#and to put some examples.... “with family” my mind went to “corpse? or grave?” and “as a child” isnt much better....

[wordywarriorwrites]

Chapter 5: Game

Masterlist: The Boss of Brooklyn A03 Link Author: @wordywarriorwrites Summary: When it comes to being The Boss, James Buchanan “JB” Barnes rules with an iron fist. For him, there’s no room for sentiment, and certainly no time for distraction, even if it is in the form of an old flame. Steve Rogers had bowed out of the life a long time ago, but a twist of fate brings him right back into the fold, and face-to-face with a man he once loved. When a game of cat and mouse turns into a matter of life and death, both will be forced to decide whether they’ll be loyal to the business, or faithful to each other. A/N: Bucky Barnes Mob Boss AU. Stucky. For: Star’s Multi-Fandom Follower Celebration & Sherry’s Fall Into You Challenge. Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, alcohol, smoking, explicit sexual content, illegal activities.

“You look like shit.”

Bucky grunted, unbuttoned his suit jacket, and settled into the cushioned seat. The three-piece Tom Ford hid most of the injuries, but it definitely couldn’t distract from the half-healed bruises that still marred his face, and Thor’s blunt assessment, though wholly unnecessary, was rather apt.

“What can I get for you gentlemen?” their host asked politely.

While neither of them had time for dinner, the restaurant had closed temporarily for their meeting, and politeness dictated they at least have a drink. Within minutes, they were served, and the staff disappeared into the kitchen to give them privacy.

“Tell me what went down,” Thor prompted. “Then, tell me what you want me to do.”

Bucky did the same song and dance with him as he’d done with the others. He gave limited information; said not to make any moves without his permission; made it clear focus was to be on business and nothing else. Though the scotch he nursed during their conversation was undoubtedly top shelf, Bucky couldn’t really enjoy it. He’d been backed into a fucking corner, and though it had been two weeks since the confrontation, he still couldn’t shake the rage.

After Steve reintroduced himself with his fist, Bucky had been hauled to his feet, and dragged out of the penthouse. He was wrangled into the elevator and confronted by two masked men who thoroughly searched him from head to toe. Once Bucky had been relieved of both the knife strapped to his ankle and the gun at the small of his back, they’d bound his wrists in front of him, and put a black hood over his head. The only way he knew they’d taken him to the parking garage was because the elevator announced it, and as soon as they’d stepped out, he’d been forced into the back of a vehicle.

Bucky had heard the tires squeal as they went down and around and felt the slight bounce that indicated they’d hit the street. Then, there’d been a series of turns before a long stretch that suggested they’d gotten on the highway. He knew he should’ve kept his mouth shut, but he’d been too pissed off for rationality, and what had happened as a result still made him flinch…    

As soon as the vehicle was parked, he was taken out of the backseat, and the hood was removed. Military-grade body armor; Magpul FMG-9; grenade and rocket launchers; computers; blueprints; at least a dozen henchmen – it was an impressive display and he knew Steve wanted him to see it.

His two babysitters muscled him over to a wooden chair, forced him to sit, and held him in place with a hand on each of his shoulders. It was some time before Steve rejoined them and that’s when Bucky made the mistake of opening his mouth.

“Can I get a fuckin’ rag or something?” he asked tartly as he tried to stem the blood that continued to leak from his nose. “Or do you want to throw your dick around some more?”

The person to his right punched him. The individual to his left joined in not long after. From there, they took turns. They moved from his face to his ribs and kidneys, which he was able to take like a champ, but a closed fist to the solar plexus stole his breath, and made him fall sideways out of the chair.

He was kicked and stomped repeatedly while he was down, and when Steve told them to stop, they didn’t obey. Seconds later, two shots fired in rapid succession, and instinct made Bucky cover his head and stomach to protect himself. When he finally peeked out from between his arms, he saw the bodies of his tormentors slumped in awkward, macabre positions.

Blood and bits of brain matter were splattered across the concrete, but nobody said anything; the corpses were simply taken away and he was put back in the chair. Moments later, another chair was brought over, and Steve sat down across from him.

“I have a job to do,” he stated. “And you keep getting in my way.”

There wasn’t a single hint of malice in Steve’s voice, but there was an uncompromising finality to it, and the point was driven home via a gun’s safety being released. A muzzle was then promptly nestled at the base of his skull, and that’s when Bucky knew the time for posturing was over.

The man he once called his best friend had always been calculating, but never quite so viciously brutal, and there was an unyielding, steely resolve about him that hadn’t been there before. Black clothing from head-to-toe; protective vest; knives strapped to each thigh; guns on either side of his waist. Broader through the chest; longer hair; a full beard. The combination of his physicality and his dress made him appear menacing, and his sheer ruthlessness meant Natasha had been right in her assessment.

Steve Rogers had changed and he was dangerous.

Bucky carefully lifted his head and met his eyes, “Why am I here?”

“Because you’re the boss, JB, and it’s your job to keep the rest of the Families in line,” Steve stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “Or can you no longer manage that?”

The insinuation made Bucky sit up a little straighter, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he asked what precisely Steve wanted from him. When he remarked he didn’t want anything, and that Bucky had already done enough damage, his curiosity was piqued. Bucky didn’t have to ask if the senator’s death had put a dent in whatever plans he had, because Steve was quick to clarify on his own.

“We’re keeping the wife for insurance and will take care of her with the job is done. In the meantime, tell Bruce to stop meddling, and keep everyone else at bay. Understood?”

The gun was pressed harder into his flesh, which made him agree to the terms, but Steve had long ago stopped taking him at his word. It wasn’t until someone brought over a tablet and Bucky was shown live footage of Natasha in her hospital bed and Bruce giving a lecture that he submitted.  

Steve nodded curtly and got to his feet, “We’re done. Now, get him the fuck out of my face.”

“Can I bring you anything else?”

Pulled out of his musings, Bucky cleared his throat, and politely declined. Thor shook his head and the server took their empty glasses.

“Remind me what we’re to donate for the fund raiser next week?” he asked as he retrieved his wallet and laid cash out on the table. “I need to write the check beforehand so Wanda doesn’t slit my throat.”

“It’s a silent auction this year.”

Thor cursed lowly, “Means I have to be there for the whole damn thing…”

Bucky stood, buttoned his jacket, and clapped him on the shoulder, “Yes, you do. So, show up on time, bid on something decent, and write a check before you get wasted, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered with a wry grin. “I hear ya’.”

After they both extended their gratitude to the restaurant’s owner, they shook hands, and went their separate ways. Bucky ran a few more errands downtown before he headed home. One glance at his inbox showed there were a million different things that required his attention, but for the moment, anything that didn’t pertain directly to business was put on the back burner.  

They hadn’t been able to keep a lid on it, and now, everyone knew Steve was back in town. They were aware of the botched take down, of what he’d done to Natasha, and how he’d ambushed The Boss. The whispers and rumors had already started and Bucky was fed up with being the punching bag.

He’d done as Steve dictated – he told the Families to mind their own and instructed Natasha and Bruce to stand down. With everyone else out of the line of fire, Bucky was finally able to focus, and the clarity brought forth all sorts of realizations.

He’d been distracted, lenient, far too indulgent, and those who worked for him and the Families had been allowed to run amuck for quite long enough. Mouths needed to be shut. Examples needed to be made. Dissention needed to be culled and it was easier to ensure cooperation when the consequences were dire. Deference was all well and good, but as Steve had demonstrated, fear was also a very powerful motivator, and could work just as well.  

In fact, sometimes, it worked even better.

Everyone could make an honest, unintentional mistake now and then – they were human, after all, and nobody was perfect. Such minor offenses would be met with an increase in dues and a hefty fine. Serious infractions would result in an immediate loss of territory, authority, and rank. The offender would be required to give restitution in whatever form Bucky saw fit, but they would never earn their way back into his or the Family’s good graces.  

Outright disrespect and disobedience – there were no second chances for that -- and anyone who wished to test him or provoke his wrath?

They’d be given a bullet and a shallow fucking grave.

Bucky had just finished putting together the missive when his cellphone rang. He recognized the number and when he answered, all he heard was a clipped, “let me in,” and then, the line went dead. This time, he didn’t allow himself to be taken by surprise, and once he confirmed it was Natasha, he disengaged the alarm, and opened the door.

“We have work to do.”

She smirked and stepped over the threshold, “Ready whenever you are, Boss.” 

Chapter 6: Set

Everything: @jennmurawski13​​ @nerdy-bookworm-1998​​ 

Steve Rogers: @patzammit @hearttoearth​​ The Boss of Brooklyn: @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan​​ @jamesbarnesappreciationsociety​ @captain-rogers-beard​​ @lilliannaansalla

[belmontsfate]

MoF - The White Wolf

- The Year of our Lord 1110 -

Seven years had passed since the Prince of Darkness had been defeated at the hands of Simon Belmont. There were times when it felt like it had happened only yesterday, but then there times when it felt like nothing more than a distant memory. Now, at the age of forty-three, Simon was content living a simple life with his family in their cabin on the edge of the forest, the mountains of his youth within sight.

Never in his wildest dreams did Simon imagine he would one day find himself settled down, tamed by a single woman who held his heart firmly in her dainty hands. He chuckled at the mere thought. It seemed a bit strange after all the years he had spent devoting his time and energy into training with the hope of one day avenging the death of his parents, but it was true regardless.

He had to admit that he felt happier than he had in a long time. The last time being back when his parents were both still alive. For so long he had been engulfed by the need to seek revenge. That was why he had never bothered to get married before. He had never had the time or desire to do so. It was as if his whole life had been centered around revenge. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it probably was a result of the mirror shard he had worn around his neck for so long. He hadn't thought about revenge ever since he took it off, even though he suspected that Dracula was still alive. That led him to believe that Alucard had been correct. The mirror shard had been controlling him.

Glancing across the room, Simon watched as his beautiful wife, Selena, cooked dinner. He didn't quite understand why, but for some reason he found it oddly satisfying to watch her, watching the way her hips swayed as she hummed a folk tune to herself. Unable to help himself, he got up from his seat at the table and coming up behind her, wrapped his beefy arms around her form.

Selena let out a small startled yelp, turning her head to glance back at her bushy-haired husband. "Simon, you shouldn't scare me while I'm cooking!" she scolded him. "It's dangerous!"

Simon could only smile as he ran his hands up and down her curvy waist. "Cooking is hardly dangerous when compared to facing werewolves and vampires."

Selena shook her head at him disapprovingly, but couldn't repress the grin that tugged at her lips. "Braggart," she said, reaching up to bop him on the nose.

"Well, I do have a lot to brag about. A beautiful wife, for example."

"A sweet braggart."

His hands moved from her waist to her belly, pulling the loose-fitting material of her dress against her skin to reveal the swell that had started to form; a testament to the fact that he couldn't keep his hands off of her. This would be their third child, and if Simon had anything to do with it, it wouldn't be the last.

Simon was very much a family man now, who loved nothing more than spending time with his children. He had already determined that he wanted two of each, and there was a good reason behind it. As a child, he had begged his parents to give him a little brother or sister. All of his old friends at the time had siblings, and seeing how close they were made him feel a bit left out and lonely. As you can imagine, that wish was never granted. He wanted two of each so that his children would never feel that way.

"Could you go find the children and call them in for dinner?" Selena asked.

Simon nodded, patting her belly before pulling away and heading for the door.

Pulling open the solid wooden door, he stepped outside and looked around. The children were nowhere to be found. He let out a small sigh. No matter how many times their mother told them to stay close to the house, they always strayed off into the forest. They were just as wild as he was at their age.

"Mary! Christopher! Time for dinner!" he called.

He waited for a while, hoping that they were close enough to hear him. When they failed to appear, he started off into the forest, a combat cross hanging from his belt as always. Even though years had passed since Dracula was defeated, he still kept his father's weapon on him at all times, ready to defend his family should anything happen. He wasn't about to lose any more family members.

The forest was silent as the grave and an oddly eerie mist had fallen over, making it difficult to see clearly. This put him on edge. The forest was never this quiet. Something was amiss. With this in mind, he picked up the pace, breaking out into a run as he called out for his children.

He came to an abrupt halt as he heard a howl, followed by the sound of twigs crunching not too far away. Turning in a circle, he scoured every inch of his surroundings, searching for even the slightest movement. At first, he saw nothing, but then something started to appear out of the mist.

"Papa!" he heard the familiar voices of his children call out to him.

In a moment of panic, he reached for his combat cross but stopped when he got a better look at the wolf. His eyes widened at the sight that he was met with. Standing before him was a huge white wolf with glowing yellow eyes and riding on the wolf's back were his two children, who were smiling and waving as if there was nothing abnormal about what they were doing.

"What on earth are you two doing?" Simon asked.

"We made a new friend, Papa!" said Christopher as he slid off the wolf's back, helping his younger sister down as well.

"We named him Wolfy!" three-year-old Mary exclaimed.

His gaze went back and forth between the two children, but in the end, it stopped on five-year-old Christopher. "Care to explain how this happened?"

Christopher's mouth failed to open.

Simon was about to ask a second time when something strange happened. The wolf began to glow, and right before his eyes, the wolf began to change, slowly turning into a man. When the glowing stopped, Simon found himself face to face with none other than Alucard; the vampire who had helped him defeat Dracula years ago.

"Alucard? Is that really you?"

The white-haired vampire nodded his head, straightening from his crouched position. "I was hunting in the area when I came across two children playing by a cliffside. I thought it best to get them to safety, so I offered them a ride on my back and went in search of their home."

Hearing this, Simon glared over at his children, but they weren't paying him any attention. Christopher and Mary could only stare at the white-haired vampire in awe. With a sigh, Simon returned his focus onto his friend.

"It seems you've helped me once more," Simon stated. "Thank you for finding them."

"You're welcome."

Silence washed over them after that, both at a loss for what to say to the other. Many years had passed since they saw each other last. There were many things that Simon wanted to talk to his friend about, many things he wanted to ask him, but he didn't know how to go about it. Though Alucard was his friend and had saved him and now his children, the fact remained that he was a vampire and was a bit intimidating to say the least. He was the son of Dracula after all. It was to be expected.

Alucard broke the silence first. "It was nice being able to see you again, Simon, but I must leave now."

Simon watched as he turned and started to walk off. He felt an all too familiar tug in his heart, the very same tug he felt as he had watched his friend leave all those years ago. He knew only one thing … He didn't want him to leave … At least, not yet.

"Will you at least stay long enough to join us for dinner?" he asked.

The white-haired vampire stopped in his tracks. "You know I don't eat the same things as you do."

Simon silently cursed himself for forgetting about his friend's eating habits. He mentioned that he had been hunting when he found the children. Whether he meant humans or animals, that he didn't know. He seemed to recall something about only feeding on monsters, but he wasn't entirely sure if he was remembering correctly.

"Then at least come and visit with us while we eat," he insisted. "It's the least I can do to thank you after you saved my children."

At that, Alucard finally turned back to face them again, a small grin tugging at his lips. "Very well."

Returning the grin with one of his own, Simon motioned his children to him, taking hold of their hands as he began to retrace his steps, leading his group back to the cabin. The mist was cleared by that point, making it much easier to see. He assumed that to be Alucard's doing.

As they walked, he noticed the children kept glancing back at the white-haired vampire, as if to make sure that he was still there. It still surprised him how quickly his children had come to trust his friend. He had taught his children about the dangers of monsters, telling them stories of some of the ones he had fought. Perhaps they could sense that Alucard was different, that he meant them no harm. The thought pleased him regardless.

With the cabin within sight, Simon released his hold on the children, allowing them to run on inside ahead of them. With them gone, he took the opportunity to get a decent look at the white-haired vampire. For the most part, Alucard looked no different than he had seven years ago. Simon had to remind himself that his friend did not age. Though, he had to admit that he looked a bit more … healthy. His body had seemed a bit malnourished and corpse-like when he last saw him. It was good to see that he had regained his strength.

"Did you build this house yourself?" Alucard asked.

Simon nodded, "Aye, I built it around the time I got married. Didn't think my wife would appreciate living out in the wilderness like a wild animal."

"I don't know many women who would," Alucard let out a small snort. "You did a good job. It looks like a good home."

Simon smiled. The fact that his handiwork had obtained the vampire's approval made him feel pleased. After a moment, he followed after his kids into the house, motioning for Alucard to follow as well.

When the two of them stepped inside, they found the children already seated at the table, their mother standing with the pot of stew she had made, dishing spoonfuls of it into their bowls. It was on;y when Simon cleared his throat that Selena looked up, her eyes widening when she saw who was standing next to her husband.

"Selena, this is Alucard, the man who helped me defeat Dracula," Simon introduced. "Alucard, this is my wife, Selena."

Setting the pot of stew down in the middle of the table, she quickly wiped hands on the fabric of her dress before going to meet the man. "It's nice to meet you, Alucard," she said, reluctantly extending her hand for him to shake. "My husband has told me much about you."

Taking her hand, Alucard raised it to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss on top of it. "It is a pleasure to meet the woman who succeeded in taming the wild monster hunter that was once Simon Belmont."

Selena giggled at both the vampire's chivalrous gesture as well as his teasing remark. Every ounce of reservation she might have held towards him previously was now gone. "Such a gentleman. Simon could learn a thing or two from you."

Simon gasped, clutching at his heart in false shock. "You wound me, Selena."

"And I see that the two of you have been busy," Alucard claimed, motioning to Selena's belly.

Simon chuckled as he moved to his wife's side, wrapping an arm her around as he pressed a kiss to her cheek. "What can I say, I find it hard to resist such an attractive woman."

Selena rolled her eyes, pulling away from her husband as she returned to the table. With a motion of her hand, Simon and Alucard joined her, sitting down across from each other. After dishing a couple of heaping spoonfuls into Simon's bowl, she turned to offer Alucard some, which he respectfully turned down, claiming that he had already eaten.

Dinner passed by in relative silence, the only ones talking being the children. Alucard passed the time looking around at the inside of the house, and though she tried to keep her thoughts to herself, she couldn't help but voice some of them.

"If I didn't know better, I would think that you've never been inside a house before."

Alucard jumped slightly as if he had been snapped out of a trance. "Forgive me for staring, but it has been a long time since I've been exposed to such warmth and family love."

Selena immediately regretted her previous remark. "I'm sorry for my rudeness. I imagine Dracula isn't the most loving father in the world."

Alucard let out a small chuckle at that. "No, he most certainly isn't, but I suppose that's hardly his fault."

This remark piqued Simon's curiosity. He had never given much thought to what it was like to be the son of Dracula. It couldn't be easy. From what little interaction he had witnessed between the vampire father and son duo, he observed that the two were not close by any means necessary. He didn't know much about their history together, except for the fact that Alucard was angry at his father for turning him into a vampire.

"What do you mean by that?"

The white-haired vampire didn't reply at first, as he appeared to be lost in thought again, but after a while, he snapped out of it again.

"My mother died shortly after I was born. My father was away at the time, completely unaware of everything that was happening. The Brotherhood of Light stole me from my home to protect me from the monster they knew my father would become," he explained. "I knew nothing of who I was or where I had come from for many years. The Brotherhood chose to reveal the truth to me after I reached manhood, telling me only of the monster and nothing of the man he had been before. Ashamed of who I was, I marched into his castle with the intent of killing him, but … fate had other plans … It was as I lay dying that my father finally saw who I truly was."

By the time he had finished his story, tears had formed in the eyes of everyone in the house, including Alucard himself. Simon was at a loss for what to say. He had no idea that Alucard had suffered such a tragic life. Though that wasn't exactly his fault either. How could he have known with the tiny amount of time he had been given to get to know him. He felt horrible. The white-haired vampire had suffered so much, and yet he continued to help humankind, as he had heard he was through the stories of the White Wolf. It was at that moment he fully realized just how selfless and brave Alucard truly was.

"And that's why he turned you," Simon finished for him.

Alucard shrugged. "There was a part of me that hoped he might have turned me simply out of love or compassion, but upon our last encounter, I realized that I was mistaken. He only saved me because he thought I would join him in remaking the world."

Simon understood why he might think that. One of the first things Dracula did when Alucard entered the throne room was to express his disappointment that Alucard had not joined him. Obviously, he did not know the mindset of the Prince of Darkness, so he couldn't say for certain whether that was truly all he had hoped to obtain in saving his son. As he thought back on the battle, he recalled something that he had found odd at the time. Someone as powerful as Dracula could have easily broken free from Alucard's hold, but he didn't … It was almost as if he had allowed his son to hold him back … It was almost as if he had been willing to die.

He shook that thought from his mind. There was a possibility that what Alucard said was true. As an experienced monster hunter, Simon knew that you couldn't allow possibilities to cloud your judgment in battle. The important thing was that they had defeated him and gotten out alive.

No one spoke again until dinner was over. Mary and Christopher said goodnight to everyone, waving goodbye to their new friend as their mother led them upstairs to bed. Soon after they were gone, Alucard got up and headed towards the door.

"I shall take my leave now and let you rest," he claimed. "I thank you for your hospitality." And with that, the door was opened and he stepped out.

After hesitating for a moment, Simon got up and went after him. A part of him was half expecting to find him gone by the time he reached the door, but he wasn't, much to his delight. He could still be seen. Although, the mist was starting to set in again, indicating that the vampire was getting ready to vanish again. Simon couldn't bear the thought of that … especially after everything that had happened this evening. The thought of never seeing him again hurt his heart.

"Father, wait!" he shouted out.

Alucard froze in his steps, allowing Simon to catch up with him. When the white-haired vampire turned, there was a look of sadness etched upon his face rather than the shock that Simon had expected.

"You know." It was a statement, not a question.

Simon nodded his head. "The specter showed me who you were in the Mirror of Fate after you left the throne room."

Alucard hung his head. "I had hoped to spare you the shame of knowing what I had become."

Simon reached out and placed a hand on his father's shoulder. "I am not ashamed of you, father," he stated firmly. "In fact, I couldn't be more proud."

Raising his head to look at his son, Alucard couldn't help but smile as he reached out and pulled Simon close, wrapping his arms around him in a tender embrace. "I'm proud of you too, son."

Simon didn't hesitate to return the embrace, clinging to him tightly, perhaps a bit too tightly, but he knew that it wouldn't hurt him. His father was a vampire after all. At that moment it was almost as if time had rewinded itself somehow, taking them back to the last time they had hugged. The only obvious difference was that he was now a full-grown man, whereas he had been six years old the last time. His father's embrace still felt the same nonetheless.

"Please, don't go," Simon pleaded. "Not again."

Reluctantly Alucard pulled away from the embrace, the look of sadness returning to his face. "I have no choice, Simon," he said. "The Brotherhood is after me and they will not hesitate to come after you as well if they find out that I am staying with you."

"Then let them come!" Simon declared, allowing his anger towards them to come out. They were the ones who had separated him from his father in the first place. "I have defeated far mightier foes than them, and so have you!"

"I know, but it's too risky. You have created a wonderful life for yourself here, and the last thing I want is for you to be ripped away from your wife and children as I was from mine."

This statement rendered Simon temporarily speechless. All he could do was stare into his father's glowing yellow eyes, seeing the deep sadness within them. It was only then that he realized that his father was right. It was too risky. He couldn't risk the lives of his children or his wife, especially not while she was pregnant. As much as he didn't want his father to leave again, he knew that he had to let him go.

"All right," he relented. "Just promise me one thing … Promise me that you'll come back when you feel it's safe enough to do so."

Alucard nodded his head in agreement. "I don't know how long it will take, but I give you my word that I will come back."

Then with one last reassuring shoulder squeeze, Alucard stepped back, transforming himself back into his wolf form.

"I'll miss you, father."

The wolf howled back at him before turning and running off, disappearing into the mist. Simon wasn't entirely sure if he was just imagining it, but he swore he heard his father's voice echo through the air saying, "I'll miss you too, son."

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 26: Brought Back (Transcript) - 25th January 2016

tw: racism, colonialism, live burial, slavery

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

No one wants to die. If the human design was scheduled for a revision, that’s one of the features that would get an overhaul. Our mortality has been an obsession since the dawn of humanity itself – humans long for ways to avoid death, or at least make it bearable. Some cultures have practically moved heaven and earth doing so. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians built enormous stone structures in order to house their dead and ensure them a place in the afterlife. They perfected the art of embalming so that even after death, their bodies might be ready for a new existence in a new place. Death is a reality for all of us, whether we like it or not. Young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, life is one long journey down a road, and we walk until its over. Some think they see the light at the end of it all while others hope for darkness, and that’s where the mystery of it all comes in: no one knows what’s on the other side. We just know that the proverbial walk ends at some point, and maybe that’s why we spend so much time guessing at it, building story and myth and belief around this thing we can’t put our finger on. What would be easier, some say, is if we just didn’t die, if we somehow went on forever. It’s impossible, but we dream of it anyway. No one returns from the grave… do they? Most sane, well-adjusted people would say no, but stories exist that say otherwise, and these stories aren’t new. They’ve been around for thousands of years and span multiple cultures, and like their subject matter these stories simply refuse to die. One reason for that, as hard as it is to believe, is because some of those stories appear to be true. Depending on where you look, and who you ask, there are whispers of those who beat the odds. Sometimes the journey doesn’t end after all. Sometimes, the dead really do walk. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

The quintessential zombie movie, the one that all the commentators say was responsible for putting zombies on the map nearly 50 years ago, was George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The creatures that Romero brought to the big screen managed to influence generations of film makers, giving us the iconic zombie that we see today in television shows like The Walking Dead. The trouble is, Romero never used the word “zombie” to describe the creatures from his landmark film. Instead, they were “ghouls”, a creature borrowed from Arabian folklore. According to the mythology, ghouls are demons who eat the dead and, because of that, are traditionally found in graveyards. But Romero’s ghouls were not the first undead creatures to hunger for the flesh and blood of the living. Some think that honour falls to the Odyssey, the epic Greek poem written by Homer nearly 3000 years ago. In the story, there’s a scene where Odysseus needs to get some information from a long-dead prophet named Tiresias. To give the spirit strength to speak, Odysseus feeds him blood. In a lot of ways, the creatures we think of today as zombies are similar to the European tales of the revenant. They’ve gone by many names – the ancient Irish called them Neamh-Mhairbh, meaning “the undead”; in Germany they are the Wiedergänger, “the ones who walk again”; and in Nordic mythology, they’re called the draugr. The name “revenant” itself is Latin and means “the returned”. The basic idea is pretty easy to guess from that – revenants were those who were once dead, but returned to haunt and terrorize their neighbours and family. It might sound like fantasy to our modern sensibilities, but some people really did think that this could happen.

Historians in the Middle Ages wrote about revenant activity as if it were fact. One man, William of Newburgh, wrote in 1190 that, and I quote, “It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony. Were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure, laborious, and troublesome”. Newburgh goes on to wonder why the ancient writers never mentioned events like these, but doesn’t seem to take that as proof that revenants are pure fantasy. They mentioned all sorts of boring things, mundane and unimportant, so why not the unnatural and unusual? He was, of course, wrong – the ancient Greeks did have certain beliefs surrounding the dead and their ability to return to haunt the living, but to them it was much more complicated, and each revenant came back with its own unique purpose. You see, the Greco-Roman culture believed that there was a gap between the date of someone’s actual death and their intended date of death. Remember, this was a culture that believed in the Moirai – the Fates – who had a plan for everyone. So, for example, a farmer might be destined to die in his 80s from natural causes, but he might instead die in an accident at the market or in his field. People who died early, according to the legends, were doomed to wander the land of the living as spirits until the day of their intended death arrived. Still with me? Good. So, what the Greeks believed was that it was possible to control those wandering spirits – all you needed to do was make a curse tablet, something written on clay or tin or even parchment, and then bury it in the person’s grave. Like a key in the ignition of a car, this tablet would empower someone to control the wandering dead. Now, it might sound like the world’s creepiest Martha Stewart how-to project, but to the Greeks magic like this was a powerful part of their belief system. The dead weren’t really gone, and because of that they could serve a purpose. Unfortunately, that’s not an attitude that was unique to the Greeks, and in the right culture, at the right time, under the right pressure, that idea can be devastating.

In Haiti, the vast majority of the people there are genetically connected to West Africa to some degree, up to 95% according to some studies. It’s a remnant of a darker time, when slavery was legal, and millions of Africans were pulled from their homes and transported across the Atlantic to work the sugar plantations that filled the Spanish coffers. We tend to imagine African slaves being shipped to the new world with no possessions beside the clothing on their backs, but they came with their beliefs, with their customs and traditions, and with centuries of folklore and superstition. They might not have carried luggage filled with precious heirlooms, but they held the most important pieces of their identity in their minds and hearts. No one can take that away. There are a few ideas that need to be understood about this transplanted culture. First, they believed that the soul and the body were connected, but also that death could be a moment of separation between the two. Not always, but it could be – I’ll explain more about that in a moment. Second, they lived with a hatred and fear of slavery. Slavery, of course, took away their freedom, it took away their power. They no longer had control over their lives, their dreams, or even their own bodies. Whether they liked it or not, they were doomed to endure horribly difficult labour for the rest of their lives; only death would break the chains and set them free. Third, that freedom wasn’t guaranteed. While most Africans dreamed of returning to their homeland in the afterlife, there were some who wanted to get there quicker. Suicide was common in colonial Haiti, but it was also frowned upon. In fact, it was believed that those who ended their own life wouldn’t be taken back to Africa at all. Instead, they would be punished. The penalty, it was said, was eternal imprisonment inside their own body, without control or power over themselves. It was, in a sense, just like their own life. To the slaves of Haiti, hell was just more slavery, but a slavery that went on forever. These bodies and trapped souls had a name in their culture: the zombie. It was first recorded in 1872, when a linguistic scholar recorded a zombie as, and I quote, “a phantom or ghost, not infrequently heard in the southern states in nurseries and among the servants”. The name, it turns out, has African roots as well. In the Congo they use the word nzambi, which means the spirit of a dead person. It’s related to two other words that both mean “god” and “fetish” – fetish in the sense of manufacturing a thing, a creature that has been made. The walking dead, at least according to Haitian lore, are real.

What did these zombie look like? Well, thanks to Zora Neale Hurston, we have a first-hand account. Hurston was an African American author, known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and regarded as one of the pillars of the Harlem Renaissance. And it was while researching folklore during a trip to Haiti in 1936 that she encountered one. In her book Tell my Horse, Hurston recounts what happened. “I had the rare opportunity to see and touch an authentic case”, she wrote. “I listened to the broken noises in its throat.... If I had not experienced all of this in the strong sunlight of a hospital yard, I might have come away from Haiti interested but doubtful. But I saw this case of Felicia Felix-Mentor which was vouched for by the highest authority. So I know that there are Zombies in Haiti. People have been called back from the dead. The sight was dreadful. That blank face with the dead eyes. The eyelids were white all around the eyes as if it had been burned with acid. There was nothing you could say to her or get from her except by looking at her, and the sight of this wreckage was too much to endure for long”. Wreckage. I can’t think of another word with as much beauty and horror as that, in the context. Something was happening in Haiti, and the result was wreckage, lives broken and torn apart by something – but what? The assumption might be that these people had all attempted suicide, but suicide is common in many cultures, not just in Haiti. When you dig deeper, though, it’s possible to uncover the truth, and in this case, the truth is much darker than we like to believe. Zombies, it turns out, can be created.

On the night of April 30th, 1962, a man walked into Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti. He was sick and complained of body aches, a fever and, most recently, coughing fits that brought blood up from his lungs. Naturally, the medical staff were concerned, and they admitted him for tests and treatment. This man, Clairvius Narcisse, was seen by a number of medical doctors but his condition quickly deteriorated. One of his sisters, Angelina, was there at his bedside, and according to her his lips turned blue and he complained to her about a tingling sensation all over his body. But despite the hospital’s best efforts, Narcisse died the next day. Two doctors, one American and one American-trained, each confirmed his death. The man’s sister, Angelina, signed the death certificate after confirming the man’s identity. Because she couldn’t read or write, she did so by pressing her thumbprint onto the paper, and then his family began the painful process of burying their loved one and trying to move on. Death, as always, is a part of life; never a pleasant one, but a part nonetheless. Over 18 years later, in 1981, Angelina Narcisse was walking through the market in her village, something she did nearly every day. She knew the faces of each vendor, she knew the scents and the sounds that filled the space there, but when she looked down the dirt road toward the small crowd of people something frightened her, and she screamed. There, walking toward her, was her brother Clairvius. He was, of course, older now, but it was him. She would have recognised him anywhere, and when he finally approached her and named himself with a childhood nickname, any doubt she might have had melted away. What followed was a whirlwind of revelations as Clairvius told his sister what had happened to him, and it all started, he said, in the hospital room. According to him, his last moments in the bed there were dark, but fully aware. He could no longer see anyone, and he couldn’t move, but he remembered hearing the doctor pronounce him dead. He remembered the sound of his sister weeping. He even remembered the rough, cotton sheet being pulled up and over his face. But awareness continued on to his funeral, where he claimed to hear the procession. He even pointed to a scar on his face – he claimed that it was the result of one of the coffin nails cutting him. Later, the family brought in a psychiatrist, who performed a series of tests on Clairvius to see is he was a fraud, but the man passed with flying colours, answering questions that no one but Clairvius himself could have known. In an addition, over 200 friends and family members vouched for the man’s identity. This, all of them confirmed, was Clairvius Narcisse.

So, what happened to him? According to Clairvius himself, he was poisoned by his brother over a property dispute. How? He wasn’t sure, but shortly after his burial, a group of men dug up his coffin and pulled him free. That’s a thought worth locking away deep in the back of your brain, by the way: trapped inside a coffin beneath the earth, blind and paralysed, cold and scared. It’s a wonder the man didn’t go insane. The men who dug him up were led by a priest called a Bokor. The men chained Clairvius and then guided him away to a sugar plantation, where he was forced to work alongside others in a similar state of helplessness. Daily doses of a mysterious drug kept them all unable to resist or leave. According to his story, he managed to escape two years later, but fearing what his brother might do to him if he were to show up alive, he avoided returning home. It was only the news of his brother’s death many years later that coaxed him out of hiding. The story of Clairvius Narcisse has perplexed scientists and historians for decades. In the 1980s, Harvard sent an ethno-botanist named Wade Davis to investigate the mysterious drug, and the result of his trip was a book called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which would go on to be a New York Times bestseller as well as a Hollywood movie, but few agree on the conclusions. Samples of the drug that Wade collected have all been disproven, no illegal sugar plantations staffed by zombie slaves has ever been discovered, and the doctors have been accused of misreading the symptoms and prematurely declaring the man dead – there are so many doubts. To the people closest to him, though, the facts are solid. Clairvius Narcisse died, his family watched his burial in the cemetery, he was mourned and missed, and 18 years later he came back into their lives. The walking dead: medical mishap or the result of Haitian black magic? We may never know for sure.

Stories of the walking dead are everywhere these days. It’s as if we’ve traded in our obsession with extending our life and resigned to the fact that normal death, the kind where we die and stay dead, might be better. We fear death because it means the loss of control, the loss of purpose and freedom. Death, in the eyes of many people, robs us of our identity and replaces it with finality. It’s understandable, then, how slavery can be viewed through that same lens. It removes a person’s ability to make decisions for themselves – it turns them, in a sense, into nothing more than a machine for the benefit of another person. But what if there really are individuals out there, the Bokor and evil priests, who have discovered a way to manufacture their own walking dead, who have perfected the art of enslaving a man or women deeper than any slave owner might have managed before, to rob them of their very soul and bind them to an afterlife of tireless, ceaseless labour? In February of 1976, Francine Illeus was admitted to her local hospital in Haiti. She said she felt weak and light-headed. Her digestive system was failing, and her stomach ached. The doctors there treated her and then released her. Several days later, she passed away and was buried in the local graveyard. She had only been 30 years old. Three years later, Francine’s mother received a call from a friend a few miles away. She needed her to come to the local marketplace there, and said it was urgent. Francine’s mother didn’t know what the trouble was, but she made the journey as quickly as she could. Once there, she was told that a woman had been found in the market. She was emaciated, catatonic, and refused to move from where she was squatting in the corner, head down, hands laced over her face. The woman, it turned out, was Francine Illeus. Her mother brought her home and tried to help her, but Francine seemed to be gone. She was there in body, but there was very little spirit left. Subsequent doctors and psychiatrists have spent time with Francine, but with very little progress to show for it. On a whim, Francine’s mother had the coffin exhumed. She had to see for herself if this woman, little more than a walking corpse, truly was her daughter. Yes, the woman had the same scar on her forehead that her daughter had, yes, they looked alike, yes, others recognised her as Francine, but she needed to know for sure. When the men pulled the coffin out of the earth, it was heavy, too heavy, they murmured, to be empty. More doubtful by the minute, Francine’s mother asked them to open it, and when the last nail had been pulled free from the wood, the lid was lifted and cast aside. The coffin wasn’t empty after all – it was full of rocks.

[Closing statements]

[madscientistjournal]

Or, The Modern Levitation of Frankenstein

An essay by an anonymous narrator, as provided by Ron Riekki Art by Leigh Legler

As an EMT, we routinely come upon body parts. A finger gets severed by a pair of pliers. A toe gets cut off by an escalator. A leg gets ex-ed off in a sawing accident. An arm just decides to leap off a body. I don’t know how it happens. I just know that I end up with body parts. What good are they? With living people, I always return them. But if they’re dead, a toe can slip into a pocket. An arm can get covered by some bushes on the side of the road and be returned to later.

What did I start doing with the pieces? I’d read Frankenstein. You have to. Don’t tell me you haven’t. “He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.” It’s my favorite ending line. It made me want the story to continue. I wanted to step into the darkness and distance and find out what was there. I wanted my own monster.

I started assembling the parts in my basement. It was beautiful seeing a body slowly coming together. I was patient too. You have to earn a body. You can’t just steal one like a nineteenth-century medical body snatcher, digging up graves for medical school anatomy lectures. There’s no skill to that. You just need a shovel and a lantern. What I was doing was the equivalent of cultivating a garden. This wasn’t speed and power. This was the slow, steady dedication of science. When I came upon a wonderful ring finger, it made me feel warm with the realization of just how married I was to physiology. Ring fingers are golden and gorgeous and so rare in amputations. The middle finger, I found, was so common that I just ignored them. It would be flopped boringly in–appropriately–the middle of the room, flipping the bird at the world even in death and I would, honestly, sometimes, flip it off right back, continuing my search for something more valuable. And there were so many tips of fingers. It felt like finding a diamond when a finger was intact, separated beautifully from the rest of the world, waiting for me to cradle it in my palm.

It took me years to get a complete arm with hand and fingers. Seven different patients. A rainbow of rigor mortis.

When I was young, I drove a taxi. Now I’m a taxidermist. It’s a natural progression. I went from driving the living to driving the dying. I’m an EMT for a hobby, but my real job is when I am at home at night.

Just recently I finished my gorgeous corpse. I know that electricity won’t make it talk to me. I know that lightning would just heat the area to 50,000 degrees when the sun is a mere 9,941 degrees Fahrenheit. It would simply destroy the beauty I’d put together. No, sadly, I realized it might never walk and talk and be born into darkness and distance. Unless I could somehow conquer telekinesis.

It took me years to get a complete arm with hand and fingers. Seven different patients. A rainbow of rigor mortis.

I’ve been studying the great masters, learning how to do spoon bending, fork bending, knife bending, chopstick bending, napkin bending, fruit bowl bending. Anything used for eating, I’d try to bend it with my mind. And it works. Subtly. It seemed to. I’d stare for hours at a spoon. Hours. Literally. Littering my off-days with madness-inducing gazing at the same exact spot on a spoon until my body ached with concentration, unless my vision blurred, until I was convinced the spoon had curved, even for just a split second. It was all I needed. I wanted my corpse to just move for a moment. A second of life.

I began staring at the corpse for hours, for days, for a full week, canceling my shifts so that I could insist that the subatomic particles of this decayed thing would have the motion that we so tie with life. And there were moments where I swear it moved, where the body turned an eighteenth of an inch, where the skin seemed to have a moment of internal pulse, and then it would be gone.

I kept at it. I read and reread and memorized the words of Nina Kulagina and Uri Geller and Stanislawa Tomczyk, people whose names themselves seemed to levitate beyond the boredom of America’s prevalence of the monosyllabic Smith and Jones. I wished for an unpronounceable name, for the ability to stun the world with the incredible miracle of making a table move. What could be more glorious than making a chair rise?

One night I tied all the body parts together. Sewed. Crocheted. Stitched. Glued. Anything. Until I had a connected corpse. With a few parts missing. A head for example. Heads are not easy to come across. There would be times where we would be on scene and the head would be missing and then someone would eventually find it. Often it would be hidden underneath some branches, almost as if someone were trying to keep it from view. But we rarely gave up on searches for heads. You don’t want to frighten the public. So they would be found. And I would be denied the final piece for my Frankenstein’s monster. And, trust me, Frankenstein would just not be the same without a head. Could you imagine the movies if the beast were headless? The draw would just not be the same. You need Boris Karloff’s green skin and sad eyes to connect to the character. Otherwise there would just be total terror. And that’s what I had.

Until one night, the telekinesis seemed to work. The headless corpse with its multiple parts from multiple humans from multiple mass-casualty incidents finally rose from the floor and started to walk up the steps of the basement. One at a time. It moved awkwardly. Heavily. Uncomfortably. Sloppily. But it moved. And I was right behind it. So near that I could smell the skatole, the bloat, the perfect autolysis.

And the corpse kept walking out into the street, out into the town. Let’s call it a village. It was really a metropolis, one of the largest cities in the United States, but I always considered it to be a sort of hamlet, at least the little area downtown where my house was compact next to skyscrapers, my family’s refusal to sell so that they blocked our view of the sun and stars and everything with steel. Our Milky Way was reinforced concrete. Our sky was glass and stone. And now I was out underneath the missing moon, the night drowned by streetlights and the drunks of the city all around, dumbstruck, one of them yelling that I was, that I was–he didn’t have the words for it.

Apparently they thought that I was basically doing all of the walking for my corpse, that I was behind it lifting the arms and moving the legs with my legs so that it wasn’t really alive at all. This is what the police said when they came. They drowned my brain with violence. It was not pretty, the arrest. The cardiac arrest of my loved one, my Frankenstein that was alive for minutes, perfect minutes where we danced out into the street. And then the world had to end us with its brightness and nearness of prison, where I will horribly never be able to see my walking creation again.

The unnamed narrator of the aforementioned account wishes to remain unnamed. He is currently doing a twenty-six-year sentence in Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Bay State Prison, a Supermax prison in central Rhode Island. While imprisoned, he has been thoroughly rereading the works of Nina Kulagina, Uri Geller, and Stanislawa Tomczyk, and is convinced he should be able to escape by bending metal bars by late June of next year.

Ron Riekki’s books include And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal Great Lakes Best Regional Fiction), The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (Wayne State University Press, 2014 Michigan Notable Book awarded by the Library of Michigan), and U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press).

Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.

“Or, The Modern Levitation of Frankenstein” is © 2018 Ron Riekki Art accompanying story is © 2018 Leigh Legler

Or, The Modern Levitation of Frankenstein was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[lolozhaoworld]

Do you believe in Affinity?

Suddenly wanted to write about the story of affinity. However, before we get to that, what led to it? 

Well 3 things: 

1. Jackson wang 100 ways

2.  TỰ TÂM - NGUYỄN TRẦN TRUNG QUÂN

3. My love for interesting stories

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZS3ZS7Y1oQ

Jackson Wang-100 ways (Behind the scenes)

During behind the scenes, Jackson says that the story of 100 ways is about a warrior and a prince that both fall in love with a girl. The prince kills the warrior and the warrior waits 1000 years to finally be with her. Although I’m not sure which story this is, I suspect it’s a historical Chinese tale or perhaps an ancient Greek legend. Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised that his MV was based on a story. It felt like a cherry on top because it peaked my interest by adding depth and space for the mind to imagine and wander. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GuR_g75ufY

Then, soon after I saw TỰ TÂM - by NGUYỄN TRẦN TRUNG QUÂN which was mindblowing. 

Just seeing the background setup, clothing, props, everything, lord knows how much their company spent on all of this. Must have been a fortune, especially since generally even a simple single backdrop setup would be around the 5 digit range. 

From perfect lighting to intricate clothing, to the setting and detail, everything is absolutely beautiful. They really put a lot of work into the MV👏👏  

And although I don’t understand Vietnamese, the music is alluring and the story overflows with detail, capturing everything that the audience needs to know within 8 minutes. Watching it, you don’t even feel that it is 8 minutes long.

As we go on, we find out that it’s actually a 2 part series and in the second MV there’s more to the story. Not to spoil too much, it captures the story of love that slips away, a love that can’t be grasped no matter how much one wants to. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d6IiLmjQYg

And that leads me to the story of affinity. 

Why do we love some, but are unable to be with them? Why do we like some, but are unable to get closer to them? Why do we have interest, but never meet some? 

Perhaps, the story of affinity explains it all. Affinity is a story that I once read in a book when I was 12 years old and ever since then, I became so intrigued with the idea and have always wondered about affinity between people.

If you’re ready for the story, let’s enter.

The story of affinity (缘分)

Once upon a time... there was a young scholar who left his hometown for the imperial examination. Just before he left, he made a pact with his fiancee that when he returned, they would get married on a certain day of the year. However, when he returned, he found that she had already wed another. Struck by the news, he became unable to eat or sleep and fell devastatingly ill.

One day, a monk passes by and sees the scholar and his dire. The monk, wanting to help him, pulls out a mystical mirror and shows the scholar a scene:

As he stares into the mirror, a body appears. It is the dead body of a woman laying on the side of the road. As the body lays lifelessly on the ground, a passerby emerges. Approaching closer and closer, he simply glances at the woman, shakes his head and keeps on his way. Not soon after the first passerby leaves, another person appears. This time, the man takes off his clothes, covers the body and then leaves. 

However, even with the clothes, the body still laid noticeably on the side of the road. After quite a bit of time, a third person appears. This time, the third person digs a pit on the side of the road and carefully buries the body. 

The monk turns to the scholar and explains, “The female corpse on the road was the past life of your fiancee. You are the second person who passed by; the one who gave her your shirt and covered her with it. She fell in love with you in this life, only to repay you with her affection (love). However, the last person is the one who buried her. That is her current husband; the one she is to repay for a lifetime.”

Suddenly, it all became crystal clear for the scholar.

This is a Buddhist story that talks about the lifetime of a person and all that has to do with affinity. In the story, all three men had a chance to meet with the woman, but all three treated her differently. What they gave was different, so each of their endings and relation with the woman was different in the next life.

In the vast sea of people, we meet many individuals. Just like these people, some we meet but never get to understand. For others we meet, we get to come together fall in love with; but never to stay together for a lifetime. And for some, we get to walk down the path of life and grow old together.

Just like the story tells, the first person that passed by without doing anything is similar to those that you meet but never get to know more about. The second person that gave her the clothes is the ones that you date and love, but without fruition. And lastly, the third person is the one that saved you in the past, only for you to return this favor in this lifetime.

In this story, there may be some concepts that seem foreign to many. One example may be: Why does the woman have to return the favor for a lifetime just because the third person buries her?

This is because historically, burying someone is a sign of respect and allows their soul to rest peacefully. Giving their physical body a place to rest allows them to pass on in peace and reincarnate.

In Chinese culture, burying someone well is important because it is viewed as a sign of respect to your ancestors, who will in turn bless you and future generations to come. There are many superstitions and folk/regional rules about how and where to bury the deceased, along with how they and their graves are to be treated afterwards. 

Many believe that by following these rules, it affects their luck and how their future generations live. If they happen to get rich, people will say “you buried your ancestors well” or “your ancestral grave is buried in a good place”- often referring to the Feng Shui aspect that’s connected to it. And if bad events continuously happen or a major bad event happens, some may wonder if it’s because they chose a bad location for the grave or if they’ve somehow angered their ancestor’s spirit by not doing something correctly.

Tying this back to the story, the third person showed respect to an unknown woman and went out of his way to bury her. He gave her soul a place to rest and allowed her to move on and reincarnate. In a way, he took care of her in the form of a duty that would only be carried out by family. Thus, in the next life she repays him by becoming his lifelong family; his wife.

Anyways, Affinity is an interesting story that I came by when I was very young. At that time, I thought the concept was so interesting (just as much as I think Rick and Morty series or the Fermi Pardox is interesting). It kind of ties in with the lesson of karma and that what we do can affect us in different ways. If we take a step forward, our story can change, and that in turn can also create a change in someone else’s life. Regardless of whether we believe in reincarnation or not, relationships are built on taking that step forward. Without the back and forth interaction, we kind of seem like the first passerby; the one that looks and walks away.

For now, I choose to be the onlooker. #Social distancing #Goodnight

[clement-weather]

What is Alison's opinion on faith? How has it shaped her throughout her life?

Alice views spirituality and its overarching purpose for what it gives to people: security. Faith is a safety net to the individual and she understands that it can be used to explain things that would be difficult to interpret without the assistance of cosmic theologies.

However, she also understands that faith acts simultaneously as a catalyst to creating and preserving culture.

Naturally, she’s self-aware of her own beliefs and the subjectivity of them. But, to her, the only thing that matters, theologically, is that the history of her own people (humanity) has been cornerstoned and fostered by philosophies surrounding the Light.

This single detail is one that connects the majority of Alison’s own spiritual thoughts. This is what has made her willing to deviate herself in more egoistic ideals so much; because Alice recognizes where humanity’s culture has built itself from, she’s willing to stand and contend that it’s through faith in traditional practices of the Light that her people will not just survive the current generation of chaos, but will also stand with a culture that rivals the prestige of its past.

In the end, that’s what Alison wants to see. She wants to see a world that is reminiscent of what her parents had told her existed.

She was born after the Second War and saw the adults she knew celebrate stopping one calamity only for them to be blindsided and overstruck by another. Then another. And then dozens more.

By the time Alison reached a “mature” age, the world that they all described was little more than a romanticized fable to her.

Here are some quotes on the subject:

“They told me of Lordaeron’s majestic Capitol City, with its majestic gardens and its noble halls, but if I might ever go there now, all I’ll find is a plagued ruin filled with vile, twisted corpses that were raised for evil.”

“I was given stories of a Dalaran that had spires reflecting their arcane glows across the sky, from Alterac’s peaks to Lordamere’s waterways, yet if I walk that path, now, all I can find is a cratered ruin surrounded by abandoned ogre mounds and murloc-ridden islets.”

“There were legends of a Stromgarde with such might that you could feel the strength of a Trollbane’s reign in the air itself  when you walked its city streets, but when I went there to pay respects to my father and brother’s graves, all I found were warriors who could barely feed themselves. — Let alone the fight to retake their neighbors’ homes the next day.”

Alison watched as the world her parents praised was unceremoniously ruined.

Naturally, she’s vindictive about it. With extreme wrath, she’s come to the conclusion that the only way to preserve what’s left for her people is to defend the remnants with a proactive sense of Holy Retribution.

It’s a cosmic battle, to her. — Because Alison views the survival of humanity and its culture as being synonymous with faith based around the Light, the practice of the Arcane, and preservation of Nature, she associates forces that rival what’s left of humanity as being inverse on a theological scale.

The existence of Orcs, Trolls, Undead, Demons, and the powers that they might wield, on Azeroth, becomes contrary to everything that she stands for, then. She associates them with Fel, Decay, and Shadow.

The dame effectively gives herself a morally-charged reason to continue hating them.

As Alison drags her feelings for those creatures into the realm of bigotry, prejudice, and malice, she doesn’t stop remembering what she lost. — She makes it as much of a racial matter as it is spiritual, for her, which is unfortunate because that affects how she treats other factions that are foreign to the Eastern Kingdoms.

Though it’s usually directed in a more vicious fashion at Draenei, Night Elves and Pandaren sometimes get treated poorly when Alison judges them on their faiths.

Here are some examples of things Demitria might have heard about!

Some say that they saw Miss Clement jeering at a Kaldorei sentinel, who’d planted a Darnassian banner in the Cathedral Square! She asked them if they truly believed the Night Elven goddess, Elune, took the ancient guardian Malorne, as her mate … then, she asked them if that meant Night Elves condoned bestiality as an act of worship!

A few guardsmen once shared a joke around Stormwind after watching Alison Clement badger a pair of Draenei with it. “Why do your priests always look so constipated?” she asked them! Then, she answered: “Because, they’re all still waiting for the prophet to tell them it’s time to GOAT!”

Once upon a time, the southern knight got into a debate with a vindicator in the Cathedral of Light. Abruptly, she posed a terrible jest: “Why are there so many cowardly Draenei, around?” she posed rhetorically, then said: “It’s ‘cause none of them wanted to walk the Path of Glory!

Although rare, these cultural conflicts tend to only happen when Alison has worked herself into an “irate” and immaturely goading state of mind. — When she’s willing to risk her own reputation, she happily discards a filter and risks soiling her own reputation.

Fortunately, these developments only amount to vexing and temporary problems for those involved.

And, in Clement’s mind, that’s all they should be.

Unless one of them is deliberately attempting to bring other humans to their aide and distract them from preserving their lifestyles in the Eastern Kingdoms, she’ll often just serve a quip and move on, because she recognizes that the faiths of those other races are tailored to themselves much like humanity’s own philosophies are structured for itself and its own racial interests.

To her, when it comes to other members of the Alliance, the only things that might warrant witch-hunts are the practicings of dark magics like Demonology or Necromancy.

The Dame regards the use of those spellworks as being relative to the forces that ultimately brought Lordaeron to ruin; when she sees them being used, even if it’s in support of the Alliance, Clement considers it to be a root of something that, if left unchecked, could force her homeland of Stormwind to suffer the same fate as the northern Kingdoms.

Naturally, that’s something that Alison is a zealot towards preventing.

Clement’s willing to even fight her friends or family if they commit themselves to the magics that, in her mind, are the antithesis to what will revitalize humanity in the north and propagate the world that she wants to see, again.

That’s how badly she wants a world where the Eastern Kingdoms are thriving again.

That’s how badly she wants a world where the Orcish Wars are little more than a petty memory.

That’s how badly she wants a world where nations like Gilneas are no longer derelict husks of the past.

That’s how badly she wants a world where the works of her people and the monumental, awe inspiring creations that they can commit to won’t be at risk for decimation by forces that would’ve been called unnatural and unthinkable over four decades ago.

Alison saw the world her parents promised her be torn asunder, with only Faith being the core pillar that withstood the tests of such adversities. 

Now, with faith turning to fury, she wants all of it back.

Thank you, so, so, so, so, so, soooo much for this ask, by the way. I know that it’s been LITERALLY MONTHS since you sent it to me, but this was an extremely difficult thing for me to put the proper words into.

And, truthfully, I still don’t even feel like I did enough justice to all of the different angles and facets of Alice’s spiritual perspectives or how they’ve added to the dynamics in roleplaying scenarios.

It was really a lot of fun to think through, even if I was tearing my hair out after trying to draft this eight or nine times! 

So, thank you so much; I’m sorry for making you wait so long. I hope you find it to be a worthwhile answer! 

[hakuouki-history]

Okada Izo - 2010 Japanese Wiki Entry

From the Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus of Wikipedia’s Kyoto Articles . This is a translation from Okada Izo’s Japanese wiki entry, exactly as it was in 2010. It is taken from PNM02538 in that collection.

For information on the database and how to use it, please check this post.

Just like English wikipedia, none of this information is guaranteed to be accurate. It’s not a current version of the Japanese article either.

This entry is really long, and it refers to a lot of people, groups, and places that you might not be familiar with. Still, I’d suggest any Bakumatsu/Shinsengumi fan to take a look at this entry. 

Why? The second part is a list with descriptions of nine different incidents, eight of which happened in Kyoto, in which Sonnou Joui shishi, including Okada Izo, murdered or publicly humiliated their enemies. These include details of gruesome murders, so please be aware of that before reading. This list shows in detail how bad the situation was in the Kyoto of 1862-1863. It’s in this context that the Shinsengumi came to exist. The founding members arrived in Kyoto in early 1863.

The translated sentences used in this service contain English contents which are translated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) from Japanese sentences on Wikipedia. My use of these translated sentences is licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Please refer to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or http://alaginrc.nict.go.jp/WikiCorpus/ for details.

Izo OKADA

Izo OKADA (1838 - June 3, 1865) was one of the Bakumatsu Shidai Hitokiri (Four famous assassins of Bakumatsu, end of the Edo Period) who joined the Tosa kinnoto (loyalist clique of Tosa) in his hometown, Tosa Province. He was referred to as 'Hitokiri Izo' (Izo the killer).

His imina (real name) was Yoshifuru.

Biography

He was born in Iwamura, Kami County as the eldest son of Yoshihira OKADA, who was a country samurai that earned 20 koku 6 to 4 sho 5 go in rice. He had a younger brother named Keikichi OKADA who also joined the Kinnoto. 

In 1848, his father Yoshihira was enlisted as the domain's ashigaru (common foot soldier) to guard the seaside against ships from overseas that appeared off the coast of Tosa; he continued to live in Shichiken machi inside the castle town, and Izo himself succeeded the status as ashigaru.

He became a pupil of Zuizan (Hanpeita) TAKECHI and studied under Onohaittoryu school. Before becoming a pupil of TAKECHI, he was self-taught in swordplay, but was quite skilled. Following TAKECHI, he went to Edo and studied Kyoshin Meichi ryu at Shigakukan, which was the training hall of Shunzo MOMONOI.

In 1860, he followed TAKECHI and practiced martial arts in the Chugoku district and the Kyushu region. On their way, he stopped at the Oka Domain in Bungo Province, and studied the swordplay of 直指 ryu. Afterwards, he joined Tosa kinnoto which was organized by TAKECHI. For some reason however, he was later crossed off from the name list.

It is not known whether if it was TAKECHI's idea or not, but Izo voluntarily went forward to the scene of the assassination following the instruction of TAKECHI. It is also said that TAKECHI used uneducated Izo merely as an instrument in the assassinations.

Starting with Saichiro INOUE, who was the shita metsuke (low class inspector of foot soldiers) of the Tosa Domain, Izo assassinated, in the name of heaven's punishment, Seiichiro HONMA who was his comrade, Daigaku IKEUCHI, Magoroku MORI, Juzo OGAWARA, Kinzan WATANABE, and Jonosuke UEDA, who were government officials and yoriki (police sergeants) that belonged to the Kyoto City Magistrate, Tatewaki TADA who was the son of Kazue MURAYAMA (she was tied to a bridge and made a public display alive), a mistress of Shuzen NAGANO (who commanded Ansei no Taigoku [suppression of extremists by the Shogunate]). With Shinbei TANAKA of Satsuma Province, he was referred to as 'Hitokiri Izo' and was feared.

After the Coup of August 18, the Kinnoto lost its momentum. When TAKECHI returned to Tosa, Izo changed his name to Tetsuzo DOI, and concealed himself alone in Kyoto. However, around June of 1864, he was captured by a shogunate official, and on being tattooed, he was banished from the capital Kyoto; at the same time, an official of the Tosa Domain captured him, and deported him to his hometown.

In the Tosa Domain, all his comrades of the Tosa kinnoto were arrested for the assassination of Toyo YOSHIDA and the series of assassinations that took place in the capital Kyoto, and with the exception of Zuizan TAKECHI, who was a Joshi (superior warrior) rank, they underwent severe torture. Izo endured severe torture, but he finally made a full confession and was beheaded on May 11 1865, and his head was put on public display.

His death haiku read 'My mind that served for you came to nothing, and will only clear up after you've gone.' 

His grave is the family grave in the mountains near Azo Station at Kochi City, Kochi Prefecture. He was buried in his secular name, Yoshifuru OKADA.

Documents from the same period or letters written by Izo himself that tell the achievements of OKADA are scarce, but several documents tell about his personality and disposition. According to "Tosa Ijinden" (Lives of Great People of Tosa) (Masamichi TERAISHI), he was 'courageous, fond of martial arts, and a giant with an extremely robust body.' 

It must be added that there was a bit of a sense of glorification, for this book was written in 1921, a time when loyal supporters of the Emperor at the end of the Edo Period were extolled owing to the historical view that Japan was peerless as a country under the eternal reign of a ceaseless line of "living-god" emperors.

According to recent studies, he was in fact rough, and loved sake and women; especially in his later years, he was treated coldly even by his comrades of the Tosa kinnoto. Hanpeita TAKECHI, who learned of Izo's arrest, wrote in a letter to his home, 'it is better for such a fool to die soon, and how his parents would lament over him for returning unashamedly to his hometown,' which indicates his ill feeling towards Izo. Letters which were considered to be written by Keikichi TAUCHI (TAKECHI's real younger brother) and so on tell that since his house stood in Shichiken machi, Izo was also disdainfully referred to as '七以.'

According to one theory, on learning of Izo's arrest, TAKECHI became afraid that Izo's confession may put his comrades on line, and he even tried to poison Izo through a jail keeping government official who was devoted to TAKECHI. There is an episode widely known through novels and so on that is interpreted in many ways; according to versions of this episode, TAKECHI was anxious that a weak natured Izo may easily give into torture; or that Izo may go under a far more severe torture than his other comrades due to his frivolousness; or that Izo received the poison and drank it (not knowing that it was poison), but did not die and confessed for not being able to withstand the torture; or he confessed in anger in finding out that it was poison. These show why, through the eyes of TAKECHI, Izo was considered 'merely as an instrument for assassination.'

According to some books, the reason why TAKECHI treated Izo coldly in his later years was, for example, from the discriminative feeling for Izo who had low social standing and no education compared with the other comrades, a sense of danger that exposure of many of the assassinations that Izo took part in may have unfavorable effects to his fellow comrades, and resentment and anxiety toward Izo for not taking his own life although those exposures could be prevented if he had committed suicide; furthermore, even if he had been a member of the Tosa kinnoto that aimed for "Sonno Joi (19th century slogan advocating reverence for the Emperor and the expulsion of foreigners) and overthrowing the Shogunate", he became a bodyguard to Kaishu KATSU (to be explained later) who was "a member of the open country wing and a vassal of the shogun"; Izo was disdained, for "although skillful in swordplay, he was a man with no resolute ideas and beliefs."

Later, a pistol which was thought to have belonged to Izo OKADA was found, and from July 1, 2006 to August 31, it was put on display during the event 'The end of the Edo period for Ryoma, Hanpeita, and Izo' at the Kochi Prefectural Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum. According to the explanation by this museum, the pistol was made in France, and was a gift from Kaishu KATSU. A 'pistol' by the way, was a name applied for the public display, and in the strict sense, it was actually a handgun. Further, this pistol was put on public display by borrowing a personal belonging.

Apart from this, it was also transmitted that when Manjiro NAKANOHAMA tried to give his pistol to Izo, Izo had refused. However, there is no record that Izo had used these pistols and the details are not known.

Assassination of Saichiro INOUE (August 26, 1862)

Saichiro INOUE was a shita yokome who was investigating the case of the assassination of Toyo YOSHIDA that took place on May 6th of the same year. The Kinnoto, which regarded him dangerous, summoned INOUE at first to a fancy Japanese-style restaurant called 'Daiyo (otherwise written as 大與) and intoxicated him; then on the Shinsai-bashi Bridge, the four men Izo, Kiyoma HISAMATSU, Hachinosuke OKAMOTO, and Kinzaburo MORITA, restrained and strangulated INOUE, and threw his corpse over the bridge into the Dotonbori-gawa River. Yataro IWASAKI, a colleague accompanying Saichiro INOUE on this occasion who had escaped this ordeal, later became the founder of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu.

It was said that there was an interrogation when Izo and the others were finally arrested, and only Kinzaburo MORITA, who remained silent, survived, and took part in the Boshin War. Later, MORITA told this story to Takayuki IGARASHI, who left behind a record called "An incident of the assassination of Saichiro INOUE."

Assassination of Seiichiro HOMMA (October 13, 1862)

Seiichiro HONMA was one of the supporters of the pro-Imperial from Echigo Province, but since he was a disputant who did not belong to a particular domain, patriots from each of the domains, who thought his attitude frivolous, began to hate him.

Meanwhile, there was a dispute between Imperial Prince Kuninomiya Asahiko and Yodo YAMAUCHI over the imperial envoy to demand expulsion of foreigners, and when there was a confrontation between HONMA, who went forward with Imperial Prince Kuninomiya Asahiko, and the Kinnoto, who supported YAMAUCHI, HONMA cast doubt that he was communicating secretly with the bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun).

According to "Documents of the Ito family, "HONMA was surrounded by a couple of men when he came out drunk from a fancy Japanese-style restaurant, and although both of his arms were pinned down and his long and short swords were taken away, he furiously fought against them and made some of them shrink back; however, in an unguarded moment, he was stabbed in the ribs, and was beheaded when he was on the verge of dying. There was however, a different opinion, for there was a testimony by a person inside the house who heard a sound 'like throwing coals' when HONMA and the assassins were fighting with swords. HONMA was also thrown into the Takase-gawa River (Kyoto Prefecture) after being killed. 

The criminals included Izo, as well as Shujiro HIRAI, Ekichi SHIMAMURA, Shinzo MATSUYAMA, Magozaburo OBATA, Kenta HIROSE, Gojiro TANABE and Shinbei TANAKA, who was known as the Hitokiri of Satsuma.

Ugo Genba no Kami (Director of the Bureau of Buddhism and Aliens) (October 15, 1862)

Shigekuni UGO (Ugo Genba no kami) was a shodaibu (fourth and fifth rank official) to the former chancellor Hisatada KUJO, and he suppressed the patriots with Sakon SHIMADA during Ansei no Taigoku, and because he was also involved in the set up of Kazunomiya koka (the marriage of Imperial princess Kazunomiya to an ordinary person), he was hated by the patriots of Joi (principle of excluding foreigners) group.

Since the assassination of Sakon SHIMADA (August 16 of the same year), UGO, who sensed danger, was moving from place to place, but he was found hiding in the Kawaramachi Palace of the Kujo family, and while sleeping, he was suddenly attacked by Izo OKADA, Hachinosuke OKAMOTO, Chuzaburo MURATA, and Matsuzaemon TSUTSUMI from Higo Province. He was slain by Izo when he tried to escape by jumping out of bed, and his son was also killed by TSUTSUMI. UGO's head was thrust into a spear, and with a document explaining why he was killed, it was put on public display on the riverbank of the Kamo-gawa River.

What is described above were recorded in "Kanbu Tsuki" (Records on civilian and military men), but there were different opinions regarding the criminals, and Izo's involvement was being questioned.

Murder of Mashira no Bunkichi (October 23, 1862)

Mashira no Bunkichi [Also known as 'Bunkichi, the Meakashi (hired thief-taker)] was an okappiki (a hired thief-taker) who, as an agent of Sakon SHIMADA, disclosed many patriots during Ansei no Taigoku. Naturally, many royalists hated him deeply.

Three men, Izo OKADA, Harunosuke KIYOOKA, and Tashima ABE, took Bunkichi to Sanjo-gawara Riverside, and strangulated him with a cord, since 'cutting him would leave a stain on the sword.'

Bunkichi also helped with SHIMADA's money lending, and since the people also hated him, he was stripped of his clothes and tied to a stake at the riverside; a bamboo stick had been pierced through his body from the anus to the head, and there were those that threw rocks at his corpse which was made a public display. Furthermore, because 'inu' (dog) was written on the notice board on this occasion, it is theorized that the expression 'one's dog' was created as a derogatory term for 'one's tesaki' (one's agent).

Assassination of the four yoriki (November 14, 1862)

All of the four men, Kinzaburo WATANABE, Magoroku MORI, Juzo OGAWARA, and Sukenojo UEDA, were yoriki of the Kyoto City Magistrate, and they had also exposed patriots with Shuzen NAGANO and Sakon SHIMADA during Ansei no Taigoku; after the heaven's punishment against Ugo and Bunkichi, they were transferred from Kyoto to Edo in order to avoid being targeted. On the evening of their arrival to Ishibe-juku (the 51st post station of the Tokaido Road), more than thirty members of roshi made an attack on the posting station, and in the uproar, these four men were murdered.

It had said in a note that described their crimes, that this was heaven's punishment for arresting many patriots and making them a felon. It was considered that many of the patriots from Tosa, Choshu, the Satsuma Domain, and the Kurume Domain took part in this raid.

In "A diary while staying in Kyoto" written by Hanpeita TAKECHI, the names of the twelve of those from Tosa who took part were listed, but Izo was not included. However, it was generally viewed that Izo took part in this raid.

Living public displays of Saburo HIRANOYA and Hanbei SENBEIYA (November 30, 1862)

Although merchants, Jusaburo HIRANOYA (?) and Hanbei SENBEIYA ?) were raised to a samurai class when Shigetomi OHARA left Kyoto for Edo as an Imperial Envoy in May of the same year (old calendar), and they had attended to him, they had a bad reputation for accepting bribery and embezzlement. Since such men were appointed to accompany the Imperial envoy that month, patriots from Choshu and Tosa Domains that became anxious for the loss of prestige in the Imperial Court stood together and decided to provoke heaven's punishment.

Izo OKADA, Toranosuke SENYA, and Kinosuke IGARASHI from Tosa, and Chuzaburo TERAJIMA joined from Choshu, and they split up to take both of the men in and kill them, but they did not kill because of the pleas of their family to spare their lives, and because of their class as townsmen; the two men were put on public display alive, by being tied naked on to a stake which was used for exposing cotton on the riverside of Kamo-gawa River.

Assassination of Tatewaki TADA (January 4, 1863)

Tatewaki TADA was a son of Kazue MURAYAMA (otherwise written as '可寿江'. Some documents describe her as Taka MURAYAMA), who was a mistress of Shuzen NAGANO, and he was a terazamurai (samurai who performed administrative functions at temples) at Rokuon-ji Temple (Kinkaku-ji Temple), but was made a target since he also took part in the suppression of patriots during Ansei no Taigoku.

On the night of the 14th, roshi (masterless samurai) conducted a raid on Kazue's house near Shimahara yukaku, and pulled her out of bed and made her a public display alive at the foot of Sanjo-ohashi Bridge; on the next evening, they brought TADA, who was taken in by a threatened owner to the Keage scaffold, and murdered him. His head was on public display at Kuritaguchi. It was said that Kazue was on public display alive for three days and three nights.

A total of twenty men took part in this raid, and it is believed that Izo participated with Yasozuchi NARASAKI of Choshu, Magozaburo OBATA, Masuya KONO, Uzumaro YORIOKA, and Toranosuke CHIYA from Satsuma. Among them, YORIOKA lived until the Taisho era, and told of this incident.

Daigaku IKEUCHI (March 11, 1863)

Daigaku IKEUCHI was formerly a Confucian scholar who belonged to the townsmen class, and was one of the Sonno Joi ha (supporters of the doctrine of restoring the emperor and expelling the barbarians). Since he devised stratagems for the problems on imperial sanction on treaties and the Shogun's successor, he was severely interrogated from the bakufu during Ansei no Taigoku, but because he surrendered voluntarily, the charges against him were relatively light. Because this had appeared as a 'betrayal against the Bakufu' to the eyes of the patriots that belonged to the Sonno Joi ha, he was made a target. 

Daigaku changed his name and hid himself in Osaka, but just at that moment, he was invited to a banquet of Yodo YAMAUCHI, and was attacked on his way home. His head was put on public display at Naniwa-bashi Bridge, and on the 24th of the same month, his ears were thrown inside the house of Sanearu Ogimachi-SANJO and Tadayasu NAKAYAMA with a ransom note, resulting in resignation of both of the court nobles.

Only the name of Izo was mentioned for this incident, and the exact number and the organization of the others who were considered present at the scene were not transmitted.

Assassination of Hajime KAGAWA (March 18, 1863)

Hajime KAGAWA was a vassal of a Court noble Arifumi CHIGUSA, and was made a target because he had cooperated with Sakon SHIMADA and others, and joined the suppression of the patriots during Ansei no Taigoku. When the roshi made a raid and stepped into his house, KAGAWA went upstairs and hid himself; but on seeing his young children who unfortunately came home and were cruelly questioned by the roshi that had captivated them, he went downstairs on his own will, and was beheaded.

This incident was generally thought as the crime of Shinbei TANAKA from Satsuma, but it was conjectured that Izo also joined him. On the other hand, there was a different opinion that it was the crime of Toraroku HAGIWARA from the Himeji Domain.

Izo OKADA is thought to have been involved in the nine incidents described above. However, there is a theory among the researchers that consider him as 'not necessarily involved in all of the incidents.' 

On the other hand, there is also a viewpoint that states 'between 1862 to 1864 when assassinations were rampant, there were many assassinations for which even today criminals are not identified (only that they were Sonno joi ha is known from notes describing their crime).'

Kaishu KATSU (1863)

According to 'Hikawa seiwa' (Quiet talks at the Hikwa mansion), which is an autobiography of Kaishu KATSU, Izo OKADA became Kaishu KATSU's bodyguard owing to the mediation of Ryoma SAKAMOTO. Three assassins attacked Kaishu, but when Izo cut one of them down and gave a roar, the remaining two assassins ran away.

On that occasion, KATSU said "You should not be fond of killing people. Such actions taken a few days ago are better to be mended" and tried to persuade him, but Izo said in return "But Mr. Katsu, if it weren't for me, your head must already have been slain."

As might be expected, KATSU seemed to have had no words to say in return, for he said 'I had no a single word to this."

John Manjiro

According to the family tradition of the Nakahama family [("Manjiro NAKANOHAMA - A Japanese that told about 'America' for the first time" (Hiroshi NAKAHAMA, 2005)], Izo OKADA was also a bodyguard of John Manjiro. Kaishu KATSU, who was confident in OKADA's skill as his own bodyguard, made him become a bodyguard of Manjiro.

When they went to a western style grave that Manjiro had built, four assassins tried to attack Manjiro, but Izo had sensed the two ambushes that were hiding, and told Manjiro not to escape impulsively but to stay put with his back against the gravestone, and slew the two attackers down. The remaining two attackers made an escape.

[foxcroft-rpg-blog]

Congratulations, Janelle! Wow it’s almost like you’ve already been playing Willa ??? Wow how did you do that? Oh, yeah, you’re the admin. 

Thanks again for applying! Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the masterlist as soon as you can. Welcome to Foxcroft!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Janelle

Age: 21

Preferred pronouns: she/her

Time zone: PST

Activity: I mean I run this… so I’m on as much as I can be. Getting off early in the mornings means I have a lot of free time.

Anything else?: N/A

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Willa Lorraine Potter

There was a time when Willa’s mother hadn’t settled for the life of the housewife. Her hair was long and untamed. She was the kind of girl who followed her favorite band up the coast, the kind of girl whose smile was welcoming and warm and made her seem like she was within your grasp, but in reality she was oh so unattainable. The only traces left of that girl lie in her daughter’s name. She wanted to name her Willow, but Willa’s father wouldn’t allow it. Finally, the settled on Willa. It was respectable, but still a nod at her mother’s carefree past.

Her middle name was her father’s doing. Lorraine. It’s the name of her paternal great grandmother. Willa never met her. She died just before she Willa was born. Named after a woman she never met, it was her father’s way of honoring the woman, but not knowing her herself, Willa didn’t put much weight in it.

Date of birth: 11/24/1992

How long have they been in Foxcroft:

Endless white picket fences, cars pouring in and out of the suburbs just before 9 a.m. and just after 5 p.m. every Monday through Friday, tupperware parties. Foxcroft’s suburbs have played like old black and white television reruns over and over again, day after day, ever since Willa was born. The episodes change, but still everything seems the same, like a played out catch phrase or a tired show opening – Willa hated it. At the young age of fourteen Willa found herself jaded with conversations of whether to paint the cabinets eggshell or cream, and predictable played-out routines. From that point forward, Willa vowed her life would be interesting, damn it. She’d lose her mind if she ended up like her mother.

Sexuality:

DEMI-ROMANTIC PANSEXUAL. She was the girl who fell in love with your mind, with the way you smiled at her, with the words you spoke. Gender didn’t matter. It was about the way you made her feel. But opening her heart was a challenge. She wasn’t cold, just closed off, too caught up in herself, in her thoughts and feelings — like the way vodka burned her throat as she drank until she couldn’t drink anymore. Or the way the fire warmed her fingertips when she struck a match. No, Willa felt everything. Loved everyone. She was just too scared to show it. Sex, on the other hand, was just another way to feel something without giving up too much of herself. It didn’t mean anything, but god did it make her feel alive.

FC change: lol no thx i basically have a shrine to phoebe tonkin she’s my tru god

MORE

How do you interpret this character’s personality? How will you portray them? Include two weaknesses and two strengths.

For Willa, there is before and there is after Adam’s death. The one constant is how tired she feels about her life. Adam and Neil made things feel easy. They howled at the moon, they stole six packs and chips from the local supermarket for kicks. Time stood still when the three of them together and it was as if they’d live forever. Immortals weren’t supposed to die — but Adam did.

When Willa found out about his death, time didn’t start again, it continued to stand still, but instead of feeling free, Willa felt trapped. It was as if the metaphorical walls of Foxcroft were closing in on her and she wasn’t strong enough to push back anymore. The free spirit that once was hadn’t died, but had been buried along with her friend’s corpse. Still, Willa endures, and her free spirit manifests in impulses. It comes when she jumps off the top of the ladder on the water tower, not entirely sure if she’ll make it to the ground alive. It comes when she picks fights with drunken patrons at Absinthe Minded who are much bigger and stronger than she is – but they don’t know Willa’s lost her last reason to give a damn. It comes in screams and broken mirrors and empty bottles of vodka. When Adam died, Willa lost her best friend, and when Neil went missing she lost the only person who could have anchored her, but he left, and she went off the rails.

Behind the impulses is a girl who’s terrified. She’s terrified of this town, terrified of losing the friend she’s pushed so far away, terrified of her own life. She could tear the skin from her bones if it meant escaping this prison. All she wants is to get out, but she doesn’t have a clue how. Willa lived for the interesting, to be free, but despite that philosophy she still had no idea what she actually wanted.

POSITIVE: free spirited, loyal, lively, protective

NEGATIVE: impulsive, uncertain, stubborn, immature

How did this character react to the death of Hazel Abrams? Adam Foxcroft? (1+ paragraphs)

Willa would never admit it, but she wasn’t really affected by Hazel’s death. She wishes she cared more, wishes she cried for her best friend’s lost lover, wishes she felt an absence in the group, but she just didn’t. For Willa, it was Adam, Neil and her against the world. Willa never felt like Hazel was truly a part of their little group, she was never really a Bad Kid. She was tacked on, and trailed along because of Neil. They were her boys, not Hazel’s.

Adam’s death, on the other hand, completely changed her. Every smoke she lit up, every glass of whiskey, every firework, every full moon, every star – it was all tainted. Everywhere she looked in the tiny town reminded her of Adam. Absinthe Minded, where they’d drink and sing along to The Clash until they wouldn’t remember it the next day. Rudford’s, where they ended up after a late night of setting fireworks off from the top of the water tower. Foxcroft was their little kingdom, but the king fell, and now all Willa sees is an empty throne.

How do they see the town and its people? Think about the different groups of people and prejudices the town holds about them. (1+ paragraphs)

Socially, Willa is free of many of the prejudices held by the people of Foxcroft. She grew up in the suburbs with a painfully middle class family. They weren’t religious, so Willa didn’t feel the stares that many people in Foxcroft felt as they drove down Sweetwater Road to Sunday service. Willa could have slid by unnoticed, but she was friends with a Foxcroft, and the town loved to gossip about the founding family.

Stealing from liquor stores and grocery stores didn’t help her case much. Willa became a bad example, a criminal. Unlike most people, she reveled in it. Being a delinquent, being a member of the bad kids club gave her something to be. She wasn’t the daughter of suburbia, she was the kind of kid your parents warned you about. In the light of the bonfires they put on at Foxcroft Cemetery, in the bottom of a bottle and the butt of a cigarette, Willa found herself. She didn’t care what anyone in Foxcroft thought of her. She never did.

For non-human characters: What does this character know about what they’ve become? Have they had any experiences that made them aware that weren’t exactly human? Elaborate. (2+ paragraphs)

The night Adam died changed everything for Willa, not just in how she felt, but who she was. Willa was with them, and then she wasn’t, the world in front of her disappeared into nothingness. Was she dead? Was she dreaming? Willa still doesn’t know. All she knows is she woke up in the middle of the swamps the next morning and that’s when they found Adam’s body. The headlines all said Neil did it, but Willa couldn’t help but feel some sort of guilt for what she’d seen. Had she been responsible?

Willa tries not to think about that night, tries not to relive the night her best friend died, but she knows that something changed that night inside her. She’s just too terrified to seek it out.

Please include 1-2 possible plots your see for this character (1 paragraph brief explanation for each)

WRITING SAMPLE

There are two options here, and you only need to complete one.

Sample #1:  This is a starter for Marlene McKinnon in an AU Harry Potter roleplay.

Sample #2: This is a self para for my character, Matthew Quinn, a thirty-year-old werebear who was infected with the lycanthropy strain. Here he’s visiting his ex-girlfriend’s grave, who he killed when they both shifted and he discovered she was a weredeer. Basically he ate her.

EXTRA [THIS SECTION WILL NOT INFLUENCE ACCEPTANCE]

How would you feel about this character dying?: She’s trying real hard to live, but ironically that puts her closer to death. She’s scared of what she thinks she can do right now, but I could see her maybe getting into things too deep eventually and it backfiring on her. Death is definitely a possibility for Willa.

Why did you choose this character?: Phoebe Tonkin. DREAMS. Lost babe trying to feel something and live an interesting life. PAIN. Sign me up.

Extras: pinterest board.

How did you find us?: I run this shit.