Problem

We examined the Mary Celeste and disappearance of its crew in “The Pilot” analysis because there’s a sign from the ship near the Vault.  I didn’t realize until “The Eaters of Light” that the ship was also a reference to the 1965 1st Doctor story The Chase, so I watched it.  Nardole’s statement below not only doesn’t make sense in the normal fashion, but also it contradicts The Chase.

NARDOLE: The way I heard it, the human ship was called the Mary Celeste. Something like that. Anyway, the Enzomodons assumed that any species they encountered would communicate as they did, by digesting each other. The Enzomodon ambassador got through the whole crew and then very sadly choked on a lifeboat, so (Nardole is now in Pictish garb, including a plaid and the face markings, and lecturing five villagers. The Doctor comes out of the Cairn.)

In The Chase, the Daleks are attributed to the missing crew, who jumped overboard in fear, so this is a change of history.  And enzomodons don’t exist in the TARDIS Wikia. They sound similar to a biology term. So what is going on?

Last week, Bill mentioned something interesting in “The Empress of Mars”:

NARDOLE: The Tardis registered multiple life forms below the surface, so this seems like the best place to look. BILL: Maybe someone's been messing around with time. Like in The Terminator.

In The Terminator, a killer robot time travels to prevent a revolution by assassinating someone.  So he’s meddling with time.  That’s a reference to the next 1st Doctor story after The Chase, called The Time Meddler.  I hadn’t seen this one, either, so I watched it after I finished The Chase.  In fact, there are 12th Doctor references in both episodes.

Both 1st Doctor stories have a huge bearing on what is happening now, including a duplicate, robotic Doctor, which the real Doctor has to fight.

The Empress with New Clothes & Classic Who Writer

There was so much to write about with last week’s “The Empress of Mars,” but I only got to some of my main points.  However, because “The Eaters of Light” is hammering home a similar plot in different clothes, I get a chance this week to write about some things I didn’t get to for last week.  It’s all the better with more examples.

DW won’t run similar plots back to back unless it’s important for foreshadowing. 

The episode is also tying together numerous foreshadowed concepts that we’ve examined over the many chapters of this series.  Here are a few examples:

·      The exploitation of children, in this case the Romans

·      The Roman and Scottish connections

·      The Doctor being female in the past

·      Harmony Shoal and the Eye of Harmony

·      Duplicate Doctors

·      Expulsion from paradise

·      The fall of the Doctor

·      Empire and exploitation in general

·      Falling into the Satan pit

·      Confronting one’s beast

·      “The big bad wolf,” as the Doctor called the Eater of Light

·      Slavery  

·      Gates/doorways that let monsters in through an intermediary

·      The God complex

·      Various end of time concepts

Therefore, it was exciting for me to see this playing out.  DW is also tying together many of the end-of-time stories to show us the source of them.

Additionally, Classic Who writer Rona Munro, who wrote the very last Classic Who story, “Survival,” is the first Classic Who writer to write for nuWho.  That’s exciting!  Also, I’m excited to see that we’ve had a couple of connections to Classic Who in these last 2 episodes.

Tying in “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent” & “Hell Bent”

“The Eaters of Light” is metaphorically, among other things, catching us up to Seasons 9’s last 3 episodes: “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent.”  “The Eaters of Light” is a retelling, so it’s basically an outline to set up the finale for furthering the story set up in “Hell Bent.”

BTW, one of the things I didn’t get to mention in last week’s “The Empress of Mars” analysis is that the Ice Queen rallied her warriors and said, “Sleep no more, my Warriors. Sleep no more. It is time!”  This is a reference to “Sleep No More,” the episode just before “Face the Raven.” “Sleep No More” then takes on an additional meaning of rallying the sleeping warriors for war.  Sleeping Time Lords were implied in “The End of Time” with Rassilon, and the Ice Queen is a mirror of Rassilon.

After almost a whole Season 10, we are revisiting events from Season 9 because there’s so much story.  Also, it’s so complicated in the subtext because events are told from multiple viewpoints, especially with the 12th Doctor.  We have been watching the story from his 3 different faces, which we have to determine from the subtext.  (The Doctor’s 3 faces show up in “The Eaters of Light.”)

Because of all the viewpoints and subjects the episodes have to cover, they must go back in time and revisit previous events, although in a different way.  This is how DW has worked from the start.  So the whole story is non-linear. 

As far as oddities in Season 10, the 12th Doctor’s erratic behavior is among the easiest things to notice, especially in “The Eaters of Light” that tells us that something isn’t right.  His behavior is reminiscent of Season 8, although I find it harsher in this episode.

His 3 parts are being highlighted here in metaphors.

“Face the Raven,” Tattoos, Birds & “Let Me Be Brave”

In the promos leading up to “The Eaters of Light,” the tattooed people reminded me of Ashildr in “Face the Raven” shown below.  Her tattoo, though, is on her neck, and she is in control of the Raven, a Quantum Shade.

As the Doctor explained

DOCTOR: It's called a Quantum Shade. It's kind of a spirit. Once it's bound to a victim (The Raven turns to smoke and leaves its cage.) DOCTOR: You could flee across all of time and all of the universe, it would still find you.

So the Raven, a member of the crow family, is also very similar to the crows in “The Eaters of Light.” The Picts have a relationship with them. However, the crows are free, unlike the Raven.  Regardless, the crows are metaphors for the Raven.

Therefore, not only are the Picts a metaphor for the Doctor, but also they are metaphors for Ashildr. She is a face of the Doctor, so this all lines up. 

The Picts also are djinn, as shown below by the 8-pointed star shape on their shields.  The shields show the djinn symbol inside a circle, indicating they are prisoners.  Interestingly, the birds are free, but these people are in a metaphorical cage.  This episode is running backward from “Face the Raven,” where the Raven was a djinni and imprisoned.  This episode is from Ashildr/Me’s point of view of having to do what Rassilon said to keep the people on Trap Street safe.  And this is just like the Doctor’s situation in “The Lie of the Land.”  So Rassilon comes up again.  Most likely he will show up in the finale.

The Doctor as a Bird In “The Pilot,” the Doctor has a bird on his desk.  I don’t know what type of bird it is, but it’s a metaphor for the Doctor.  Here, it looks like it has a pigeon body, but it’s beak is more like that of a coniferous bird.  Anyone have any ideas?  Maybe it’s supposed to be a hybrid.

We’ve seen the Doctor represented by an Eagle, Raven, and now Crows.  At first, the Doctor tells Nardole the Crows are sulking.

Toward the end, after Kar, Lucius, and another Roman are going to enter the gateway.  The Doctor says something odd and contradictory to the Doctor’s promise “Never cruel or cowardly.”:

DOCTOR: Oh, stop being brave. I can't bear brave people.

However, since this episode is a reworking of “Face the Raven,” it’s a reference to Clara when she has to face the Raven.

(Clara steps out into the deserted street. The Raven lands on a nearby stall and caws. She walks towards it as other passers-by run away. The Doctor steps out of the doorway.) CLARA: (sotto) Let me be brave. Let me be brave.

The Doctor is ready to take Kar’s and the Romans’ place.  Kar and the Romans, in this case, represent Clara, who is a face of the Doctor.

Earlier in the episode, the Doctor has an interesting conversation with his mirror, Kar.

KAR: I'm remembering the dead. DOCTOR: Oh, right. Well, save that for old age. KAR: They're dead because of me. DOCTOR: You know, every moment you waste wallowing about in that happy thought means more of the living are going to join them. When you want to win a war, remember this. It's not about you. Believe me, I know. Time to grow up, Kar. Time to fight your fight.

With the mirrors, he’s talking to himself.  The dead person in “Face the Raven” is Clara, but he’s sulking, which can help explain his harshness.  In fact, he asked Kar if she was sulking, which started this conversation.

At the end of the episode, Nardole says something important to him after watching Ban with the crow:

BAN: Kar. She's holding the gate. Remember, her name is Kar. CROW: Kar! BAN: Kar. CROW: Kar! Kar! (flies off) NARDOLE: There, you were wrong. The crows aren't sulking. The crows are remembering. CROW: Kar! Kar! Kar! (They walk off across the moorland.)

The Crows are remembering, so the Doctor is remembering Clara.  We need canon confirmation.  We may see it with the Doctor and Bill first.

“Heaven Sent” & the Eye of Harmony: The Inter-dimensional Temporal Rift

In “The Eaters of Light,” Doctor goes into an inter-dimensional temporal rift where a second in there equates to days of time on the Pict’s side.  The temporal rift and the gate are similar to what happened in “Heaven Sent,” being that it was actually a Black Hole and the Eye of Harmony, which we examined in Chapter 17 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  The Doctor was a Door metaphor there.

In that chapter, we examined how it was a factory, so to speak, for creating an army for Rassilon, using the Doctor’s own energy to power it.  Those beings in the rift in “The Eaters of Light” represent the army.

The army-factory concept, island, castle, creation of almost people and monsters were part of the 2-part, 11th Doctor story in “The Rebel Flesh” and “The Almost People.” Check out the island with the castle on it, shown below.  It’s a direct reference to the Doctor’s confession dial castle in “Heaven Sent.” I should have mentioned it in Chapter 17, but I didn’t.  So what happened in those 2 episodes have a direct correlation to what we are seeing now. In fact, these episodes are also referenced by Judy’s red wellies at the beginning of “The Eaters of Light.”  We’ll examine that in a bit.

Anyway, at first glance, the creatures in the rift in “The Eaters of Light” reminded me of the fish swimming in the air in “A Christmas Carol.”  However, once one creature comes closer, shown below (white arrow), it looks like some type of lizard.  This scene mirrors the cute fish in “A Christmas Carol,” giving way to a shark. These creatures in this latest episode also resemble at a distance the flying stingrays from one of the last 10th Doctor episodes “Planet of the Dead.”  Also, they resemble the Gelth from 9th Doctor episode “The Unquiet Dead.”  We also examined that latter episode and the idea of a gateway in Chapter 17.

There’s a theme here of creatures and gateways in “The Eaters of Light,” “The Unquiet Dead,” and “Planet of the Dead.”  We haven’t looked at the latter episode, so I want to highlight a few things.

“The Planet of Dead” “The Planet of Dead” introduced 2 arcs: knocking 4 times and something is returning.  Therefore, it’s appropriate to tie this episode into “The Eaters of Light.”  Knocking 4 times also showed up in “Hell Bent,” “The End of Time,” and “Thin Ice.”

Also, the Doctor and a busload of people pass through a wormhole (another reference to black holes) to an alien world.

They find a swarm of creatures ready to come through the wormhole to Earth’s side, much like what is in “The Eaters of Light.”

“Hell Bent,” the Grudge & Chess

Nardole said something surprising the first time I heard it:

NARDOLE: (untying the Doctor) I know you're inclined to bear a grudge, so just remember I know about ten percent of your secrets. The dark secrets.

Thinking about it further, I realized it wasn’t surprising at all.

The 12th Doctor bearing a grudge?  Unless I’m not remembering something, we’ve only seen him bear grudges with Rassilon and the High Council in “Hell Bent.”  He did look like he was bearing a grudge against Ashildr/Me, but it vanished at the end of “Hell Bent.” 

In “The End of Time,” the Master also bears a grudge against Rassilon.  Both are end of time events, and the Doctor is mirroring the Master there.

Rassilon also bears a grudge against the Doctor and tries to have him executed.  He probably also holds a grudge against the Master.

Chess & War When the universe was nearly dead in “Hell Bent,” Ashildr sat with a chess set when the Doctor arrived. A sign of war.  

In “The Curse for Fenric,” chess was defined as “war, a game played by politicians.”  Ashildr/Me is Mayor Me.

In “The Eaters of Light,” the 12th Doctor said he had governed in Roman Britain.

So both Ashildr and the Doctor are politicians involved in a chess game.  Ashildr in “Face the Raven” was ministering aid to enemies of the Doctor. She, in some ways, has been on the opposite side of the war.

Samson & Delilah, David & Goliath: How to Win at Chess

In “The Empress of Mars,” the Tythonian Hive reference directly alludes to the 4th Doctor episode “The Creature from the Pit.”  In it the Doctor has a conversation with his companion.  I wanted to get to this in last week’s analysis, but ran out of time.  The Doctor talks about a Minotaur, so the whole God complex goes way back.

Even more interesting, Romana is going through the Doctor’s belongings:

ROMANA: All right, but what can you possibly do with the old jawbone of an ass?

DOCTOR: Don't be a philistine.

The reference to the “jawbone of an ass” and “Philistine” is an allusion to the Old Testament story of Samson & Delilah.

Samson & Delilah

OMG, River and the Library!

While I was just thinking about Samson and Delilah’s story, I had a revelation! 

Samson was given great strength to help him fight his enemies.  The jawbone of an ass is a reference to slaying an entire army with just a jawbone, and he destroyed a Philistine temple with his bare hands.  However, if Samson cut his long hair, he would lose his strength.  I’ve been totally baffled by the Doctor’s unruly hair.  Now, I get it! 

River is Delilah! 

Missy now, too, has unruly hair because she is mirroring the Doctor.

River told the 10th Doctor in the Library:

RIVER: The last time I saw you, the real you, the future you, I mean, you turned up on my doorstep, with a new haircut and a suit.

Wow!  She takes him down by the haircut, like Samson!  That’s not exactly how we saw it in THORS, but he ended up on Trap Street, redressed for Christmas.  The whole thing was a trap, and a great deal of time passed in the episode in the subtext, which we examined in a chapter in Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

Anyway, regarding Samson, Wikipedia says

He then falls in love with Delilah in the valley of Sorek.  The Philistines approach Delilah and induce her with 1,100 silver coins to find the secret of Samson's strength so they can get rid of it and capture their enemy.

Delilah keeps trying to figure out the source of his strength, and he keeps telling her different sources, which she tries to exploit.  But they are all lies.

Eventually after much nagging from Delilah, Samson tells Delilah that he will lose his strength with the loss of his hair.  God supplies Samson's power because of his consecration to God as a Nazirite, symbolized by the fact that a razor has never touched his head.

In “The Name of the Doctor,” there was a conversation about the Doctor’s name, which is a similar metaphor – a Holy Grail:

VASTRA: This, Mister DeMarco claims, is the location of the Doctor's greatest secret. CLARA: Which is? JENNY: We don't know. It's a secret. VASTRA: The Doctor does not discuss his secrets with anyone, my dear. If you're still entertaining the idea that you are an exception to this rule, ask yourself one question. What is his name? (Something invisible touches Jenny's cheek.) RIVER: Well, I know it. CLARA: What, you know his name? He told you? RIVER: I made him. CLARA: How? RIVER: It took a while.

So the Doctor’s name AND hair are metaphorical Holy Grails! 

OMG, I still am blown away by how DW is doing this!  This is exactly why I find this all so fascinating.

In fact, this explains why the Doctor’s hair started out short and started to grow longer over seasons 8 and 9.  Metaphorically, his strength was growing, and that matches the Great Work.

David & Goliath

While the jawbone of an ass definitely refers to the story of Samson and Delilah, Philistines are part of a second story in the Old Testament, which is very relevant: David and Goliath.

In the story, there is a war between the Israelites and the Philistines.  Goliath, a Philistine giant, fights the young David, who is armed with a sling.  David kills the giant and becomes a hero and future king of the Israelites.

In both “The Empress of Mars” and “The Eaters of Light,” there are superior forces fighting ill-equipped forces, mirroring the Goliath vs. David story: the Ice Warriors vs. the Victorian British troop and the Romans vs. the Pictish band, turning into the Romans and Picts fighting the Eaters of Light.

Captain Catchlove in “The Empress of Mars” mentions that Colonel Godsacre is not the hero of the Battle of Isandlwana that he appears to be.  He deserted.  While I briefly mentioned what happened, I never got to put it in context of David and Goliath.

In the Battle of Isandlwana, about 20,000 Zulus armed mainly with traditional iron spears and cowhide shields annihilated the British invasion force of about 1800 men, armed with state-of-the art weapons, and maybe 400 other civilians.

In both episodes, however, there is a beast of a different type that changes the balance of power.

The Eaters of Light change the situation between the Romans and Picts, threatening everyone.

In “The Empress of Mars,” the Doctor mans the Gargantua and threatens to destroy all their lives.  He says either they live together or die together. In one way, he is David (one man) against a huge army.  However, he is the one that ends up with the giant weapon, mirroring the Eaters of Light.

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel Gargantua is a reference to 5 novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, which, according to Wikipedia, tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel.  Gargantua’s wife died giving birth to his son.  And a character is beheaded, which sounds like Nardole, and Gargantua sews the head back on.  A whole nation lives in Pantagruel’s mouth, which sounds something like people living on the Star Whale’s back or in CAL’s mind.

The Winning Chess Strategy: Working Together

Working together is another theme that I didn’t get to last week.  In “The Empress of Mars” and “The Eaters of Light,” the forces have to work together to survive.

“The Curse of Fenric” may give us an idea of what is happening because it looks like “The Curse of Fenric” and chess are playing out with the 12th Doctor.  But this is a deadly game of live chess, like we saw before with the 11th Doctor in “The Wedding of River Song.”

Most likely, the Valeyard is at work here.

Fenric is most likely the Valeyard.  According to the TARDIS Wikia:

Fenric, also known as Hastur the Unspeakable, Aboo-Fenrán, the Wolf and the Hunger, was an immensely powerful sentient force that was at least as old as the universe itself and an intelligence of pure evil, later identified as a Great Old One.

Commander Millington in “The Curse of Fenric” wants to win the war at any cost, so he plans to poison the enemy with the curse, which brings on Ragnarök.

MILLINGTON: Let me see. (reads) I warn of the day when the earth shall fall asunder, and all of heaven too. The Wolves of Fenric shall return for their treasure, and then shall the dark evil rule eternally. This is it. The final battle between the gods and the beasts. It's now, Judson. The Curse of Fenric.

The 7th Doctor has fought Fenric before with a chess game and won, trapping Fenric. However, Fenric got free:

JUDSON: You left me in the shadow dimensions, trapped for seventeen centuries. But now I've found a body again, and the preparations are complete.

The Doctor has to play chess again with Fenric; however, Ace accidentally gives the enemy the Doctor’s winning strategy:

ACE: A brilliant move. The black and white pawns don't fight each other, they join forces.

So to defeat Fenric, the Doctor has to break Ace’s confidence in him because Ace is under Fenric’s control.

The Roman Vs. Scottish Sides of the Doctor & Companion Obsessions

The Eater of Light is as much a metaphor for one’s inner beast as it is an external monster.  In fact, the Roman vs. Scots struggle represents the Doctor’s internal struggle within himself, as a hybrid. 

In “Deep Breath,” the Doctor defined the Roman side of his mirror, the half-faced man:

DOCTOR: Well, it would need a constant supply of spare parts. You can tan skin, but organs rot. Some of that metalwork looks Roman. Wonder how long it's been around, how much of the original is even left? The eyeballs look very fresh, though.

The Roman side is the robotic side, which makes sense, too, from Rory’s situation.

Romans & the Last 3 Companions

Amy One of Amy’s interests included, according to Wikipedia, “the Roman occupation of Britain, on which she had several books, along with her favourite book, Pandora's Box. She didn't receive a good grade for her paper on the Romans due to titling it ‘Invasion of the Hot Italians’. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, Let's Kill Hitler, The Pandorica Opens)”  Also, she put a party photo into a book on Roman Britain.

Amy also has a look alike (or is it Amy having gone back in time?) in “The Fires of Pompeii,” who is a soothsayer in the Sibylline Sisterhood.

Amy, in “The Eleventh Hour,” says that she is sometimes a nun, sometimes a kiss-o-gram, and sometimes a policeman.

The 12th Doctor has been trying to deny he’s a policeman in seasons 9 and 10.

Clara In “Deep Breath,” Clara and Vastra were having a disagreement about Clara’s behavior regarding the 12th Doctor’s new face.  Clara to counter Vastra talked about being a fan of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor. According to Clara, “Last of the five good 'uns. Stoic philosopher.”  When she was 15, she had only one poster on her wall – the emperor. 

Bill Bill has read one book on the Roman 9th Legion and got an A star, so she considers herself an expert on the legion’s non-disappearance.

It was really a very odd debate she had with the Doctor about the missing legion.

Anyway, the Roman 9th Legion really did disappear from history.

The debate between Bill and the Doctor seems backward.  When it comes to the missing Roman 9th Legion, English novelist Rosemary Sutcliff in 1954 wrote the book most often cited, called The Eagle of the Ninth.  Based on some historical information, some of which has been confirmed, she presents the view that the Romans were annihilated on the battlefield in Britain.  So what book did Bill read?

The eagle does represent the Romans, so we have to extend our Eagle metaphor.

Vestal Virgins in Rome, Angels & the Doctor’s 2nd Class Rating

The Doctor said that he was once a Vestal Virgin, 2nd Class.  In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins, priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, gained great power.  Their existence was deemed fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome.  After Rome converted to Christianity and fell, some blamed it on the absence of the priestesses. 

Parents committed their daughters to the priestesshood before puberty (when 6–10 years old), and the children took a vow of chastity for 30 years.  After that, they were free to marry.

They sound a lot like the Sisterhood of Karn in that they cultivated the sacred fire or flame that was not allowed to go out.

So the Doctor being a Vestal Virgin does support the hypothesis that he was a female as a child.

2nd Class, It’s a Wonderful Life & “Turn Left”

I’m not an authority on Vestal Virgins, but 2nd Class sounds very strange.  A reference that immediately came to mind was the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

It mirrors what happens in “Turn Left” when we see life without the Doctor. 

The film is based on Philip Van Doren Stern's 1943 short story "The Greatest Gift."  According to Wikipedia:

The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born.

Much like dystopian life without the Doctor in “Turn Left,” Bedford Falls becomes, metaphorically, Bedford Fell.  In the dystopian segment, it actually does get renamed to Pottersville after tyrannical Mr. Potter.

The Doctor, as a 2nd Class Vestal Virgin, would then be Clarence Odbody, Angel 2nd Class, who is trying to get his wings.  Doctor Angel, trying to earn his wings, would become the Doctor’s personal savior, as Clarence became George’s. 

The Doctor’s personal saviors in “Turn Left” were Rose and alternate-Donna.  If we go by the mirrors of the movie and “Turn Left,” the Doctor we see in “The Eaters of Light” is the alternate-Doctor who will be a personal savior of the Doctor.  Is that Missy?  We’ll examine that in a bit.

We examined the 10th and 12th Doctor’s metaphorical angels in Chapter 16 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  Here’s a very short version:

10th Doctor & “The Satan Pit” The 10th Doctor jumps into the very deep pit in “The Satan Pit” and survives, which makes him realize someone prepared it for him to survive. 

12th Doctor & “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” We saw something similar in TRODM when the 12th Doctor’s cable and rope broke as he hung upside down outside Grant’s window.  He falls, which is a metaphor for falling into Satan’s Pit, but somehow survives and climbs in Grant’s window after Grant talks to his mother.

YOUNG GRANT: Mom says you can come in. You're expected.

Grant’s mother is the Doctor’s mother, since Grant represents the young Doctor.  She’s expecting the Doctor and must be the angel who is saving him.

In fact, in “The End of Time,” an angel is associated with the Doctor’s Mother on TV and Wilfred, Donna Noble’s grandfather.  Wilfred was like a dad, in a way, to the 10th Doctor, and he was a face of the 11th Doctor.  Will the 11th Doctor show up?  He’s been in the subtext a few times in Season 10.  

Interestingly, we examined how the Doctor was associated with the Virgin Mary in “Extremis.”

Bill and Pits in “The Empress of Mars” & “The Eaters of Light” In both “The Empress of Mars” and “The Eaters of Light,” Bill falls into pits and survives, mirroring both the 10th and 12th Doctors.

In both episodes, she’s stepped up and become like the Doctor by mediating the situations. She’s actually mirroring the Doctor.

Bill Mirrors Martha in “The Doctor’s Daughter”

Bill is not just mirroring the Doctor in the episode, but also she is mirroring Martha in “The Doctor’s Daughter.”

In that episode, Martha gets separated from the Doctor and Donna and ends up on one side of the war with the aliens called the Hath, who were fish-like people.  While the Doctor, Donna, and the Doctor’s replicated daughter Jenny end up on the humans’ side of the war with General Cobb, whom wants to commit genocide against the Hath.

Martha can’t easily communicate with the Hath, who have water devices on their faces.  However, through rudimentary communication, she does befriend one of them, who ends up sacrificing himself to save her.

So in a twist to the Hath and communication problems, Bill learns about the gift of translation of the Doctor and TARDIS.

“People Like Me and You, We Should Say Things to One Another”

One of the themes that I didn’t get to in “The Empress of Mars” analysis was communication.  That it comes up again in “The Eaters of Light” is very significant, and with the setting and other elements of the story, it takes on additional meaning. 

In fact, you may recognize the title of this section as what Clara said to the Doctor in “Hell Bent” when they were in the Cloisters.  Since “The Eaters of Light” has a lot to do with Clara and communication, the title seems like foreshadowing for things to come.  Also, Sweetie wrappers is probably a reference to River. 

Gift of Translation by the Doctor & TARDIS with a 10th Doctor Reference

While communication comes in different forms (e.g., dialogue, sign language, and music) and levels from basic to intimate, being able to express oneself at the most basic level is a big plot point in “The Eaters of Light.”  Without speaking a similar language, it’s impossible to form friendships and alliances, and the latter is at the very heart of this long story and chess game, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Bill recognized that the Doctor or the TARDIS or both translated languages, which is why people in space all speak English.

LUCIUS: You speak Latin? KAR: I don't. BILL: Neither do I. Not a word. And I don't speak whatever they speak either. It's him. It's you, isn't it? DOCTOR: Yes, it's me. BILL: Something to do with the Tardis. Maybe, telepathic field?

While we don’t get an answer here, the Doctor as part of the circuit for translation came up in the first 10th Doctor story “The Christmas Invasion.”  The Sycorax were trying to take control of Earth while the Doctor was unconscious, recovering from regeneration.

ROSE: I don't understand what they're saying. The Tardis translates alien languages inside my head, all the time, wherever I am. MICKEY: So, why isn't it doing it now? ROSE: I don't know. Must be the Doctor. Like he's part of the circuit, and he's, he's broken. 

Rose speaks of the Doctor, as though he were a broken machine. 

The Doctor’s Lack of Communication Theme: Women Have to Take Control

The statement that the Doctor can give others the gift of communication is a striking contrast to the Doctor’s own problems with communication.  His own failings are at the heart of at least part of the problems.

The Doctor’s lack of communication is called out in multiple ways in this episode, but it follows a trend, especially with the 12th Doctor. 

DOCTOR: I've got a better idea this time. BILL: Which is the part you never tell me. DOCTOR: Don't I? BILL: No. DOCTOR: I probably just get interrupted.

True to form, he got interrupted.  And in all fairness to him, when he was going to tell Bill about his blindness after Nardole pushed Bill to ask the Doctor what was wrong, he once again got interrupted. Getting interrupted, too, has become a theme with him, and missing memories of Clara fits in this category.

It can’t be coincidence, especially since he called out the problem.  Someone is directing things, and it sounds like it might be Missy or River.

Certainly, the Doctor has been terrible about expressing love and fears.  We know the Doctor isn’t afraid to talk about running from the Untempered Schism.  However, when it comes to talking about emotions, he avoids the subject almost at all costs, it seems.

Of course, it’s not exclusive to the 12th Doctor, especially when it comes to love, but the 12th Doctor is the most guarded when it comes to talking about emotions.

The Doctor & River The Doctor is terrible at telling his own wife how he feels about her.  Therefore, River felt unloved and poured out her heart in THORS, showing a vulnerability that we’ve never seen from her.  The Doctor got a rude awakening there.  River had to be the one to pour out her heart first.

The Doctor & Clara We saw the Doctor guarding emotions with Clara, although he did open up more from the 8th to the 9th seasons.  However, she only realized his love and devotion once she learned he spent 4.5 billion years being interrogated and tortured before coming back for her.

She had to take the reins and say, “People like me and you, we should say things to one another.” Hopefully, we’ll finally learn what she said.

The Doctor & Bill The Monks wouldn’t have taken control of Earth, most likely, if the Doctor had let Bill know about his blindness.

In response, Bill has really stepped up to take charge, especially in the last few episodes.  She even went as far as to help save the Doctor from himself in “The Eaters of Light” by not allowing him to go back into the rift.  Nardole, too, stepped in and tied up the Doctor.  It was a mirror, too, of the Library scene with River before she died.

The Coming Gut Punch, “Heaven Sent” & “The Girl Who Waited”

Moffat has set up some odd situations this year with, for example, the whole Doctor-executing-Missy thing and the anticlimactic Vault reveal.  However, from the subtext, we know these things weren’t happening like the text showed.

No doubt, he has some big gut punches coming. 

I see “The Eaters of Light” as directly foreshadowing what is coming. 

In relation to the last 3 episodes of Season 9, only “Face the Raven” was highlighted in “The Light Eaters.”  Most likely, we’ll see some retelling of “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent,” which brings in “The End of Time” two-part story.

From the clips, we will see the Eye of Harmony, which is a Black Hole. 

In “Heaven Sent,” the Doctor was in a different time stream, so to speak, from Clara.

It looks like Bill will be “The Girl Who Waited,” mirroring Amy in a different time stream, while waiting for the Doctor and Rory to rescue her.  But Rory was a prisoner in the subtext, mirroring Rorybot, a sentient robot. The 12th Doctor would be the Rorybot mirror.  However, Missy is also mirroring the Doctor, and so is Bill.

BTW, Bill and the 12th Doctor’s promo shot mirrors somewhat a shot from “The Beast Below.”

Here’s the 11th Doctor holding Amy while she is floating in space.  While Amy is having fun, Bill looks fearful of something.  

Next Chapter or So

I will have one or two chapters to add, talking about the meaning of the TARDIS on the rock, the beast on the stone, red wellies, Guardians, and more.

Read next chapter ->