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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 1 year

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Breaking down the Comics: Elias Spector's Death

Okay. Okay. I'm going to try to be....a little comprehensible.... I'm going to fail. Just a warning.

I want to talk about the first run of Moon Knight. Specifically the last issues of the first run. There were 38 issues in the very first run of their own comic. After that, they reached out to a larger audience and started to print differently and started over with #1 because comics suck at a comprehensible numbering system.

In the start, we meet Marc Spector, see him have a conflict of heart, die, come back, and become Moon Knight. He starts to add in identities of Jake and Steven as a way to be anyone else but Marc Spector and claims they are just him starting over and trying to use their lives as a way to do things better. (a system that has not yet realized that it is a system. Denial is not just a river).

We see him fight some of his villains that start to play bigger parts later in the series. We see him make friends as Jake and money and love as Steven. We see bits of his past and some stories of Marc Spector’s adventures. We meet Randall and even get to see Marc fail to save people (Crowly’s son, Randall, Gena’s friend). We see him struggle with Khonshu and his identity a bit. We even see him break down a couple times.

But the way that fist run ends is to me the real defining moment for Moon Knight. Let’s take you to:

Issue #37, The Ghost.

It opens with Elias dying of cancer in a hospital in Chicago. On his deathbed, he calls for Marc.

The comic notes that they have been estranged for 18 years.

In this comic, Steven has finished organizing the files on Marc and is still grappling with the fact that he and Marc are in fact two different people. He thinks once he has organized Marc’s life, he can lock it up and they can become Steven Grant forever and never have to deal with that unpleasantness again.

Up to this point, we have been seeing them struggle with their identities. Still under the illusion that they are one man putting on different identities who can't decide what life to live.

Understandable, considering that Marc does not want to be Marc anymore. Steven detests the life that was lived as Marc and Jake pushes back on both lives, wanting to be with friends and a simple man of the people.

In many ways, Marc only surfaces when things of the past come up. He refuses to acknowledge that he's still around and when he is faced with that fact, he is stressed and full of rage.

We've seen clips of Marc's past. We see him working as a guide for not always good people through tough parts of the world. We see him working for hire with the Feds in capturing a runner. We see the CIA and world organizations hiring him. Is it any wonder that he's so skilled? That his past is often overlooked when it comes to SHIELD and other entities, because he probably not only worked for them, but probably also carried out shady business for them. But that's a different story.

In this issue, we see Steven watching a recording of one of the missions Marc was on. "Spector led a scout team. We took a terrorist camp in a cross border operation. The only problem was that our .50 caliber gunners couldn't be bothered with fine distinctions between terrorists, women, and children."

As much as we'd like to see Marc as a man of misfortune and circumstance, he wasn't always a good guy. He often tried his best to be good in his missions, often feeling conflicted and trying to save people or turning on those that he found to be of bad character, but sometimes he was a bad guy.

It's important to see these bits so we can better understand Marc and his intense trauma, his guilt, and his self hatred.

This issue uses this to show how far away from his father's teachings Marc fell. How he pushed so hard against his father that he ended up on the other side.

In my books, this is the most important Moon Knight story. The story of where he came from. Of his father and his faith.

His parents fled to America when Germany took over Czechoslovakia. In Europe, his father had been a great man that was "ordained a Rabbi at eighteen, and went on to become a brilliant scholar in the Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism."

They moved to the poor side of Chicago where his father tried to teach him that "God loves a poor man. [...] Poor in goods, rich in spirit." (Something Jake Lockley adheres to).

Here, they suffered antisemitism. They were beaten and used as scapegoats for everything wrong.

Interestingly enough, he sites that his mother died when he was just a child. with the frequent beatings, fear, and death of his mother, it's any wonder Marc suffered some trauma?He became angry at his father for not standing up for himself or them.

His father wanted him to study to become a Rabbi and Marc turned to boxing and self defense.

When his father tries to stop him during a fight, he punches him. His father disowns him and kicks him out.

The next day Marc joined the Marines. He focused "for eight years" to become the best. When he was the best, he became a mercenary.

If you jump forward several writers, you find out that he was dishonorably discharged from the Marines for bouts of dissociation and mental health. But let's stay focused on the original story.

Steven has found out that their father is dying and he is refusing to go back. "He said he never wanted to see me again, he meant it. I won't go back."

An important aspect of this comic is that Marlene notes herself to be Steven's lover, confidant, and guru.

She acts as their guide in matters of the mind and heart. She's always the one that calms them and helps them to reconcile when the three of them start to fight one another and don't know who they are.

Despite her not understanding his DID, and they themselves not understanding it, she is a huge help for them.

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts and opinions on Marlene, but it's good to note that she was originally written as a very important part of his story.

"Marc Spector was always an escapist. When your relationship with your brother Randall soured you just forgot him for ten long years until it was too late and he died hating you. I can feel what kind of spin you're in, Steven, but you have to accept the responsibility, make amends now. Steven Grant and Moon Knight have no fathers. Only Marc Spector does."

That's a very interesting view into all their relationships and how they keep one another at arms length. Jake, Steven, and Marc refuse to believe they have the same past, responsibilities, or life.

Yet, when Marc is struggling with dealing with the approaching death of his father, and facing him, Steven takes the floor and tries to help Marc get out of it. (Just like Jake jumping out the window later in Lemier's version of the story. Always running...Maybe I'll do something on that later...)

While out being Moon Knight, he comes across a Synagogue on fire. He sees a man run into the burning building and finds a Rabbi struggling to save the Torah from the fire.

"The five books of Moses. He put his life on the line for this. My father would have done the same, I'll bet. Though he wouldn't lift a finger against the thugs who bullied him. I guess every man's got his own reason for being a hero."

He finds out that the fire was set on purpose by NeoNazis. It reminds him of when he was a child and he flies into a rage.

"I'm not about to let these Nazi goons get off with 'Malicious mischief' and a slap on the wrists."

He's been through this before. There is weight to the thought that a lot of Marc's childhood trauma stems from dealing with religious trauma and antisemitism.

I think as time moves on, we forget the time period that Moon Knight is set in. He isn't just a child of a jewish immigrant.

His father fled the Holocaust. There is a high likelihood that friends and family did not make it out. Marc grew up hearing about relatives he lost. Knowing that his blood line probably didn't make it out of Europe. That there are no pictures of his ancestors. That he can't go back and see the old houses and towns.

His father was a Rabbi, which means he was in a big part of a Jewish community that also probably fled or flat out came from the camps. He grew up seeing the tattoos, the poor health, the people with PTSD, and hearing the stories.

We're talking severe Generational Trauma.

When Marc finds the Nazi scum that burned the synagogue he has some of my favorite lines that define him:

"You know where I belong, punk? I belong with the decent and innocent folk who can't find a moment's peace. Not in the streets, not in their own homes, so long as punks like you terrorize them. I belong with the persecuted."

Detective Flint shows up and stops him before he kills them. (I honestly forgot Flint went back to the beginning. That poor man has dealt with so much Moon shit.)

Marc realizes he needs to face things and heads to Chicago.

But he is too late. He arrives in time for the funeral. He's handed a kippah and he puts it on for the first time in years.

Now, we get to learn a bit about Elias.

We come to find him as a man in desperate search of Self and Spirit. A man who was so stern and severe but also a man that sought truth and a just way to live.

His line of research focused on the "knowledge to see beyond the physical. To know the universe as a reflection of the divine image and to see mankind redeemed..."

It discusses how the body cannot meet G-d, but only the spirit and only in death can the spirit travel.

We find out later that he was seeking a way to bring back the departed who have met with G-D and the other side.

A man that refused to fight back against those that had done him wrong, who believed that given enough time that G-D would punish those that had brought them harm.

A man that sought for a way to face G-D after watching a world try to wipe his people off the very earth. An interesting thought.

During the eulogy, Marlene reflects that "It's almost as though he were speaking of you as Steven Grant. A man in search of self and spirit who rejected Marc Spector's materialism to become Moon Knight - A social conscience and moral force, just, severe, unknowable."

Steven later goes to visit their father's grave at night and comes across some thugs spray painting a swastika on some of the grave stones and vandalizing them. He’s emotional and outraged that even here there is no peace to be found. It turns out this was all a distraction as someone has stolen his father's corpse!

Issue #38, And the dead shall rise: (I love that cover).

We see Moon Knight struggling with his identity. Elias was not a father to them all. Marc is emotional and pissed, but still refusing to take responsibility for his part in all this.

"Moon Knight will find his...Marc Spector's father and return him to the dignity of a final resting place..." Steven refuses to say ‘my father’. Any mention of Elias is always in relation to Marc and even Marc can’t make himself be present when talking about his father.

Marlene is tasked with helping to clear out Elias' study and donate his papers and books to the university when she's attacked by someone who runs off with some of the papers.

Steven returns and has a small break down. "I'll find him, Marlene, and I'll kill him for desecrating my father's grave and memory!" "That's Marc Spector the cold - hearted mercenary talking, not you stev--" "How long can I deny it, Marlene. I AM Marc Spector!"

And Marc is finally taking charge. The first time he has taken ownership of his father and how he feels.

He sees his father in a new light.

"I may have misjudged my father's saintliness for cowardice and his genius and moral zeal for fanaticism. [...] And isn't moon knight in his own way a moral zealot fighting perhaps for the very same values Marc Spector once rejected?"

Now that is an interesting way to look at it. Moon Knight is about doing the right thing. About protecting those that need it. About believing in something unkillable and powerful. Moon Knight is about an idea of man being more than he is. Is this not what his father believed in?

We learn that Elias had uncovered a way to bring a soul back to the dead body with necromancy where it could then "utter its knowledge of God to a living Kabbalist."

Turns out one of Elias' students decided to test this out on Elias' freshly dead body.

He does manage to resurrect the dead body of Elias, who zombie walks towards Moon Knight.

Marc immediately starts having flashbacks and intense guilt. Even with his dead father trying to strangle him, he refuses to fight back: "No! I'll die before I ever lay my hands on him again, I swear it! Father, forgive me-"

Marlene shows up and manages to break the spell, sending Elias back to death.

Marlene tends to save him a lot in the earlier runs. Just something to note.

Marc once more is not present. Curled up on the floor after melting down, he is beyond emotional and most likely dissociating out the wazoo. "I found him, Marlene... I found...Spector's father."

Once more, Marc is being protected. Marc, who hated how his father sheltered him and wanted to feel the real world in violence and brutality is often in need of being sheltered. Steven, who wants to rid himself of Marc and the past is often doing the sheltering.

When it comes to emotions, Marc is often the one being overcome. Either in fits of anger and rage, guilt and regret, or just overwhelmed in sadness or traumatic responses. Steven Grant is usually the one that is shown to be calm and collected.

In fact, at the start of the issues, when Steven is watching Marc’s tapes and going through his things, he’s detached and unemotional. Steven has the ability to see things from a different perspective of ‘useful’ and ‘Not useful’. It’s rare that Steven responds to things with emotion unless Marc is involved and they are arguing or Marc has put them or someone he cares about in danger.

Frankly, it’s possible that Steven is the caretaker in the early comics. Mackay has shown that Steven not only manages their finances, but their hygiene and body care. He’s the rational and logical one. The one that can face down a villain without reacting. He’s also the one that does all the exercises and rehab when Marc puts them in a wheelchair.

The story ends with them returning home to New York. Steven notes that they almost died because of Marc's emotions. He also notes that Marc seems to have resolved some of the bitterness that was held with his father's memory. He comments that he feels a peace of mind and like a whole new person.

Steven and Marc featured heavily in this with Steven shielding Marc without even realizing he was doing it. And as a system that has not come to full realization yet, it is possible that Steven is starting to understand here, which is why he feels like a whole new person at peace with himself.

This is also how the first run of Moon Knight as a stand alone comic ended. 1980-1984.

Before this issue, Jake was featured heavily. Steven was the mansion party pretty boy that lounged around with Marlene. Jake was the one out doing his reconnaissance and hanging with Gena and Crowley.

It was a good connection to link Steven and Marc’s past with the father and Jewish faith. Jake would have been easier to connect. Jake is the son that Marc wishes he had been.

But Jake is emotional. Jake wants nothing to do with Marc’s bloody past. Calls him a killer and would be happy to spend all day in his cab. If anything, when Steven and Marc talk about Jake, it often feels like two older brothers talking about a goofy but kind younger brother.

A few issues earlier, when they ended up in a wheelchair for a time, Steven lamented that he didn’t think he could give up driving Jake’s cab, as it brought him too much joy.

So I can see why this issue needed Steven to be involved. Steven doesn’t know who he is at this point. He hasn’t been defined and given the chance to figure out what makes him happy and tick. Jake has already broken off and figured out who he is. He knows he’s Jake Lockley. But who is Steven Grant aside from Marlene’s eye candy and the rich boy?

Settling Marc’s past, seeing who he was and where he was coming from, protecting him, and facing down the Nazi threat was eye opening for him. Much like in the show, Steven needed to see where they came from to see where he belonged.

Does it get easier for Steven and Marc to interact after this? Not really. Marc is still self destructive and a danger to them. But I think when Marc falls down that path, it’s easier for Steven to know where Marc is coming from. To help him get out of the spiral and let them function.

An interesting aspect is how much Marc’s past has been re-written over and over again by different writers. His mother’s role, his relationship with his brother, his religious handlings, his trauma, and his violent past are redesigned each time a new writer gets their hands on him.

No one really knows how to handle Marc’s relationship with G-D or his specific type of trauma. Marc’s guilt is’t because he betrayed his culture or religion. He didn’t turn his back on that. His fate with heaven and hell are constructed by Christian writers that don’t understand or research things well enough.

Marc’s pain is that he can’t let go of the choices he made. The regrets of relationships that he turned his back on weigh heavily on him. His inability to save people and the times he didn’t try when he should have are agony to him.

“You can’t save everyone, but you have to try.” Marc’s problem is that he will break himself trying. He can’t handle the thought that he can’t save everyone. Each one he loses is a scar on him that eats away at him as another example of him destroying everything good in his life.

Marc has gotten to the point where a flower would wilt and he’d take it as a personal hit that he didn’t try hard enough.

He lost his brother. He was too late for his father. He couldn’t help Marlen’s father. Marc needs the reminders that sometimes he has to lay down and rest. Steven tends to be that reminder.

When Marc forgets that he’s more than just a killer, Steven steps in and tells Marc to sit down and shut up. He is balance and control that both Marc and Jake lack and I really wish we got to see more of this, especially in current writings.

I want to see that Marc is the emotional hot head. That Jake is the heart and soul. That Steven is the cool and collected protector. I want to see them wrestle with G-D in a way that makes sense to them. I want to see how Marc has healed and how they are processing their trauma. I want them to show that they can work together and know what one another needs. I want them to show that healing is possible without losing any part of themselves.

Sometimes healing looks like three guys sharing time and doing their own thing. Not one guy being in control of the body full time. Sometimes healing is one guy celebrating Purim while the other two take a back seat because it isn’t their thing.

I’m prepared for disappointment, but I hope I’m pleasantly surprised.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight comics #Meta #moon knight meta #I'm back on it everyone #I was supposed to be writing something else and this happened #I'm so sorry #Marc Spector #Steven Grant #I'll find a good Jake one next #I wish the new guys would go back and re-read the old stuff #There's some gold in there that should not be missed or re-written #I'm not normal about Moon Knight #Marc needs more hugs #Someone get Steven off his high horse and back into that speedo #He needs to learn to relax sometimes #Jake needs a buddy #I miss the Moon Knight friends

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i-eat-deodorant · 2 years

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if anyone isn’t aware i headcanon that all the bishops were mortal once and that each crown has changed hands multiple times.

i’m thinking about a warlord au that takes place way before COTL, detailing the merging of the five bishops into the old faith. back then, gods were much more common, towns were much more developed, and cults were constantly at war with each other for more recruits/land/resources.

- crowns aren’t immortal as well. they can be created--concentrate enough belief, enough idea, enough of a concept into a single object and it’ll crystallize into a crown. they can also lose power and crumble from becoming obsolete. the more ancient the crown, the less danger of this happening

- shamura is already a god, and has been in a centuries-long war against multiple forces: the vulture-queen red crown of the mountains, the slippery network of blue-crown inheritors on the deep oceans, and multiple small crown uprisings. at this time, they weren’t living in silk cradle yet. that came after they conquered the red crown

- narinder, still mortal and two-eyed, is his war advisor and second-in-command. shamura rescued him from death by freezing and raised the sickly kit into his most loyal confidante. he was killed mere seconds before shamura’s army overtook the red crown*, and shamura used the spare crown to bring him back, making him a god. he wears the skull necklace, and while technically is older than heket and kallamar, he didn’t end up ascending to godhood until after both of them.

- heket was an up and coming leader of the anuran uprising. anura was a region of little, with few water sources and poor soil for anything other than the desert-loving menticide mushroom. heket managed to rally the sparse few villages that dotted the region into a conglomerate force, intent on pushing out the invading gods that tithed them for resources and devotion. after terrorizing the outer borders of shamura’s territory, they came to an agreement: shamura would supply the anurans with the resources they need in exchange for more troops and the firepower of another god

- kallamar was one of the successors in a long chain of blue crowns wearers, gods that didn’t have much firepower or permanent followers, but were really good at transferring the power of the blue crown between devotees. when one cult got struck down, there would be a couple months of standstill. then, inexplicably, another one would crop up in a pre-established area, secretly converting every follower in the vicinity to their faith and siphoning devotion under the nose of another god. they all had to pledge to sacrifice themselves for the autonomy of their crown, but kallamar was a weak link; after he saw the red crown defeated by the combined forces of the purple and yellow crowns, he panicked, and ended up coming out of hiding to propose an alliance where he’d keep the blue crown forever, essentially breaking all his oaths

- leshy was actually an anomaly in the god world; the green crown had laid forgotten in darkwood long after its original bearer died, and so desperate was it for a bearer that when a seed drifted down between its tines, it sprouted into leshy. rumours started floating around of a feral creature in the woods, capable of bursting from the dirt and dragging its victims down with it with a single fatal bite. heket was actually the one sent to fight him. she managed to wrestle the young god down and make him promise to join the others, becoming the fifth and final bishop long after the events of the war

#i think some problems that keep me from elaborating further are that it's easy for cultural insensitivity to leak in #and the heavily colonialist vibes #although imo the bishops are not good people and would absolutely support colonialism if they were the colonizers #so it's just a matter of distancing author intent from character opinion #unfortunately history is my worst subject lmao

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the-letterbox-archives · 3 months

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Tell me something about The Rockdove Promise then, for the tag game :3

file (1)2-5-015: ask response

thank you for the ask!!

the rockdove promise was gonna be a team project, but it fell through, so i adapted it again, mostly because of the gods, so i'll focus on them.

there are 10 gods, all are very spooky and very temperamental. they are not referred to by their real names, as it is superstition that their true names hold unimaginable power, and speaking it forces a god to be in debt to you, but not without unfathomable consequences. i'll try to be brief,,

The False King

first and foremost is now known as the false king. god of the sky, justice, and order. he is the oldest god, and used to be the divine king. he's basically an allegory for the divine right of kings, full of spite and rage. he's old news by the time the story rolls around, but he introduced the rockdove promise, and it was his threats of damnation that set the status quo since the beginning. father to the next god...

The Dread Prince

my personal favourite. the dread prince is the god of death, stars, and the home. he is the current king of the gods, but human epithets do not grant him that luxury. a fickle, unpredictable being, but that's to be expected since he's never had to try for anything in his entire existence. younger by god standards, and technically a demigod, he holds a strange, taboo power (mostly the element of death); all the gods are watching him very carefully, and the humans are trying to placate him.

The Usurper Queen

goddess of war, rebirth, and revolutions, the usurper queen is the dread prince's wife, though attained this status without her say. after trying to end her husband-to-be's life, she was married off to him by the false king, partly to show her where she stands in the divine hierarchy, and partly to mellow both of them out. a corrupt and spontaneous king fell madly in love with his, and it kind of worked out for both. she's the one who's pov we see in the prologue (y'know, where she threatens to kill all the humans in increasingly horrible ways?)

The Wave Raiser

god of the ocean, storms, and darkness. quite kind by divine standards, but prone to uncontrollable fits of rage and despair that throw the seas asunder. it's such an issue that sailing is well known as a very dangerous affair. with his twin, they try and abate (or cause, depending on the day) the damage.

The Lamplighter

god of travel, guidance, and light. twin of the wave raiser. those sound like great domains, huh? something an honourable god would have, right? hahahaha... ha. in reality, the lamplighter is incredibly vain and quick-tempered, and it's really a gamble if he guides you somewhere safer than the dark, raging sea.

The Witchdaughter

goddess of magic, family, and healing. relatively reclusive, but treats her closest followers very well. she hides in the cracks of reality, bearing her magical gifts to those who pledge to her name. she's rewards loyalty well, and punishes disobedience with an iron fist. her benevolent nature is not constant, however.

The All Seer

goddess of wisdom, prophecy, and enlightenment. the first seer, she spoke her prophecies to the first humans. but they weren't very positive prophecies, so mortals fear her, even today. she only shares her knowledge with close disciples. and if their minds are destroyed forever, that's really not her fault.

The Lady of The Hollow

goddess of decay, nature, and hunting. her worship is few and far between, due to her nasty habit of rotting the bodies of humans that come to close to her divine presence. she sees that the natural order remains intact, decaying old things and hunting those who defy her. quite fun at parties, though.

The Sculptor of Knights

goddess of strategy, creation, and borders. heralded as the one who cut up the land into nations and territories eons ago, her creations sprung forth knights and warriors fueled by blood. she and the usurper queen are quite close friends, where strategy and creation meets brute force and chaotic revolts.

The Shepherd of Lost Things

god of trickery, theft, and oaths. all in all, a very silly guy, they have a bad habit of stealing mortal goods and never returning them. this facade makes them seem inoffensive in comparison to their peers, but they have some more bad traits, to the detrement of humankind.

these are the gods who demand the divine tithes every year, that the usurper queen believes the humans are trying to dispute, and that laszlo is constantly thinking about, despite almost dying (whoops). and it turns out i was not brief. oh well, at least the archives are a little less stuffed..

#letters speaks #not a story #letters rants #archival asks #writeblr #writing #writers on tumblr #writing community #creative writing #writers #the rockdove promise rant #letterbox archives file

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goldenworldsabound · 2 years

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For Fitzy: 🎭 and 💭!

Essay asks! Thanks Set-chan!

🎭 In the Shakespearean sense, would you describe your ship as a tragedy or a comedy? Why?

My understanding is that the primary difference is in the ending. Tragedies end with the death of the main character, while comedies tend to end in reunions and marriages. So in that sense, I do have to say it's a comedy, though it has elements that defy that and lean more towards tragedy.

Specifically, as it relates to Aura, many obstacles are overcome by the two of them, but they end up together and staying together.

My assumption still is that Francis WILL NOT be able to bring his daughter back from the dead. I think that would be wrong for his character growth and I also don't see the plot allowing it. Even if (when?) the good guys get the page, I don't see them allowing Francis to bring someone back from the dead...unless they themselves are doing that, which would be interesting and I hadn't considered it until this moment.

Anyway, hypothesizing on the future of the series aside, the fact that Francis does not have that reunion with his daughter somewhat twists the comedy a bit - one part of the comedy is fulfilled, and the other remains empty and lost forever, itself becoming an obstacle to be overcome (grieving a lost child).

💭 What arguments would you use to persuade someone to ship the ship you're discussing?

This ship has both hilarious interactions (tsundere!Aura plus shameless!Francis, not to mention Aura's AI/son HAL) that border on sitcomesque, but also tackles more serious subjects, ranging from Aura helping Francis cope with his grief, to working out a healthy polyamorous relationship between three people. There's also a lot of soft tender loving moments between the two. Also a good and nuanced portrayal of a nonbinary individual dating a bi cis man. So the ship does it all basically. Also, power couple who kick ass fighting side by side (or they would, I don't have plans for it to happen but like they would be unstoppable).

also secret workplace romance is part of it and I love that trope soooooo

#opulence amongst monoliths

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greywoodrpg · 1 year

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𝕣𝕪𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕓𝕠𝕝𝕥

he was born thirty-four years ago, he is a werewolf who lives in wolf crossing as the manager and bartender at the den and owner of bolt's auto repair shop, and is the alpha of the pack. he looks an awful lot like stephen james hendry.

“I'm two pounds shy of a bomb, I'm one shade short of alarm. I'm too past wrath that I'm calm.”

tw: death, violence, drugs, murder

He smoked his first cigarette at twelve, rolled up his first joint at thirteen, got into his first bar fight at fourteen and the first tattoo right after that. Dad out of the picture, mom working double shifts to get them by. You’d think that would motivate the little rascal to rise above the gutter? Not in the part of good ol’ London he lived in. Ryden narrowly missed juvy after stealing a car and driving it into a ditch at fifteen, ending his teen years as a high school dropout. Between gangs, drugs and a bit of rock'n'roll, Ryden was lucky to survive till his twenties, given his self-destructive behavior and tendency to fight anything that had a social security number.

Until a girl happened. It’s always about a girl, isn’t it? And for some reason, they’re always named Sarah. Ryden got all straightened up for his Sarah, got a decent job as a construction worker and rented a dingy little place where she could hang her artsy photos and paintings. She was an art major and she read poetry. She had dark hair and sometimes snorted when she laughed. She put up with his snark and liked the stories behind his tattoos, even if they were a bit exaggerated.

But you don’t get to have a past like Ryden without consequences. One night, Ryden returned home to his Sarah dead on the floor, a pool of blood like a red halo around her head. A group of thugs he owed some money to had broken in, taking bitter revenge. They didn’t find Ryden in, panicked, and killed the girl when she screamed she’d call the police.

The next thing Ryden knew was that he was at a funeral, standing over a freshly buried grave. A strange man in black had approached him then, giving vague introductions and dubious connections to Sarah’s family side. In return for a favor, he promised to give Ryden a rare gift that would change his life forever. Naturally, Ryden declined, finding the man crazy for asking. Turns out Ryden didn’t have much of a choice there, as the man returned the next night, leaving Ryden on the floor of his apartment with a bloody bite mark on his shoulder, the night of the incident a complete blur. Needless to say, this bite had indeed changed Ryden forever.

After this, he moved about, running away from the man in black, his roamings taking him to America, to a town called Greywood. There, he'd found things he thought he'd never come to deserve - people he could call friends despite his tendency to snarl at anyone inching close to knowing him better, a steady couple of jobs, both of which he actually kind of sort of runs (look at him, adulting successfully), and a pack to belong to, which placed its trust into his rough hands with reliance that still blew his mind by naming him the alpha - their wolf in charge. A fresh start, until time runs out and the devil comes to collect his dues...

“what power did he attain when settling in greywood?”

Upon spending a few years in Greywood, Ryden acquired keen animal instincts that are border-lining with precognition, a very sharp sixth sense and passive perception which can anticipate impending danger and almost predict things seconds before they happen - every other supernatural ability he has was acquired prior to moving to the town, such as those related to his hybridization when he was turned into a werewolf, influenced by demon blood. Due to this, his mid-shift form is similar to a stereotypical horror-style werewolf - a creature with a wolf's head, covered in fur but walking upright on two legs. In this form, he loses all conscience and his strength, speed and healing abilities double, but he has no memory of his actions, cannot control it and is most bloodthirsty then, with almost all of his humanity gone. At that time, he is also most susceptible to the control the creature who turned him has over him.

penned by... sandra

#supernatural rp #town rp #horror rp #mature rp #literate rp #oc rp #stephen james hendry fc #infernal #werewolf #hybrid #taken #death tw #violence tw #murder tw #drugs tw

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softersinned-arc · 1 year

Text

@xfindingtrouble said: ♫ for ellis

"creature" by penny and sparrow

Every drop that I bleed It's a gift you give me Let me spend my skin on you Kiss me, whisper, make me new I'm a creature for your love

what they have between them is the deep and selfish kind of love. it's the transcendent kind, too. they are both possessive of one another in a way that can border on obsession, and that's true pretty much every step of the way: they are each other's best friend, better half, whole heart. and even at their worst, even when they hate each other a little bit, they'd do anything for each other, and they wouldn't hesitate to suffer if it means the person they love most in this world won't. they're both rogues; they both do a lot of fighting that's up close and personal, and pretty fucking dirty. how many times have they taken a hit for each other? how many times have they taken a hit they really couldn't afford to take for each other?

it's in her choice to use magic for him, too: she doesn't think, she just acts. she accepts his anger and his feelings of betrayal and she accepts that she's opened herself up to incredible danger: not just from him (though she trusts he wouldn't intend to hurt her like that, no matter how angry, accidents happen), but from the rest of this party, only one of whom she knows at all. so she takes a few extra hits in battle that can divert attention from him. she swallows her fear. she keeps asking, because someday the answer to do you trust me? will be yes again. they just have to get there. and in the meantime, she can bleed (metaphorically, literally) if it makes his own bleeding a little bit easier to bear. it's a little unhealthy! it's a little dehumanizing! and i don't think either one of them would have it any other way than with that intense, unconditional devotion.

"till forever" by joy williams

We're beginning to finally see one another We grow stronger, we grow stronger for breaking apart We grow stronger for breaking apart together... How you move me, how you move me to love you I keep choosing to love you again every morning

obsessed w the idea of them becoming better for having that period of deep anger and hurt and distrust. obsessed w the idea of them knowing each other better because they've gone through that and made the active choice to love each other in spite of it (in some ways, because of it). there comes a point for them where the anger and the secrets just stop mattering in the face of the bigger issues: the world practically ended, and they survived it together. and now they're making a future in what's left of the world.

this one is pure amaranthine to me. it's them getting to know each other again in astoria's home, rather than his; it's them getting to know each other with an idea of who each will be for the rest of their lives; it's them having the opportunity to love and trust each other again, now that they've both had the time to heal. i love, too, the element of choice that's always so powerful for them: they could separate. it would be really easy. but they both know they won't, because there's no universe where they make the choice to leave each other. there's a wonderful sort of finality to them.

"wasteland, baby!" by hozier

And that day that we'll watch the death of the sun to the cloud and the cold and those jeans you have on And you'll gaze unafraid as they sob from the city roofs Wasteland, baby, I'm in love, I'm in love with you And I love too that love soon might end, be known in its aching, shown in the shaking Lately of my wasteland, baby Be still my indelible friend, you are unbreaking, though quaking, though crazy, that's just wasteland, baby When the stench of the sea and the absence of green are the death of all things that are seen and unseen Are an end but the start of all things that are left to do Wasteland, baby, I'm in love, I'm in love with you

finding a selection of lyrics to quote and not just gesturing vaguely at the whole song was, frankly, torturous. my beloved hozier described this song as a love song for the end of the world (which, to be honest, is the name of the playlist i'm going to make for them sooner or later), and there's nothing more appropriate for them. they fall in love with each other again while constantly facing down the potential that everything is ending. not just the potential, but in some cases, the certainty. they look over the wreckage of the blight, the darkspawn civil war, the mage rebellion, the false calling, the inquisition, and they survive through it, somehow. they don't just survive through it, but time and time again they find an opportunity to know one another better, more intimately than they've ever known each other before, and to love each other better than they have before, which is a feat in and of itself given that they love each other so dearly, and so wholly.

i keep coming back to the images of them in their own little bubble while the world seems to be crumbling around them, sharing a moment of tenderness that's both in clear view of the rest of the world and still wonderfully private: ellis holding her after they find her in the snow after the destruction of haven to help warm her again, astoria throwing her arms around him when he gets back to the vigil after he defeats the mother and neither one of them letting go, the two of them watching each other with sweet, private smiles on their faces as she's getting her tattoo, the same smiles they'll share years down the line when he marries her in the laws of her hold.

"new year's day" by taylor swift

Don't read the last page But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared, and you're turning away (But I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong, or we're making mistakes) I want your midnights But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day

it wouldn't be an ani playlist without at least one tswift song. this is, i think, one of the most profoundly beautiful love songs she's ever written, and she's written a lot. astoria and ellis both are really profoundly important people, to each other but even more than that, to the world at large. he stopped the blight. she's the herald of andraste. they are surrounded by people politicking and lying and playing games; they do plenty of that themselves. and they are at each other's sides through the heroism and the last ditch efforts, during all the moments of glory and failure, but more important than that, they're together when things settle down and they're left with the very real and often tedious tasks of rebuilding.

i think a lot about the relief astoria would feel when she realized that ellis stayed to protect the city, despite knowing she was in the vigil. i think about that all the time. and i think about astoria knowing that at least this place she loves, her home, is being protected by the person she trusts most in the world. i think about them rebuilding the vigil together - astoria cataloguing every bit of damage meticulously while ellis talks about the adjustments they'll need to make - and them rebuilding the city together - the two of them filthy and sweaty in a public show of support to the survivors of the attacks. i think about astoria watching him in those moments and falling more and more in love with him. i think about them closer in the aftermath, and trusting each other more and more - astoria bringing him the elfroot ointment for his cracked hands, buying him a new journal when the one he's working on is mostly filled. little gestures to one another that say i know who you are and i love you even when nobody else is looking but us.

sidebar: please clap. i chose one tswift out of the like. six i usually have at the ready for them.

"a case of you" by joni mitchell

I remember that time you told me You said, "Love is touching souls;" surely you touched mine 'cause Part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine You taste so bitter and so sweet, oh I could drink a case of you, darling, and still be on my feet Oh, I would still be on my feet

this one always slips away from me but the second i listen to it, i think about them. it's equal parts tragedy and love, which i think is perfect for them during the blight: that anger and betrayal, even if they know eventually it will pass, is painful, and they live through it regardless. they love each other enough for it to be worthwhile. they are, at this point, a piece of each other: and while ellis is experiencing his very understandable crisis in faith, astoria is in many ways rediscovering hers through him. she thinks there's something genuinely holy in him, in all the pieces of him he thinks are broken: it's a desperate and hungry and absolutely incomparable devotion between them, and she thinks that perfection is impossible but there isn't a goddamn thing about him that doesn't make her think that there's something bigger than them in the universe.

i love the lyrics "go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed" too, for them: they both have to accept one another's imperfections and failures in an honest way, and accept that it won't ever be perfect. and i think during the blight there probably are moments when astoria's mourning what they've lost and fucking miserable for it, because how is she supposed to live without him? how is she supposed to survive without what they had? she learns eventually that the answer is by creating something stronger, but there are definitely moments she thinks it's gone for good.

honorable mentions, because if you get to cheat so do i: "daylight" by taylor swift, "like real people do" by hozier, "to be alone" by hozier, "wedding song" by anais mitchell, "one and only" by joy williams.

#ii. sweet music playing in the dark. ( playlist )#i. here's the truth from my red lips. ( answers )#iii. the difference my love is that when you laugh i forget about the sky. ( ellis x astoria )#xfindingtrouble #(did you know. i love them so fucking much. they have my heart always.)

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little-mouse-gardens · 2 years

Note

💄

💄 maroon : what old wounds do your ocs have that affect them in your story?

Tw! - mentions of abuse

The Great Beasts - journey to the west, Monkie kid

Wei Xiurong

the tragic loss of her husband while she found out she was pregnant and the death of her grandmother while she was on the verge of labor took a toll on her.

with no time to Greive, she put more focus onto raising her triplets than going out and fighting demons every night, vowing to ensure her daughters would be safe and happy above her own needs.

however, she wasn't the same happy go lucky young woman she was before.

yes, she was still happy and loved her children and friends very much, however...she could barely move on from the loss of her beloved husband and grandmother.

not even entertaining the idea of remarrying because of the pain his death brought her.

Wei Chuntao

sun wukong getting trapped under a mountain for 5000 years made Chuntao extremely cautious around the court of heaven and anxious every time her husband pulled a stunt after being released

she ended up having to take care of flower fruit mountain, her third child when he was born, and her husband all of the same time which led her to

not mention the wedge that drove in between her and Rong when wukong had brutally attacked liu'er mihou

she still feels guilt for not stepping in. for putting her foot down and calling him out on his behavior towards his friend and especially her sister.

no matter how much she tries, she knows Rong may never forgive her for it.

Wei Rong

wukong attacking her husband

the worst day of her life and a day that forever changed her

she felt complete and utter betrayal, anger, rage and hurt.

her husband nearly died in her arms, he lost his eye and wukong basically told the both of them that they were not friends and that unless they wanted to be killed, they would stay away.

all of that in combination with her sister, her best friend and blood, knowing where macaque was heading and refusing to do something about wukong made her snap

she lost trust in her sister and ex-friend. she became cold, distrustful and bitter, bordering on hatred, towards wukong and barley talked to her sister for hundreds of years after.

Wei Qiaolian

learning about wukong's incident with macaque made her blood boil

though she understood that he was protecting tripitaka.

however, she was extremely upset by the way he handled it and the terrible things he said not only about him but about Rong.

she genuinely lost some of her respect for him and still, just like Rong, doesn't trust him or forget the things he said hundreds of years of after the incident.

The Grimwood kids - owl house

Felicity Grimwood + Quinn Grimwood + Nadia Grimwood

their biological parents abandoning them, their aunt lying to them about being witches and the bullying that came with having pointed ears while growing up in the human realm

May Grimwood

her own family member practically abandoning their three kids as newborns for her to raise because they chose killing the emperor over taking care of and raising their kids and being with their family

Bluebottle Manor - Undertale & Undertale Aus

Eliza Evans

Her mother's death at the age of seven and her father just abandoning her and moving onto a new family

Ashely Jackson

getting attacked by a mountain lion when she was eight after her older brother just left her at a national park.

she ended up with permeant scars, phycological and physical, and an older sibling who ended up in jail after learning he was trying to kill her.

Marely Lane + Sabrina Buckley + Daisy Gable

there really aren't any old wounds for Marley, Sabrina, or daisy

Venus Buckley

if anyone has ever watched BoJack horseman and remember the episode about his parents?

yeah...that's what Venus's family is like.

he had a mom that practically blamed him and his siblings for her life being miserable and used the issues in her childhood as an excuse to be abusive towards them

and a dad that practically did the same thing but complained about his mom so much it drove all of them insane

he was lucky and thankful he didn't turn out to be like his mom, dad or siblings.

however, he harbors a lot of hatred and resentment towards them. wishing to any powers that be that they could disappear off the face of the earth

#fanfiction #jttw ocs #jttw #monkie kid ocs #monkie kid #toh oc #toh fanfic #toh #undertale ocs #undertale aus #undertale #wip : bluebottle manor #wip : the great beasts #wip : the grimwood kids #ask answered #mousespeaks

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cream-and-tea · 2 years

Text

[ID: a picture of a group of peaches lying in a pile with a faint border around the edge, white text in the centre reads CREAM-AND-TEA while smaller text below that reads reintro/navigation. END ID]

hi! hello! salutations! my name (at least on the internet) is creme (she/her please and thank you), and this reintro has been... a long time coming, to say the least. let’s get some quick facts out of the way so i can talk about my over abundance of projects!

i tend to write character-driven stories, complicated relationships of all kinds, queer/nerudivergant characters (hey, write what you know), fucked-up magic systems, and basically everything i touch ends up having SOME kind of fantasy element (whether intentionally or not)

i also write poetry! but that tends not to get posted as much bc of just how personal it is to me

i’m pretty active on here but i'm trying to get better at actually Posting My Writing, i do have some stuff up (mostly from my main wip Lay Me Down) but that’s something i’m working on

(i’m working on… a lot)

i’m currently studying journalism and creative writing in university!!!

i’d love to be published one day (primarily with my poetry and maybe a novel) but first i have to actual finish something lol

i am literally up to read/follow anything. anything at all. i do have stuff i look for and some genres i read more than others but if something has a premise i like/tropes i like/a cool vibe/anything remotely interesting at all i tend to jump on it

i love love love being tagged in tag games even if it takes me fucking forever to do them lol

aaaaand i think that’s mostly it! now onto the main event (aka all my stories i couldn’t shut up about so i had to put them under the cut):

LAY ME DOWN.

[ID: an opening between two trees surrounded by ferns and leading into darkness, with text across it that reads LAY ME DOWN in white letters. END ID]

BASICS. drafting/outlining. fantasy/horror/post-apocalypse. third person present tense, dual POV. book one of the gravespeaker trilogy.

PREMISE. On an earth overtaken by a infectious supernatural forest: a runaway with the ability to see the dead, a star student with far worse than blood staining their hands, the ghost of a murdered girl with a score to settle, and a failed prophet who knows far more than he thinks, must work together to unravel the mysteries and secrets of a deadly library at the end of the world that is just as much prison as it is salvation (that is… if they don’t kill each other first).

CHARACTERS.

Agnes-Maria white [17 and too good for this place. she is made of bruised skin and bleeding flowers, a girl half dying who will do anything to live.]

Pallas [17 and exactly where they think they belong. there is nothing safe or kind or soft about them even though they want to be, both the knife and the open wound.]

Nina Martin [18 and longing to leave. she is an echo of someone a different girl used to be, and death is only the beginning.]

Fiver [25 and looking for something better. he exists as an ichor-toned lie and wishes to scrub the residue of it from his skin, someone desperate to break the chains of the past around his neck.]

TAG. wip: ghost story

comic sans intro

playlist.

pinterest board.

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @vellichor-virgo @transmasc-wizard @houndmouthed @muddshadow @just-wublrful @corkywantstowrite @shrunkupthejams @andromedaexists @caninemotiff @lungs-and-gills @lychniscitrus @phantomnations @onomatopiya @deer-in-headlights-stare @arctic-oceans @redbloodprose @definitelynotclayface @cannivalisms @atthenian @dallonwrites

BURN THE STARS

[ID: a photo set in a dark space where a young person stands, face upturned, eyes closed, as their arms reach up, hands cupping an orb of light that casts a golden glow in the space around it. the text across the centre of the image reads BURN THE STARS in white letters. END ID]

BASICS. planning (seriously in the very early stages of planning). sci-fi fantasy. third person past tense (for now), four major POVs (for now). book one of a planned duology.

PREMISE. Exiled from one of the galaxies seven holy ruling families and poisoned with magic she doesn't understand, Apollinaires self-destructive spiral is interrupted by an event that leads her into the path of a sharpshooter with a taste for vengeance and a fervent medic pursuing knowledge no matter the cost. Meanwhile, in the heart of a massive rotating space station known as the Rings, wearing a stolen face and longing for home, reluctant assassin Anandi Alva plans to finally bring the star-spanning church to its knees. While within the palace both a fallen warrior and a girl-king strive to remember what means to be human.

CHARACTERS.

Apollinaire Sibel-Marie Gloria Alphonsine el Belrose, eldest daughter of the house of the seventh saint [the unchosen. the eldest daughter. god-cursed and roiling in flame]

Danny [the trickshot. the wanderer too far from home. saltbitter and stormy-eyed]

Silas Ambose [the “healer”. the seeker of truths. broken heart still beating and trembling hands]

Anandi Alva [the assassin. the tortured idealist. silken tongue and a thousand masks]

Rill [the executioner. the punished. steel bite and starstreaked blood.]

Glorian Apollinaire Alphonsine El Belrose, the first mourner, he who bears the sword and cries with the tears of a thousand people, aka “Alphie” [the chosen. the youngest child. golden crowns and redrimmed eyes]

TAG. wip: burn the stars

pinterest board.

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @just-wublrful @transmasc-wizard

MISC PROJECTS

[ID: a backdrop of soft, glittery peach fabric. the text across the centre of the image reads MISC PROJECTS in white letters. END ID ]

aka “things i’m not actively working on but constantly ping-pong around my brain on a day-to-day basis”

SALT BIRDS. low fantasy/slice-of-life audio drama. outlining. follows the lonely keeper of a seaside graveyard when one of the bodies she fishes from the ocean ends up being very much alive. With nowhere else to go the teenager she finds washed up on her shore must stay with her and the two must find a way to live with each other, despite the secrets both are keeping.

guilt, redemption and forgiveness. facing the unknown. stagnation and apathy. isolation. the ocean is real scary you guys (but also cool).

ONE DOWN AT DEVONS MARSH. urban fantasy with heavy litfic elements. planning/sporadically drafting. follows twins Friday and Oliver Walker as they attempt to understand the curse that dictates one of them will die on their seventeenth birthday while also navigating their relationships with each other, their family of witches, the town they live in, and the friends they meet along the way.

family (blood and otherwise). complicated platonic relationships. coming of age, faeries and witchcraft. weird small towns. fate and free will. death and grief. oops! this one is all about MY specific high school trauma!

SUNDOWN LAND. soft fantasy/roadtrip. planning. follows Shrike, a runaway thief slowly dying from a magical disease, and Ariel, an artificial construct who's maker has recently disappeared, as they journey through the ruins of their wartorn country in search of a mystical place both know from a popular childrens story.

finding closure. coming to terms with childhood abuse. generational trauma. personal autonomy. fantasy vs reality. discovering and defining identity. places being personified. it can be a pinocchio retelling if you squint reeeealllly hard.

ALL FALL DOWN. superhero. rewriting and replanning. follows hero and villain duo Tatum and Umbra as their city of New Victoria is plunged into chaos following a series of increasingly violent attacks. forced to work together and battling their own inner demons the two and their rag-tag group of friends are drawn into a much larger conspiracy that could unravel their ideas of themselves, each-other, and the foundation of the very world they live in.

enemies-to-lovers. gray mortality. the dangers of black and white thinking. what makes someone a villain and what makes a someone a hero. found family. the dangers of obsessive hate and revenge. heroes who choose to save the world. healing and recovery. heist bullshit.

GO TO #creme does a writing if you want some examples of my scribblings

GO TO #creme does an art if you want to see my gay little drawings

GO TO #creme does a tag for a look at the tag games i’ve done

GO TO #*stares in podcast rambling* if you want a taste of the OTHER things i obsess over constantly

129 notes · View notes

ghostking1 · 3 years

Note

I don’t really know what you’re into but I asked some of my other percico shipper friends and we made a list of some of our favs :)

•|| Five Times Percy Broke His Phone and The One Time It Wasn't His Fault ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29524128

• Percy/Nico

• Rated G

• one-shot

• Words: 5,726

Summary:

As punishment for blowing up the Legions armory Leo is sentenced to work in phone repair for the camps. Normally this wouldn't be too bad, phones these days are pretty bulletproof. Unfortunately, he hasn't thought of the extraordinary circumstances Poseidon’s favored son tends to regularly find himself in. This is one battle the Son of Hephaestus is determined to win. Olympus helped him.

•|| Breaking the Ice ||•

https://www.deviantart.com/leukanthes/art/Breaking-the-Ice-Slash-287857101

• Percy/Nico

• no rating, but I guess G bordering T (?)

• one-shot

• Words: 2,574

[No Summary]

•|| Could Never Imagine ||•

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10703658/1/Could-Never-Imagine

• Nico/Percy

• Rating: T

• 46 chapters

• Words: 103k+

Summary: The war is over Annabeth chose to leave camp to allow her soul to heal, leaving a distraught Percy behind. Soon enough though the girls at camp are coming-on to the twice savior of Olympus. Percy however has no intention of finding a new girlfriend. So how will he get them to leave him be? It's a good thing Nico is around.

•|| Family Dinner ||•

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5439187/1/Family-Dinner

• Nico/Percy

• Rating: T

• one-shot/1 chapter

• Words: 6k+

Summary: The fancy invite card read: Welcome to our new home! Please join Percy Jackson and Nico di Angelo's housewarming dinner. Please do not feel the need to bring anything. Dinner begins at 6:00pm. The address is 38501 Sunshine Lane, Long Island.

•|| Can I Clear My Conscience? ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250188

• Nico/Percy

• Rating: T

• one shot/1 chapter

• Words: 12,222

Summary:

Death Touch: Nico’s powers have gone out of control and he’s killing living beings with a single touch. The only one who can save him is Percy.

•|| Revival ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287157/chapters/45872164

• Nico/Percy

• Rating: Explicit

• 4 chapters (complete)

• Words: 28,903

Summary:

After the events of The Titan's Curse Nico finds himself struggling to live on the streets. Exhausted, he recklessly uses his powers to take him somewhere safe. He ends up in an unfamiliar cabin and too weak to do anything else he decides to spend the night.

Percy still feels guilty about Bianca's death. He searched and searched for Nico but was unable to find him. Something is sending him visions of the boy though as if to tell him to go find him. At last Nico ends up in a familiar looking place and Percy seeks him out. What follows is something neither of them expected.

•|| on top of the world ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184790

• Nico/Percy

• Rating: T

• one-shot/1 chapter

• Words: 16,175

Summary:

In which Gaea wins and Percy breaks another promise to Nico, and surprisingly, Nico doesn't mind.

•|| The world will never take my heart ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1712186/chapters/3646085#workskin

Summary:

where Percy and Annabeth break up, and Percy convinces Nico to move in with him and attend Goode

•|| Sensory Love ||•

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12454985/1/Hitome-Chan-s-Sensory-Love

•Rating: M

•words: 237+

Summary:

Mortal AU where Percy and Nico are best friends, but Nico’s feelings run deeper than that.

•|| Coding and Codeine ||•

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12457018/1/Hitome-Chan-s-Coding-And-Codeine

Summary:

post apocalypse mortal AU where Nico meets Percy in a near dead world, and the two travel the US and fall in love

•|| Seasons Change ||•

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/7838989/1/

Summary:

Mortal AU where in Nico and Percy were friends since they were little, but they had a falling out. Nico never recovered from Percy's rejection and neither did Percy. Through a twist of fate, they get a second chance

•|| The love we miss ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087406

Summary:

Canon divergent fic where Annabeth is killed during the days following the second war

•|| World Traverls ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649647

Summary:

a series of amazing fics by awanderingmuse which follow an older Percy and Nico

•|| Kiss a boy in Tokyo town ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/337259

Summary:

Japan becomes the new location for camp half blood after the fall of the United States.Nico comes to visit percy in Japan

while annabeth is still in the US and things transpire

•|| Tribulations ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061345

Summary:

Percy and Nico are caught in an argument between two goddesses and are put to the test. They must prove the strength of their bond to survive or lose their freedom forever.

•ll When the river meets the sea ll•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171134

Summary:

Nico di Angelo should be his best friend. He looks over, meeting Nico’s eyes; Nico, who looks patient and a little embarrassed for some reason, and he thinks, why isn’t he?

Or: Wherein Nico has an incurable case of being a martyr, Percy grows to hate The Muppets, and Poseidon surprises the both of them with a bouncing baby demigod.

•|| Fire escapes and friendships ||•

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17810015/chapters/42019895

Summary:

“So it’s safe to assume you’re the reason she’s stalking around like she’s just sucked a bag of lemons.”

“She called me today.”

“And?”

“She just wanted to chew my ear off. You know, for ruining all her hard work and design for your cabin. And then for suggesting to Chiron that she shouldn’t be allowed to help with the refurbishment.”

Or where Percy and Nico burn the injustice that is the Hades cabin and Percy takes the blame.

Christmas parties, confessions and cozy death traps

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748753/chapters/67921453

Summary:

Ah, Christmas! That magical time of year where goodwill permeates the air, gifts are exchanged, and demigods question if they'll be smote down for singing the less secular Christmas carols! But as Nico will soon find out there are far more nefarious threats than carols this joyous time of year, a threat, in the form of an ugly Christmas sweater.

||• percico authors to support ||•

Likegallows

https://archiveofourown.org/users/likegallows/pseuds/likegallows

Bobinthecomments

https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobInTheComments/pseuds/BobInTheComments

Awanderingmuse

https://archiveofourown.org/users/awanderingmuse/pseuds/awanderingmuse

Midnightinjapan

https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightinJapan

anitstar_e(Kailamahine)

https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/pseuds/antistar_e

Let me know if you need more~ :)

First of all, thank you so much for these pics. All of these were disgustingly good, like extremely disgustingly good, and I enjoyed them all immensely. But, I figured you'd want to hear my thoughts on them, and because I wanted to share my thoughts on them, so here they are :D

•|| Five Times Percy Broke His Phone and The One Time It Wasn't His Fault ||• -Amazing, a 10/10, one of my favorites, short enough that my attention span never got me distracted, great writing

•|| Breaking the Ice ||• -Another great one, this one blew me away

•|| Could Never Imagine ||• -I loved this one because it showed all of Nico's insecurities

•|| Family Dinner ||• -sooooo cute

•|| Can I Clear My Conscience? ||• -this one was kind of sad but a great healing fic

•|| Revival ||• -showed the Nico living on the streets that we never saw, very well done

•|| on top of the world ||• -dangerous situation where all hope is lost and they can only lean on one another? sign me up

•|| The world will never take my heart ||• -this was a fun fic to read

•|| Sensory Love ||• -this was pretty good, but it had cheating themes which made it hard for me to absolutely adore

•|| Coding and Codeine ||• -loved this au

•|| Seasons Change ||• -this one was a little harder to swallow, it had mature themes in it and there was cheating involved, and I always have a harder time with that

•|| The love we miss ||• -*chef's kiss*

•|| World Traverls ||• -so cute, i love this au, it’s like that could actually happen in the canon book series

•|| Kiss a boy in Tokyo town ||• -percy jackson + japan? yes please

•|| Tribulations ||• -love, love, love, love, loved it

•ll When the river meets the sea ll• -a work of art

•|| Fire escapes and friendships ||• -I really like the change in pov, this fic was really well done

•|| Christmas parties, confessions and cozy death traps ||• -loved embarrassed Nico and the creepy ending

And all the authors you recommended are great! :D

Thank you so much for all your recommendations, they were really fun to read!

#nico di angelo #percy jackson #pernico #percico #percy x nico #nicercy #pjo/hoo #fic rec #fic reccomendations

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saphirered · 3 years

Note

Saph I hope you feel better! I really liked the VM Snow White you just posted, but could you also please do the same prompt but with M9 boys including Molly? If you’re not feeling up to it that’s fine too!

Thank you! The meds are beginning to do their job luckily. I'm glad you liked the last one. I blinked, my hand slipped and now it's here. Prepare for some angst. Hope you enjoy! 😘

(Caleb)

Caleb had always known his past would come to haunt him. He was prepared for it. Prepared to take the hit, take responsibility for everything and he’d face his past be that with or without the people he loves. Part of him, once he got used to having these fools around, having you around, wanted it to be on his own, to protect them and protect you. To not have any more lives lost in the grand scheme. The people he loves becoming collateral would be unacceptable. But you had become collateral in the grand scheme of things.

When it became clear to his enemies he was a bit more attached to you than the others, they took this weakness and exploited it. They pushed his buttons before, using you as a tool, verbal bait even, but he never fell for it. His reluctancy to act on his feelings, to keep them to himself instead, were the very thing he hoped would keep those loose ends from latching onto you. His love is a curse, the objects of his desire always to be torn away from him no matter how hard he tries to prevent it. He’s lost you to that same curse. Not lost. Almost lost.

You’ve been cursed, your conscious mind separated from your unconscious body. Simple healing spells wouldn’t do the trick here. This curse holds no roots in the divine. He’s spent days researching and that much he could confirm. This curse would take an arcane approach. Something he prides himself in to be his specialty. Lucky you. Lucky him. He had the others bring all books, ancient scrolls and other sources of knowledge brought to him, along with a wide variety of components once he’d made a significant dent in the research matter, assuring him this would have the greatest chances of success.

It’s not the soft canopy bed with the plush pillows from the fairytales you’re placed on. Instead you lay on a wooden table, inscribed with all sorts of arcane sigils. Nor do you look like some angelic peaceful being. Your brow is furrowed in discomfort, your hands balled into fists at your sides. Caleb moves a brush against areas of exposed skin, painting symbols to match with precision and care, afraid to even make a single mistake, triple checking every mark. He speaks the incantations while incorporating the components varying from precious gems crushed and whole, herbs and incense. And then he waits. He doesn’t expect the effects to be immediate, often with these magics it is not and he knows that but that doesn’t get rid of the impatience and fear.

“How I long to hear your voice again. I know this will work but that doesn’t ease away the sliver of doubt. What if… What if… That’s what I keep asking myself. I know it’s stupid.” Caleb wipes an hand over his brow as he pulls up a chair and sits at your side, elbows leaning on the table careful to avoid any sigils just in case.

“It also faced me with the harsh reality that I held off telling you how I feel. It looks so stupid now in hindsight because what good did it do anyone. In the end you still ended up paying for my mistakes. I was stupid to push you away, try to convince you your own feelings were unreciprocated. I know I didn’t have you fooled in the slightest but to know I could have loved you, it makes me feel like I am to blame for wasting that opportunity and possibly shortening our time together. The thought of losing you before having given you my love will forever be my greatest regret.”

Caleb watches the muscle of your hand unclench and relax. He hears a deep intake of breath and staring at your face he’s met with your smile, one filled with love as he helps you sit up. All is good once more.

(Fjord)

Fjord’s drenched to the bone, out of breath, anger running through him like he’s never experienced. Still he’s unsure if his anger is directed at the one responsible for your eternal slumber or at himself for making a ballsy move that didn’t pay off in the slightest and in fact backfired in a worse way he could have ever imagined. He played a game of chicken with Uk’otoa and lost. He’d have been fine by letting someone else pay the price for him. Why should he care about some stranger becoming victim to the leviathan? The one who paid the price, became the victim to his actions didn’t end up being a stranger. It had to be you of all people hadn’t it?

Uk’otoa must have been watching his dreams, even his waking actions if that were possible and have seen his infatuation with you. When the leviathan threatened Fjord in another briny dream of his mentioning your name he had called bullshit. The snake had never been able to reach out to anyone it didn’t already have some kind of grasp on. Little did he know Uk’otoa had just that. Just enough of a sliver through him, and the Cloven Crystal to get to you.

So there Fjord sits at your bedside. You’re just as drenched as he is, hair dripping, skin glowing in the candle light of the room reflected off the water particles. Your lips are tinted blue, a redness around your eyes, your skin is cold. The sleep you’re in is a state of perpetual drowning and Fjord knows what it feels like, to drown. He can only hope you’re spared that pain. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to forgive himself if you are tortured like so because of his actions. Clasping your hand between both of his he runs his fingers over your knuckles. He bows his head. It still feels so wrong to not have you respond to his touch. So wrong.

“I want you to know that I am to blame for your fate. I’m about to do a very stupid thing to make it right. I know you’d tell me not to but I can’t sit by and watch you suffer like this. I’ve tried everything. I’ve begged and bargained. I’ve shouted at the skies but I got no reply. Everything comes up empty and I see no other choice than to do this. It might sound stupid but I came to ask for your forgiveness.” Fjord pauses. Usually he would have gotten a reply. He would sell his soul for just having you tell him everything will be alright. It’s a good thing he’s about to sell it for so much more than that. It’s worth it. It’s worth having you alive and well.

“I won’t ask for forgiveness for what I’m about to do because I will never regret it. I ask only you may one day forgive me for what I might become. I need you to know I love you and did, will do all of this out of love. That’s why I hope you’ll never see me again after I give myself to Uk’otoa. I can’t bare to watch that affection in your eyes being replaced by hatred, but most of all disappointment. I hoped to be worthy of your love and I will always regret never having truly experienced it.” Fjord’s voice cracks slightly. He studies your face, as if to ingrain every detail into his memory, as if he thinks he might never see it again.

“I’m afraid. I’m so deadly afraid.” Fjord whimpers pressing a kiss to the back of your hand before he lets go. He checks his supplies, taking out the Cloven Crystal, glaring at the orb intensely cursing the thing to oblivion. Coughs pull him out of his staring match with the crystal. Your body moves, leaning over the edge of the bed vomiting up brine. Fjord drops the orb and his belongings running over to you and helping you gather your bearings until you’re no longer chocking on sea water.

“You better not do what I think you’re planning with that orb or so help me Storm Lord, I will drown you myself.” Fjord can’t do anything but laugh despite the very real threat on his life as you pull him into your embrace.

(Caduceus)

Caduceus isn’t bothered by death. Death is part of life as much as living is. It’s inevitable. Every soul will move on, leaving its vessel for the earth, the fire or the wild things to bring forth something new. What does very much bother him are perversions of death, those who try to cheat death, upset the natural balance, maim and manipulate that what is and should be. He hates it with a passion and seeks to rectify it, return the world to that balance when faced with it. That’s where you come in. You much like him have a respect and understanding of life and death similar to his own. Very few people understand that. Very few people do not fear the end when they see it coming. You’re one of those very few people.

You understand Caduceus on a different level, in his sentiment and mannerisms while others may think him strange. Not that he cares if people do, you’ve been his filter in the big shiny new world past the borders of his grove. You’ve been his safety net, his grounding force, his safe haven when the world seems against him and he thinks his senses might be wrong. The Wild Mother must have gently blown her winds to bring you together.

That’s why it seems so wrong you’re affected by this darkness having taken hold over your body, leaving you in a state of not entirely alive nor dead. Resurrection has been futile as much as draining your life and allowing you to move to the care of the Wild Mother herself. You’re trapped and that’s why Caduceus fears what would happen should you die. He’s seen what this perversion of life and death has done to his home, the forests surrounding it and the creatures living in it. He’ll do everything in his power to prevent that from happening to you.

Caduceus has put your body through the typical burial rites and rituals, preserving what he can by using wards and the divine blessings granted to him by his goddess, sending her prayers of your recovery but you appear to be even beyond her reach now. He moves a damp cloth across your arms and face, brushing aside your hair, humming to himself until he’s done, moving on to clean the room around you, getting rid of the dust, placing things back where they belong and replacing the decayed flowers with fresh ones. Caduceus gathers his tea, preparing a cup for himself as he watches you.

“Can you show me how they’re doing?” The wind grows cold. He knew that would be the answer but still he could hope maybe that answer could change.

“Are they in pain?” The wind grows warm but then cold again. You were, but not anymore. It seems that the new wards he’s put up are doing their job. That’s good.

“Is there a cure?” The gentle breeze disappears. She doesn’t know then. This goes even beyond the goddess herself but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Caduceus will keep hope, though it is dwindling fast, for your sake he’ll have hope. He’s always spoken to the dead before and while you’re not really dead, there’s a strange comfort to something that feels so final.

“Hey. I’d ask you how you’re doing but that’s not gonna work now, is it? Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine. I know you are. You’ve managed to keep me alive with the others for much longer than I’ve been taking care of you like this. I think we’re going to be fine. I know you’re here but I still miss you. Calliope makes for terrible company watching things unfurl between the others. She’s too much of a hopeless romantic. You forgot to tell me the recipe to that special brew of yours. I’ve been trying to recreate it but I haven’t been able to. I think what I’m trying to say is, I could really do with having my best friend back. That’d be nice.”

Caduceus sips his tea, face devoid of his usual dopy smile. A sudden breeze hits through the window, blowing it open. A few lighter weight and loose items go flying but the thud of a heavier one is clear to hear. Caduceus closes the window and feels something solid hit his boot. It’s a crystal from the ones surrounding the grove. He picks it up, feeling the warmth run through it. The breeze directs towards you and he feels himself walking over to your body. The crystal calls to you and when it touches you your body runs with energy, pulsing, like you’ve been forcibly pulled back to this world. You look around eyes wide breathing heavy.

“Hey.” Caduceus smiles. “I made tea.”

(Mollymauk)

Maybe pretending you and him were some high born assholes was a questionable decision. Taking on an invite directed at the said people you were impersonating even more so, and stealing, sorry, borrowing without asking, some things from their summer cottage to swim in luxuries, an out right terrible idea when these people happen to be very well connected.

So when these fancy folk came back to the cottage earlier than expected, the two of you had grabbed what you could before making your grand escape, chased by their private guards until you lost them. A safe distance away you set up camp. Time to inspect your findings before returning to the carnival. Your eye for valuables had always been much more keen than Molly’s and your appraisals usually spot on. It was only natural he would let you do your thing but he’d still help you.

Particularly proud of getting some ornate jewellery box Molly had pried it open and revealed the jackpot. But of course you couldn’t just sell recognisable jewellery as is and you couldn’t keep such a thing on you very long. So of course you went to work, prying the stones from their settings. A particular necklace was giving you trouble, not even your tools being able to pry it out, you even broke one so you left that one for last.

The two of you had argued, eventually setting on just smashing the stone with the pommel of Molly’s scimitar, the broken gem still providing plenty of pay and not being as recognisable in peaces. So you held the necklace across a stone while he smashed it. When it did a spark hit, next thing he knew you were on the ground, your hands burned where you held the precious metal. At first he thought you were simply knocked out but when you didn't wake up he grew worried. Splashing water in your face, shaking you, lifting your legs, nothing got you to wake up so instead he carried you and the jewellery back to the carnival. Two days and still you didn’t wake up. It became clear this bloody gem was cursed when dark veins started crawling up your skin as the days passed.

Since this was technically on him, Molly took care of you. He makes quite a doting nurse when he wants to be but never without an inappropriate comment or two. It was quite strange to not hear you laugh at or scold him for these comments. Nevertheless he’d fluff up the pillow beneath your head, provide you an extra blanket when the night was cold, tell you stories, or simply the events of the day, the people who came to the carnival, some things he lifted from people’s pockets and so on. Molly has to say he’s ashamed to admit he’d got frustrated with your unresponsiveness or rather the fact you still hadn’t woken up and there was nothing the others could do for you. A healer would still be a week or so out.

“You know, while I’ve really begun getting used to these little one-sided conversations and your lack of judgement at some of my more terrible decisions I really prefer sharing them with you in the moment. I’ve gotten caught by the guards twice now and without you, Gustav is getting a bit sick of bailing me out. I miss our little flirtations. I miss your sometimes wrong opinions, though you’d say they’re proven facts. I miss your company. I think our time apart has given me time to reflect how much you truly mean to me and how much I need you in my life.” Molly leans on his elbow as he studies your face unmoving. You look so peaceful and asleep but he’d much rather get lost in your eyes when you’re awake.

“I laughed at you when you told me the most valuable thing in the world anyone could ever give another is their heart but I think I know what that means now. I’ll offer you mine if you will have it. So please, come back and make sure my head doesn’t get up too high into the clouds or I might just float away.” Molly leans back looking at the ceiling of the tent with a sigh. He’s pulled out of his mind by a snicker.

“A dramatic confession of love to the unconscious target of your affections? And you call me cliche.” Molly looks at your face, eyes still closed but smug grin clear on your face. He pokes your side making you jump.

“You are insufferable.”

#critical role x reader #critrole x reader #mighty nein x reader #caleb widogast x reader #caleb x reader #fjord x reader #caduceus x reader #mollymauk x reader #critical role #mighty nein

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littlebirdlovessquirrelflight · 3 years

Text

We Should Have Drowned Our Love in the River: A HawkLeaf AU

Summary: Instead of meeting Crowfeather, Leafpool is introduced to Mothwing's brother, Hawkfrost. Even after their love meets a sudden, violent end, the consequences nearly destroy everything ThunderClan's medicine cat loves.

Main relationships: HawkfrostxLeafpool, BrambleclawxSquirrelflight

Tags/Warnings: Unhealthy relationships, emotional manipulation, major character death, graphic description of violence, loss of faith

Link to work on AO3

Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

PROLOGUE

Leafpool had played many roles in her life: sister, daughter, mother, apprentice, healer, oracle. They had taken her down more paths than she could count. She had seen far off lands in the mountains; met cats who spoke in lilted voices and blended in with the ice-cold stone to confuse their prey. She spoke to her ancestors, who warned of dire conflict through twisted prophecies and murky visions. She stood beside her sister when the world wanted to forget Squirrelflight’s role in saving the Clans and finding their new home – all because Squirrelflight stood beside her when Leafpool had nowhere else to go. She made her mentor and family proud – and surely disappointed them too. But they loved her and she them just the same. But of all the roles Leafpool fulfilled in her too-short yet somehow too-long life, only one had her creeping through moonlit dew at the edge of StarClan’s hunting grounds, heart pounding in her chest so loudly she was sure Sorreltail could hear it where she left her sleeping. Lover. The young spirit peered out at the meadow, the flowers still and forever in bloom. She tried to appreciate the beauty of the glen, but she couldn’t help but glance over at the yawning darkness in the background. Wilting bracken lined the bottoms of the trees, creating a stark border between the valley and decaying woods. And though the Dark Forest had been silent for several seasons now, part of Leafpool still feared it would spew out the ghosts of vicious, damned warriors, determined to stain StarClan’s silver valleys with red. As she mustered up the courage to step farther into the field, she caught movement coming from the edge of the wood. She froze, tense and ready for a fight, before letting out a sigh. Only Hawkfrost. The tom quickly spotted her, his eyes sparkling like chips of ice. Leafpool watched as he bounded over, purring; as he tried to push his head against hers, she jerked back, only seeing the angry wound in his throat, still scarlet red as if the fatal injury had been dealt just this morning. “I hate that you still have that,” she said simply. Hawkfrost shrugged. “StarClan cats may be able to return to the time they’re happiest, but I don’t have that luxury.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “But you could have.”

For a moment, it looked as though Hawkfrost was growing angry, but he sighed, his shoulders sagging. “There’s no point wishing the past could change, Leafpool. We both know that.”

“I know,” she longed to lean against him, and let their tabby-and-white fur blend together, but she remained still. “We shouldn’t be meeting like this.”

“C’mon!” he laughed. “We’re not two starstruck lovers, sneaking out of our camps anymore. There’s no code up here that says we can’t speak.”

“StarClan wouldn’t exactly be thrilled if they saw me here, though.”

“StarClan aren’t exactly thrilled with a lot of things you’ve done, dear.” He laughed again at her glare. “And here I thought my wit was what won you over all those moons ago.”

Leafpool turned away. “That was a different time. Before you- before things changed.”

Hawkfrost fell silent at that, staring at the smaller cat. He sat down next to her, settling in the long grass. “Leafpool,” he dragged out her name, as if saying it too quickly would frighten her away. “Please – let’s not talk about that now. Not here. Your father forgave me.”

Leafpool’s head snapped around, eyes blazing. “He didn’t forgive you, Hawkfrost. He just stopped StarClan from killing you off for good. If you were forgiven, you’d be with me.” Where you promised you’d be, she stopped herself from saying out loud.

She watched as Hawkfrost hung her head and couldn’t stop the pang in her chest at the regret filling his eyes. Suddenly, she blurted out: “Is there something I could have done to stop it?”

Hawkfrost sighed. “No. You did all you could- you almost did stop it, but I told you: by the time I realized, it was too late.” He rubbed a large paw against his forever-wound, wincing. “And trust me, I’ll never forget how much of a fool I was for throwing away the life I could have had with you. The life I could have had with our kits.”

“I wish you could have met them,” she muttered. “Properly, I mean. As their father.”

“Do you think Hollyleaf will ever come with-”

“No,” Leafpool snapped. “I told you, Hawkfrost, she doesn’t want that. And I won’t force her. Our mistakes have harmed her enough. That goes for Lionblaze and Jayfeather when they reach StarClan, too.”

“‘Course,” the tom grunted. “Though I did get to spend some time with Lionblaze. Positive time, I mean.”

Leafpool curled her lip. “You call training our son in bloodlust ‘positive time’?”

“Well I enjoyed it.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Sometimes I think that’s what made you fall for me.”

Leafpool stared at the flowers ahead, her face burning with annoyance. Only when you used that stubborn personality for good. Not to rip everything apart in a desperate attempt to please the father he never knew. She blinked back tears as she realized: Hawkfrost had drowned his own future with his children in bloodlust that had grown out of a desperation to bond with a father who had missed out on his life because of his own evil path.

She could only thank every ancestor she knew that Lionblaze had broken the cycle with his children. And Jayfeather, though coarse, was one of the most compassionate healers she knew. But Hollyleaf… the brutal weight of it all had broken her and sent her spiraling dangerously close to the edge. Now the young warrior rested in StarClan, clearly wanting to be with her mother but not knowing how to wade through the misery and resentment to make it to Leafpool’s side.

Just like I am with Hawkfrost.

“What thoughts are racing through that brilliant head of yours?” the tom in question asked, breaking Leafpool out of her trance. She hesitated, not wanting this meeting to yet again end in an argument over things neither of them could do anything about.

“Just… thinking about Hollyleaf,” she said lamely. “She just seems so lonely. I mean, she’ll spend time with me or my parents, but… well, all her friends are still below. And even though there aren’t any borders up here, I think she struggles to trust strangers.”

Hawkfrost nodded. “Well, from what little I saw, she always seemed independent. I mean, it was usually just her brothers she spent her time with.”

“And Cinderheart.”

“Your mentor?” “No – well, yes, technically – not anymore though. Lionblaze’s mate.”

“Mm.” Hawkfrost looked up at the black sky. “She looks so much like Tadpole, you know.”

“I wish I could have met him.” “Me too.” Another stretch of silence settled between them until Hawkfrost gave himself a small shake, as if dispelling the grief Leafpool knew he still held onto over his long-lost brother. “Do you remember when we met?”

Leafpool let out a purr. “Which time? The time you properly introduced yourself or the time you almost tore me apart for having the audacity to speak to Mothwing about medicine cat business in your… magnificent warrior presence?”

“So I’m not known for positive first impressions…”

“That much can be said.” She looked up at him, feeling a flicker of the love that had brought her to the border of RiverClan and ThunderClan so many times.

“But I am good at lasting impressions.”

“Oh, Hawkfrost. That’s quite the understatement.”

#Hawkfrost #Leafpool #Warrior Cats #Hawkfrost/Leafpool #Hawkfrost x Leafpool #HawkLeaf #LeafHawk #Mothwing #HOllyleaf #Lionblaze #Jayfeather #Firestar

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umbran6 · 3 years

Text

Hogwarts Houses for the Heroes of Olympus, Apollo, and Meg.

I’ve seen a lot of people do this, so I thought I should do this and explain as to why I wanted them there. Spoilers are abound through Heroes of Olympus and Trials of Apollo as I explain my reasoning.

Percy Jackson: Hufflepuff. Look, I know a lot of people place him in Gryffindor. That’s a reasonable outcome one can reach, considering his feats could be considered immensely brave. However, Percy has often participated in his quests out of a sense of loyalty towards those he loves, whether it’s his mom (The Lightning Thief), Camp Half-Blood (The Sea of Monsters), Annabeth (Both The Titan’s Curse and Battle of The Labyrinth), and in The Last Olympian, all of them. What really pins him in place is when he willingly fallis to Tartarus alongside Annabeth by the ending of The Mark of Athena, which is a remarkable yet insane feat of both love and loyalty. He also has a work ethic, which is revealed during The Tower of Nero. Rather than just go straight to New Rome and live a happy life, he went to a hellish military school just so he could graduate from there with a high school diploma. If that’s not a work ethic, I don’t know what is. Loyalty and work ethic are key Hufflepuff traits, and Percy has shown all of them.

Annabeth Chase: Slytherin. Annabeth has often shown a lot of intelligence, but also a lot of resourcefulness and cunning during her time in the series. She literally tricked both Arachne and Nyx in what were impossible situations, and her goals are extremely ambitious, with her wanting to become an architect so she could build something that could last a thousand years. She also has a lot of Ravenclaw traits, to the point she repeated Odysseus and listened to the Sirens so she could learn what she desired the most. However, that was only once, and most often she used the knowledge she was given in resourceful and cunning ways, such as during the Last Olympian where she used the statues from Daedalus as a way to defend Manhattan. Needless to say, in my opinion she is a Slytherin first and Ravenclaw second.

Jason Grace: It’s quite tricky, considering we don’t get to see any key defining traits, but I have decided to put him in Gryffindor. Jason’s shown plenty of bravery, fighting Giants and Titans during his quest, but he also has honor and chivalry, which he shows during Blood of Olympus, and later on, The Burning Maze. Specifically, in the scene where he makes a deal with Kymopoleia, promising to make shrines not only to her, but to all of the hundreds of minor gods of Greek Mythology. As we later see during The Burning Maze, Jason was completely willing to honor such a deal, working on the shrines even while he was living the closest thing to a normal life one could achieve as a demigod. And of course, we can’t ignore the fact that he was brave to fight Caligula just so his friends could escape.

Piper Mclean: Slytherin. This is because during most of the time we’ve seen her, Piper fights dirty. She doesn’t stab a monster in the dagger, but charmspeaks the monster and stabs him in the back while he’s distracted. When claiming the position as Cabin Counselor in the Aphrodite Cabin during The Lost Hero from Drew, Piper uses the rules against her to get the position, rather than straight-up fighting her at the very beginning. Furthermore, rather than fight Khione upfront during the House of Hades, she bides her time and stalls the goddess until she can find a way to win. Though she has some traits that could go along with the other Houses, Slytherin tends to stand out the best. The only way she isn’t Slytherin in terms of traits is that she lacks ambition — we never see her have a higher goal beyond the quest, or any plans for what she’s going to do after everything’s done. Overall, she’s Slytherin through her actions, not her words, ironically.

Frank Zhang: Gryffindor. This is because Frank performs a lot of actions that are by any standard, brave, and often selfless and self-sacrificial. Specifically, a lot of the sacrifices he performs throughout the series. In Son of Neptune, he was willing to be the distraction against the Laestrygonians so that Percy and Hazel could start their escape plan. He was literally willing to burn his own life force (his stick) so that Thanatos could break free despite the very large risk it posed to him. He even stood in the way of a Giant, pushing him all the way to the Canadian border. And as we learn in The Tyrant’s Tomb, he was willing to repeat his sacrifice if it meant Caligula and Commodus were killed. Frank is a Gryffindor through and through, though he does have some minor Ravenclaw traits such as his use of tactics against his opponents, way of making plans, or recalling ancient Roman history.

Hazel Levesque: Once again, this was another difficult one. Mainly because Hazel is split right down to the middle between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. On one hand, she was so loyal to her mother that despite the fact that the lady got them into this mess, Hazel willingly sacrificed Elysium so her mom wasn’t punished. On the other hand, she was also willing to sacrifice herself so Alcyoneus couldn’t rise again despite the fact that it would lead to her and her mom’s death. Finally, I decided she deserved to go to Gryffindor, because of the fact that she willingly went towards the quest to rescue Thanatos in The Son of Neptune despite the fact that it was very likely that the god of Death would take her back to the Underworld. That takes immense amounts of bravery, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but she’s also putting herself at immense risk of being dragged down to the Underworld.

There are some Slytherin traits, such as when she made a plan to trick Sciron during the House of Hades, or the plan to trap Nike. However, Hazel’s a lot more defined by her bravery and empathy, which are more Gryffindor traits. If she had more ambition, a big goal after the quest it could be understood, but overall her Gryffindor traits are more prominent. For example, let’s compare how she got to Praetor and Octavian got to Praetor, and later on, Pontifex Maximus. Octavian often used a lot of word-twisting and dirty tactics to get his position, and only got there because Reyna left her post so she could help Jason. In comparison, the legion willingly raised her on a shield and collectively voted her into the position due to her bravery during the fight against Tarquin in The Tyrant’s Tomb.

Leo Valdez: There have been arguments over where he should go. All of them want him in one house or the other, but the most convincing ones were either having him in Slytherin, or in Ravenclaw. And I can definitely agree with both — Leo has shown immense amounts of intelligence and cunning throughout the series. He’s also intelligent in the sense that he created the Argo II, multiple weapons, the Holographic Scrolls, and even Buford.

However, after looking through his actions, I found that he leans more towards Slytherin. Although his façade of cheerfulness and humor was used to disguise trauma, he also used said humor to make himself appealing towards bullies so they didn’t beat him up. He often used his cunning to morph himself to social situations such as his façade as a jokester to look less threatening in comparison to others.

During the times we see him fight, he’s also the one to not only play it smart, but also using tactics and dirty tricks, rather than focusing on swordplay or his own fire powers. The only time we see him go ham with his pyrokinesis is when he’s fighting Khione during The Lost Hero. Furthermore, in The Mark of Athena, rather than straight-up fight the nymphs and Narcissus to get the celestial bronze he needed to make repairs, he uses himself as a distraction and has Hazel manipulate the bronze in a place where she can’t be seen, which is a plan that needs a lot of manipulation of the opposing parties.

What finally acted as the nail in the coffin for me was his plan to defeat Gaea during Blood of Olympus. It involved a lot of manipulation of both enemies and allies, and in the ended it succeeded so brilliantly that everybody got what they wanted, with none of them being aware of the plan until Frank and Hazel explained it, and they were the very few people in the know regarding Leo’s sacrifice. Developing such a plan takes immense amounts of cunning and ambition, which are both Slytherin traits. Although he may be chaotic, mischievous, and annoying, Leo is the guy you don’t realize is a Slytherin until it’s too late.

Nico di Angelo: The thing about a guy who was pretty much a loner throughout most of his time in the series is that it’s hard to tell what values he has. Ergo, we should look at his actions rather than his own words. Nico, although mainly dominated by his naïveté during his younger years, has shown himself to be extremely brave. For example, there was him openly defying his father by saving Percy from his imprisonment, and later actively convincing Hades to stop his vow of neutrality and fight alongside the Olympians in The Last Olympian. Finally, there’s his excursion to Tartarus and later his willingness to transport the Athena Parthenos during Blood of Olympus. Nico willingly went there to see if the Doors of Death were over there, and later transported the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood even if it meant he would fade into the shadows forever. All feats are insanely brave, and therefore I argue that he should go to Gryffindor.

Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano: Hufflepuff. Most of Reyna’s actions aren’t inspired by bravery, honor, or chivalry, though from a certain point of view they are brave. Reyna often performs most of her actions out of loyalty for those she cares about, almost in a Percy-ish kind of way. Her interrogation and cold nature towards Percy in Son of Neptune? Suspicion that he would be a threat to Camp Jupiter. She metaphorically fought against Octavian’s power advances because she knew his own ambitions wouldn’t help New Rome. Willingness to cooperate with the Greeks before the Eidolons screwed up everything? She believed that it was best for New Rome. Willingness to brave the Mare Nostrum all by herself? Both her loyalty to Jason and that she believed that waging war against Camp Half-Blood was not the best for the legion. Her loyalty and ethic just make her a shoe-in for Hufflepuff.

Apollo/Lester Papadopoulos: Oh boy, he’s kind of at an in-between when it comes what house he should be in. If we were talking about him pre-Lesterfication, I would honestly say Hufflepuff, but he takes a good chunk of those traits and turned them into a darker way. He defeated Python because the snake monster had chased his mother off of Delphi. He alongside Artemis murdered Niobe’s kids because the goddess insulted Leto by saying she was better than her. When Asclepius is murdered by Zeus, he retaliates by murdering the Cyclopes who made the weapons. And finally, he punishes those who broke their vows He shows loyalty, but in a lot of darker ways that we don’t expect. He’s got Hufflepuff morals, but they’re in a darker, more warped way than we expect.

If we’re looking at him post-Lesterfication, I would still say Hufflepuff, but now he does it in a brighter way and is also more Gryffindor. He was more willing to sacrifice himself if it meant saving those he cared about, such as when he willingly tried to kill himself during The Burning Maze if it meant Caligula would stop holding his friends hostage. He was also willing to commit more honorable gestures such as bringing Jason’s body to New Rome during The Tyrant’s Tomb. He was even willing to own up to his mistakes right in front of a god who had every right to hate him if it meant Meg and Reyna could be spared. He’s still a Hufflepuff, but he’s a more idealistic and less warped version of the values he had before he became Lester.

Meg: In a way, she’s pretty much like Apollo. She’s a Hufflepuff, but in all the wrong ways at first. We see this in The Dark Prophecy when its clear that during that time, she was more loyal to Nero of all people rather than her fellow campers, to the point of accepting Nero’s gaslighting if it meant she could see the positive view of him. However, she’s also loyal to Apollo and her father, which we see in The Burning Maze because the main reason she guns for Caligula is because she often compares him to The Beast aspect of Nero, the person who killed her dad. She in the end is also willing to accept and finish her father’s legacy, planting the seeds that eventually become the Meliai. Tower of Nero is when she gains the will to stand up to Nero after support from Apollo and her friends, and is later on seen taking care of the other children Nero abused. In the end, she’s a Hufflepuff despite the fact that she may not look like it.

Now, before you guys getting up in arms about there being no Ravenclaws, in my opinion the house is a lot more knowledge-focused, whether its discovering more knowledge, but also using it in a more academic and experimental way. Considering we don’t see this attitude or its corresponding values too much during the stories that we see since they’re more save-the-world mission focused. While Slytherin does have an intelligence-centric value such as cunning, its more focused on using such intelligence to manipulate and trick others, while Ravenclaw uses such intelligence in the discovery for knowledge.

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blackswaneuroparedux · 3 years

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ltdan2288 asked: As a fellow veteran of the Afghan Campaign, might I ask if you have any thoughts about the imminent end of Allied air support & combat-advisory operations over there? The fall of large swaths of the country to the Taliban is already underway, which can only be seen as an unspeakable tragedy for the people there. From a strategic perspective, there’s no reason to believe that we won’t have to return in some capacity of AQ or ISIS reestablish themselves under Taliban sponsorship. At the same time, it’s not clear to me that our presence did anything beyond kick the can down the road and delay this inevitable outcome. As someone with such a deep knowledge of military history, I’m curious if you have a different perspective.

I have been avoiding answering this post for a while now because Afghanistan dredges up so many conflicting emotions inside me. I wrestle with so many memories of my time there with my regiment to fight in a war that we all didn’t really understand what we were fighting for.

Deep breath.

Almost two decades of conflict in Afghanistan has cost British taxpayers £22.2billion, or $31.3 billion according to UK government figures. As British troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, the 20-year deployment bill could be even higher. As of May 2021, the total cost of Operation Herrick (codename for the deployment of British soldiers to Helmand province) is £22.2billion. There were 457 fatalities on, or subsequently due to, Op Herrick. Of which 403 were due to hostile action. During the operation between January 1, 2006 and November 30, 2014, there were 10,382 British service personnel casualties. Of these 5,705 were injuries and the remainder being illness or disease. The UK’s remaining 750 troops in Afghanistan, involved in training local forces, started exiting the war-devastated country in May. Most of them will return home by the end of July.

They, like every one of us who went to fight in Afghanistan, will ask the same questions, ‘Why did we go there?’ ‘What was the real purpose of the mission?’ ‘Was it worth it?’

Both my older brothers fought there with special distinction and I later fought there too. I have very mixed emotions when I think about my time in Afghanistan. For all its faults and tortured history, I love that country and love its many ethnic people. I even started to learn Pashtu as I already had a spoken command of Urdu because I had been raised partly in both Pakistan and India and it’s where many Afghan refugees living in the UN camps for over a generation had learned Urdu too.

It’s not just that my family has history in Afghanistan going back to the days of the East India Company but I had a sincere respect for its culture and history as one of the central hot spots for great civilisational achievements, but also as a stubborn and unruly country who proudly defied the Great Powers to bend the knee and turned it into a ‘graveyard of empires’. Most of all I think of the friendships I made there and how my perspective on life changed as a consequence of knowing such resilience and fortitude in the face of catastrophe and death.

I’m sure like everyone else I wasn’t too surprised by President Biden’s announcement that he was announcing the imminent withdrawal of all American troops in Afghanistan. He wanted to pivot to something else when asked about it. “I want to talk about happy things, man!” He said. Who could begrudge him given that America has been at war in Afghanistan for a better part of 20 years and has nothing to really show for it. Except of course the loss of its brave service men and women as well as the death of thousands of Afghan civilians. It spent more than $2 trillion to kill Osama bin Laden, the architect behind 9/11 attacks and failed to convincingly snuff out both murderous terror groups, Al Qaeda and ISIS.

When the Secretary General of Nato announced back in April 2021 all alliance troops were to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, it was made to look like a nice, clean, enunciation of a joint decision. The end date was set for 11 September, 2021 - 20 years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - and it was in line with the oft-repeated alliance maxim: we went in together; we will come out together. Except that, on closer examination, it was all rather messier.

This was partly because the withdrawal from Afghanistan had actually been Trump’s policy, so here was Joe Biden, the anti-Trump, co-opting a policy from his predecessor (a policy Trump had been so keen on that he tried to accelerate the withdrawal after he lost the election). Biden then tried to detach it from Trump by slowing down the withdrawal date a little and expressing it in terms more comprehensible to the Washington establishment and to US allies.

Where Trump had essentially done a deal with the Taliban and set a withdrawal date of 1 May, Biden left the Taliban out of it and invoked the totemic date of 9/11. This does not mean, of course, that the withdrawal will not be completed a good deal sooner - once you announce a withdrawal, you might as well get on with it.

In fact, Biden had to make a decision one way or another, given the rapid approach of Trump’s 1 May withdrawal date. And, whether it came from Washington or Nato, it was pretty low key for an announcement that a 20-year military involvement that had cost 4,000 allied lives was ending. Indeed, many people beyond Washington and Afghanistan might not quite have registered the news, given the considerable noises from Nato’s simultaneous dire warnings about Russia massing troops on the Ukrainian border, the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in the UK, and the Covid pandemic everywhere.

And distractions were needed not just because Biden was implementing a Trump policy. It was also because he was ordering an unconditional withdrawal – which he justified, correctly, by saying that setting preconditions would mean that the troops could be there forever. It was a risk Biden knew all too well, given that Barack Obama had been persuaded by General David Petraeus – against his election pledges and his better judgement – that what Obama really wanted was not a withdrawal, but a ‘surge’ with conditions attached before a withdrawal could take place.

Distractions were also useful for London, where the timing was hardly ideal. Imagine you were in government in London, you had watched the dismal failure of the UK’s Herrick operations in Helmand Province between 2006 and 2014, you knew that your armed forces had suffered 456 deaths in 20 years, with many more severely injured, but you had hung on in there.

Your government had also just released a blueprint for foreign and security policy, setting future priorities even further from home, in the Indo-Pacific, and your Prime Minister was about to make a high-profile visit to India as part of his post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ branding . In those circumstances, an announcement that the US had decided to leave Afghanistan, giving you no choice but to follow, was almost exactly what you did not need. Rather than showing the UK as a powerful, autonomous military actor and a valued ally, it showed the exact opposite.

It also reminded an unhappy British public about a costly conflict it had rather forgotten. And those who did more than bother to remember - like the families who lost loved ones on the battlefield - and who over the years have blamed successive governments for moving the goalposts and lacking an exit strategy (all true too).

All of which might explain why the UK’s Foreign and Defence Secretaries followed the US example by changing the subject to the iniquities of Russia and China, rather than issuing a joyous pronouncement to the effect of: hooray and thank goodness, our boys and girls are coming home.

The UK’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter gave a subdued, unenthusiastic response to Biden’s announcement. I cannot remember such open acknowledgement of UK-US military policy friction in recent decades - or such an abject admission by the UK of its defence dependence on the US. What Carter said was that the unconditional withdrawal was ‘not a decision we had hoped for, but we obviously respect it and it is clearly an acknowledgement of an evolving US strategic posture’. In other words, the UK had opposed Biden’s decision – or would have done, if asked (which is not clear). Also, that it was Washington’s ‘strategic posture’ that had ‘evolved’, not the UK’s. He suggested there was a real danger that progress made could be lost and that there could be a return to civil war, with the Taliban maybe returning to power - again, all true.

Given that the UK officially has only 750 troops in Afghanistan at present, and most of them are there in a training capacity, to dissent from the US position so openly would be considered decidedly rude in the Ministry of Defence. Perhaps to that end, General Carter played the dutiful soldier and had to - through gritted teeth - put a positive gloss on Afghanistan’s future, insisting that the objective in going into Afghanistan, ‘to prevent international terrorism emerging from the country’, had been achieved which was ‘great tribute to the work of British forces and their allies’.

He also said that Afghan forces were ‘much better trained than one might imagine’ and that the Taliban ‘is not the organisation it once was’, so that ‘a scenario could play out that is actually not quite as bad as perhaps some of the naysayers are predicting.’ Blah blah blah. He’s wrong, and I think he knows it but only in the sanctity of his gentlemen’s club might he truly admit it.

I know he’s wrong because the chatter amongst ex-veterans I know is that we’ve made a balls up of Afghanistan yet again - by ‘again’ I mean from the past 200 years of us Brits trying to bring order to chaos in Afghanistan and getting burned for our troubles.

Both my father and my older siblings tell me what their friends and ex-service peers (some very senior indeed) have been nattering over a drink at their gentlemen clubs where ex-veterans haunt the club bar. Many just shake their heads in sighed resignation before burying themselves in the Times crossword or drowning their sorrows with a beer or two at how lock in step we’ve become to the Americans at a time when the British army is re-branding itself as a more independent nimble hi-tech impact army (the creation of a new ranger regiment being but one example).

Still if President Biden wanted to tie a neat bow on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan - saying, as he had, that the logic for the war ended once al-Qaida was gutted and Osama bin Laden killed - then it reveals a stunning lack of introspection about the United States’ role in the conflict that will continue in Afghanistan long after the last American and British troops leave.

Less than three months after President Joe Biden declared that the last American troops would be out of Afghanistan by September 11th, the withdrawal is nearly complete. The departure from Bagram air base, an hour’s drive north of the capital, Kabul, in effect marked the end of America’s 20-year war. But that does not mean the end of the war in Afghanistan. If anything, it is only going to get worse.

It is true that the president had no good choice on Afghanistan, and that he inherited a bad deal from his predecessor. There are never good choices when it comes to Afghanistan: only bloody trade offs.

But in announcing an unconditional withdrawal, he made the situation worse by throwing out the minimal conditions U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had negotiated under the Trump administration. U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has delivered to the Afghan government and Taliban a draft Afghanistan Peace Agreement - the central idea of which is replacing the elected Afghan government with a so-called transitional one that would include the Taliban and then negotiate among its members the future permanent system of government. Crucial blank spaces in the draft include the exact share of power for each of the warring sides and which side would control security institutions.

The refrain now from the Biden administration is that the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan, that it will aim to do right by Afghan women and girls, and that it will try to nudge the Taliban and Kabul toward a peace deal using a diplomatic tool kit.

But the narrative ignores much of the reality on the ground. It also ignores history.

In theory, the Taliban and the American-backed government had been negotiating a peace accord, whereby the insurgents lay down their arms and participate instead in a redesigned political system. In the best-case scenario, strong American support for the government, both financial and military (in the form of continuing air strikes on the Taliban), coupled with immense pressure on the insurgents’ friends, such as Pakistan, might succeed in producing some form of power-sharing agreement.

But even if that were to happen - and the chances are low - it would be a depressing spectacle. The Taliban would insist on moving backwards in the direction of the brutal theocracy they imposed during their previous stint in power, when they confined women to their homes, stopped girls from going to school and meted out harsh punishments for sins such as wearing the wrong clothes or listening to the wrong music.

More likely than any deal, however, is that the Taliban try to use their victories on the battlefield to topple the government by force. They have already overrun much of the countryside, with government units mostly restricted to cities and towns. Demoralised government troops are abandoning their posts. In the first week of July 2021, over 1,000 of them fled from the north-eastern province of Badakhshan to neighbouring Tajikistan. The Taliban have not yet managed to capture and hold any cities, and may lack the manpower to do so in lots of places at once. They may prefer to throttle the government slowly rather than attack it head on. But the momentum is clearly on their side.

America and its NATO allies have spent billions of dollars training and equipping Afghan security forces in the hope that they would one day be able to stand alone. Instead, they started buckling even before America left. Many districts are being taken not by force, but are simply handed over. Soldiers and policemen have surrendered in droves, leaving piles of American-purchased arms and ammunition and fleets of vehicles. Even as the last American troops were leaving Bagram over the weekend of July 3rd, more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers were busy fleeing across the border into neighbouring Tajikistan as they sought to escape a Taliban assault.

As the outlook for the army and for civilians looks increasingly desperate, so do the measures proposed by the government. Ashraf Ghani, the president, is trying to mobilise militias to shore up the flimsy army. He has turned for help to figures such as Atta Mohammad Noor, who rose to power as an anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban commander and is now a potentate and businessman in Balkh province. “No matter what, we will defend our cities and the dignity of our people,” said Mr Noor in his gilded reception hall in Mazar-i-Sharif, the key to holding the north (sounds like Game of Thrones). The thinking is that such a mobilisation would be a temporary measure to give the army breathing space and allow it to regroup and the new forces would co-ordinate with government troops to push back hard on the Taliban.

However this is Afghanistan. The prospect of unleashing warlords’ private armies fills many Afghans with dread, reminding them of the anarchy of the 1990s. Such militias, raised along ethnic lines, tended to turn on each other and the general population.

With America gone and Afghan forces melting away, the Taliban fancy their prospects. They show little sign of engaging in serious negotiations with Mr Ghani’s administration. Yet they control no major towns or cities. Sewing up the countryside puts pressure on the urban centres, but the Taliban may be in no hurry to force the issue. They generally lack heavy weapons. They may also lack the numbers to take a city against sustained resistance. On July 7th they failed to capture Qala-e-Naw, a small town. Besides, controlling a city would bring fresh headaches. They are not good at providing government services.

Perhaps the Taliban have learned their history lesson and might refrain from attacking Kabul this time around. Their best course may be to tighten the screws and wait for the government to buckle. American predictions of its fate are getting gloomier. Intelligence agencies think Mr Ghani’s government could collapse within six months, according to the Wall Street Journal. So clearly the momentum is on the side of the Taliban and they just need to chip away at Ghani’s forces one district after another until the inevitable and hateful surrender of the central Afghan government to their demands.

At the very least, the civil war is likely to intensify, as the Taliban press their advantage and the government fights for its life. Other countries - China, India, Iran, Russia and Pakistan - will seek to fill the vacuum left by America. Some will funnel money and weapons to friendly warlords. The result will be yet more bloodshed and destruction, in a country that has suffered constant warfare for more than 40 years. Those who worry about possible reprisals against the locals who worked as translators for the Americans are missing the big picture: America, Britain and other allies are abandoning an entire country of almost 40m people to a grisly fate.

Nothing exemplifies - at least in Afghan eyes - of all that has gone wrong with American involvement in Afghanistan than in the manner of their leaving.

The U.S. left Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base's new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans' departure more than two hours after they left in the middle of the night without raising any alarms.

They left behind 3.5 million items, including tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and military MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat ration packs to the uninitiated). Thousands of civilian vehicles were left, many without keys to start them, and hundreds of armoured vehicles. The Americans also left small weapons and ammunition, but the departing US troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not left for the Afghan military was blown up.

Now that is some feat considering the logistics of this mass exodus without drawing any attention. You have obviously been to Bagram and so you will know just how big and sprawling it is. Bagram Airfield is the size of a small city, roadways weaving through barracks and past hangar-like buildings. There are two runways and more than 100 parking spots for fighter jets known as revetments. One of the two runways is 12,000 feet long and was built in 2006. There's a passenger lounge, a 50-bed hospital and giant hangar-size tents filled with furniture. And all those shops to remind Americans of home from familiar fast food restaurants and hairdressers and massage parlours to buying clothing and jewellery and buying a Harley Davidson motorbike (or so I’ve been told).

I’m guessing that the Afghans were certainly outside of the wire and probably had not been inside Bagram Airfield for months. So from the outset they would not have had any reason to think anything was going on until the generators probably ran out of fuel and it started to go a little too quiet. The inner gate was probably discretely left unlocked and when the US stopped answering the radio/phone and then they probably investigated.

Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour's drive from the Afghan capital, Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan troops. Afghan military leaders insist the Afghan National Security and Defense Force could hold on to the heavily fortified base despite a string of Taliban wins on the battlefield. The airfield includes a prison with about 5,000 prisoners, many of them allegedly Taliban members.

I’m pretty sure some bright spark in the US Pentagon public affairs dept convinced his military superiors that it was important to avoid the optics of Americans leaving in the same way they did in Vietnam in case it depresses the American public and the US military. Instead it demoralised its allies, the Afghan national army who are now the only line of defence against the Taliban. In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area. The manner in which the Americans left Bagram air base amounts to a resounding vote of no confidence in Afghanistan’s future. It just looks bad.

The U.S. choice came with costs attached to each decision. With staying, the cost was potential U.S. troop casualties and a fear that things would not change on the ground. With leaving comes the cost of a deeper conflict in Afghanistan and a backsliding of progress made there over the past two decades. In many ways, the costs of staying seem shorter-term and borne by the United States, while the costs of leaving will be predominantly borne by Afghans over a longer time horizon. Yet, even if those costs seem remote now, history tells us that they will be blamed on the United States.

Biden perhaps reflective of history of Americans getting into quagmires abroad didn’t want to be seen exerting time and energy for a losing cause. His decision also reflects his administration’s foreign policy for the American middle-class paradigm, which focuses on domestic considerations over international ones (and is this so different from Trump’s “America First”? No, it is not). The irony, though, is that the American middle class largely doesn’t care about Afghanistan - their ambivalence gave way to support for this decision once it was announced, but it wouldn’t be hard to visualise the public approving of a scenario that kept a couple thousand troops there for a while longer.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is the narrative the president has presented along with the rationale for withdrawal: that America went to Afghanistan to defeat al-Qaida after 9/11, that mission creep led America to stay on too long and, therefore, it is time to get out. This takes an incomplete view of U.S. agency in the war in Afghanistan. The narrative implies that the civil conflict in Afghanistan today did not originate with America - that this more than 40-year war began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, preceded America’s interference in Afghanistan, and will follow our departure.

The fact of the matter is that, by beginning the campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 and overthrowing the Taliban, who were then engaged in their draconian rule, and installing a new government, we western allies began a new phase of the Afghan conflict — one that pitted the Kabul government and the United States/Britain/NATO against the Taliban insurgency. The Afghan people did not have a say in the matter. That we allied powers are leaving Afghan women, children, and youth better off in many ways after 20 years is due to us, and we should be proud of that. But that we are leaving them mired in a bloody conflict is also due to us, because we could not hold off the Taliban insurgency, and we must all reckon publicly with that.

I have to ask myself why did we fail?

I’m only speaking about us Brits now as I’m sure you have your own thoughts as an ex-Marine officer of what you thought of the American military effort. Yes, I’m copping out of really bashing the yanks because first, I have too much respect for those fantastic American service men and women I did have the privilege to fight alongside with; and second, we Brits have nothing to crow about as we fucked up in lots of ways too, and to make things worse, we should have known better given our imperial history with Afghanistan.

The seeds of our failure in Afghanistan lies in not learning from history. We didn’t have a mission that was properly defined nor did we have a strategy that was clear, coherent, and easily communicated to both its fighting men and women as well as to the British public.

Were we there to get our hands bloody and to root out and destroy extreme Islamist terrorists or were we there to indulge in state building out of some idealistic notions of liberal humanitarianism? This question was at heart of our failure within our government and also within the British army as well as our relations with America and our NATO allies and finally the Afghans themselves.

Although never colonised in the same manner as other central and south Asian countries, the modern Afghan state is very much a creation borne out of great power rivalry. A land occupied by a number of different ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, it is a country whose borders were defined by, and whose sense of national identity was forged in response to western great power competition. Its geopolitical position - landlocked, mountainous, and surrounded by past great powers and present regional rivals - lends Afghanistan a dual role of geographic obscurity and great strategic significance, and has as such frequently been treated as little more than a buffer state between empires and a proxy of local powers. Its shared historical border with Russia and British India made it an object of imperial intrigue and, by consequence, has been subject to five European military interventions in the last 175 years.

The first three interventions of these occurred during the era of ‘the Great Game’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which Britain and Russia (latterly the Soviet Union) competed for influence and control over Afghan politics in order to protect their respective imperial holdings in India and central Asia.

The fourth and fifth interventions, ranging from the late 1970s to the present day, similarly involved attempts by Soviets and then by an American-led international coalition to remove political leaders acting against their interests and to protect their favoured candidates.

The unifying feature of all these conflicts was the idea of Afghanistan as the site of potential threats to the interests and security of more powerful states.

Britain’s legacy in Afghanistan in particular set the tone for the country’s historical pattern of conflict and political contestation, fuelling both the intermittent emergence of Afghan national consciousness and a fractious political lineage that saw thirteen amirs in just eighty years. Interventions by the Empire during the Great Game set the conditions for the assassination of ostensibly national leaders by their compatriots (Shah Shuja Durrani in the First war) or their exile by the British (Shere Ali Khan and Ayub Khan in the Second).

Despite the British achieving their aim of protecting India in the second and third conflicts by maintaining Afghanistan as either a pro-British buffer state or as a neutral party, the Afghan narrative tends to emphasise successes such as the massacre of British forces retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad in 1842, the defeat of British and Indian forces at Maiwand in 1880, and the gaining of sovereignty in foreign affairs in 1919.

Soviet intervention in the late 1970s and 1980s further buttressed this identity of resistance, and the failure and ultimate overthrow of the Communist-backed Najibullah government, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union shortly after their drawdown from Afghanistan, led to a sense amongst the victorious mujahidin of the country as the ‘graveyard of empires’.

Afghanistan’s modern history should thus be seen as inextricably linked to the ebbs and flows of great power politics. Each intervention exacerbated extant internal power struggles between rival elite individuals and groups vying for nominal control over the country. Foreign intervention in Afghanistan was met on each occasion with fierce resistance from tribal militias coalesced around religion; as has been remarked upon by one historian of the country, the threat of external domination has been one of the few means of uniting its disparate population around the concept of an Afghan ‘nation’, and in most cases this shared sense of identity cohered around religion, not nationalism.

Indeed, the presence of intervening powers and the development of the Afghan state may be seen as mutually supporting: whilst most Afghan leaders throughout the last two centuries have asserted their sovereignty over the country, the reality has in most circumstances been one of competing tribal chiefs and/or ‘warlords’ rather than a single dominant leader.

Where leaders have managed to cohere the disparate tribal and ethnic groupings of the country under one banner - most notably under the regime of Dost Mohamed Khan (1826-1839, 1845-1863) – this was due in large part to their diplomatic abilities of compromise and co-optation with Afghanistan’s regional power- brokers. In other cases, such as that of the reign of Abdurrahman (1880- 1901), power was maintained by an unflinching ‘internal imperialism’ and the use of punitive force against rebellious factions.

The challenges of maintaining and projecting centralised power in Afghanistan allow us to see the relationship of its leaders with world or regional powers in the last two centuries as one of mutual exploitation. Throughout the Great Game and the Cold War, whilst the British/Americans and Russians/Soviets would use threats and bribes (and occasionally force) to compel Afghan rulers to comply with their geopolitical needs, Afghan rulers themselves often deftly manipulated those powers to maintain and extend their own power.

The pattern followed by Afghan leaders from the nineteenth century to the present day is remarkably similar in the respect that most have relied upon a rentierist economic model, seeking external aid in order to sustain the cost of security and administration. The plan of modern rulers was to warm Afghanistan with the heat generated by the great power conflicts without getting drawn into them directly. Abdurrahman, for example, used British subsidies to fund his military campaigns against rebellious factions; the Musahiban rulers of the mid-twentieth century used American capital to develop its nascent economic infrastructure and Soviet finance to bolster its armed forces; and, following the overthrow of the last royal leader of Afghanistan, Mohamed Daoud, in 1978, the quasi-communist leadership of Babrak Karmal, Hafizullah Amin, Nur Muhammad Taraki, and Mohammad Najibullah during the late 1970s and 1980s relied in the main on Soviet money and military assistance in its ultimately failed attempt to implement socialist policies and put down the American, Saudi and Pakistani-backed mujahidin.

These trends continued into the post-Cold War period in respect to both the Taliban movement (essentially directed and funded by Pakistan), the Northern Alliance (funded largely by former Soviet central Asian states) and the regime of Hamid Karzai (maintained in economic and military terms by the American-led, NATO-operated International Security Assistance Force and the wider international community). In the former cases, occurring in the main in the period of civil war between 1992 and 2001, rentierism was limited to the maintenance of proxy parties and the continuation of conflict.

By contrast, the ISAF mission bore similarities with the Soviet-backed socialist regimes of the 1980s, insofar as it focused huge amounts of capital and military resources on stabilisation and state-building efforts. Both intervening parties made the error of ignoring Afghanistan’s political history and focused their efforts on bolstering the authority of a centralised state, both promoted policies that were deemed ‘universal’ in their application and were, unsurprisingly given such hubris, vulnerable to accusations by Afghan opposition to being alien and imperialistic ideologies, and both expended enormous amounts of blood and treasure in order to sustain the regimes they supported.

The UK’s struggle to locate a coherent strategy for Afghanistan should, therefore, be seen firstly in the light of the historical problematic of Afghan state-building. This is important in narrative terms because difficulties of defining strategy imply similar challenges in explaining strategy. As with its efforts to ‘think’ strategically, Britain’s ability to explain the strategy(ies) for the war in Afghanistan have been frequently criticised by various commentators. The most strategically debilitating aspect of the Afghan campaign has always been the incoherence of the mission’s purpose; indeed the question ‘‘why are we in Afghanistan?’’ has never really been settled in public consciousness. The international community massively underestimated the difficulties of state-building and greatly overstretched themselves in the commitments made to Afghanistan, and that they did so because ‘strategies’ for Afghanistan rested on assumptions of the universal applicability of liberal state-building.

The international community from the start (meaning from the Bonn Conference of late 2001) fundamentally misunderstood the nature of an Afghan society deeply ravaged by decades of conflict, and failed to foresee the malign effects state-building ventures would have on the country. Specifically, the Bonn Conference, which set out the parameters of the post-invasion Afghan state, implemented a centralised state system onto a state whose experience of such was limited, and where the success of such a system in extending its authority beyond the major cities was predicated on coercion and the use of force.

Historically this has rarely been a credible option for Afghan rulers or their international backers, and was even less so under the self-imposed restrictions of liberal war-fighting and state-building. Rather, re-creating a centralised state required Afghan and international actors to enter into the same methods of co-optation and compromise as those of the past; in necessitating these kind of measures – as opposed to implementing a looser, federal system of governance – the centralisation of the Afghan state paved the way for a reconstitution of a ruling order based on tribal elements and ‘strongmen’. This produced something of a paradox for state-builders, as the creation of a strong, central state capable of implementing liberal policies across Afghanistan came at the cost of entering into alliances with ‘warlords’ known for their illiberal and coercive political approaches and illicit economic activities.

Another unintended but unavoidable consequence of centralised state-building identified by scholars is the re-constitution of the rentier state in Afghanistan. Post-Bonn, Afghanistan returned to its historical norm of maintaining the state via the extraction of external security and development rents, without which it would almost certainly implode due to the ruinous state of its economy and taxation system. Studies have shown that his new rentierism differed from previous patronage systems at the state level insofar as it was fuelled by an unprecedented influx of capital and resources into the country. This had the effect of introducing regulated systems of ‘neo-patrimonalism’, where departments were to be distributed as rewards to the various factions that took part in the Bonn conference, and there had to be enough rewards to go around.

In other words, the structure of the post-invasion Afghan state was, to a great extent, defined not by the demands of good governance, the needs of the country or the demands of post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction – the purposes for which the centralised model was chosen to promote – but rather by the first-order need to avoid the derailment of the centralised state by co-opting regional power brokers.

Because of the imperative of shoring up a nascent state by securing support from potential competitors, the gulf between the ends of liberal state-building and the illiberal means required to facilitate its functioning can therefore be seen to a certain extent as inevitable.

A major issue, however, was that the patrimonial linkages created by the state for its regional proxies was not comprehensive, as it did not extend to the Taliban’s Pashtun heartland and, as such, fuelled resentment and alienation as much as they placated and co- opted extra-state power brokers. Key players in the Northern Alliance - the primarily Tajik opposition to the Taliban - received prestigious posts within the state, whilst the predominantly Pashtun Taliban were themselves excluded from such arrangements. Because those rewarded by the state tended to be given ministerial or governorial roles in cities, the conflict dynamic tended to reflect an urban – rural divide similar to that of the Soviet occupation. Along this reading, the neo-Taliban insurgency was in many ways a product of the political miscalculations and deficiencies of post-invasion state- building activities.

Given this starting point, such a view concludes that the strategic problems encountered by the international community in Afghanistan were, to a large degree, problems created by (or at the very least exacerbated by) the state-builders themselves. They misread Afghan politics in a way that reflected their own philosophical assumptions about the state and society.

Strategy in Afghanistan suffered because the coalition effort, comprised of multiple national actors and the United Nations, rarely took on the form of a unified effort. Part of the reason for this was a divergence of opinion between actors as to the ultimate purpose – counter-terrorism or state-building – of the intervention.

In the first years of the Afghan campaign, the United States’ Bush Administration remained staunchly opposed to what it called ‘nation building’ and opted instead to pursue a policy of capture- or-kill missions against suspected terrorists. For the United Nations and most of the United States’ European NATO allies, however, state-building was considered a necessary element of any counter-terrorist strategy. This difference of opinion was manifest from the start by the creation of two parallel missions – the US-led, counter-terrorism-focused Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and the stabilisation missions of the European Union, United Nations (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)) and NATO (International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)) – engaged in seemingly incompatible aims of military prosecution and peace building.

Opinion on the impact of this dual approach varies. Some scholars have noted, along lines similar to those critiquing the state-building efforts of the international community that the approach taken by the UN, EU and ISAF was too ambitious, naïve and unrealistic, and therefore bound to fall short of their liberal political and economic goals. Both Europe and these international agencies ignored the necessity of paring down the international community’s state-building efforts to core, security-centric capacity building within the Afghan National Security Forces. But of course one can make the counter argument, as many have of course, that on the contrary it was the insufficiencies of state-building approaches vis-à-vis OEF’s counter-terrorist approach that led to subsequent failures in UN and ISAF efforts; specifically, that a disproportionate focus on counter-terrorism missions meant that opportunities of peace- building were irreparably compromised.

Within NATO there was a division not just of opinions but also one of mission relating to different political perspectives about the purpose of the Afghan mission and its ultimate referent object – whether it was primarily about the interests of the coalition member states or concerned in the main with Afghanistan itself – and, from that, the methods to be employed in pursuit of one or another objective. This was not merely a debate bounded by strategic necessity, however; rather, such debates stemmed as much from institutional disagreements over who would or could do what in Afghanistan, which in turn arose from the differences in political constitutions and cultural attitudes towards counterinsurgency and counter- terrorism.

These ‘national caveats’ or ‘red cards’ of participation created significant problems for NATO in Afghanistan, both political, in terms of the relations between states and the abiding sense amongst some that others were ‘free-riding’ on the collective security system and, and strategic and operational, in the sense that command-and-control capabilities and cohesion between forces were limited by the engagement restrictions placed on certain armed forces. Indeed, the disproportionate burden placed on combat-oriented states like the United States, the United Kingdom, and several new member states in Eastern Europe led to political statements denouncing Europe’s perceived transgressors of collective security participation; former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates argued, for example, that NATO had effectively become a ‘two-tier alliance’ ‘between members who specialise in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks and those conducting the ‘hard’ combat missions - between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership... but don’t want to share the risks and the costs’.

A lack of strategic unity was the natural consequence of a structural compromise that produced two distinct strategic authorities that were, in many ways, competing with one another. Along similar lines to the political arrangements between the Afghan state and its regional proxies, the NATO alliance structure can be seen (and evidently is seen by officials such as Gates) as patrimonial: states participated on the basis of fulfilling their own interests and along operational lines that were complementary to those interests, for the purposes of securing an alliance structure that accommodated all participants ahead of the imperative of creating a coherent strategy for stabilising Afghanistan. As with the neo-patrimonialism of the Karzai regime NATO’s efforts would be dictated by the limitations imposed upon it by circumstance.

Thus, in the cases of Afghanistan’s and the international community’s internal political dynamics, strategy was confined by the structure of the Afghan state and society, the structure of the international community and NATO, and the interplay between those structures. The implication here is that the agency required for the possibility of a workable strategy may have been illusory from the start.

Leaving Afghanistan was never going to be pretty, but the latest turn is uglier than expected.

No one quite expected the speed of collapse within the Afghan National Army to hold of attacks of the Taliban. I don’t think it’s do with the lack of training or their professional skills is lacking (though there may be some truth in it). A big driver in the collapse is the money for wages, food and medical care for troops is syphoned to Dubai, so the Afghans who want to fight, and there are quite a few who hate the Taliban, get less replenishment than the 6th army in the last weeks of Stalingrad. They have arms, ammo and boots for this season only and that is it. Both money and morale are in short supply for these soldiers.

If I was a trained soldier in the Afghan National Army I would desert. I would say to them abandon the fixed defences these ‘ferenghis’ (foreigners) have gifted you and move to the hills and seek refuge with your tribal clan, who will be glad of the arms and experience you bring. Or get over the border if you are lucky to be in the North, if in the West you hire yourself to the Narcos in the badlands on the Iran border. Most other places it is either a last stand or defection, your Government and their relatives have already got their planes fuelled up in Kabul ready to move to their villa complexes in the UAE.

I’m being a trifle cynical but for good reason. Everyone who has been to Afghanistan sees the veil lifted on the corruption of aid and how the elites protect themselves ahead of defending the masses who bear the brunt of the bloodshed.

The corruption has been endemic from the get go, but the international community ignored it all for 'progress'. Any Afghan politico you hear on the media complaining about the West abandoning Afghanistan has at least $30 million parked in Dubai that should have gone to the soldiers, teachers, doctors, builders etc.

As spectacular as the collapse of the Afghan National Army has been it’s been even more scarier seeing how swift the Taliban has been in taking over vital provincial areas through propaganda, civilian intimidation, and rapid attacks. One by one, the Taliban has been taking over areas in a number of provinces in northern Afghanistan in recent weeks. The Taliban says it has taken control of 90 districts across the country since the middle of May. Some were seized without a single shot fired.

The UN's special envoy on Afghanistan, Deborah Lyon put the figure lower, at 50 out of the nation's 370 districts, but feared the worst was yet to come. Most districts that have been taken surround provincial capitals, suggesting that the Taliban are positioning themselves to try and take these capitals once all foreign forces are fully withdrawn. On a map, it's easy to see the point Lyon is making. A stark example is Mazar-i-Sharif, the biggest city in the north and a significant power centre in its own right. It was the rock upon which the Northern Alliance fought against the Taliban.

It is significant the Taliban are kicking off this offensive in the north, not their heartland in the south and east. The north was the toughest part of the country for them to crack last time. Their expectation is if they have victory there, success will flow much easier in their traditional homelands further south.

The strategy of taming the north extends to emasculating and profiting from trade routes to neighbours. On Monday night they captured the important border town of Shir Khan Bandar, Afghanistan's main crossing into Tajikistan. Earlier in the day, top Tajik government officials had met to discuss concerns about the growing instability next door. There is no indication that the Taliban intend to take their fight north of the border, but in the past Tajikistan has been a vital conduit for supplies flowing to the militants' northern enemies.

The last time the Taliban controlled the city was 20 years ago, when they left hundreds of captives in steel trucking containers to suffocate and die in the scorching desert heat. Now, the militants are back at the city gates once again, as part of a lightning offensive against Afghan government forces that has set alarm bells ringing from Kabul to Washington. So it should worry us all where will all this lead to.

America's drawdown seems to be the game changer. The Taliban have been beaten back several times in recent years, notably from Kunduz in 2015. The Taliban captured it briefly before US airstrikes were called in. Civilian casualties were high but the militants were driven out. The militant group has never been able to withstand the heavy US and NATO air assaults backing Afghan ground forces, but now the US and NATO are leaving, so is much of the threat of sophisticated and sustained air power. And the Taliban are well aware of this.

It seems to me behind the choice of withdrawal by the Biden government lies a bigger assumption that drives that choice. That is the Taliban militants' perceived desire for international recognition. This has been the mantra underpinning the American exit. The logic of the American argument has been simple: The Taliban wouldn't renege on their agreements with the US because they crave international acceptance. The events of this past week and more appear to blow a hole in that assumption.

Another assumption that’s currently being blown out of the water is the US establishing some presence outside of Afghanistan so that if it needs to intervene again to combat terrorism or flush out militants then it can do so from the safety of a neighbouring country. But so far no country has come forward to reciprocate. And why would they? Like the Afghans, no one likes foreign troops with boots on the ground in their country. Only the central Asian republics and possibly Pakistan would come close to allowing that but there would be a political cost those governments would pay with their people. Moreover by welcoming the Americans in, they also allow the militants to target that country too.

Another assumption is the nature of the Taliban support and links to terrorist groups. The U.S. may not face any serious post-withdrawal Afghan support of extremist threats to the United States, even if the Taliban does take over. It is all too true that the Taliban continues to talk to the remnants of Al Qaeda, as do elements of the Pakistani military. It is unclear, however, that these remnants of Al Qaeda focus on attacks on the U.S., and the Taliban does seem to oppose ISIS. It is also unclear that the Taliban will host other extremist movements that focus on attacking the U.S. or states outside the region.

It is unclear that any key element of the Taliban has an interest in such attacks on the United States. Even Al Qaeda now focuses largely on objectives inside Islamic countries, and it is unclear that some other major extremist force will emerge in Afghanistan that do not focus on regional threats and on taking over vulnerable, largely Islamic states.

At the same time, one needs to be careful about the assumption that the U.S. can defeat any such threats by launching precision air and missile strikes against extremist targets. It is unclear that the forces in Afghanistan involved in any small covert attacks on the U.S. will be easy to target and cripple if they do emerge. The Taliban is unlikely to tolerate major training camps and facilities for extremist forces, and any such strikes will present major problems for the U.S. if the extremist threat consists of scattered small facilities and small expert cadres that shelter among the Afghan population.

It is also far from clear that more intense U.S. air attacks on Taliban forces from outside Afghanistan will have any decisive effects. The loss of limited numbers of Taliban fighters as well as some key Taliban leaders and facilities will not offset the pace of their victories in the countryside or enable the central government to survive. A continuing U.S. ability to target and kill some key Taliban leaders and fighters also does not mean that the risk of such strikes will deter future Taliban willingness to let small, extremist strike groups conduct well-focused, well-planned strikes on U.S. or allied territory, especially if such groups in Afghanistan sponsor attacks on the U.S. or it strategic partner by strike units or cadres based in other countries.

At the same time, it does seem more likely that the Taliban, and/or any independent extremist groups, will focus largely on Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, and the other “-Stans.”

Going forward I think we need to re-evaluate many of our assumptions about the war in Afghanistan.

The objectives of the Authorised Use of Military Force approved by the US Congress in 2001 have long been accomplished. Once Osama bin Laden was killed in Operation Neptune Spear in 2011, the last element of the AUMF was met. The American and British mission in Afghanistan was complete. But America and Britain did not leave because we wanted to do a spot of state building to curb the spread of militant islamist terror. That was a mistake as it turned out.

Post-Neptune Spear, The American, the British, and their allies’ conventional mission should have been ended, adopting instead a laser focus on intelligence collection and offensive special operations to prevent al-Qaeda (or any terrorist organisation) from re-establishing safe havens and training areas.

What was needed for an acceptable ‘victory’ and a ‘saving face’ withdrawal was to embrace the use of Afghan Militia Forces the same way the Allies did for our initial entry way back in 2001.

In 2001, Western powers won the initial military engagement in 42 days using special operations forces with local and regional allies - we need to return to this format - and through a combination of special operations and specific information operations efforts, regaining the high ground and influence over ‘centres of gravity’. The issue is not the number of troops, but the mission of the forces there. Once the mission is defined, the number of forces needed would be clear.

It has never been about the number of troops - it’s been about the lack of an achievable mission assigned to our forces in Afghanistan.

The US engaged in ‘nation-building’ for the wrong reasons - and has seen bad results. We installed Hamid Karzai, served as his praetorian guard to protect the new central government and abandon our AMF allies and attempted to build a large, bulky, expensive and ineffective Afghan National Army - a force that is now evaporating before our eyes. It was folly.

Americans will never make the Afghan people more like them - nor will they be able to instil what my American colleagues used to fondly refer to as ‘a Jeffersonian democracy’ in Afghanistan. That day may come but only when the Afghan people wish it to be so. Lest it be forgotten Americans sought independence in 1776; the Afghan people seek self-reliance and independence from foreign influence. This is their defining historical DNA: escape from any outside control.

The Afghan people are not ungoverned, they are self-governed - with no tradition of central democracy and no desire for our version of democracy or ‘prosperity’. By pushing ‘prosperity’ we had become targets for both the Afghan government and the Taliban. This has ended, but we must draw a distinction between the end of nation-building and the continuation of our own interests in Afghanistan and the region.

It is time to adopt a practical policy based on what will work and is in our allied interests, rather than by funding the aspirations of progressive politicians who have no real understanding of Afghanistan.

First, we must establish a clear post-‘state-building�� strategy - with achievable objectives. We must return to the policy and operational format we know will work - cooperation with Afghan tribal leaders and militia. This type of force was used to achieve the initial victory in 2001. Empowered warlords and regional leaders were the force multiplier that worked as the Afghan Militia Forces - and can again, in partnership with our Special Operations Forces work now. Intelligence collection and limited military operations should be our focus.

There is no way around it. One has to play the Great Game. Think tribal rather than central. Afghan nationhood is a liberal Western wet dream.

The central government is weak and corrupt just like all the other rulers of the past. The Afghan National Army is not as strong as it is on paper. It can hardly prop itself up rather than any government. Most of the Afghan National Army troops have stronger tribal loyalties than to the concept of a nation. Since the tribal chiefs play both sides to hedge their bets, it's no wonder 'their' people do what they're told. The Taliban know this because that has always been the Afghan way, so the tribes go with them. Provided the Taliban honour their promises to the tribal chiefs, the Taliban can do what they want.

On one hand, the tribes won't now be too bothered by central government and have a large pool of Western-trained troops to prop them up. On the other hand, they now have to do business formally with the Taliban again. Largely in order to get their hands on Western-supplied aid that will surely follow after the Americans leave.

Second, we must accept the reality of Pakistani influence in Afghanistan - and work with the Pakistanis to counter al-Qaeda and the other militants now attacking Pakistani targets within Pakistan. Pakistan has made great advances in securing the tribal areas on the other side of the border and they have always been the de facto control of much of the Taliban force capacity, such as the Haqqani network. Working with Pakistan is the best option within the current circumstance.

‘Endless wars’ are not an American value. The use of the US military must only be used in response to genuine threats, when American interests are at stake or lives in danger. Withdrawal of conventional military forces and discontinuing nation building is in the US interest: leaving Afghanistan is not.

Third, make Afghanistan China’s problem. Afghanistan could easily become a hotbed for growing Islamic extremism, which would to some extent affect stability in Xinjiang.

It is not without reason that Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires”. The ancient Greeks, the Mongols, the Mughals, the British, the Soviet Union and most recently the US have all launched vainglorious invasions that saw their ambitions and the blood of their soldiers drain into the sand. But after each imperial retreat, a new tournament of shadows begins. With the US pulling out of Afghanistan, China is casting an anxious gaze towards its western frontier and pursuing talks with an ascendant Taliban. The burning questions are not only whether the Taliban can fill the power vacuum created by the US withdrawal but also whether China - despite its longstanding policy of “non-interference” - may become the next superpower to try to write a chapter in Afghanistan’s history.

Beijing has held talks with the Taliban and although details of the discussions have been kept secret, government officials, diplomats and analysts from Afghanistan, India, China and the US said that crucial aspects of a broad strategy were taking shape. An Indian government official said China’s approach was to try to rebuild Afghanistan’s shattered infrastructure in co-operation with the Taliban by channelling funds through Pakistan, one of Beijing’s firmest allies in the region. China is Pakistan’s wallet.

It has been reported that Beijing has been insisting that the Taliban limit its ties with groups that it said were made up of Uyghur terrorists in return for such support. The groups, which Beijing refers to as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, are an essential part of China’s security calculus in the region. The ETIM groups were estimated by the UN Security Council last year to number up to 3,500 fighters, some of whom were based in a part of Afghanistan that borders China. Both the UN and the US designated the ETIM as terrorists in 2002 but Washington dropped its classification last year. China has accused the ETIM of carrying out multiple acts of terrorism in Xinjiang, its north-western frontier region, where Beijing has kept an estimated 1m Uyghur and other minority peoples in internment camps.

In a clear indication of Beijing’s determination to counter the ETIM, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, exhorted counterparts from the central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan this year to co-operate to smash the group. “We should resolutely crack down on the ‘three evil forces’ [of extremism, terrorism and separatism] including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement,” Wang said in May according to Chinese news media which I follow.

The importance of this task derived in part from the need to protect large-scale activities and projects to create a safe Silk Road. Silk Road is one of the terms that Chinese officials use to refer to the Belt and Road Initiative, the signature foreign policy strategy of President Xi Jinping to build infrastructure and win influence overseas.

An important part of China’s motivation in seeking stability in Afghanistan is protecting existing BRI projects in Pakistan and the central Asian states while potentially opening Afghanistan to future investments. China would have to more actively support efforts to ensure political stability in Afghanistan. So make them work for it. Western powers need to leverage China’s problems in Xinjiang to be more active in Afghanistan.

International media outlets and intelligence agencies worldwide have been circulating reports pointing toward the creation of a Chinese military base in the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province for a while now. Although China has not embarked on militarisation programs on foreign soil historically, and has profusely denied the rumours about building an Afghan “mountain brigade,” China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti provides an example of China’s newly adopted strategy of leveraging economic influence to further its strategic objectives. There’s even some chatter amongst Chinese officials that Beijing may entertain the idea of being part of a future UN international force should one be needed in Afghanistan (a bad idea but hey, let China find out first hand for itself).

The Afghan government was able to maintain a measure of stability largely because of the superiority of US air support. The drones, gunships, helicopters and heavy air artillery were unmatched by the Taliban. But when the US leaves, that advantage will evaporate. China’s imperative to create overland trade routes to Europe and the Middle East may draw it inevitably into Afghanistan’s domestic strife.

Of course China’s forward policy in the Wakhan Corridor needs to be assessed with a critical eye. Although on one level it seems to be motivated primarily by the threat of radicalisation, China’s interest in the region is also contingent on the strategic role that Afghanistan is capable of playing in the larger scheme of things. Despite China’s vehement denial, there seems to be sufficient evidence available indicating a definite military build up in the region, which provides China with an opportunity to showcase its ability to transform into a balancing force in the regional dynamics. I think that is a trade off that both America and Europe can afford to concede under the current circumstances.

In conclusion In the face of failure, there is an impulse to move on and not ask “what led to this?” But to avoid a reckoning with our follies is to risk their repetition, or worse.

it is probably too late to salvage either the civil or military situation in Afghanistan. It almost certainly is too late to salvage it with limited in-country U.S. forces, outside U.S. airpower and intelligence assets, and with no real peace agreement or functional peace process. Limited military measures are not the answer, and neither is simply reinforcing the past processes of failure. Tragic as it may be, withdrawal may not solve anything and may well make conditions worse for millions of Afghans, but reinforcing failure is not a meaningful strategy.

I do feel strongly that both the American and British governments must establish a clear path of redemption so that those who served and the families who sacrificed loved ones know that their loss was not wasted. At the same time our civilian governments must limit missions to intelligence collection and counter-terrorism missions that will prevent the metastasis of al-Qaeda or Isis in the region should the Afghan government fall. How we balance these two is going to be very interesting to follow in the next chapter in Afghanistan’s tortured history.

I apologise for the length of this post. This has been a hard post to write because of the subject matter and the many conflicted emotions and memories I have of my time in Afghanistan. I wish I had all the answers but I suppose the beginning of wisdom would be to know how to ask the right questions. Because we didn’t ask the right questions when we went in, we ended up making a real mess of it.

There is an understandable desire to bring all our allied troops home safe and that not another life is lost there. Yet I doubt this policy of withdrawing all troops will bring peace to anyone, not to us and most of all, the Afghanis themselves. As always in war it is the native population that will bear the real cost of war, in this case women, girls, and others brutalised under Taliban rule. What lies for them if the Taliban regain power to govern the country in their image is something I care not to imagine but retain a deep foreboding of their continued suffering. Ordinary Afghanis just want a respite from war and have a chance to live in peace, but without having us foreigners or the Taliban around. It is hard to imagine that happening at all. Our desire to save our soldiers’ lives set against ordinary Afghanis being left at the mercy of the Taliban is one of those humbling and brutalising trade offs that any war can only offer.

Near the end of his famed novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald described two of his privileged characters, Tom and Daisy, as “careless people” who “smashed up things and creatures” and then “retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness” to “let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

That description applies to America as a whole but also to we Brits and other Europeans, especially when we tire of a misguided war. Americans and we Brits are a careless people. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we smashed up things and human beings with abandon, only to retreat into our materialism. No scratch that, returning soldiers retreated into themselves struggling with PTSD whilst the rest of our citizenry carried on with their own material struggles and their insipid culture wars. The point is we always leave others to clean up the mess in a very bloody fashion that never troubles our conscience.

Count on us, probably sooner rather than later, doing precisely the same thing in Afghanistan. Again.

Thanks for your question

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