#become someone else in vastly different ways and in one book you can be separate but you don’t want to and in another you are both the same

[gregmarriage]

me reading fight club and the talented mr ripley, back to back: “getting a lot of weird toxic gay vibes from this.”

[thescentofrainonstone]

It's the voice. It's what He says YOU and only YOU directly into your ears.

Or "fanfics, audios and self esteem building"

Let me explain.

There's an addendum to be had on the matter of where we go for escapism, when it's stories or fanfics that then become books if that experience of disappointment in current life, frustration and longing is shared enough (like in the case of twilight and fifth shades).

I seem the only one vocally noticing when one writes a self insert is because of their need ultimately to feel special, chosen by the character for whatever reason is desirable to them (usually tall, dark, handsome, immortal or thereabout and wealthy but not ostentatiously because money exists as preventative from problems).

But what hit me recently, and admitedly late, relates to audio. And the baldur's gate 3 people who fell hook line and sinker for Astarion might probably back me up on this because from what I understand, as someone who hasn't played and doesn't even know the game but got still hit by the way the pale elf got into the zeitgeist (at least of nerdy people whl play d&d old fashionably around a table monthly) is that most of the heavy lifting and heart throbbing is due to the work of Astarion's voice actor Neil Newbon.

Now, audio is a peculiar thing, go check out GoneWildAudio on Reddit and see for yourself the quite literal mind🦆it can be to have someone, speaking in your ear, addressing YOU and then go convince your brain that is *not* an actual human referring, adoring, and talking to YOU.

First: audio recordings have been around a little over 150 years. So in a way you'd think we haven't evolved to understand the difference between a recording and someone there who really whispers in your own ear.

But then again, film shocked the first time they saw the locomotive but nowadays no one would dream what's in their TV is actually part of their surroundings. And to that I argue: audio has no frame. Nothing physically breaks the illusion like the screen and its separation from your actual surroundings.

Audio doesn't have that. Put on headphones, close your eyes and with a good quality equipment (or binaural) it's freaky what audio can give the impression to your brain that's going on.

Now personal vulnerability moment: years ago I went into a rabbit hole that led me to the work of a certain GWA Voice Artist. I was writing a paper and supposedly "researching and studying" like a good observer of the human condition when I suddenly found myself nothing short of addicted to sound in the form of their very unique specific voice. to the point I took it upon myself to try and understand what kind of ton of bricks hit a performer when they share something seemingly personal and vulnerable... Via audio. Which as said above, doesn't have a defined frame that separates it from how our brains differentiate everything else that affects any of our other senses in reality. Let's just say that I realised the experience of someone whose voice presented male is vastly different from someone like me whose voice was coded femme. And that's because cishet men don't know how to respectfully interact with the subject of their porn. At least that's what I saw in my brief but intense experience as a virtual sex worker, basically.

But beside the point: voice and sound create such a good illusion because of how many more human facets come through with timbre, every breath intake, every exhale, all those imperfection that communicate "human".

Now here's where it gets tricky: there is an agreement on the swoon-worthiness of words spoken to YOU about YOU in Your ear. How "unique, amazing, exceptional, beyond whatever he dared to imagine You are, how You affect his entire world and way to see at every human after you who doesn't hold a candle to your being". Which reflects in the popularity of audio and I suspect justifies the success of Astarion beyond the video game world like, to my knowledge, no character had breached before.

But.

What struck me is one specific effect Audio has on people, and I mean beyond the physical effect of the rightfully horniness. I refer to:

self-confidence.

Please consider this an invitation to confirm or deny, but after spending days, listening to a voice telling you how amazing, and special, and sexy you are, how crazy you drive him/her/them and how they only have eyes for you, don't you start to walk a little bit taller? Head a little bit higher? Hips a little bit swayer?

And this is to say: I don't think most people have the ability to do that for themselves, to write themselves into self inserts and yet being able to praise themselves like they clearly yearn to. And audio then becomes I guess like you're masturbating with someone else's hand voice?

Btw: again kudos to fanfic writers in the Astarion realm because at least they are a step ahead the last fandom I checked and if not praising their self insert enough (ever for me, but maybe I'm just a praise slut) they definitely spend more time in the pale elf's head than I ever witnessed in the last twenty or so years I've read (and occasionally written but I will forever deny under torture) Fanfiction

In this air, if you are looking to disconnect from reality with amazing heartfelt smut go check our @again-please and @fangswbenefits ❤️❤️❤️

[the-writer-muse]

How to Research for Diversity

Introduction

Inevitably, you’re going to be writing characters who have had much different experiences than you, whether that’s due to race, ethnicity, religion, and much more. The best way to understand and properly represent these characters is to do research--a lot of it. A few Google searches isn’t going to cut it. Yes, the research and reading process for writing minorities is long and tedious. But it’s worth it when someone can relate to that character, see themselves in that character, or look up to that character. Properly representing us is important because we want to see ourselves in the stories we read, and giving us that boosts our confidence in ourselves and our culture!

Make it matter

If you’re making a character diverse just for the sake of being diverse, stop and reconsider. Your representation needs to be genuine. You can’t just throw in an Asian character because you feel like your cast isn’t diverse enough. Diversity shouldn’t be forced. You don’t need to have a character of every race in your book. But you should research for what you do have.

You don’t always have tap into a character’s background if the plot doesn’t call for it. But knowing that background 1.) allows you to understand them better, and 2.) allows people to relate to them, both of which are very valuable. Your representation needs to feel natural. Bringing up diversity casually throughout the story is the best way to do that.

What you should never do is define a character by their minority or oppression. Above all else, your character should be just that--a character, and a well-rounded one at that.

Record your research

You’re never going to be able to remember everything that you look up. So, write it all down. That could mean doing it the old-school way, aka handwriting (kudos to anyone who does this) or dumping it all in a word processor (I recommend Google Docs because it has the “outline” feature that allows you to go to a specific place when you need it).

I would suggest categorizing your research, preferably into separate documents. Here are some ideas for how you can divide it:

Names

Language

Music

Normal/formal clothing

Stereotypes in literature and other media

Food for everyday and formal occasions

Holidays and special occasions

Restrictions and taboos

Researching on the Internet

It can be really tempting to just click the first link that pops up--most likely Wikipedia--on the Internet, do a 10-second fact check, and call it a day. But that’s not enough. Wikipedia is a good source if you’re looking for general information, but even better are the citations at the bottom. These lead you to trustworthy sites.

You should also look up organizations and official websites of minorities. These websites are more likely to be reliable. In the US, these websites commonly end in “.org” or “.gov.” Other countries have different website domains--there’s a list on Wikipedia here.

Read blogs and articles that people have written about themselves and others. Government-run websites may be important, but personal accounts are just as valuable. Look up online encyclopedias as well--for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica is a great resource, and it ends in “.com”. By contrast, paper encyclopedias are more likely to become outdated, and they can’t be edited.

Consume media by marginalized people--this one is pretty self-explanatory. Read books by marginalized authors, fiction or nonfiction. Watch TV shows and movies directed by marginalized people. Keep doing this until it's barely a conscious decision to choose marginalized media.

Include other people

This is one of the most effective research methods you can employ because it involves only primary sources, while researching on your own involves primary and secondary sources. First, prepare a list of questions that aren’t easily answerable by the Internet. It helps if you specifically relate them to your book. For example, you might ask someone their opinion on a certain character who has a certain arc. Interview as many people as possible. Even characters in a single minority are vastly diverse!

When you’re done with your book, you’ll want to enlist sensitivity readers. Sensitivity readers are different from beta readers because they specifically critique a book’s representation. Looking at their feedback, you’ll be able to see recurring mistakes and flaws in your characters.

Social media

Social media is extremely valuable for talking to a variety of people and seeing different perspectives.

First, follow people of the minorities you’re researching. I would suggest a mixture of “ordinary” people and celebrities. Observe how they might include facets of their culture in their day-to-day life, and how they might speak about issues concerning their culture. You can also (politely) ask if they can answer your questions.

Another thing you can do is look at memes--yes, you read that right! Memes made by marginalized people depict common struggles and relatable situations, which is extremely valuable (and entertaining!).

Media representation tests

You may have heard of the Bechdel test--2 or more female characters have a conversation that isn’t about guys. This is just one of the many media representation tests out there. Media representation tests check your work against stereotypes and misrepresentation, although they aren't comprehensive or completely accurate--sometimes, there are exceptions. Here are a handful of tests:

“Sexy lamp” test (women)

Ellen-Willis test (women)

Deggans rule (race in general)

Vito-Russo test (LGBTQ+)

Topside test (trans people)

Duvernay test (race in general)

Maisy test (sexism in children’s media)

Mako-Mori test (women)

Ris test (Muslims)

Villalobos test (Latina women)

Waithe test (Black women)

Imperfection

No matter how much you research, understand your representation will never be perfect because people have such vastly different experiences. And that’s okay! The best you can do is keep learning and listen when people point out your mistakes.

[bloodraven55]

A Study of Intimacy in the DC Comics

Hoo boy, this is going to be a chunky analysis but I have many things to say so grab a snack and let’s get started.

When I was reading the issue about Blake and Adam’s relationship I got a similar sense of closeness between the characters as I did when I read the issue about Blake and Yang’s relationship, but with a vastly opposite tone. And I want to look at how the two comics make the emotions behind these relationships clear while also making them feel totally dissonant from each other.

To begin with, there’s the first time that one of the characters sees the other within each of the comics, which is important for establishing the dynamic throughout the rest of the story. In the former case, it’s Blake who sees Adam first, and it’s framed to make her seem incredibly small and young. Emphasis is placed on her terror and discomfort with the close up of her expression and the harsh, striking colours that remind you of fire or an explosion. Not to mention that we only see his almost demon-like mask, not his eyes or his expression.

Now compare that to Yang getting distracted by Blake at Beacon. Unlike with Adam, we see Yang’s eyes and her expression, complete with a slight blush dusting her cheeks to create an even softer atmosphere. And instead of bold, aggressive colours Blake is surrounded by flowers to convey a sense of beauty and peace, with the look on her face calm and unbothered instead of petrified. It’s also worth noting that although Blake is of course five years older here anyway, the way she’s framed also makes her look much more like a woman than a girl with her features and posture, highlighting the power imbalance between her and Adam that doesn’t exist between her and Yang.

The message here is clear right from the start. Adam is presented as an imposing figure of fear who Blake is afraid of, and someone who sees her as a child rather than an equal, On the other hand, Yang is presented as a teenager with a crush whose attention doesn’t in any way make Blake uncomfortable, and someone who sees her as a peer.

Now let’s move on to another common element that the two comics share: a montage of sorts showing the bond between the two characters growing. In both cases there is a series of panels skipping through significant moments in their relationship, but they’re markedly different.

The examples of moments for Blake and Adam are primarily them fighting together in the White Fang which I haven’t included since there isn’t as much to discuss, representing the violent core of their relationship and again reminding you of the power that Adam has over her with his superior position in the organisation, with Blake being saved by him multiple times and given little to no agency in the action, and even when he walks her home in what should be a pleasant moment the palette is drowned in his crimson red with only Blake’s clothing standing out as he talks of “monsters in the dark.” The monster is him, in case you didn’t catch on before.

But the part I want to focus on is the fact that their single instance of physical contact, or indeed anything approaching a show of affection that you might expect from a couple, is entirely cast in shadow. One more, we can’t see their expressions or their eyes to read their emotions, and the whole scene feels distinctly dark as a result in more ways than one.

In contrast, all of the activities that Blake and Yang do together are not only in bright, vibrant colour with not a shadow to be seen anywhere, but we’re shown their expressions in nearly every case too. It provides a sense of earnestness to the emotions with Blake looking wholly and sincerely happy in two of the panels and outright giggling in a third. And that’s before we even get to the “May I help you, please?” with the words that give Blake a choice in the matter in striking bold so they can’t be missed, another demonstration of the contrast between Yang and Adam’s methods of “helping” her.

Adam might have helped Blake physically, but he didn’t allow her to make her own decisions and he destroyed her emotionally, whereas Yang offers both physical and emotional help without forcing either of them onto her.

Nowhere is the disparity between these two relationships more obvious, though, than in the series of panels in each comic where the dynamic shifts into something else— something different to how it started.

On one side, you have Blake realising that Adam was never the man she thought he was, and that all of the good qualities she believed that she saw in him were just an act of manipulation. The colours are all dark and somber, and even as Blake tries to pretend that everything is normal it feels wrong. When she repeats her promise from earlier in the same story it now has a totally different meaning, and the way that Adam’s red takes over the dull background as they hug before becoming all-consuming as he shows his true self is a sign of how he attempted to reduce Blake to something broken and empty that he could mould into whatever he wanted.

But when Blake is spending time with Yang not only is there no reveal of ulterior motives or any kind of pretence—just two happy people enjoying each other’s company—but in the decisive moment where the path of their relationship is sealed the background changes from the same dark-ish murky blue that it was in the scene with Adam to a radiant gold instead of a blood-soaked red. We get the same close up of Blake’s face during a defining moment with her partner, but rather than the numbing dread that she experienced with Adam, with Yang she’s simply happy.

Where Blake and Adam’s relationship goes from bad to worse, Blake and Yang’s takes a step forward instead, towards something better and brighter.

This is hammered home further by the fact that the only time Blake looks joyful and carefree while she’s with Adam is right at the beginning of the comic, while it ends with her at her lowest point emotionally and mentally, yet at the end of the second comic if anything Blake is more relaxed and content than ever as a result of the progression of her and Yang’s dynamic. There’s also more colour symbolism, with her wearing a red cloak to indicate Adam’s influence smothering her at the end of the first comic, and Yang’s colour again taking over the background to make everything sunnier near the end of the second comic.

Something else that’s worth discussing is how it’s not just Adam that Blake is thinking about in the panels where she’s on the boat to Menagerie, but Yang as well. She speaks of the dangers of “intoxication,” as she calls it in an effort to distance it from love, while clothed in Adam’s colours as she throws away her last physical piece of Yang into the ocean. The imagery is, uh... not subtle in the slightest.

Further things of interest would be that Adam is still hiding his eyes behind his mask even at the start of their relationship, while focus is placed on Yang making eye contact when she tries to apologise, and also Blake covering her own eyes as she leaves Yang behind because of Adam’s actions but covering her mouth while laughing with joy instead as Yang shows understanding and respect for her boundaries.

This brings me to something which I want to briefly note since it’s a recurring motif throughout both comic: hands. Blake touches Adam’s face and mask several times, Blake and Yang’s fingers brush meaningfully when Yang hands over her drink, Blake pockets the bottle cap as a memento, and Yang’s finger runs idly along the back of the booth like she wants to touch Blake but isn’t sure if she’s allowed to.

It’s a simple but effective way to build a sense of intimacy as well as romantic tension without being too blatant, and it works incredibly well here. The aspect that’s most telling, however, is that while with Blake and Yang the suggestion of that longing for physical contact goes both ways, Adam never touches Blake, which is a reason why their relationship ends up feeling so one-sided and cold and off in comparison.

Finally, I want to cover how the bond between the characters is expressed even when they're physically separated. With regards to Blake and Adam, the red cloak and her narration where she repeats his toxic victim blaming narrative to herself are pretty easy to discern. But with Blake and Yang it’s a little more subtle, as Yang finally finishes reading the book that Blake lent her earlier in the issue and quotes the closing lines before adding her own wish to share a story and a life with Blake one day. The setting of her looking out at the moon, something Blake shares some symbolism with but which can also represent a cycle of rebirth like the repairing of a relationship, only adds to the atmosphere of pure romantic pining that permeates the panel.

To summarise, Blake’s relationship with Adam and her relationship with Yang are made to feel intimate and powerful through a variety of techniques in their respective comics, but that sense of intimacy is used in entirely opposing ways to show how the former was an overwhelmingly negative influence in Blake’s life while the latter is an overwhelmingly positive influence.

[insincerelycrowley]

Setting The Alarm Clock

Summary: Crowley has finally woken up from his Lockdown nap, only to find that something very strange has been happening in his flat. 

Word Count: 1980

Warnings: N/A

A/N: My contribution to to #AwakeTheSnake

Crowley hated mornings. So, it was particularly irritating that it happened to be a morning when he woke from his nap. At least, he thought it was morning, judging from the noise of birds nesting outside his window – annoying little buggers.

Crowley was just about to roll over and check what time (month?) it was, when he noticed something…odd. There was a strange smell to his flat. It almost smelled like someone had been - baking? That couldn’t be right though, could it?

Finally opening his eyes and levering himself out of bed, Crowley found that the smell was just the start of some unusual occurrences. Taking a good look around his bedroom he saw…almost nothing. All his furniture and belongings were gone apart from the bed and the bedside table. The table itself held nothing but his phone and a glass of water (which had not been there before he went to sleep).

Confusion mounting, Crowley left his bedroom, and promptly tripped over a pile of boxes left just outside the doorway. This was another thing that had definitely not been there before his nap. Peaking inside the box at the top of the pile, he saw that it was filled with some of the smaller items from his office. His globe, various astronomy books, and his prized sketch of the Mona Lisa were all stashed away inside. Something weird was going on here.

Intending to check his office for himself, Crowley stopped as he passed his plant room. Something was wrong. There was a distinct lack of fear coming from inside. Peeking into the room, he was horrified to find that it had been completely cleared out. There was nothing left but a few (still pristine) leaves on the floor. Something that felt a lot like anger clenched in his gut at the sight.

Pushing away from the door, Crowley entered his office and felt the clench in his stomach grow tighter. His throne was gone. Someone had taken his throne. If he was angry before, he was furious now. Gritting his teeth Crowley stomped back out of the office, and immediately doubled back when he noticed yet another empty space from the corner of his eye. Staring at the bare hallway floor where his statue of good and evil…wrestling…had once been, Crowley found himself thoroughly perplexed at how anyone had managed to get something like that out of the building without him noticing.

He was broken out of his confused musings by the sound of humming originating from his kitchen (absently he noted that it resembled Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6). Snarling and just barely resisting the urge to summon hellfire, Crowley went to confront whoever had invited themselves into his flat.

Striding into the room with as much swagger as a demon in silk pyjamas could muster, Crowley’s eyes widened when he found almost every available surface covered in cake. Looking around what had once been his kitchen, his gaze landed on the figure facing the oven.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale jolted at the sound and turned around. Catching sight of Crowley, he broke into a brilliant smile that made the demon’s heart stutter in his chest.

“Crowley! Oh, my dear I’m so glad you’re finally awake!”

Crowley stared for a moment, willing his brain to switch back online. He tried desperately to make sense of the scene in front of him, but after a few moments had to admit defeat and ask “Angel, what’s going on?”

Aziraphale’s smile only seemed to get brighter.

“Well I did tell you I’d taken up baking before you went to sleep dear.” Seeming to notice the state of the kitchen he chuckled and added “although I admit, I may have gotten a little carried away.”

Crowley blinked. “Yes, I can see that, but what are you doing here?”

Aziraphale seemed unfazed by the question.

“Oh, of course – well, it occurred to me that you’ve acquired a lovely collection of plants over the years. I was dreadfully concerned about what would happen to them in your absence, so I just popped in to check on the poor dears. I fully intended to go straight back to the bookshop when I was done, but…”

“But?”

The angel fidgeted slightly. “I may have become a little distracted, and never actually got around to leaving…”

Crowley fought hard to push aside the warmth blossoming in his chest. “So, you’ve just been living here while I was asleep then?”

“For the most part, yes. I have been out once or twice to attend to some important business, but I’ve always seemed to find my way back here.”

“I thought you said visiting was against the rules?”

“It was! The rules have been somewhat relaxed now. Households can meet under certain circumstances…and…I got worried when you didn’t call. I had to make sure you were safe.”

There was that warmth again, it was harder to push aside this time. Crowley sniffed and tried to appear nonchalant. “I left you a message.”

“I know, but I had to make sure – if only for my own peace of mind. However, once I was here, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you. I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Crowley felt a lump come to his throat. As he was trying to swallow past it, a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Wait – did you pack all my things?”

Aziraphale smiled and nodded. “Yes, of course.”

Crowley blinked again. The angel admitted it so easily, as though turning up to someone else’s flat and packing up all their belonging while they slept was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. “I-I’m gonna regret asking but –”

“Well I didn’t exactly know how long you would be asleep for dearest. I thought it best to just make a start and hope everything would be ready for when you woke up.”

Crowley had the impression he was missing a vital piece of information. “What – Angel, what on earth are you talking about?”

Aziraphale seemed to consider his answer for a moment. “While you were asleep, I started thinking about how there’s still so much that can keep us separated. This lockdown is just the latest in a long list. I know we’ve been apart before, and this shouldn’t be any different – but it is different now Crowley. I want it to be different now.”

“Different how?” The words felt heavy on Crowley’s tongue.

Aziraphale smiled. “The solution is obvious when you think about it my dear. After all, no one could ever object to us seeing each other if we lived together, now could they?”

The angel looked immensely proud of himself as he finished speaking. Meanwhile Crowley was having an extraordinarily hard time processing what had been said. He let out a string of cut-off noises before finally forcing out “So, what? You’re planning on moving me into the bookshop then?”

Aziraphale scoffed. “Of course I’m not moving you into the bookshop my dear – the living space is much too cramped for both of us. No dearest, the bookshop wouldn’t work at all I’m afraid. Although I’m not sure that I can bare to part with it completely…no, I think I’ll keep hold of it as extra storage for my collection. Oh, and it would be awfully convenient for us to have somewhere to stay for night or two on the occasions we come back to London. You should certainly have the option of not driving back straight away if it’s late. Of course I suppose we could just as well stay here on those occasions – if you want to keep hold of the flat that is.”

Crowley felt like he and Aziraphale were having two vastly different conversations, but he was making a valiant effort to piece them together. “Whoa, Whoa, Angel slow down – what do mean when we visit London? And If I keep hold of this place? I’m trying to keep up here, really I am, but you’re gonna have to help me out a little.”

“Well I just thought that we’d need a little more space, and it might be nice to get out of the city – go somewhere quieter. Here.”

Aziraphale produced a travel agents’ brochure from underneath a plate of scones. Flicking the brochure open, he turned it towards Crowley, showing him an advertisement for a beautiful cottage. Voice brimming with enthusiasm, Aziraphale continued. “It has a garden, and plenty of space for my most treasured books - the view is simply breath-taking! It’s just down the road from the most delightful little bakery! Oh, and it’s close to a valley called Devil’s Dyke – I thought you would appreciate that.” He gave Crowley a wry smile.

Opening and closing his mouth a few times Crowley tried again to grasp where the angel was going with this. “Angel – I still have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Why are you showing me pictures of a cottage?”

“Well because it’s ours of course!”

“What do you mean it’s ours?”

“I bought it.”

“You – you bought a cottage?”

“Well – yes.”

“For us?”

“Yes.”

“To live in – together?”

“Yes, obviously to live in together Crowley, I wouldn’t buy a cottage just for myself, now would I?”

Crowley was silent for a long time, just staring at Aziraphale. Long enough that Aziraphale’s smile faded and he began to fidget under the scrutiny.

“You’re not happy.” The angel stated bluntly. “I knew I should have waited – and I definitely should have asked before just packing up your belongings! I had no right to do that. I shouldn’t have just assumed you would want the same thing. I’m so sorry…I-I just got excited, and I fear I’ve gotten rather carried away…”

“Angel, Angel, stop – I didn’t say I wasn’t happy, did I?”

Aziraphale wrung his hands together. “You’re not upset with me?”

“Of course I’m not – I’m just…. surprised. It was a surprise, that’s all.”

The angel hesitated for a moment before venturing “a good one?”

Crowley smiled softly. “The very best.”

Aziraphale visibly sagged in relief. He smiled at the demon before jolting upright with a sudden realisation. “Oh! I completely forgot – you’ve only just woken up. You must be hungry. Sit down and I’ll get you some cake.”

“I’m fine Angel.” Crowley tried to protest, but Aziraphale was already ushering him to sit at the breakfast bar.

“Nonsense – you’ve been asleep for months; you may be a demon, but you still need to eat something.” Aziraphale said placing a slice of sponge cake and a cup of coffee next to him. Crowley instantly lifted the cup to his lips to hide the ridiculous smile forming there at the Angel’s fussing.

“So, when did you want to move in?” The demon asked.

Aziraphale froze for a moment. “You’re sure Crowley? You’re not just indulging me? Because if you need more time…”

“I’m sure Angel, there’s nothing to think about. Just say when and we’ll go.”

Aziraphale lit up at immediately. “We can go whenever we want. I’ve been popping out to the cottage whenever I can to get it ready and move things over – there’s barely anything left to do. We could go now if we wanted!”

Crowley chuckled – “Well maybe we can wait until after breakfast, but if you want to go today then we will.” He paused. “So, go on then – I know you’re just dying to tell me all about it down to which curtains you’ve picked out.” He teased.

Aziraphale was all too happy to comply, and launched into excited chatter about their cottage as the demon felt the smile he’d been holding back break free.

Crowley didn’t need to see the cottage to know that it would be perfect. Anywhere the angel picked out for them would have been. The building and the location didn’t matter, Crowley’s home had always been Aziraphale.  

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

I’ve been thinking about something for a while so now I’m going to come at y’all with a Hot Take(tm)

and that is that there’s no such thing as a bad fanfic.

I hear often from ppl, about having to ‘sort through a pile of crap to find that one Good Fic’ or overall complaining about how much bad fic there is around and whatnot and I FOR ONE am sick of hearing it.

firstly, bypassing the fact that these ppl saying these things can get off their lazy asses and do it themselves if they want, the way we’re judging ‘bad’ fanfic is totally skewed (and often, very much based on that single person’s opinions). there’s no way we can really judge that a fic is ‘bad’ without taking into account lots of other stuff.

look, have I read fic that’s poorly edited, has bad grammar/spelling, run on sentences, ooc characters, and just generally can’t follow or enjoy it? YES! abso-fucking-lutely I have. have I also found fic that has impeccable characterization and to-a-t grammar and a great plot/premise I love? also yes!

but here’s the thing kids - these two things aren’t polar opposites like ppl have been saying. because, regardless of these added factors, the effort and care put into the fic is the same.

no one makes fic bc they’re forced to. it’s not like school work. no one sits around and goes ‘eh, well, guess I HAVE TO finish that fic..’ like they would about a paper that has to be done and then potentially half-ass it. the thing that separates fandom art from original art I think, is the fact that while most original art does have passion behind it, that can die out and creators can stop caring, which then shows in the art (game of thrones, s3 of stranger things, shows that that should’ve stopped long ago and are now a husk of their former selves like supernatural, some james patterson books I could name). whether that’s bc they’re no longer invested in that world, or it’s now just a cash-cow and no longer a project (*cough*STRANGERTHINGS*cough*), whatever, it then bleeds into the art and makes it a horrible mess no one enjoys - and THAT my friends, does create and then constitute bad writing. but that’s not exactly what I’ve seen in fandom art. ppl get burnt-out sure, but most if not all fandom creators are doing it bc of the passion. therefore, you don’t find the same kind of ‘bad’ writing you might find in season 57 of ‘long-running t.v show that should’ve been laid to bed years ago’ bc the creators are still invested in it. what you’re REALLY complaining about, is poor grammar or editing or that someone’s written a character in an way you don’t like or you don’t think the plots very good, etc. AND THAT’S VASTLY DIFFERENT THEN ACTUAL BAD WRITING

this is why I believe that no matter how ‘bad’ a fic is, the passion behind it is the same as a ‘good’ one. therefore, I find, no fanfic can truly be ‘bad’ bc the writer has done their all to make a world their passionate about and for characters they’re passionate about. and who can be mad about that??? and even if you take that into account and still DON’T like it, then just move on for christ’s sake!! just fucking do something else!! no one is PUTTING A DAMN GUN to your head to read that fic!!

secondly, there’s also a myriad of reasons why a fic might have all those ‘bad’ traits. the writer could be very young/new to writing/not fluent in the language they’re writing in/could have a disability or multiple that affect their writing - you never know! OR, that’s literally just where they skillset is at. that’s it. so to sit around shitting on these ppl all day for creating free art makes you, guess what, AN ASSHAT it could also be multilayered. I’ve written a lot of fic in my life, and so have become much better at writing overtime. I know I’m good at characterization and plotting/pacing (or I get told this at least), but you know what I’m still not great at despite trying to work on it? spelling and or grammar!! it’s a fucking bizmol! ergo, there isn’t always a clean way to differentiate ‘good’ art from ‘bad’ if you’re thinking about it in that regard!

this is all to say, you can’t separate ‘bad’ fic from ‘good.’ not only is it a dick move to (inadvertently) criticize ppl’s art they care about and are making for free, but the way we categorize a ‘bad’ fic is hella shallow and I don’t think equates to the sometimes terrible writing we see in books, shows, etc. also I don’t think it helps anyone; not the fandom, not their readers, and certainly not the writers. bc guess what everyone, if you spend all your day complaining about the onslaught of ‘bad’ fic and the rarity of ‘good’ fic, soon no one is going to WANT to make fic bc you keep piling your arbitrary standards so fucking high.

tl;dr: fic (and fandom art in general) can’t be considered ‘bad’ when the writer is doing their all, no matter the skill level, to make a good story & also don’t shit on ppl’s art regardless of it’s ‘quality’, jerks.

[wistfulcynic]

Their Way By Moonlight: A Day in the Life, Part 2 (Chapter 15)

For @thisonesatellite​​ and @ohmightydevviepuu​​, and I hope you are not too drunk (and) or jet lagged to enjoy it ❤️❤️❤️

In which efforts to break the curse continue. Henry has an important meeting and reunites some old friends, Captain Book begins, and we learn more about the subtle knife. 

SUMMARY: A new curse has fallen on Storybrooke and this time Emma is trapped inside it, deliberately separated from Henry and anyone else who might  help her break it. But what no one knows –including her own cursed self– is that she and Killian have the ability to share their dreams, and are working together in secret to find a way to break the curse and free everyone from a new and dangerous foe.

Rating: M

AO3

-

A Day in the Life, Part Two:

Henry’s third stop on his busy Saturday was the pawn shop. It was just as he remembered it, or at least as much as anything in this Bizarro World version of Storybrooke could be as he remembered. The sign above the door still read ‘Mr Gold’, and inside the shop itself was still cluttered with wondrous and mysterious things. It had been dusty and dank and somewhat grim when Henry first returned to it three weeks earlier but now was much cleaner and better organised, brighter, and welcoming in a way that it certainly had never been before. 

The front door was unlocked and Henry went right in. “Hi Mr Cassidy!” he called out as he closed it behind him. 

“Hey, Henry,” came his father’s voice from the back. “Be right there.” 

“Okay!” Henry looked around as he waited, peering curiously into the display cases and trying not to think too hard about where everything in them had come from. Despite all the improvements, the fact that the pawn shop was stocked with stolen things was still pretty creepy in his opinion. He hoped that after the curse broke Neal would give them back to their rightful owners and not hoard them for his own gain the way Mr Gold had. 

Henry hoped for a lot of things from Neal after the curse broke.

It worried him a bit, if he was honest, wondering what was going to happen to them—to all of them, really—after the curse. He and Neal had spent so little actual time together that Henry wasn’t sure how much of his image of his father was real and how much was wishful thinking. Killian had told him loads of stories of “Bae” as a boy, and Emma, once they got their memories back in New York, had finally told him the truth about the watches and giving birth to him in jail. But they seemed like such different people, Killian’s Bae and Emma’s Neal, and both were so different from Henry’s impressions of the man he’d met that he felt more confused than ever. At this point he wasn’t even quite sure what he wanted from the man or even what kind of man he hoped Neal would turn out to be. He only knew that he couldn’t turn his back on his own father, not even when that father had abandoned his mother and by extension him. 

(“That’s not entirely fair, lad,” Killian had said a few weeks earlier when they were having lunch together, just the two of them. “He didn’t know you existed. Perhaps if he had, he’d have made a different choice.” 

“Maybe,” Henry replied. “But he still left my mom in jail.” 

“Aye,” Killian agreed. “So he did, and I also find that difficult to forgive. I’m certain he regrets it, though.” 

Henry thought for a moment. “I’m not sure it matters that he regrets it,” he said. “Not if he doesn’t admit it was wrong and try to make up for it. Mom says he never even told her he was sorry.” He looked up at Killian. “Do you think he ever will?” 

Killian took his time answering. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know if he will ever understand just how deeply he hurt your mother. Truthfully, I feel I know the man far less than I did the boy. I’d like to believe that Bae is still in there somewhere, but Neal unfortunately seems to be a bit too much like his father.”

“Yeah,” said Henry. “But even Rumplestiltskin did the right thing in the end. He sacrificed himself to save us from Pan. Maybe my father will do the right thing too.” 

“Who’s to say but that he will,” replied Killian. 

Henry thought a bit more, then said firmly, “I’m gonna give him the chance to try.” 

Killian smiled at him, the proud smile that always made Henry feel warm inside. “I think that’s the right decision,” he said. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”)

The curtain separating the front of the shop from the back shifted, and Neal appeared. He smiled at Henry. “Hey, kid, what’s up?” 

“Nothing special. I was just wondering how things are going here?” 

“Good, yeah, good.” Neal smile turned a bit awkward and he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a learning curve, not gonna lie. But I’m getting the hang of it. Think I’ll be able to open next week.” 

“That’s great!” 

“Yeah. Hope so. Your dad’s been a lot of help, showing me the ropes of how to run a business. Tell him thanks from me, will you?” 

“Sure. Or you could come to dinner with us tonight and do it yourself.” 

“Dinner? What, like, at your house?” 

“Yep! My dad said it was okay if I asked you. He’s making burgers and he always makes too many, and we just thought you might like some company.” 

“Oh.” Neal blinked in confusion, a look Henry had come to realise meant he was thinking about something that would never have occurred to his cursed self on its own. “Um… sure, okay. Thanks.” 

“Cool! It’s above the bookstore. You know where that is, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“So just ring the bell and we’ll come downstairs to get you. About seven?” 

Neal grinned. “I’ll be there. Thanks, Henry.” He shook his head and his grin shifted into an odd little smile, wistful and slightly sad. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Henry. 

“Oh, nothing, nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking. About how much has changed these last few weeks.” He leaned back against the register, crossing his arms over his chest. “I mean, it’s weird, right, the way those old records just showed up one day in the mayor’s office?”

“Yeah. Very weird.” Henry struggled to keep his face blank.

“I didn’t even know my father owned a pawn shop.” Neal frowned. “I don’t remember much about my father, actually.”  

“That’s probably why you didn’t know,” said Henry. 

“Yeah, probably. Anyway, it’s changed my life, you know. I never wanted to be a janitor, but—” he shrugged “—there wasn’t really anything else I could do. Now I can do this. Some kind of luck, huh?” 

“Oh yeah,” said Henry. “Luck.” And his mom’s magical forgery skills that were second to none. “I’m really glad, Mr Cassidy. I hope you’ll like working here.” 

“Yeah, thanks. I really think I will,” said Neal.

~

“You came to inquire about the subtle knife.” Oisín smiled, leaning back in his chair. “May I see it?” 

Emma huffed in annoyance, reminding herself that he was their best chance to find answers despite his supercilious nature and the supremely irritating way he always knew about things before they happened. She opened Killian’s satchel and took the knife from it.   

Oisín’s face was calm as she carefully removed the knife from the plastic evidence bag where she had kept it wrapped since she’d taken it from the loft, but there was a glint in his eyes that Emma recognised, having seen it in Killian’s on more than one occasion. It was the look of a man about to get his hands on a treasure he never imagined he’d have the chance to touch. She held the knife out to him and he took it almost reverently. 

“It’s extraordinary,” he breathed, letting his fingertips trail along the blade, and Emma couldn’t suppress an eye roll. What was it with men and weapons, she thought. Even the supposedly wise immortal ones were hard for them. 

“What can you tell me about it?” she asked. 

The look he gave her was nearly as sharp as the knife itself. “What do you already know?” 

“Not much. There’s mention of it in a book Henry found, but that was the only reference any of us could uncover. The book said that it was the sharpest blade in existence, and could cut through the fabric of reality, whatever that means.” 

“That is correct,” said Oisín. “The blade of Æsahættr is two-sided, as you can see.” He held the knife up to the the shop’s dusty window, catching the faint light with its two-toned blade. “It was forged of two different metals. This side—” he indicated the shiny edge “—can cut through any substance in any realm, while this one... can cut through the barriers between the realms themselves.” 

“So you’re saying that someone could use this knife to—to cut a portal between two realms?” asked Regina.

“Indeed.” 

Regina and Emma exchanged a look. “So that’s how she did it.” Regina sounded almost awestruck. “That’s how she made the portals.” She shook her head. “That’s—well, it’s terrifying magic.” 

“Terrifying indeed,” said Oisín. “And also extraordinarily dangerous. The energy that divides the realms is dangerously unstable, as well as being very powerful and difficult to breach. Cutting permanent portals into it brings vastly unpleasant consequences. I’d advise you not to attempt it, if there is any other method of realm travel at your disposal.” 

“We don’t need realm travel,” said Emma, just as Regina exclaimed “Permanent portals?”

“Yes, permanent,” Oisín replied. “It is possible to close them but doing so requires a delicacy of touch and a close relationship with the subtle knife, neither of which I believe your sister is capable.”

“That’s probably true,” said Regina, just as Emma exclaimed “A relationship with the knife?”

“Oh yes,” said Oisín, returning his attention to Emma, mirth twinkling in his emerald eyes. “The subtle knife always has a bearer, and though I cannot See who that bearer is, I am certain it is not Zelena.”

“She probably stole it,” said Regina. 

“That seems likely to be the case. And also likely that she forced the bearer to cut the portals.” 

Emma was frowning hard. “So how would someone go about becoming a—a bearer of this knife?” she asked. 

Oisín smiled, the smile of a man who has lived long and seen much, most of it unpleasant. “In the time-honoured way of passing a magical weapon from one hand to another,” he said. “By killing the previous bearer.” 

“Hmmm.” Emma’s frown deepened. “And is there any way of identifying the bearer?” 

“Perhaps, though it is difficult to be certain. The lore of Æsahættr is vague at best; in most realms it is entirely unknown and in others spoken of only in hushed whispers. Even I had believed it a myth, until I perceived its presence in this land. All I can tell you is that in some of the whispers there is mention of the bearer suffering injury to his left hand in the process of obtaining the knife. The loss of fingers, I believe.”

“Hmmm,” said Emma again. “Okay. Just one more question. You said that this side—” she pointed at the shiny edge”—can cut through any substance in any realm?” 

“Yes.” 

“What about magic?” 

“Oisín’s eyes glinted again. “In theory, yes. But I rather suspect you knew this already.”

Emma nodded, slowly. “I saw it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “But I wasn’t sure I could believe what I saw. I was fighting Zelena, I had her trapped within a containment spell… and Henry just—he just—cut the spell open. He sliced right through my magic.” 

Regina drew in her breath sharply. “He did?” 

“Yes didn’t you—oh, I suppose you couldn’t see the light magic?” 

“Not as clearly as you, no. But could Henry?”

“I imagine that young Henry perceived the magic more than strictly saw it,” remarked Oisín. “Perception, not sight, is what guides the subtle knife; the barriers between worlds are invisible to all eyes. That which one can perceive, however, one can cut.” 

~

Henry’s fourth stop of the day was Granny’s, just in time for lunch. The diner was busy as always, bustling with people and noise, and when the crowd parted and Henry caught a glimpse of his grandparents tucked away in a corner booth staring at each other with the same dopey looks on their faces that he saw all the time on his mom and dad, he couldn’t hold back a gleeful grin. 

“Hey, Archie,” he said, sliding onto a stool next to the erstwhile psychiatrist, who looked tired and hopeless and and very wrong dressed as a miner, with grime beneath his fingernails and settled deeply into the lines on his face. His wire-rimmed glasses had been replaced by safety goggles and his hair looked thinner. Nevertheless he greeted Henry with a warm smile. 

“Hello, Henry,” he said. “How are you?” 

“Good! Can I ask you something? 

“Of course.” 

“Have you ever considered getting a dog?” 

When Henry first began his quest to return love to the people of Storybrooke he had opted for little suggestions, gentle hints designed to nudge them in the right direction. It hadn’t taken him long to realise that with this curse subtlety was futile, and that they responded to nothing but what his dad called “sledgehammer tactics.” Hey, Belle, have this book. Here, Neal, take this pawnshop. So, Archie, how’d you like a dog? The direct approach was the only one that worked. 

“A dog?” Archie replied. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Really? Because I think you’d be great as a dog dad.” 

“A dog dad…” Archie’s voice trailed off and a dreamy look settled in his eyes. “I’ve never thought of getting a dog.” He frowned in confusion. “That is, I don’t think I have. But actually… yes. A dog. Yes. That might be just the thing.” 

“Uh huh,” said Henry, who was keen to waste no time. “I saw one today I think you would love. A Dalmatian.” 

“Really?” 

“Yep. At the animal shelter. He just got there today.”

“A Dalmatian,” said Archie. “That’s the black and white spotted ones, right?” 

“Yep. I petted him, he’s really friendly. And he really needs a home.” 

Archie looked uncertain. “I don’t know if I could take care of a dog, Henry. I work long hours, you know.”

Yeah but you won’t for much longer, Henry thought. Not if I have anything to say about it.

“Just go meet him,” he wheedled. “I’ll come with you if you like.” 

Archie warred with himself for another moment then nodded. “All right. I’ll meet him.” 

~

It was barely a quarter past two when Belle arrived at the bookshop. Killian was busy helping customers and didn’t see her right away. It still surprised him how much business the shop drew in, considering the place only existed to give him a respectable and non-suspicion-raising occupation and a reason to move to Storybrooke, and also as a means of getting books of magic to a place where Emma could have access to them, both to help her rediscover her own magic and to give them all the information they would need to take on Zelena. It had certainly fulfilled all those roles, admirably, but now that the curse was near to breaking Killian had begun to think ahead. He would need something to occupy his days, and what with his ship and his crew most likely stranded in Neverland with Blackbeard as their captain, a return to piracy or even a more respectable ship-based occupation was firmly off the table. His only real option was to keep the bookshop.

The more that he thought about it the more appealing the idea grew. He truly loved his little shop, the light and airy space all his own that he had organised and furnished to suit his tastes. He loved his books, the way they smelled and how they looked lined up neatly on his shelves. He loved matching those books to the people who sought them, loved both the pleased looks on his customers’ faces and the satisfaction of closing a sale. He loved the mental exercise of keeping his accounts and tracking his inventory, of looking through catalogs and choosing new books to purchase. Books that of course he would need to read himself in order to make recommendations to his customers. That prospect in particular he loved. Killian still found this realm frustrating and baffling in many ways but one thing that could be chalked up firmly in its favour was that it possessed a true wealth of reading material. He calculated he would need to live at least another three hundred years just to get through it all.

He began to think about expansion, about new genres he could introduce, popular titles that would attract new customers. Soon plans and ideas that started small had grown and grown until they were lodged firmly in his mind, refusing to be ignored or brushed aside. He wanted to do this, he realised, wanted it quite intensely, and for the first time in his very long life he had the luxury of choosing to do precisely what he wanted. Which was a surprisingly terrifying prospect but also a very welcome one. 

Killian completed his sale then turned to greet the new customer with a smile that froze on his face when he recognised Belle. Though Henry had texted him to expect her visit he instinctively braced himself for her anger, her disgust, before he recalled that she was cursed and didn’t remember him. 

“Hello,” he said, forcing himself to relax. “Is there anything I can help you with?” 

“Are you Killian Jones?” 

“Aye.” 

“My—my name is Belle. Belle French. I, uh, know your son.” 

“Ah, yes. I believe he mentioned you. He recommended a book to you?” 

“Yes.” Belle’s face lit up. “A wonderful one. And he said, um, that you might be looking for an assistant? Here?”

Bloody Henry, thought Killian, with a mixture of exasperation and fondness. You drop one mention that you’re thinking of expanding and he runs with it. Still, he couldn’t deny that the quickest way to nurture Belle’s love of books would be to surround her with them. The lad was undeniably clever. 

“I’m thinking about it,” he said. “Are you interested in the job?” 

“Y—” Belle took a deep breath. “Yes. I am.” 

“Well, why don’t you sit down and we’ll have a chat about it,” said Killian, gesturing to the sofa at the back of the shop. “Would you like a drink? Coffee? Tea?” 

“Tea would be lovely.” 

What the hell, thought Killian, as he went to make the tea, why not? When the curse broke she would doubtless be angry and scared of him again—and who could blame her?—but then he knew he’d be dealing with rather a lot of that once Storybrooke regained its memories. He might as well take what steps he could towards demonstrating how he had changed and hope that would be enough to convince people to give him a second chance. 

~

“Perception,” echoed Emma. “Right. Okay. I think that’s all we needed to ask.” She turned to Regina. “Unless you have any other questions?” 

“No.” Regina shook her head. “This has been very informative.” 

Emma held out her hand for the knife and Oisín, after one last long look and a subtle caress, relinquished it. Carefully, Emma replaced it in the reinforced evidence bag and tucked it back into the satchel. She leaned the satchel against the leg of her chair and turned back to Oisín with an expression both resigned and expectant. 

“What?” he asked. 

“We’ve learned what I came here to learn,” she replied. “So we’ll be going now. We need to get back to Storybrooke before it gets too late.” 

“Indeed. It was lovely seeing you, even for a short time.” 

Emma frowned. “Is that it?” 

“Were you expecting more?”

“Well, I mean, aren’t you going to give me some cryptically wise parting words?” asked Emma. “You usually do.” 

“Not today,” said Oisín, amusement dancing in his eyes again. “I believe you know everything you need, and also that you understand the import of what you know.” 

“Well that makes a change.” 

He laughed, a light, musical sound that rang out far more loudly than it ought to in the small space of the shop. “You know, Emma, I’m very proud of you,” he said. “You were hardly the easiest pupil I have ever taught, but you are by far the most accomplished. And I don’t just mean your power, that you were born with. I mean your attitude and your approach to your magic. How you have let go of your fear and resentment of it. How you’ve embraced it. I believe that had you not, even Hook’s most determined efforts to restore it to you could not have been successful.” 

Emma flushed, still not wholly comfortable with praise, and gave a little shrug. “It’s all down to him anyway,” she said. “He always says that magic is a part of me and that he—” she grew pinker and glanced at Regina out of the corner of her eye “—he loves every part of me.” 

Regina did not sneer. Instead she flushed slightly herself and smiled a small smile, as if remembering. 

Oisín nodded in satisfaction. “It’s as I hoped then.” He leaned back in his chair again, his expression soft and almost wistful. “I used to weep at the waste of that man,” he said. “You must never tell him that I told you this. I wept in mourning for the loss of what he could have been, for the good man so deeply buried beneath anger and vengeance that I feared he would never be seen in more than glimpses. That he would destroy himself without ever knowing who he truly was, or could be. Until you, Emma, gave him a reason to know it. You saved him.” 

“He saved me too,” said Emma, thinking of how closed off she had been before she met Killian. How lonely. How lost. “We saved each other.”

“Yes,” Oisín agreed. “That was the first part of your story. A part I believe is now approaching its end. There are far more parts to come. Enjoy them all, together.” 

He stood and waited as Emma and Regina followed suit, then held out his hand. When Emma took it as if to shake, he grasped hers between both of his and held it tightly. 

“What will you do now?” Emma asked him. “I—I don’t think Killian and I will be coming back here. Once we break the curse... well, all my family is in Storybrooke and he really loves that bookstore. I’m pretty sure we’ll be staying there. Are you going to stay here?” 

“No,” Oisín replied, “I’m no longer needed in this place. I shall return to my home, and my Niamh. But you know how to find me, should you ever have need of me again. Or simply wish to say hello.” 

“We might actually do that,” said Emma, smiling. “Thank you.” 

Oisín returned the smile, squeezing Emma’s hand. “It’s been an honour, Emma Swan, now Jones,” he said. “Give my regards to your husband and son. And to the rest of your family—” his eyes flitted to her belly, so briefly she nearly missed it. “—when they arrive.” 

~

Belle left the bookstore an hour later with a new job and a bag full of books, most from Killian’s own personal collection. 

“I’m working on diversifying the inventory,” he’d explained. “And your input on the best ways to do that would be greatly appreciated. At the moment we don’t stock very much light, entertaining reading material. However I believe I have one or two things of my own you would enjoy.” He piled book after book into one of the cloth bags printed with the Jolly Roger Books logo and handed it to Belle with a grin. “I look forward to hearing what you think of them.” 

She felt happier than she could remember feeling, all but dancing along the sidewalk in her eagerness to get home and start reading, absolutely ecstatic at the prospect of quitting her job at the market and going every day to that beautiful shop full of books and light and Killian’s friendly smile and interesting conversation. Even the odd hints of regret that she could see lurking behind his eyes felt relatable, and though she’d only spent an hour in his company she felt almost like he was a friend already. 

Books and a friend, thought Belle, with a flash of insight and a sudden clarity that swept away the apathy and confusion that had clouded her mind for as long as she could remember. She stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk as a feeling of revelation washed over her. That’s what had been missing in her life, the cause of the emptiness she constantly felt but never could quite manage to explain. All this time she’d thought something was broken in her, when really she’d just needed books. And a friend.   

~

Henry met Archie outside the animal shelter late that afternoon. Archie smiled his familiar, warm smile but Henry could see he was nervous. 

“Henry, I know I agreed to this but I’m not so sure it’s really—” he began. 

“Just meet the dog,” Henry interrupted. “It won’t hurt to meet him.” 

He pushed open the door and held it, looking back expectantly. “Come on,” he encouraged, and slowly Archie followed.  

“Back again, Henry?” David smiled at them. “Yep! Mr Nolan, this is Archie,” said Henry. “He’s the one I told you about, who might adopt the new dog.” “Might,” emphasised Archie with a nervous smile. 

“No problem,” said David. “We only allow adoptions when we think it’s a good match, for the animal and the human.” Archie nodded, and the tension in his shoulders relaxed. “Henry, why don’t you take him back to meet the dog?” David asked. 

Henry had to force himself not to run. He hurried to Pongo’s cage where the dog seemed to be waiting, wagging his tail. “Here he is,” said Henry eagerly. “Isn’t he great?” 

Archie approached the cage slowly, his eyes going wide behind his safety goggles. “He’s—he’s gorgeous,” he whispered.  

“At the sound of Archie’s voice Pongo gave a small bark and his tail picked up speed, moving so fast it was a blur. He poked his nose through the bars of the cage and whined at Archie. 

“Look!” cried Henry. “He likes you already.” 

“Ohhh,” said Archie, moving towards the cage, hand extended. “Hello, boy.” 

Pongo licked his hand, and when Archie knelt down, his face, covering it in sloppy, loving kisses. Archie laughed, his face lit up with joy. 

“Well he certainly seems to have chosen you,” said David’s voice from behind them. 

“He definitely has,” Henry agreed. “You’ve got to adopt him, Archie.” 

“I don’t—I’m not—I can’t—” Archie looked helplessly at Pongo’s pleading eyes and sighed. “I will,” he said. He looked up at David. “If it’s okay—” 

“Of course,” said David. “There’s some paperwork to do, but after seeing you together I’m more than happy to sign off on the adoption. Congratulations.”

Archie nodded, still looking a bit shell-shocked. 

“I’ll go get everything prepared, you come to the front when you’re ready,” said David, He took out a key and unlocked Pongo’s cage. The minute the door opened, the dog leapt on Archie, squirming delightedly. 

“What are you going to name him?” asked Henry. 

“You know, I have no idea,” said Archie. “I never actually expected this to happen. Have you got any suggestions?” 

“How about Pongo?” Henry suggested. 

“Pongo,” Archie repeated, and the dog barked happily. Archie smiled. “Is your name Pongo?” 

“Woof!” said Pongo. 

“Well, that seems definitive.” Archie laughed. “Pongo it is, then.”

He stood, his hand still on Pongo’s head. “Thank you, Henry,” he said. “I had no idea I needed a dog, but I think...” he frowned and shook his head, blinking rapidly. “Somehow, I think he’s just what I was missing.”  

“No problem,” said Henry, mentally ticking another name off his list. “I knew you guys would love each other.”

~

Emma poofed herself and Regina straight from Queens to Killian’s apartment. Transporting the both of them over such a distance and then back again had exhausted a great deal of her magic, and if she went to the station first she doubted she’d have enough left to poof from there to home. And as she and Killian were still cautious about being seen together in public, she didn’t want to walk to his place or drive. It wasn’t worth the risk of anyone observing her going into the bookstore after it was closed, or spotting her bug parked in front of it. 

Henry and Killian were already there when the white smoke swirled up from the ground and they appeared. Emma went straight to her husband, knowing he would be worried about her, and allowed him to run his hands over her and look probingly into her eyes, assuring himself that she was okay in both mind and body. Regina gave a hug to Henry and a nod to Killian, then left to get ready for her date. 

“Regina and Robin Hood,” said Emma, snuggling into Killian’s side and relaxing against him. “I still can’t quite believe it.” 

“It’s so cool,” said Henry. 

“Yeah, I guess it is.” Emma smiled, thinking about the new softness she’d witnessed in Regina that afternoon. “So how was your day, kid?” 

“Good!” Henry’s face lit up. “I did so much! I found Pongo and got Archie to adopt him, and Dad’s gonna give Belle a job, and I invited my father for dinner.” 

“Your fa—Neal? For dinner?” Henry nodded. “What, here?”

“Aye,” said Killian, running his hand soothingly up and down her arm. “It was Henry’s idea but I agreed. We thought it might be nice to include him in a family meal, even if he doesn’t know that’s what it is.” 

“He’s really lonely, Mom,” Henry chimed in. “Everyone in town is, but him especially. I think the love he needs might have to come from us.” 

“But… then why did we give him the pawn shop?” 

“To get the pawn shop open again, mostly,” said Killian. “And to give us an excuse to meet him. But we didn’t really expect him to discover any love there. Remember, Swan, that Bae was abandoned by his mother and ran away from his father. He found a home briefly with the Darling children but that was taken from him, and I’m sad to say that during his time in Neverland he didn’t really become close to any of the Lost Boys. Henry thinks and I agree, that what Neal really needs, what perhaps he’s always needed, is a family.” 

Emma nodded. “I can see that, I guess. But how are you going to explain me being here with you guys? Won’t he think that’s weird?” 

“So we just don’t explain it,” said Henry. “The curse has kept him really isolated. I don’t think he knows you’re supposed to be married to Walsh. He doesn’t seem to know very much about what’s been going on in town, and almost nothing about his father.”

“Huh,” said Emma. “I guess that makes sense. It was the same with Regina. She was really isolated working for my parents.” 

“Aye. Allow people to interact and you risk them forming attachments,” Killian agreed. “I imagine that any kind of genuine connection between people would have threatened the integrity of the curse.” 

“Well, okay,” said Emma. “That sounds like a solid plan, and I’m on board. But I need a serious nap before I deal with Neal or anyone else. I’ve used so much magic today. When’s he supposed to get here?” 

“Not for a few hours yet,” said Killian, kissing her hair. “Go have your nap, love. We’ll be sure to wake you in time.” 

Henry watched as his parents cuddled for a moment then shared a soft kiss, watched his mom head off to their bedroom and watched his dad watching her go. He thought about his grandparents making doey eyes at each other that afternoon at Granny’s, and about Archie and Pongo’s joyful reunion. He thought about his mom so excited about her date with Robin, and about Belle discovering books and his father coming to have dinner with them. He smiled to himself. A day like this one was just about worth getting up early for. 

-

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[triforceangel13]

An Accidental Mating Ch. 4 (A SidLink Omegaverse Story)

Chapter 4: What Was Expected

It had been a couple of months since Sidon had left to go home. Each day that passed the more Link yearned to be by his side. He really had no idea what was making him so desperate to see the Zora again. Sure he loved him and missed him but there was just something else that was having him crave to be there next to him.

Perhaps it was that he had told him he loved him. If it wasn't for the mark sitting on his neck as well as the “fun” that he had that time ago he would have run right to the prince's side and begged him to take him as his own.

Things didn't feel right until he was right next to him. But he couldn't. His duty was to protect Zelda despite that there was no longer any danger.

One didn't know of any possibilities so it was best to stay at his job.

Zelda had noticed the change in him, never once mentioning it however as she took down mental notes of these changes. Small mood swings would occur, him being happy one moment and then close to tears the next. He was eating a lot more now than he usually did, which was saying something considering that he was quite the glutton. There was one more thing she needed to make sure of and only then would she have her full results.

“Link, can I talk to you about something personal?” Zelda asked one day as they sat in her study. Link peered up from the bowl of rice he was eating, shrugging his shoulders.

“Sure,” he responded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The princess rose up from her seat and pulled a chair out for Link to take a seat in.

“Here, sit.”

Link rose from his spot on the floor and took a seat in the chair, setting the bowl of food down on the desk in front of him.

“I've noticed something going on with you. Want to talk about it?” she asked softly. “You can talk to me about anything. You're my best friend.”

Link sighed softly, leaning back a bit. “I just don't feel right. My mind keeps going back to going to the Domain again and again. Like I won't feel right until I get there.”

Zelda nodded her head. “Well that was part of what I was going to ask. Have you been feeling anything else weird lately?”

“Well I keep getting sick every morning but then I feel fine and I eat so much food as usual. Maybe I'm just eating too much,” Link sighed. “Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.”

Zelda started to smile a bit, tapping her chin. “Mind showing me your shoulder?”

“My shoulder?”

“Yes, I want to see your shoulder. You didn't tell me that much about that night, though I don't blame you seeing as you can't remember that much,” she said.

Link sighed, tugging the collar of his tunic to the side to reveal the scar that sat on his shoulder. The mark hadn't faded at all, standing stark against his pale skin. Zelda delicately ran a finger over it, a knowing smile came to his face.

“Alright, first it seems like when you did the deed a couple of months ago, the person you had done it with marked you as his mate. Only alpha bites can remain vibrant on an omega's skin. It's the easiest way to show the omega had been claimed.”

Link paled at that. He had been claimed? The guy he had done it with had marked him as his own and then had left him?

“I think I know what species at least marked you. Let me get my book,” she said, going to the large bookshelf in the room and looking at the titles. She pulled out one and started to flip through its pages, searching for something.

“Each species whether Hylian, Rito, Goron, or Zora each had a distinguishing bite. Gerudo teeth are like ours so it'd be hard to decipher but I believe....”

Link looked to the book as she placed it in front of him, different anatomies of each specifies spread out before him.

“I believe a Zora had marked you,” she stated. “I don't know who it was unless I can get bite marks to compare them to as they are a little similar to one another but they are vastly different from the rest of us.”

Link idly ran his fingers over the mark on his neck. “That explains why I want to return to the Domain so bad.”

“You don't sound exactly happy about that,” she offered.

“I thought it was because of my feelings for the prince,” he told her, his voice thick. “It just turns out it wasn't Sidon and it was because this Zora I slept with is my mated Alpha.”

Zelda was silent a moment, resting her arms on his shoulder as he pulled his knees up to his face and rest his forehead against them.

“Isn't there a way I can undo this?”

“There are a few ways to undo a mating, but there is something that honestly will make it all the more difficult to separate the two of you,” Zelda sighed.

“What is it?”

Zelda sighed. She hated seeing her best friend so upset. He had one night of fun and it seemed like his world was falling apart.

“Link, you had said a couple of months ago that you were late for your heat, correct?” she asked in the most gentlest of ways. The blonde nodded his head, wiping his face of tears. “And you had said that you are late again?”

Link felt a lump form in his throat, his eyes going quickly down to the slightly plump stomach that he was starting to develop.

“I'm pregnant, aren't I?” he asked.

“I believe you might be,” she said gently, petting his hair. “You may have gone into a heat that night and with that combined with what you did resulted in this child. There is no way to separate you from your alpha until the baby is born.”

His shaking hand ran over his stomach, stroking it affectionately. This child, despite had been created with such a mistake he had made, he wasn't going to blame the child.

“Well, we can wait till the baby is born and then separate me from the alpha,” Link said hopefully but Zelad shook her head.

“I wish it was that easy but it's not. This yearning to go will only get worse until you are by the alpha's side. If anything it would make you sick beyond reason. I'm sorry Link but we need to go find him,” she said softly.

Link scowled at that. He didn't want to go. He didn't want to see the man who had abandoned him and the baby, but he also didn't want to have Sidon see him like this, stomach swelled with the child that wasn't his own.

But he didn't want to feel ill or worse end up killing himself if he wasn't by his mated Zora. He would have to power through it.

Perhaps maybe he could figure out why he had left him like that, demand to know why he hadn't said anything.

But what if the Zora had no idea that he was with child? Perhaps. It still hurt that he would just leave after a connection such as that but if he didn't know he was with child he didn't blame him for not knowing.

If it wasn't for the fact that he would become ill if he wasn't by the alpha, this would be news that he would keep to himself. He didn't know the first thing about taking care of a baby but he would learn and he knew Zelda would help him through it.

“Let's take you to the infirmary and see if it is true and I'm not just speaking out of my rear end,” Zelda said with a weak laugh.

Link nodded his head.

* “I need you to go to the bathroom in this so I can do the test,” she said, handing Link a potion bottle with a cork. “I only need a bit so don't fill it up.”

He sighed as he took the bottle, returning a few moments later from the bathroom and passing the bottle reluctantly. He didn't want to take the test but he also wanted to know if it was true that he was pregnant or not. Part of him wanted it to be untrue.

The healer took the bottle, dripping a few drops of another liquid into it and stirred it, nodding her head a little bit.

“Alright, it'll take a few moments till we get our results, so make yourself comfortable,” the healer said, stepping away with the bottle.

Link let out a sigh, taking a seat in one of the chairs. Zelda slowly sat next to him, worry  written on her face. She could understand that his was a hard thing for him. To have someone else's baby as well as be mated to someone else that wasn't the one he was in love with was something that would hurt. She couldn't imagine the turmoil that her friend was feeling.

“Wait, how is it possible for me to be pregnant. If it's a Zora that shouldn't happen. I'm a Hylian. We are two different species,” Link suddenly said, looking to Zelda with hope that he was right, but deep down he knew that it wasn't possible. He was grasping at any possibility now out of his desperation to be normal again.

“Oh Link...” she sighed softly. “I know not having your memory has taken so many important things from you. You had forgotten most of the basics when it comes to alphas and omegas. It does not matter the species. If it's an alpha and the omega is in heat, there is a high chance that you will become pregnant regardless of species.”

Link paused and nodded his head. He knew he should have guessed that. He knew that with all the facts lined up for him he should've known that it was like this. Now the only question that would be posed of was would the child be a Hylian or be a Zora?

“Remind me to give you a book on this sort of thing. I have one in my library,” Zelda offered but knew this was not the news that Link wanted to hear. “Perhaps...maybe you aren't pregnant at all. Maybe you're just under a lot of stress and my hypothesis is wrong.”

Though they knew that he possibility of that was not very high.

“I wouldn't say that your highness,” the healer said as she stepped back into the room and held up the bottle that the liquid inside was now blue. “This says that you are indeed with child and seemed to have been with child for a while now. I'd say you're about three months along.”

Despite that Link knew this was the results of his test, he gently pressed a hand to his stomach, petting it softly as another hand came to his face as he felt tears brim his eyes. This wasn't the child's fault .It was his own. His own for letting a strange Zora he didn't know impregnate him. He really should not have drank that alcohol.

He would raised this child on his own, doing whatever he could to make sure that the child was happy despite he was not.

“I'll leave you two alone,” she said to them, leaving the two in an uncomfortable silence. Zelda rest her hand on Link's and he turned to her quickly, wrapping his arms around his friend as he sank to his knees.

Tears leaked down his cheeks. This was the opposite of what someone would do when they found out they were going to have a baby. But the thought of not being able to be with the prince had overwhelmed him. He was tainted goods. He was owned by someone else. There was no way Sidon would want him now.

“Oh Link...please talk to me,” Zelda urged. Link shook in her arms, one hand clutching his stomach. So many thoughts were going through his head. “Is this because of Sidon?”

Link sat back a bit and nodded his head, wiping the tears on his face. “It's bad enough he thinks that I'm  just someone who sleeps around,” he hiccuped. “But now it's even worse. Now I'll never have the chance to be with him!”

Zelda gazed at him confused, but squeezed her hand  that still rest on his shoulder. “Link, isn't he mated to someone else?”

Link quickly shook his head. “He said to me before he left that he wished it was him in that bedroom with me.”

Green eyes widened and she quickly got what was happening. Sidon was in love with Link just as much as the blonde champion was with the Zora. Having sex with another alpha was something that could be overlooked but now Link was mated as well as pregnant.

Sidon had no right to try to claim for his own unless his alpha abandoned him. From the mark on his neck he was pretty sure that he had no intentions to do so.

“I'm so sorry Link,” she said, kneeling down on the ground and hugging her friend to herself, letting Link cry as much as he wanted.

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[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, JEM! You’ve been accepted for the role of IAGO. Admin Rosey: Jem, you have no idea how much I flailed and screamed and went buckwild while reading this application. The quotes that you picked for the plot points set the stage for an absolutely exceptional application. I think that, with Iago, a difficult task can be capturing his core without humanizing him so that others can understand him. But you gave us insight into his being without us feeling a shred of sympathy for him. Most know that I enjoy the exploration of these sort of characters but it can be so difficult to trust someone with them. There is no one I trust more than you with our duplicitous Iago. Everyone, read this application from beginning to end and weep with me. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Jem.

Age | 25.

Preferred Pronouns | She/her.

Activity Level | I’d say my activity level is about a 6/10! My work schedule is pretty demanding, but I always try to carve out some space in my life for writing, and I’m usually able to plot and crank out replies consistently throughout the week.

Timezone | EST.

Current/Past RP Accounts | Here, here, and here.

IN CHARACTER

Character | Iago/Ivan Rahal.

What drew you to this character? | I’ve been drawn to (re: obsessed with) Ivan since literally the day his biography was posted, but I initially shied away from applying for him because I was, admittedly, a little intimidated by how unrelenting his darkness is, and I wasn’t quite sure I could do justice to a character with so many layers and so many complexities, all of them wrapped in varying shades of evil. But I found that once I began unraveling Ivan layer by layer, that intimidation gave way to fascination, and I became so completely wed to the idea of immersing myself wholly in all of Ivan’s inner workings, in dissecting his person and his psyche as thoroughly as he dissects those around him. Ivan errs on the side of evil, yes, unquestionably so, but his lack of morals is deeply rooted in discipline, and that discipline has bred a methodical, calculative process of destruction that, though morally bankrupt, is unique to Ivan Rahal and Ivan Rahal alone. He’s a villain unlike any other one villain, a monster unlike any other one monster. To delve into the motives of a man who wants for nothing and feels for no one was challenging, yes, but also vastly compelling. Initially, I wasn’t quite sure how to approach a character who’s so definitively dark, but even darkness is painted in different shades and shapes, and Ivan is no exception. He’s cruel, yes, but he metes out his cruelty subtly, and in increments, and only to those he deems worthy of his attention (usually those virtue-bound apostates). He’s rotten, yes, but his rot is tempered some by his self-control, and that leash alone makes him considerably less prone to apocalypse than he might’ve been had been born absent restraint. He’s treacherous, yes, but there is beauty to be found even his treachery: the way he transforms, the way he sheds his snakeskin and shifts it to match the changing colors of the political current. To simply brand him a “monster” is to do a disservice to his many layers, for he’s a creature far more nightmarish than monsters could ever hope to be—and he swathes those nightmares in stardust, tricking the masses into thinking him angel-born, haloed, hallowed by the heavens. He’s cruel, and selfish, and he has a severe deficit of conscience, but he’s also smart, and tenacious, and adaptive, and in this game, in this war, those qualities are invaluable—and that makes him a valuable player here in Verona. Ivan is a villain, to be sure, and one of the worst, but even the most wretched devils in the most wretched circles of hell have their limits, their lines to cross or not cross. And isn’t that what Verona’s about? Flirting with the spectrum of monstrosity; forging lines, and deigning to cross or not cross them; wading in the gray sea of morality. Ivan is a villain, to be sure—and so the question remains: what kind of villain will he be, and what kind of lines will he cross?

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

“A wolf will never be a pet.” —Kamilla Tolnoe He’s a Capulet, to be sure, but make no mistake: Ivan would just as soon slit Cosimo Capulet’s throat as he would Damiano Montague’s if it meant getting his way. The Capulets were little more than convenient to his plans upon his arrival to Verona: he needed to remain close to Odin, and he found the Capulets’ methods of war far more preferable to those of the Montagues. But Ivan’s self-interest remains paramount, and should the Capulets ever become inconvenient to his agenda, his eye might yet wander elsewhere.

“When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War He’s avoided Delilah, and depressed her, and exhausted her, and separated her from Odin, and from the Capulets, and from the Veronesi. And yet still she remains. A broken shell of the woman she once was, to be sure, but Ivan was certain she’d have fled Verona by now, driven from her home by shame and gossip, found to be guilty of adultery by a jury of vipers. And yet still she remains. Curious. Dangerous. Ivan was so certain he’d well and truly broken any love Odin felt for Delilah, but he sees remnants of it in the way he looks at her, in the way he reminisces about her, in the way he shows kindness as an ode to her memory. And that simply won’t do. Not for Ivan, who would not do well to be found out; not for Odin, who would be the first survivor of Ivan’s games; not for Delilah, who would be the first winner of Ivan’s games. It’s the first time Ivan has felt—not quite panic, no, but a sort of unnerving itch, like the chessboard upon which he’s been playing has suddenly been turned around, and he’s disoriented by it. He’s more determined now than he’s ever been to expel Delilah, and all of her suspicions and wiles, from Verona.

“You have played, I think, and broke the toys you were fondest of, and are a little tired now; tired of things that break, and—just tired.” — E.E. Cummings For all of Ivan’s love of games, he’s bound to get bored eventually, no? What happens when he’s made his way through the masses of Verona, when he’s grown tired of his games with Odin, and Delilah, and Chiko, and Pandora? What will happen when he’s broken all of his toys so thoroughly that there’s nothing left to play with? What will he turn his attentions to next? Who will he turn his attentions to next? Will ever there come a time when he finds he can no longer sustain this sort of gameplay, when even his dead, wintry soul grows weary of such cardinal sin?

“What are you? A chaos.” — Anaïs Nin, Fire: From a Journal of Love He’s motivated by power, yet, but not inasmuch as he’s motivated by his passion for destruction. His life’s greatest joy is ruination: his blood sings for it, his heart thrums for it, his bones rattle for it. It’s ingrained in his very being, this endless want for destruction, this mad desire to desecrate all things holy. He’s proven time and again his value to the Capulet mob, but for all of Halcyon’s efforts to leash him, Ivan yet remains feral, untamed, and that could prove problematic, surely, for an organization based on mutual trust and collaboration. How will Ivan’s own motives intersect with those of the mob’s? What will happen when those two sets of motives are no longer compatible? What will happen when Halcyon’s leash breaks?

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | If the admins felt strongly about using Ivan’s death as a plot device, I’d certainly be open to it!

IN DEPTH

“You’re terrible at this,” Ivan groaned to Odin from across the table, eyes flicking from the book in his hand to his companion. Odin, whose face was scrunched with concentration as he stared at the chessboard between them, shot Ivan a dark look. “Must you read while we play?” he groused. “It’s distracting.” Ivan snorted. He very much doubted his reading mid-play had any sway in Odin’s chess skills. In all of their matches, Odin had never once won, had never even come close to beating Ivan—not in the game of chess, and not in the other games Ivan played with him, either. “What else am I supposed to do during the hours you spend deliberating how, exactly, you’re going to lose to me?” Ivan drawled, eyes returning to the book in his hands as he kicked his feet up onto the corner of the table and rocked his chair onto its back legs, his limbs sprawling out—ever the picture of a lazy, contented cat. Odin glared at him and outstretched his palm as if to move a chess piece to make a point. In the end, he decided against it, and returned to his ruminations. Ivan blew out a loud sigh of frustration, and Odin, irked, growled, “What are you reading, anyway?” Ivan didn’t look up as he raised the book in his hands for Odin’s purveyance. “The Art of War?” Odin read the title aloud, brows knitting together. Ivan nodded in confirmation, purring, “Perhaps if you read it, you might stand a chance at winning one of these matches one day.” Odin grunted his disapproval. “What could I possibly learn about chess from a book on war?” “All life is war, Odin,” Ivan said, and the response was so immediate, so instinctive, that Odin raised a brow at him. “Look,” he said, and turned the pages of the book towards Odin, pointing to the chapter’s title: “‘There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general.’ Who’s to say you couldn’t use these faults to outmatch me in chess?” Ivan placed the book on the table, reaching over to Odin’s side of the chessboard, moving one of his rooks forward one space. “Firstly,” he explained, “there is recklessness, which leads to destruction.”

Funerals weren’t so terrible, Ivan supposed. A bit redundant, maybe—how many times in the past hour alone had family and friends alike, red-nosed and puffy-eyed, groveled to Ivan about how wonderful his father was, how kind and true and good. (It had been a concentrated effort for Ivan not to ask each of them, amidst their weeping soliloquies, if they were at the right funeral, or if they had the right Samir Rahal, or if they were deaf or drunk or dumb, because by no stretch of the imagination was Samir Rahal wonderful, or kind, or true, or good.) So—redundant, yes—but not so terrible. If nothing else, the black dress code suited Ivan well—suited Ivan almost as well as the veil of death that lingered overhead, muzzling the gathered crowd with a heavy blanket of despair. It was a hunting ground for his ilk: a garden of eden nouveau, abound with trees sprouting apples ripe for the picking. And he was the black-and-silver-scaled garden snake, weaving about their ankles, hissing nightmares into their ears, all at once at the helm and bow of their ruin. Ivan had a way about him that was nearly reptilian in nature (an ode to his true essence, he supposed)—the way he moved, the way he spoke, it was all very…snakelike. Eyes slitted with alert focus; a lean, muscled body that seemed to swagger and sway with an ease that was far too predatory; a tongue poised with venom, and a sharp set of teeth to match. And those eyes, more animal than human, turned to the crowd before him, picking through the masses with a cool, hooded gaze that eventually zeroed in on his younger brother, who stood just beyond the stained glass doors of the church house, trying in vain to light a cigarette with a now-empty lighter. Turning on his heel, Ivan slinked through the crowd and sidled up next to his brother, a matte black lighter already in his outstretched palm as he approached. (Ivan himself didn’t smoke, but he made a habit of keeping a lighter on his person—all worthwhile negotiations were made over shared cigarettes, after all.) “Why the long face, Joseph?” he deadpanned, lighting the end of his brother’s cigarette in one fluid, graceful motion. His brother gave him an incredulous look before drawing a sharp inhale, hands shaking as he took the cigarette from between his lips and flicked its bud, ash catching on a gust of wind and scattering between them both. Ivan clicked his tongue with admonishment as he swatted a fleck of ash off of the lapel of his jacket. “What did Armani ever do to you?” he drawled, face lax with cool indifference. Joseph’s only response was a vulgar gesture and a mean scowl. “So sensitive, brother,” Ivan chuckled—and he was. Of all three Rahal children, Joseph had always been the most tempestuous, too easily steered this way and that by the unpredictable tide of emotion. Messy—Joseph was always so messy, and that sort of disposition made for easy prey. “You look well for the son of a dead man,” Joseph noted, glancing sidelong at Ivan. “You don’t,” Ivan countered, eyebrows raised as he looked pointedly at his brother’s trembling hands, at his pallid face, at the way his eyes glazed over blankly. Joseph shrugged, and Ivan noted with no small delight the defeated sag of his brother’s shoulders. He was prime for ruin, riper now in all his sorrow than he’d ever been before. “Nicotine isn’t quite doing the trick today, I see,” Ivan said. “Perhaps whiskey will.” He jerked his chin at the tumbler in his brother’s shaking hand. “What, Ivan?” Joseph hissed. “Are you going to tell me what you used to tell Baba?” Joseph screwed up his voice and deepened his voice a few octaves, mimicking Ivan’s rich timbre. “Alcohol isn’t the solution, now, is it?” “Technically,” Ivan pointed out matter-of-factly, “alcohol is a solution—of the chemical sort, of course.” He expected another vulgar gesture from Joseph, a growl or grunt at the very least, but he instead looked to Ivan with round, pleading eyes, seeking salvation from the very source of his damnation. Stupid boy, Ivan almost wanted to chide him. So reckless in his trust. It was too easy with Joseph—boring, almost, to feast on a thing so bent and broken. Joseph looked at Ivan as if he were the salve to all of his wounds, not knowing that he was plague that fostered pitfalls of pestilence beneath those very wounds, nourishing his hurts with black tar and rot, siphoning the life from him without a trace. And this was perhaps Joseph’s greatest fault of all: he wanted, and he wanted recklessly. He wanted to heal the wound without first dressing it; he wanted to feel, but to feel only the good, never the bad; he wanted stability, but plunged headlong into life’s greatest uncertainties: love, drugs, death. He wanted, wanted, wanted, Joseph, and he was reckless in his wants, desperate enough to procure them that he would’ve placed his trust in anyone who claimed they could deliver him those wants, even Lucifer himself. And, well, here he was: Lucifer himself, Ivan Rahal, tongue coated with the poison of promises unkept, poised to deliver Joseph the salvation he so recklessly pursued. “Brother,” he entreated, outstretching his hand for his brother’s taking. “Come.” Joseph obeyed without question and reached his arm outward, and when his fingers clasped around Ivan’s and met with the cool, hard steel of a needle concealed in the palm of his brother’s hand, the clouds in his eyes cleared, replaced by the mad glint of a reckless man who’d just discovered a new want.

“Then,” Ivan said, “there’s cowardice, which leads to capture.” He reached across the chessboard to move Odin’s rook back one space—a fearful retreat.

“Mama,” he crooned from his place at the kitchen’s entryway, one shoulder propped against the doorframe. “You look tired.” The effort he used to layer his voice with varying shades of concern was minimal (his charades, even in his young adulthood, had long since become instinctual—more second nature than conscious effort). He pushed off the doorway and moved to her side, eyes round with feigned concern. She turned to him, face weathered, drawn, bruises of purplish blue blooming beneath her eyes from sleeplessness. She smiled at him, and if he had any heart at all, it might’ve broken at the sight: a sad, sorry widow, joyous at the sight of her imagined savior, blind to the life he leeched from her, ignorant of the poison he injected into the very marrow of her being. Yes, if he had any heart at all, it might have broken, but the foul, writhing beast that inhabited the arctic wasteland of his ribcage didn’t break: it preened at the spectacle of heartache, like a desert rose blooming in the midst of high summer. So fragile, the human spirit; so easily broken. “Nothing to trouble yourself over, sweet son,” she said, reaching out a hand to place over his own. Her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled up at him, and he noted with some small dismay the veins of gray that began to creep into the edges of her thick sable hair. Her age in spirit had taxed her age in body, made older by his father’s shortcomings than she might have been had she married a good, kind man. Her eyes seemed ever round with fear these past years, murky and unclear, as though she were constantly treading the tide of cowardice, fighting to stay afloat, grasping with slippery hands at the anchor of courage. He pitied her, but it was a cruel pity, not a kind one; the sort of pity that might belong to a wolf who’s just come across wounded game. Pitiful, but still hungry; pitiful, but still hunting. Ivan’s gaze slid from her hunched form to a pile of envelopes laid out before his mother: bills, he imagined, all left unpaid by his father. In one sweeping gesture, he reached out, gathered the bills in one hand, and stuffed them into the pocket of his overcoat, leaning down to press a tender kiss to his mother’s temple. “I’ll take care of it,” he murmured—and he meant it. He’d pay the bills, every last dollar, every last cent. But he wouldn’t do it for love, or for pity—he’d do it for the game. The game of giving and taking, of building and breaking; of nursing his mother with riches of love and wealth only to watch her wither at their gradual extinction. When she looked to him, her eyes were watery with gratitude, but there was a sort of murkiness there, too—a kind of cowardice; a fear of unknowing, of a mother unable to care for her brood. And he fed it, that fear—nourished it in his mother so tenderly, so subtly, that she would already have succumbed to it by the time she realized fear’s talons had burrowed into the essence of her. And perhaps it was because of that fear that she smiled when Ivan pulled a small bottle of pills from his coat pocket and placed it on the table before her. “For the exhaustion, Mama,” he said. “It’ll help you sleep.” She didn’t hesitate in taking the bottle and tucking it between the folds of her dress. Because she was fearful, and because Ivan had trapped her in that fear—a cage made by his own masterful hand, carved from the shadows of nightmares and the rot of death, stitched together with naught but the fine web of her own unbecoming, her deepest dreads and terrors. “Ivan,” she sighed, and his name on her tongue sounded like a hymn, a prayer. “What ever did I do in this life to deserve a son like you?” He didn’t have an answer for her.

“Thirdly,” Ivan said, “there’s a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults.” He moved one of his own rooks forward three spaces. Odin raised his hand to move his own rook forward, eager to capture Ivan’s rook, but Ivan held up one of his hands, gesturing for him to wait, to temper himself.

“Son!” his father grunted from his study, the single syllable slurred with what Ivan could only assume was brandy, if he was lucky—whiskey, if he was not (Samir Rahal was not half as cruel drunk on brandy as he was drunk on whiskey.) Eyebrows raised, he exchanged a knowing look with his brother, who sat in the chair opposite him. “It’s your turn,” Ivan said matter-of-factly, returning his attention to the book in his hands (some old, weathered text about European trade stratagem). “Please, brother,” Joseph groaned, voice strained. He was only two years younger than Ivan, a young seventeen now, but when he was like this, begging, he looked much younger. Ivan flicked his gaze back to his brother to find wide, pleading eyes round with fear. Ivan heaved a sigh, exasperated. So dramatic, he was.“What’ll you give me for it?” Ivan asked, one eyebrow cocked. “Anything,” Joseph said quickly, sounding far too desperate for a man attempting negotiation. Ivan made a noise of disgust and moved with swift grace as leaned forward in his chair to smack the side of Joseph’s head with his book. “Never promise anyone anything,” he hissed. “God above, Joseph, have I taught you nothing?” His brother muttered a curse and made a show of rubbing the back of his head, but he said nothing more. “Here,” Ivan said, tossing the book in Joseph’s lap as he stood to his full height. “Read it. It might do you some good.” And so he went, off to his father’s study, straight to the fat, drunk lion’s den. But was of no favor to Joseph that he went, no (Ivan’s actions were not—not ever—motivated by anything but self-interest). He went to his father not to spare Joseph his wrath, but to incur it. It was part of their game—his father, drunk and foolish and full of ego, thinking himself a god, a Zeus of old age; and Ivan preying on his foolishness, and his drunkenness, and his ego, a Hades of new age come to usurp the gods of old and claim his kingdom come. “You rang, Baba?” Ivan said as he entered his father’s study, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He was greeted with an empty bottle of Jack catapulted by his father’s own hand that crashed into the wall just a few centimeters to the left of Ivan’s head. Whiskey it was, then. Pity—for his father. Ivan schooled his face into a mask of boredom as he brushed a mist of shattered glass from the sleeve of his shirt. “You’ll mind your aim next time,” he said cooly, turning to the round mirror hung on the wall and inspecting his face for embedded shards of glass. His skin remained unscathed, save for a few small scratches on his cheeks and chin. “The Versace,” he said, gesturing to the fabric of his shirt, “can be replaced. The face cannot.” Ivan’s indifference had always irked Samir well, and already he was incensed, outraged by his son’s insolence. “You’ll mind your mouth next time, boy,” his father growled, and he moved to take a step towards Ivan, but the motion made him sway, and he thought better of it, instead planting his feet firmly in the ground and anchoring his hands on his hips to save face. But the misstep did not go unnoticed by Ivan, and he practically purred at the advantage his father had just handed him. The game had only just begun, and already he’d won. “Sealegs aren’t working well today?” Ivan asked, one corner of his lips hitching upward cruelly. His father, with that fickle ego so easily provoked, began to unravel before Ivan’s very eyes. It was the unbecoming combination of fury and pride, Ivan was sure, that drove Samir forward a step, and Ivan raised an eyebrow pointedly at the way his father grabbed the back of his leather armchair to steady himself. “Was there a reason you called for me, Father? Or did you only want an audience to spectate your balancing act?” Rage, untethered and undiluted, eclipsed the clarity in Samir’s eyes. “I called for you,” he snarled, vicious now, “because I wanted to look into the eyes of my thieving son”—he pointed a finger at his ransacked liquor cabinet, which now housed only two lone bottles of Jack—“and hear his defense before I beat him bloody and throw him out of my house and onto the street for the wolves to devour.” Ivan flicked his gaze to the near-empty liquor cabinet, drawling, “I only drink top-shelf, I’m afraid”—a denial, a half-truth, and a half-lie all in one. He did, indeed, only drink top-shelf liquor, but he did also, indeed, pour most of his father’s liquor stock down the kitchen sink for no reason in particular other than game-playing. “I don’t think Mama would be terribly pleased with you exiling her eldest from your house, do you, Baba?” Ivan mused, ambling over to the liquor cart at the center of the room and pouring an amber-colored liquid out of the decanter and into a tumbler. “Your house,” he repeated, turning the words over on his tongue in slow, dripping syllables. “Is it, though?” he asked, raising the glass in his hand and swirling it about. “When’s the last time you paid one of those bills?” he asked, nodding to the pile of envelopes that lay on his desk—no doubt electric bills and property taxes and mortgage notices, all of which Ivan had paid and righted in the year prior. And he’d paid them not for kindness, or for decency, or for love of family, but for power—for this moment right here. He’d been steadily gaining the upper hand in this very war for just over a year now, a general priming himself for victory: fashioning his mother and brother and sister into an army of loyal allies eager to defend his honor; sharpening his tongue into a weapon of mass destruction, arming himself against his father with an arsenal of information; drawing up blueprints of Samir’s weakest points, testing for faults in his defenses and marking them down in detail. Yes, he’d been preparing for this war for a long, long time now, fighting and winning small battles all the while, and Samir, the poor fool, had only just now realized war had been waged. It was almost unfair—to go to war with a foe so disadvantaged. Samir made a gruff noise of outrage, face red with fury. “Can you remember the last time you paid a bill for this house, Father?” he asked, and he layered the question with enough innuendo that it sounded more like, “Can you remember anything at all, you miserable, wretched drunk?” Ivan moved towards the desk and began rifling about the already opened envelopes, reading their contents aloud one by one. “Electric bill—account balance paid in the name of Ivan Rahal. Water bill—account balance paid in the name Ivan Rahal. Home insurance—account balance paid in the name of Ivan Rahal.” He flipped through the envelopes unceremoniously, and each time he spoke his own name may as well have been a knife to his father’s gut. “Ivan Rahal, Ivan Rahal, Ivan Rahal,” he crooned, dropping the stack of envelopes back onto the desk with a loud thud. “It would seem, then, that this is my house after all. Perhaps I ought to exile you, Baba, and see how well you fare with the street wolves.” Samir sputtered like a fish, so consumed by his outrage that he didn’t know which vein of fury to latch onto, which battle to fight first. It was no matter, though, for whichever battle he might’ve chosen, he would’ve lost—he already had. “Don’t fret, Father—I’m not an unreasonable man,” he said, again swirling the tumbler of liquor in his hand. “You may remain here, in my house.” And then, making a show of it, he brought the tumbler to his nose, sniffed once, grimaced in distaste, and poured the amber liquid out into the dimly lit fire, which roared to life with a grand whoosh. “But I’ll not have whiskey under my roof,” he said, scowling. “Certainly not bottom-shelf whiskey.” And that was it: his final blow—placed well and delivered even better. It landed perfectly, beautifully, the way a symphony’s sonata ends on one grand crescendo, and his father, mad with rage, lunged at Ivan. He made it one, two, three steps before stumbling over his own feet, thrown off balance by the heavy weight of whiskey. He fell at Ivan’s feet, groaning something awful and spitting half-intelligible curses at his son, a god bending a knee to his usurper. Zeus falls, Hades rises. Ivan sneered down at Samir, his face cold as he crouched down beside him. “Need a hand?” he asked, only the way he said it—darkly, and imbued with shades of malignant rot—sounded more like a threat than an offer of aid. His father, cheeks, eyes, and nose all bright with redness, looked up at him, and when Samir Rahal did, indeed, take his son’s hand, Ivan knew he’d won this war after all.

“And then, lastly,” Ivan said, “there’s a delicacy of honor, which is sensitive to shame.” Ivan moved forward one of his pawn’s.

The soft, clinking ring of the pawn shop’s doorbell drew Ivan’s attention, and he watched through cool, narrowed eyes as a woman with dark skin and dark hair that tumbled down her back in messy curls strode through the front door. Ivan studied her as she weaved in and out of treasure troves scattered about the small shop, her eyes catching most often on paintings. She seemed wild, feverish, full to the brim with a kaleidoscope of life’s greatest joys: love, beauty, freedom, passion, honor. Unbent and unbroken, she enchanted Ivan, and that, he supposed, was unfortunate for her, for the epicenter Ivan Rahal’s attention was not a pleasant place to be. With quiet, slinking steps, he slithered up to her side, where she was admiring a Syrian fresco of moderate value he’d extorted from an old friend. “What’s the going price?” she asked, not bothering to break eye contact with the painting. “There is none,” he replied smoothly, to which she furrowed her brow and canted her head in silent question, her gaze darting from the painting to Ivan. “I don’t trade in the currency of coin here.” A half-truth. He did, on occasion, accept monetary payments, but most often, his preferred currency came in the form of secrets and owed favors. “What do you want for it, then?” she asked. “A name seems a fair starting point,” he said, propping his shoulder against an old, mammoth grandfather clock adjacent to the painting she was studying. She smiled then, and it was a brilliant, dazzling thing—a vision of beauty that Ivan admired not only for its capacity to be ruined, but for its loveliness, too. “Sirena De Angelis,” she said. “Sirena De Angelis,” he repeated, each syllable rich and heady on his tongue. “You’re a painter, then, Sirena De Angelis?” More an observation than a question, and when she shot him another quizzical look, he slowly reached out one hand to curl a stray tendril of hair coated in dried blue paint around his pointer finger, holding it within her scope of vision for her purveyance. Matching splotches of blue streaked other places in her hair, and speckles of it peeked through the neckline of her blouse. “You’re either a painter, or a girl with some rather…messy proclivities in the bedroom,” he purred, hooded eyes falling first to the paint in her hair, and then downward, to the low-cut vee of her shirt. She blushed furiously, and for a moment, he wondered if she might surrender right there and storm out in a fury. But his initial assessment of her rang true, and her eyes lit with a fire untethered, a passion unmatched. “Can’t I be both?” she challenged, and he smiled at that—a real, rare sort of smile, one that met his dead eyes. “You’d have to tell me, I imagine.” “And then will I have earned the painting?” she shot back. Ah, smart girl. She was learning how to play his game, and he was excited, endlessly, to have found a partner that could match him—if only for a little while; if only until he well and truly broke her. “This painting,” he said, sweeping one arm outward towards the fresco, “was recovered from the remains of the Royal Palace in Mari during a French archaeologist’s excavation in 1935.” Leisurely, he pushed off of the grandfather clock and neared Sirena in slow, lazy steps. “It’ll cost you more than a confession, signora.” He paused, one corner of his lips quirking. “Even one so delicious.” She cocked her head, considering. “What’ll it cost me, then?” He studied her, eyes fixed on hers with feverish intent, daring her to falter, to misstep. But she met his gaze with equal intensity, eyes of green smoldering with the same amber fire that seemed to emblazon the very core of her spirit. “A kiss will suffice,” he said plainly, casually. That seemed to throw her off balance, and for a moment, her full lips floundered open and closed, searching for a response. She eventually settled on: “I’m married, signor!”—which she emphasized by flourishing her left hand, showcasing the unimpressive diamond ring on her fourth finger. He’d guessed as much (he catalogued each person he met, and the wedding band she wore had not gone unnoticed during his initial assessment of her). “So am I,” he countered. That gave her pause, and some of her anger gave way to confusion, and perhaps a bit of outrage. “You’re—married?” “No,” he admitted, chuckling, and she looked positively irate at being toyed with so cruelly. “But if I were, would it matter?” “Of course it would matter!” she exclaimed, insistent. “Why?” he asked. “Because,” she huffed, “it’s—it’s—dishonorable!” He barked a laugh, the sound rich with amusement. “Ya haram,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Is that it, then? Honor?” He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest. “I didn’t think such a thing existed in Verona.” “Well—it does,” she said stubbornly, mimicking the action of crossing her arms over her chest: a true competitor through and through. They stared at each other for long seconds, perhaps even minutes, and it was Ivan who finally broke the silence. “Honor, like art, is subjective,” he said, and moved to stand beside her, facing the painting. She opened her mouth to argue, but he continued on before she could voice her opposition. “Here”—he pointed to the top of the painting: a sky painted in a flurry of dreamy hues, dappled with shades of pinks, oranges, and creams—“I see the beginnings of a sunset, but you may see the beginnings of a sunrise.” She didn’t argue that (she mightn’t have had a counterpoint to argue with at all). He turned to her, closer now than he’d been before, head bowed to meet her at eye level. “You think it’s dishonorable to kiss me, but I think it’s dishonorable to waste a pair of willing lips.” She held his gaze, her face taut with the busy inner workings of her mind. “We’re at an impasse, then,” she breathed, ragged, and they were so close now that the soft whoosh of air she expelled fanned his face. “So it would seem.” He studied her a moment longer, and when their lips were naught but an inch apart, he abruptly straightened to his full height, turned to the painting, removed it from its easel, and handed it to Sirena. Dazed, she took the painting, eyes round with confusion as she looked from the fresco to Ivan, then back to the fresco, then back to Ivan. “Take it,” he said, turning on his heel to retreat to his back office. “It’s worth much, Signora De Angelis,” he called over his shoulder, pausing at his office door to turn to look at her one last time. “But it’s not worth your honor.” He delivered the lie so well, he almost believed himself. She returned to the shop the next night and proved to him two things: firstly, that the painting was, after all, worth her honor, and secondly, that yes, she was indeed a painter and she did indeed have some rather messy proclivities in the bedroom—or, well, in the back office of a pawn shop, on top of a desk that was littered with various containers of paints and inks Ivan used for forgery. And so began their tryst: a mad, wild, tempestuous affair, imbued with all things rotten: deceit, infidelity, lust. They fucked viciously, desperately, grasping at each other for air, for life, for passions long denied. Each joining was more frenzied than the last, an unholy union lush with labored breathing and tangled limbs, writhing bodies and sweat-slicked skin, pleas and groans and moans, scratch marks and bite marks. And yet, in spite of its malignancy, their affair bloomed with beauty abound: he’d bring her Egyptian paints of the richest hues, and she’d paint him, and after, or during, they’d make love; he’d pull her into alleyways in broad daylight to do wretched, wonderful things to her, and she’d slip away from her sleeping husband in the dead of night and sneak into Ivan’s apartment to do wretched, wonderful things to him; she’d collect little treasures—pendants or rings or books—for him to sell in his pawn shop, and for each treasure she gave him, he returned the favor, showering her with gifts galore: a sapphire-stoned choker dating back to the 20s, a sundress embroidered with spun gold, a vintage Versace scarf. Ivan took great care to wean her on him, to immerse her in his person, in his essence. He kissed her well, loved her well, romanced her well, fucked her well. He fashioned himself the axis upon which her world spun, bent himself to her will to fool her into thinking she’d brought a god to knees. Everything she was, her world in its grand scope, became deeply rooted in him, and only once she was well and truly infatuated, once he’d pulled the wool over her eyes and led her astray from all the other sheep, did he unsheathe those big, wolfish teeth. His extracted himself from her life in increments—slow, poisonous increments. He began with small things: gone were the terms of endearment, the thorough, passion-filled sex, the thoughtful gifts, the affection. In their stead, he sewed seeds of doubt and uncertainty: screening her calls, letting his gaze drift pointedly to other women, coming when dusk settled and leaving before dawn broke. And when the early dregs of madness began to cloud her once-clear eyes, he exited her life altogether, severing himself from her so cleanly that there were times she wondered if it had happened at all, or if Ivan Rahal had been the making of a nightmare dressed in dreams. And then, when he’d stripped her of nearly everything, her love and her hope and her joy, he took what remained: her honor. Early on in their tryst, she’d gifted him one of her paintings: a watercolor vision of Ivan sprawled half-naked in her bed at dawn, hair mussed, eyes heavy-lidded and face soft from sleep. One morning, that very painting arrived at her husband’s workplace, and when Sirena returned home that evening, he cast her out of his house and his heart as thoroughly as Ivan had, and in the following weeks, Verona’s hotbed of gossip devoured what remained of her ill repute. Months later, Ivan was reading the paper when he saw it: Sirena De Angelis, 27, found drowned in the Adige on Sunday. And he felt—nothing, really. Surprise, perhaps, and maybe even a bit of nostalgia, but not sorrow, and certainly not guilt. Honor would have driven him to guilt, but he had none. Sirena had honor, and it drove her into the Adige.

There was a beauty in this tête-à-tête between he an Odin—a perverse irony in the way he laid out precisely how he would set out to bring down the lionhearted fool. He would take his time with Odin—would destroy him thoroughly, slowly. The muse that whet his appetite for apocalypse. He would desecrate all that was holy about Odin, would ransack his temple of virtue and leave that cavern hollow and wanting, a new habitat for his demons to occupy. He would water Odin’s small seed of recklessness with brandy and whiskey, with long, late nights spent at The Dark Lady, with the occasional hit of this drug or that drug. And then, he would feed his fears with whispers of his beloved’s adultery: creating imagined visions of Delilah’s eye straying a touch too far at that gala the week prior; waxing poetic about her beauty, a beauty unmatched even by the seraphs carved by Michelangelo’s own hand. And only once Odin was well and truly rooted in the trenches of his own cowardice would Ivan start poking at the weak spots of his temper, needling them, hollowing them out until he was naught but a bundle of raw nerves, easily provoked into fits of rage that Ivan would be sure to redirect in Delilah’s direction. And then he would prey on Odin’s honor, which Ivan imagined would prove the most challenging stage of Odin’s destruction, for his honor was deeply ingrained in his core, the foundation upon which his person was built. But Ivan would warp it, he was sure—would poison Odin’s honor until it was too delicate to battle his ego, until his reputation and its perseverance became his sole focus, and there was little he would not do to keep it intact (little he would not do to spurn his wife and outcast her as the villainess of the story to paint himself the hero-victim). Swiftly, Ivan reached across the chessboard to move forward Odin’s queen, which then checked Ivan’s king, left exposed without the protection of pawns and rooks. “Checkmate.”

EXTRAS

You can find a Pinterest board for Ivan here, a playlist here, and an instrumental playlist here!

MBTI: ENTJ. Astrology: Scorpio (November 2nd). Moral Alignment: Neutral Evil. Enneagram Type: Type 8. Headcanons:

OCCUPATION: His uncanny knack for weaning people on poison has long made him one of the Capulets most able dealers, and Odin has since restricted the majority of his duties to networking clients and peddling weaponry, dealing heavily in the black market trade of firearms. His silver tongue and military experience make him an extraordinary dealer of illegal weapons, and he’s cemented his place amongst the Capulet ranks as one of their best merchants, so to speak. In addition to his role as a Capulet soldier, Ivan owns and runs a small pawn shop in Verona called Handkerchief (an apropos ode to the Shakespearean tragedy from which he inherited his codename). Ivan is, and has always been, a procurer of things not easily procured: weapons, liquor, jewels, drugs, blackmail, information. And so it seemed natural, really, for him to set up shop and capitalize on his trade of black market products—a front to trade treasures for information, to curry owed favors and debt among those foolish enough to make a deal with Verona’s snake-skinned devil. By the looks of it, Handkerchief is little more than a small, homespun pawn shop in the heart of Verona, rife with trinkets, antiques, and paintings of great value. But in the back of the shop, dealings of a far more sordid nature take place, and it’s behind the shop’s plain front that you’ll find a variety of illegal goods ranging from firearms, to poisons, to drugs, and all matter of unseemly things. The pawn shop works partly as an outlet through which Ivan can peddle black market weaponry on behalf of the Capulets, but his business is equally rooted in more selfish interests, and it’s not uncommon for Ivan to trade away items of great value for information or I-owe-you favors to be cashed in on a rainy day. Whether or not he chooses to share the information and servitude he grosses from personal ventures is his own prerogative—one he handles on a case-by-case basis.

WEAPONS: His military service in the Middle East was a study in all sorts of weaponry, but Ivan’s found he’s partial to knives, old-fashioned though they may be. There’s something exquisite about robbing life with something pretty, something luxurious. It makes a dirty business something elegant, dresses murder up in glitter and gold—or sparkles and silver,as circumstance would have it. He quite likes the feel of a blade’s hilt, silver and etched with the Capulet crest, fitted against his palm like a babe burrowed against the nook of her mother’s neck. Seldom does he travel without knives—karambits, butterfly knives, combat knives—hidden beneath his jackets, in his boots, up his sleeves, and you can count on each blade in his possession to be coated in some variation of poison, be it monkshood or henbane, nightshade or yew (he’s a connoisseur of poisons, and is well-versed in those natural toxins that kill cleanly, sleekly, with no trace of his person). Veronesi at first made the mistake of thinking Ivan less skilled in physical combat than his Capulet companions, too reliant on fighting of the intellectual sort. But he schooled them all in his capacity for ruin of any kind, and he has since developed some repute as one of the Capulets most notorious assassins, skilled well in weaponry and even better in discipline and strategy (a product of his time spent fighting wars overseas). But perhaps Ivan’s greatest weapon in his arsenal is his tongue, and oh, does he use it well. Perhaps never in the history of the modern world has one man’s mouth been so capable of ruin. It’s with words that he’s laid waste to whole cities, imbuing his chosen victims with the sort of fear that rattles bones and teeth alike. He can talk most anyone into most anything with that tongue of his: he can talk enemies into lovers, can talk lovers into spies, can talk spies into allies, can talk allies into enemies—and so on. His wish is will where his knack for persuasion is concerned, and it is for this reason and this reason alone that Cosimo Capulet welcomed Ivan Rahal, a wild card without conscience or loyalty, into his ranks with open arms—because that sort of tongue could turn the tides of war.

FAMILY: The eldest of three children, Ivan was born to Samir and Esmeralda Rahal, neither of whom were well-suited to raise children. Esme, even before Ivan poisoned her against herself, seemed not of this Earth, perhaps forged from the clouds, untethered to the world and its realities. She was untethered, manic with faraway dreams and giggly lunacy (a byproduct of marriage to his father, from whom she was desperate to escape, even by means of imagination). She was horribly ill-equipped to raise a brood of three unruly children, and Samir was no better off. He was unhinged, dependent on whiskey to see him through his days and scotch to see him through his nights. Gruff and cruel and violent, Samir was no better able to raise his children than Esme, and the only bit of parenting he ever contributed to his lot came in the form of raised voices and raised hands (fists, if he was running low on Jack) when they misbehaved. No, Samir and Esme were not well-suited to raise a family, and so the Rahal children raised themselves. The oldest of three, much of what Ivan learned as a boy was self-taught. He taught himself how to read, how to play chess, how to tie his shoes, how to speak English, how to write Arabic. Then, when he was two, Joseph came, and four years after that, Yara came, and he taught them these things, too, because playing chess with someone who doesn’t know how to play chess is no fun at all. And then, when he was older, he taught himself how to drive, how to light a cigarette, how to negotiate, how to court lovers, how to hold a gun. These learned trades, though, he kept to himself, because playing chess with someone who knows all your tricks is no fun at all, either. Joseph was tempestuous—hypersensitive to his emotional keep and prone to chronic mood swings. Yara was gentle—a soft bloom of a girl too sweet to be sustained by the cold winter of the life the stars had designed for her. And their parents, one a madwoman full of sorrow and the other a catatonic drunk, did nothing to correct their children’s ills. Ivan’s love of catastrophe began here, with his father, who grew less and less alive with each gulp of amber liquor, a gradual deconstruction of man that fascinated Ivan endlessly. And it was not just deconstruction of man, but self-deconstruction of man, for what did Ivan do but place the bottles into his father’s own hand? And then, once he was weaned, what did Ivan do but take the bottles away? What did Ivan do but press needles discretely into his brother’s palm? What did Ivan do but bring his mother bottles of pills big and small, blue and pink? What did Ivan do but whisper doubt and misery into his sister’s ear? Ivan didn’t force his father into a depressive withdrawal so intense that he died of a heart attack. Ivan didn’t press the needle into the crease of Joseph’s elbow. Ivan didn’t force his sister into developing a habit of whoring around just to feel whole, alive. Ivan didn’t shove those pills down his mother’s throat. Was it not Ivan who arranged his father’s funeral and thereafter (and for some time before) looked after the family’s finances? Was it not Ivan who paid for all three of Joseph’s rehabilitation stints? Was it not Ivan who came to pick up his weeping sister whensoever she beckoned him, despairing outside of clubs or alleyways or her lovers’ apartments, seeking comfort and safety? Was it not Ivan who, when Esme was too lethargic to get out of bed, brought her groceries and fresh flowers from the market? What did Ivan do but hand his family their own instruments of destruction and let them have at it, swooping in at the end of it all to save them from themselves. What guilt did he bear in their ruination when all he ever did was give them the choice between ascent and descent. Was it his fault that they chose Hell over Heaven? Was it his fault that they suckled from Eden’s ripe apple tree like famished pests? Was it his fault that they never learned to play chess well?

APPEARANCE: He’s always belonged to the shadows, Ivan, and he dresses in their colors like a ship flying its kingdom’s sails. Black, black, black. He wears slacks and shirts of varying shades of black and grey, all embroidered with veins of Capulet silver. Jewelry gets in the way of his unique lifestyle, and so he doesn’t wear much of it, but he often dons rings, on most every finger. Rings thieved from his victims, his lovers, his foes. They’re trophies of wars waged and won, and they make the bite of a mean right hook even meaner. The only other piece of jewelry he wears is a silver cuff around his wrist fashioned to resemble a serpent with eyes of embedded emerald. It was a gift from a freshly heartbroken Odin—a trinket crafted from the melted remains of his silver wedding band and forged into a band of brotherhood—a gift to the savior who spared him his wife’s faithlessness and preserved Odin’s repute amidst a scandal tainted with shame and dishonor. Ivan wears it daily—an ode to his greatest masterpiece, his most fatal plague.

MANNERISMS & HABITS: Subtle and discrete, you must look to his body language to discern his moods: a cocked eyebrow when he’s intrigued, rigid shoulders when he’s hyper-focused, a scowl when he’s displeased, a crooked smile when he’s up to no good (and he’s never up to any good). To many, he’s an enigma, swathed in shadow and bathed in mystery, no discernible telltales to give away his moods. Ivan’s gone to great lengths to perfect the art of smiling when he wants to bite. A little faux charm goes a long way, and for none is this truer than Ivan Rahal. A master of transfiguration, he sheds his snakeskin like an art. A dance of duality, he straddles worlds with exquisite ease: the noble son, the dutiful wardog, the loving brother, the loyal soldier, the steadfast companion, the devoted lover. A purveyor of worlds, he knows well how to appeal to the masses, how to mold his person to suit his audience. Some know him to be sweet-eyed and sweet-tongued, and other knows him to be devil-eyed and devil-tongued; it all depends on what game he’s playing, what role best suits his interests. And that’s what it’s all about, really: his games. He fights dirty, kills dirty, fucks dirty. His father taught him young that honorable men are remembered for naught but dying young and dying easy. And so he lives without honor: thieving indiscriminately, killing indiscriminately, screwing indiscriminately. And this is how he gets away with it: smiles. Darkness, to Ivan, is an art, and he’s gone to great lengths to refine it. The whole of Verona knows him to be lethal, the Capulet mob’s grim reaper raised feral and trained wicked. But so easily do they forget that he’s a killer, a beast untethered by the human weight of a moral compass. He’s dark in the way he smiles sweetly with the same lips that have sneered down at the corpses of his victims; he’s dark in the way his hands curl around his lovers’ throats one night and around his foes’ throats the next (darker yet in the ease with which he demotes lover to foe). How many of his once-lovers and once-friends have suffered the winter of his cool indifference once he’s used them all up and thieved their greatest joys, their greatest loves? How many people—children, mothers, fathers, wives—have fallen pray to his foul games and tricks? With his lazy grins, a chin raised a fraction too high, hooded, cool eyes, and a masterful combination of archaic elegance, indifference, and a silver tongue always poised with lies and half-truths, it’s easy to be bewitched by Ivan’s bacchanalian beauty, to forget that he’s a killer (a good one, too)—and by the time they remember, it’s far too late.

LANGUAGES: Born in Syria, Ivan’s native tongue is Arabic, but he’s since mastered a handful of languages across the globe. He fancied himself the weapon of conversation at a young age, and he knew early on that what makes a weapon powerful is, above all, its versatility—its ability to be wielded against all manner of friend and foe. And so he immersed himself in cultures and languages across the world, diversifying his greatest weapon as well as he was able. During his early travels, he familiarized himself with German and Russian, and then, during his military tour, he picked up the Romantic languages (Spanish, French, Italian—a very small bit of Romanian). Since joining the Capulets, he’s become near-fluent in Italian and Spanish, and he’s made an effort to school himself in Zulu for the sake of his South African contacts. His versatile tongue and wide-ranging cultural scope has made him anoutstanding negotiator and conversationalist among the Capulets, and he is known well for his diplomacy by Capulet contacts in Spain and South Africa.

[lokismercedes]

A History Lesson and a Date

 A Loki x reader one-shot based on the Valentines Day prompts from loki-the-fox:

44: “Yeah nothing says ‘I love you’ more than bouquet that’ll die in two days              time.”

46: “My mom gave a rose because she felt sorry for me”

Author: Lokismercedes

Summary: After you and your husband split, your uncle Tony Stark moves you and your 16 year old twin daughters into the compound. A certain raven haired god takes a keen interest in you three and in turn you give him a history lesson about Valentine’s Day.

     You had gotten pregnant in high school when you were 16. Even though it was incredibly hard you still managed to finish school and graduate. Your uncle Tony was disappointed to say the least, but he always supported every decision you ever made. Telling him that you wanted to keep the baby (Even after you found out it was twins) was no different. Your mom had kicked you out when you told her, and immediately uncle Tony demanded you move in with him. When you were 20 you met your husband. After a whirlwind of a romance that lasted 6 months he proposed and you said yes, a month later you two were married in a small ceremony that only a few friends and family members attended. Now eleven years later, here you were, living with Uncle Tony again after being kicked out. He truly was a God send and the only family member that didn’t shun you for getting pregnant at sixteen. Today not only marked your humiliation after finding ‘the love of your life’ cheating on you with someone who was ten years younger than you but it also happened to be Valentine’s Day. Now you were never one to really care about this holiday, but you desperately longed for the simplicity your life used to be. You missed living in Tennessee so much, the way everyone in your small town always smiled and waved at each other, and always made small talk whether they knew you or not. That was your favorite part of living in the south: The Southern Hospitality! Living in New York was VASTLY different. 

     On top of moving to New York with the twins you had recently started going back to school to get your Registered Nursing License. While you were desperately trying to cram a study session in this morning you noticed the girls weren’t in their room, cursing you texted them asking where they were. They both told you they were with the Asguardians in the common room kitchen eating breakfast. You blew out a sigh of relief knowing they were already eating breakfast, and knowing that Happy - Uncle Tony’s assistant - was going to drive them to school so you could worry about studying for your nursing boards. You grabbed your books and notes and grabbed the girls backpacks (They conveniently forgot in your living room of the suit you lived in) and started reading over your notes walking to the elevator to meet up with the girls.

     Your boards were coming up in a couple of weeks and you knew the material easily enough, what was worrying you was the fact you also had to do a clinical exam on top of the written exam. You knew there was some things that you really needed to brush up on but the girls were way to wirey and wiggley to use them, you know you could always ask Uncle Tony or Aunt Pepper, but you feel like you have already imposed on them enough, and didn’t want to ask them unless absolutely necessary. As you stepped out of the elevator and into the kitchen of the common room you immediately heard Thors’ booming laugh, and the girls came running at you.

“Thank god we don’t have to run back upstairs to grab them.” Savanna sighed in relief.

“Is Happy here yet?” You ask them.

“Not yet, but we panicked when we couldn’t find our bags.” Dakota piped up. “Oh mom, there’s a bouquet of roses in the kitchen that has your name on the card.” She said as an afterthought. 

“WHAT?!” You nearly shouted. “Please tell me they are from you two?” You say.Both girls shook their heads

“Nope, looks like you might have a secret admirer.” Savanna smirked. 

“God I hope not.” You mumbled walking into the kitchen. “Morning Odinsonbros” You gave the gods in greeting.

“And what a glorious morning it is Lady Y/N.” Thor said pulling you into a hug a lung popping hug. Loki nodded in your direction and flashed you a dazzling smile.

“Girls, why didn’t you wake me up, instead of the boys?” You asked.

“Well, mom, we really didn’t want to bother you with today being Valentine’s Day and all.” Savanna spoke up. You rolled your eyes and gave them both a hug and a kiss.

“Beside, Lady Y/N, we were up anyway.” Thor smiled at  you. Loki grumbled something into his breakfast indicating Thor was lying, but trying to be polite.

“Guys, I’m fine, makes me feel like you like the boys more than me, you know today really doesn’t mean much to me, never has.” You responded.

“Mom, read the card, I wanna know who sent you flowers.” Savanna urged handing you the card.

“I really don’t.” You grumbled taking the card, worried they may have come from your Soon-to-be-ex-husband. The look of worry must have been on your face because Thor asked what was wrong.

“Nothing really, hoping to hell its not from my ex.” You shrugged.

“Well if they are, can we burn them?” Dakota asked hopeful

“ABSOLUTELY! That’s the best idea I’ve heard this morning!” You beamed at the girls, earning a chuckle from Loki. You placed your notes that you were studying down on the counter and sat next to Loki. You could see him trying to read the card over your shoulder and you smirked.

“Jealous?” You nudged him with your shoulder.

“Hm hardly, just merely curious as to who’s attention you hold” Loki waved his hand nonchalantly. 

“HE SPEAKS!” You winked at him, and you swore he blushed a little.You looked down at the card and read it:

Y/N,

Honey, I heard about what happened between you and H/N, and I’m terribly sorry. Here’s a little something to, hopefully, brighten your day a little. Call me when you’re free.

                                    -XOXO Mom 

You rolled your eyes, handed the card to Loki so he could read it, grabbed the roses and threw them in the trash can. All four of the people in the kitchen gave you a quizzical look. 

“Why did you throw them out? I think its an endearing gesture.” Loki asked

“Too little, too late” You told him. 

“Who are they from, mom?” One of the girls asked. 

“Nobody important.” You shrugged. Right then Happy walked in to take the girls to school. You noticed Thor give Loki’s shoulder a squeeze and he too made an excuse to leave. 

“Now why would you say your mother isn’t important?” Loki moved to take his plate to the sink, then casually leaned againsed the counter and folded his arms across his chest.

“Long story short, she kicked me out when I got pregnant at sixteen, then her and all of her side of the family disowned me.” You shrugged.

“Maybe shes trying to mend her relationship with you. Possibly for the sake of your daughters.” He pondered.

“Hm nice try Mischief, but my mom gave me a rose because she felt sorry for me, since the separation.” You tried to sound indifferent. “She really wasn’t a hands on mother to be honest, we have always had a rocky relationship.” You really wanted this conversation to end. This was actually a very touchy subject to you and you know Loki’s just trying to make you feel better. 

“Or, she really does love you, and is trying to finally reach out.” He walked over to you, and you noticed he was picking at his hands

“Riiight, Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a bouquet that will die in two days time.” You quipped back smirking.

“Always the optimistic I see. Stark did tell me a little bit about this midguardian holiday. Can’t say I’m a fan of lovesick couples groping each other in public, whispering childish sentiments, and spending ridiculous amounts of money on stuff thats obviously just going to get tossed in the bin at the end of the day.” He gestured towards where you threw the roses out. 

“Actually it only turned romantic around 1375, when the medieval English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote a poem called “Parliament of Foules.” where he linked the dreaded V-Day with Love. It used to be a pagan celebration called Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, it was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman God of Agriculture. Around A.D. 270 the christian church decided to place St. Valentine’s feast to Christianize the pagan belief.” You told him matter- of- factly. Loki stared at you in shock. “What? I like history and being catholic I specifically like the history of different saints.” You smirked at Loki’s absolutely stunned look. 

“What else do you know about this holiday?” He asked genuinely sitting back down motioning for you to join him. “Please enlighten me more about this tediously mundane holiday.” 

You sat next to him and faced him. “Um, well, lets see, nobody really knows who St. Valentine really was, there could actually be up words to 15 different people. The one that Roman Catholics seem to really focus on was a Roman Priest in the third century.” Loki was just staring at you while you talked occasionally smirking at the passion for which you spoke. “Technically in my opinion, were celebrating a temple priest that was arrested, beaten, sentenced to death, and eventually beheaded on the 14th of February.” 

“What exactly was his crime?” Loki wondered

“He was helping couples wed, you see, when emperor Claudius the second made marriage illegal because he wanted unwed men for his army.” You smiled at the look of disgust on Loki’s face.

“Barbaric!” He exclaimed

“It really is, he was only canonized in 1988, by pope John Paul the second.” You were becoming more and more aware of the way Loki was staring at you, almost like he could see into your soul. 

“Lady Y/N, I would love to hear more about this, lets say, over some dinner and maybe wine?” He asked almost shyly, picking at his hands again. You furrowed your brows in confusion. 

“Like a date? Loki are you asking me out?” You were sure you heard wrong.

“I suppose I am.” He looked up to finally meet your eyes, he had so much riding on you saying yes. It all clicked into place now, the constant figiting, Thor squeezing his shoulder earlier, he’s always been so good with the twins, that’s why the girls never woke you up this morning! He’s been planning this and they have been helping him! Your heart was racing. 

“Tell you what, Mischief, if you convince your brother to check in every now and then with the twins, maybe stay overnight with them, not only will I have dinner with you, but you can help me play nurse-” You started but was interrupted by your Uncle Tony walking in right at that moment and spitting his coffee out. Both you and Loki burst out laughing.

End 

[redorblue]

An ode to Musa Yeswi (from The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, by Arundhati Roy)

(This was originally a part of this post where I talk more generally about The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Tilo’s character and the peculiar structure of the book. But that post got way out of hand, so I decided to split it up.)

So, Musa. On the surface, his life appears to be nothing but a string of tragedies, with him as a simple vehicle that the author uses to tell us about how fucked up the situation in Kashmir is. After all, he was pretty much forced into the underground after Amrik Singh made him his newest source of entertainment, and “underground” in this context means that he’ll have to join the rebellion. But I think that is a very superficial view on his character. For me, the two defining aspects of his personality are his sense of justice and his bond to the people and the valley of Kashmir. Sure, he could have fled to some faraway place in India, or elsewhere, kept his head down and hoped that Amrik Singh’s network doesn’t stretch that far. That wouldn’t have been easy, but theoretically doable. In reality, however, going someplace else wasn’t really an option. He’s tried that already with studying in Delhi, and even though he obviously knew how bad the situation was back home, he still chose to return after he graduated because he doesn’t want to live anywhere else. He loves Kashmir and his people with all his heart. So the underground it is - because he can’t bear the injustices done to them, because he owes it to his daughter to be brave, because he can’t run away from his grief and this might be the only way to work through it.

And it takes a toll on him, of course it does. It’s heartbreaking how both he and Tilo remark on how he has become less substantial (smudged, as Tilo calls it) than he used to be, which is such an on-point metaphor for what being in a war (and a pretty hopeless guerilla war at that) does to a person. But in his thought processes and his interactions with Tilo (and briefly with Garson Hobart - I can’t remember his real name for the life of me) show that he’s - maybe not the same person as before, but a person, a complete human being, which is a lot more that what you usually get. I mean, let’s face it: he’s a Muslim in a rebel organisation, which is more than enough to get you labels such as terrorist, fanatic, extremist etc. I was a bit afraid that someone in my book club would call him that, because my reaction would have probably got me banned from the book shop. There are so many instances where you can see how kind a heart he has, how intelligent he is, how caring - and yes, also how much he suffers from seeing his people suffer and how he puts everything he has into make it right, but what’s important here is that it’s not his only defining feature. There are so many scenes that I could cite here, but I’ll try to restrict myself.

“The meal was delectable. Musa was a relaxed, accomplished cook.” (p. 431) I know it doesn’t sound like much, but that was the one line that drove home how much I adore his character. It’s from his last visit to Delhi when he accidentally meets Garson Hobart. Theoretically, they’re on diametrically opposed sides of the conflict that has been eating Musa’s life for years, and he’s still able to see his old friend from uni days instead of some guy who used to be pretty high up in his enemy’s hierarchy. They spend time together, they talk, and in the end Musa cooks for Garson Hobart which says so much about his character - how he sees people instead of sides, how he has at some point in his life taken the time to learn how to cook (and getting good at it) instead of relying on some female relation to do it for him, as the stereotype demands, how he still wants to spend some time with an old acquaintance even though he already got what he came for. Maybe I’m reading too much into this scene, but for me it just really encompasses much of what I love about him.

“This is the worst part of the Occupation… what it makes us do to ourselves. This reduction, this standardization, this stupidification… […] if and when we achieve it… will be our salvation. It will make uns impossible to defeat. First it will be our salvation and then… after we win… it will be our nemesis. First Azadi.Then annihilation. That’s the pattern. (p. 371) This scene is taken from when Tilo visits Kashmir for the first time and watches Musa pray - also for the first time. Superficially it might read as him saying Islam/religion in general = stupidification, but I think there’s more to it. First of all, as this passage clearly shows, Musa is not stupid, and second, in a room alone with Tilo he has no need to perform uniformity, so he must actually enjoy the ritual of prayer - maybe as a way to bring him some peace of mind, but definitely not because he wants to eclipse his personhood or something. What he does comment on, I think, is the way that Islam/religion/ideology (not sure which) is used to turn ordinary people into a fighting force. He doesn’t use any of the essentialistic, short-sighted allegations on Islam that are frequently thrown around (the book in general has a very positive portrayal of Muslims), but he looks at it from a functionalist perspective from where it’s indistinguishable from any other ideology ever invented. But this instrumentalization of Islam is clearly separated from the spiritual/personal dimension encompassed by him getting up early in the morning to pray.

“We’ll win this war, and then we’ll be together, you and I. I’ll wear a hijab - although you look lovely in this one - and you can take up arms. OK?” (p. 389) This scene takes place a few pages later, when Tilo prepares to go back to Delhi and she and Musa have to say goodbye to each other. On the one hand, it’s very romantic - not because of the “and then we’ll be together”, but because it’s a white (and very obvious) lie that Tilo needs to hear at that moment (just before that, she witnessed Gulrez’ murder and was interrogated at the Shiraz). On the other hand, it shows that the two of them have a great dynamic that’s not stuck in gender roles. He uses gendered images here to convey that the current situation is a reversal of their normal dynamic where Tilo is more of a revolutionary than he is, but at the same time he shows that he doesn’t really care about the conventions attached to those images. He’s an armed fighter and a commander, which is as manly as it gets when it comes to jobs, but he doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to his role. He doesn’t feel the need to constantly reaffirm his masculinity because his sense of self is not as fragile as that. And if that’s not attractive, I don’t know what is.

Babajaana - do you think I’m going to miss you? You are wrong. I will never miss you, because you will always be with me. (p. 342) This is another snippet that could be cheesy if taken out of context, but here… it really isn’t. These are the first two lines in a letter that Musa writes to his dead daughter the day after her funeral. The whole letter is a work of art, it’s that beautiful, and he never finishes it, which breaks my heart into tiny pieces. It also ties nicely into one of the big topics of this book: the issue of borders and borderlands. In this book, the stories of all the characters deal with the things that separate people and put them into categories, be it gender, religion, caste, physical distance our, as in this case, life and death. However, the book doesn’t stop at criticizing those borders and revealing their artificial nature, it also transcends them. For the gender divide, there’s Anjum who doesn’t really feel at homereally on either side of the gender binary and finds a solution in the liminal space that’s occupied by Hijras. For religion as well as caste, there’s Saddam Hussein who was born a lower caste Hindu and looks for a way to escape both logical frameworks by pretending to be Muslim. For physical distance, there’s Tilo and Musa’s relationship that regularly bridges years of separation and vastly different experiences in life. And for life and death, there’s the graveyard that is turned into a ministry of utmost happiness when it’s inhabited by people who have found a home in each other. And this. This beautiful sentence that a grieving father writes to his daughter who was taken from the world in an act both utterly random and and frighteningly systemic. The same sentiment is mirrored at the end of the book, when Tilo gets the news of Musa’s death, and although it’s hard for her, she has the same feeling: that he isn’t really gone, that she can still be with him on the other side of a border that is, like so many others, not as unforgiving as it seems.And that view, that lesson is definitely the opposite of Musa’s life being nothing but a string of tragedies.

[vvakarians]

DA 20 Questions

Tagged by @goblin-deity ! Thank you fam! If anyone wants to be tagged consider yourself tagged!

1. Favorite game of the series

Inquisition! It’s the one I started with! It’s an amazing and beautiful game. 

2. How did you discover Dragon Age? 

There was a cosplayer I used to follow here on tumblr that cosplayed as this character named Dorian, and then they cosplayed as Fenris. I looked into both characters because I really liked the designs. From there I checked out the game from the library and fell in love with DAI!

3. How many times have you played the games?

I’ve played DAI too many times to count, I can probably count on my pc, which is a handful of times, otherwise on my ps4 at least 25. DA2 I’ve completed exactly twice, played it four times. DA:O I’ve completed exactly once, but played multiple times, like three times I think.

4. Favorite race to play as?

Elves or qunari!

5. Favorite class?

I absolutely love mages, always have. In DAI I play as a necromancer or knight enchanter, in DA2 I play as a blood mage or a spirit healer. I have a harder time playing as one in Origins, but I usually play as a blood mage or an arcane warrior. Other than that I play as a Double Handed Warrior, usually a Reaver or some other scary subclass lmao.

6. Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions?

In general I usually make the same choices kind of? Mostly because I can’t push myself to ally with the templars. I do edit my canons outside of the actual games, like Calliope allies with the Mages but they do end up saving the templars as well, just after they get to Skyhold. Artemaeus, my city elf who was adopted by the Dalish, sided with the mages but left the templars to fend for themselves (save for Barris who did not deserve to die). Honi, my Adaar, sided with the mages and conscripted the templars, she was pretty harsh on them but decided that both sides could benefit from coming together. In general I haven’t changed my stance on the Grey Wardens, it wasn’t their fault that Clarel had a moment of weakness in being manipulated and I couldn’t find my Inquisitors justifying anger towards them enough to banish them. With Halamshiral I can’t in any way place Celene on the throne, it’s just my personal thing. After reading Masked Empire I said nah. But if ya like her that’s cool. I don’t usually have someone drink from the Well, I considered it with Callie, but I felt that shit could go down from a Solas perspective and I was not about that angst. 

7. Go to adventuring party?

1st World State: Tauriel Mahariel /Ophelia Hawke/ Calliope Lavellan

DAO: Alistair/Zevran or Leliana/Morrigan or Wynne 

DA2 (When I need Anders): Anders/ Aveline/ interchangeable rogue

DA2 (When I need Fenris): Fenris/ Sebastian or Varric / Merrill

DAI (Base Game): Solas/ Sera or Cole/ Iron Bull

DAI (Hakkon): Dorian/ Iron Bull/ Sera or Cole

DAI (Descent): Vivienne/ Iron Bull/ Sera

DAI (Trespasser): Dorian /Iron Bull / Interchangeable rogue

2nd World State: Aviel Tabris / Valentyne Hawke / Honi Adaar

DAO: Alistair / Leliana or Zevran / Wynne

DA2: Anders (or Merrill)/ Isabela / Fenris (or Aveline)

DAI: Dorian (or Vivienne) / Sera / Iron Bull (or Blackwall)

3rd World State: Mah’Vir Surana / Sparrow Hawke / Artemaeus Lavellan

DAO: Zevran / Morrigan / Alistair (or Sten)

DA2: Fenris / Merrill (or Anders) / Interchangeable Rogue

DAI: Dorian (or Solas) / Cole or Sera / Cassandra

8. Which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

Calliope 100%, I put most of the thought into my first world state characters. Tauriel was the easiest to make and her canon hasn’t changed much, same with Ophelia, but all three of my heroes were well, well thought out. I’ve had four or five years of making them under my belt.

9. Favorite romance?

For angst, absolutely Solas. You can’t get much more angsty than that. Other than that my most favorite romance is Fenris’, he’s a character that I love greatly and as a sexual abuse survivor with PTSD I related to him a lot lmao. 

10. Have you read any of the comics/books?

I have all of the books except for Last/First Flight (?), I’m currently reading Masked Empire. I also have the World of Thedas Volume...2? And I have the first Magekiller comic.

11. If you’ve read them, which was your favorite book? 

Masked Empire for sure, it’s because I love Felassan.

12. Favorite DLC’s?

Trespasser or Jaws of Hakkon, I absolutely love the stories in both. I’m also biased towards my favorite of the series/I love killing Dragons. And Veil Quartz, I love Veil Quartz.

13. Things that annoy you?

The fandom mostly. I fucking hate some of y’all shits. I hate the lack of rep too, they did fucking great in DA2 with almost every LI being bisexual. Could have done that with DAI with the straight LI’s but, shrugs. Other than that I don’t hate it much. 

14. Orlais or Ferelden?

Orlais, it has the Emerald Graves and I love big ass trees. 

15. Templars or mages?

Is that even a question? Mages

16.  If you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

I have three separate world states, and then an AU with @trans-aloth . Calliope’s has at least 25 separate oc’s in it because I’m a fucking menace. Other than that they usually stay seperate. Alexx and I combined worldstates with Cianan and Callies for that AU. 

17. What did you name your pets?

I only have names for Calliopes world state pets, but I will def name the rest of the others when I play. 

Tauriel: Kili (mabari)

Cassiopeia: Ser Claws (mabari)

Merielle: Howl (mabari)

Serynn: Athena (mabari)

Fen’Asha: Pluto (mabari)

Ophelia: Willoughby (mabari)

Calliope: Bones (Deepstalker) , Enasalin (Dracolisk) 

18. Have you installed any mods? 

I did way back when I thought my computer could handle it. Still got all of them downloaded but I play primarily on my ps4 or ps3.

19. Did your Warden want to be a Grey Warden? 

Tauriel had accepted the fact that she needed to become a Warden and only was angry about it when Duncan said that it was no place for the children. She managed to convince him to let her take them however. Cassie did not want to become a Warden and fought it tooth and nail, but had nowhere else to go. Serynn had accepted it wholeheartedly, it wasn’t much of an issue. Merielle wanted to get out of the Circle but was difficult in taking the Ritual because she didn’t like the fatality rate. Fen’Asha was also in that same boat and at first saw it as another injustice. 

20. Hawke’s personality? 

Ophelia is a securely purple unless dealing with templars, then it’s Red through and through. Halcyon (their eldest sister) is a Red Hawke, Blue with her family, and Hero is a Blue Hawke, Red with templars.

21. Did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquistion? 

Yes! I usually do! I use a gold/red/black color scheme, so it involves a lot of fucking Dragon Bone. 

22. If your character could go back in time and change one thing what would it be?

Tauriel would have gone back and saved Tamlen. She would have insisted that they look for him and at the very least if they found him they would make him a Grey Warden too. If that wasn’t an option she’d make sure Evra and Krie didn’t get traumatized by the fact their father was killed by a mirror of all things. 

Ophelia would go back in time and watch their mother more closely, or perhaps ask Carver not to go to the Deep Roads with them. Leandra’s death was the hardest thing they ever had to go through aside from handing Carver over to the Grey Wardens. The estate just felt so empty without Leandra. 

Calliope would go back in time and save their best friend from being taken by the templars. But they also realize that things would have been vastly different or the both of them that way. And they also realize that they were pretty young when Isi was taken from the Clan, they wouldn’t have been able to do much. It’s just something that haunts them to this day. 

23. Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

Calliope is a mage and a warrior, SO I MEAN. Calliope’s home clan is also from Orlais and their mother is a former slave from Tevinter who then went to the Kirkwall Circle after being captured in the Free Marches.Other than that they end up with a First Enchanter that’s an oc of @trans-aloth ‘s. I also have an oc that ends up with Varric, because I have a distaste for the real life Bianca. Tauriel also ends up in a poly relationship with Cassiopeia and Alistair. Other than that, Alistair, Zevran, and several other people are trans. 

24. Who did you leave in the Fade?

Stroud, all three times.

25. Favorite mount?

Dracolisk’s or any of the Harts, I love ugly boys and giant elk.

[boothanita]

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Root Chakra Reiki Hand Position

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Home Is Where the Jamaican Beef Patties Are For Shani Jones, growing up black in San Francisco meant a constant feeling of disconnection. Then, with the help of La Cocina, she turned her mother’s beef patty recipe into a citywide sensation.

If you visited the Jones family household anytime in the late ’80s or ’90s, you might have found a Jamaican beef patty shoved in between the sofa cushions. Or under someone’s pillow. Or tucked into a bookshelf. These are the measures that must be taken when one lives in a house with eight siblings, two grandparents, any number of visiting aunts and uncles, and a mother who can only roll out 24 of her famously flaky, juicy, meat-stuffed, turmeric-tinged patties at a time. (Which may sound like a lot, but do the math.)

“Look, I’m number seven of the siblings,” says Shani Jones. “When you’re one of the youngest, you have to either stick up for yourself—or hide your patties. So I hid mine under the couch.”

These days, Shani no longer needs to squirrel away her patties. Instead, she makes them herself, using an industrial grade Hobart mixer and a dough sheeter that can roll out 250 at a time. The recipe is the backbone of her catering company, Peaches Patties, named in honor of Shani’s mother, Victoria Jones, a.k.a Peaches.

But shortages still happen. Shani’s company is one of the only Jamaican food purveyors in San Francisco, and the beef patties are the most popular item on her menu.

The story of the Jones family patty recipe begins before Shani was even born. Her father, Martin, left his hometown of New Orleans at the end of the Great Migration, heading west to San Francisco. Her mother, Victoria, was a nursing student in Trenchtown, Jamaica. The two met through a penpal company. “It was like eHarmony or Match.com back in the day,” Shani says. “My mom had penpals in Senegal, in Cuba, all over. But she and my dad really clicked, so one day, he decided to come out and visit her in Jamaica.”

One trip was all it took. Six months later, Victoria had relocated to San Francisco. She married Martin and never looked back. But she brought her patty recipe with her, handed down from her own mother, and raised her eight children in a house suffused with Jamaican culture and cooking.

Jerk chicken, fried plantains, peas and rice, beef patties: These were the flavors of Shani’s childhood, but home felt like an island of sorts, in the middle of a city largely devoid of Caribbean community. “Even today, there’s not much of a Jamaican diaspora out here,” she says. “Most of it is on the East Coast.”

Growing up, Shani did her best to assimilate with an outside world that differed largely from her interior one. She got good grades, made friends, followed the rules. But it wasn’t easy; cultivating emotional barriers became a survival tactic. “Black people here are marginalized,” she says. “We are looked at and treated differently. In order to keep on functioning, you need a certain degree of numbness.”

It wasn’t until she moved across the country for college that Shani saw things could be different. Studying Mass Communications at the historically black Clark Atlanta University, she found a vastly different community, where black people held positions of power—professors, doctors, politicians—and Caribbean culture thrived. Even Atlanta’s grocery stores were better, with shelves upon shelves packed with jerk seasoning and Scotch bonnets and bottles of Pickapeppa sauce.

After graduation, Shani visited her mother’s home country for the first time. “As soon as I got off the plane in Kingston and went outside, I don’t know what it was, but it rushed over me,” she recalls. “I felt this calmness. Like, wow, okay, I’m home.” She ate patties at a local shop and visited her ancestral stomping grounds—the verdant Saint Elizabeth countryside where her grandmother grew up, her mother’s high school and community theatre and nursing academy in Trenchtown.

“Jamaica was an awakening moment for me,” she says. “I wasn’t numb anymore. I was grieving for the first time, that disconnection I grew up with. I never knew that I could actually feel that relaxed before.”

When she returned to San Francisco, Shani was determined to regain this sense of connection. “I came back and realized there was still no Jamaican food outside my mom’s house,” she recalls. So, while pursuing a PhD in Organizational Leadership and Management and driving for Lyft, she returned to her mother’s kitchen to recreate some of her family’s classic recipes—juicy jerk chicken thighs, veggies stewed in creamy coconut curry, and of course, the famous beef patties. But this time, they weren’t just for family. They were for friends, then strangers. Small events, then larger ones. As word spread, so did demand.

“I started having casual conversations while I was doing Lyft rides,” Shani says. People would ask her if she did rideshares full time. “No,” she’d tell them, opening up about her PhD, her fledgling business, her struggle to balance it all with a gig economy salary and San Francisco’s rapidly rising cost of living. “Within those conversations, three separate times, people asked me: Have you heard of La Cocina?”

She had not. But a bit of Googling led to a free orientation workshop, which led to an application, which led to an acceptance. And suddenly, Shani was a member of one of the country’s most successful nonprofit food incubators, an organization dedicated to helping Bay Area women, immigrants and people of color to open their own successful businesses.

Through La Cocina, Shani learned how to brand her business. She moved production out of her mother’s kitchen—a space she’d outgrown—and into La Cocina’s shared industrial kitchen space. There, a pastry chef taught her how to scale up the patty recipe, from batches of 24 to 250. And it was La Cocina that helped Shani find a retail space: a kiosk at 331 Cortland Marketplace in Bernal Heights, sidled up against other food sellers from all over the world, many of them fellow graduates of La Cocina.

“With La Cocina, I’ve been able to get more help than I would’ve on my own as far as navigating this industry,” says Shani. “Just having a space to start and grow my business, and people versed in the field who could meet me where I needed them the most—that’s what helped me grow and flourish.”

On December 23, the Marketplace shut down due to rising rents—a problem that’s become devastatingly familiar to restaurateurs all over San Francisco. But Shani is undaunted. Business still booms, and she’ll keep running her catering business—alongside her nine-person staff—from La Cocina’s shared kitchen.

Meanwhile, her beef patty recipe, along with her family’s origin story and her jerk chicken, is now featured along with 80-something other recipes from fellow La Cocina grads in the organization’s beautiful new cookbook, We Are La Cocina. “In this book, I was able to actually tell my story, to show who I am, to share my rich heritage of being American but raised the Jamaican way,” says Shani. “All of the recipes in this book are tacit knowledge, written down on paper to make them explicit knowledge for everyone else.”

Eventually, La Cocina will help Shani and her staff find a new, larger, standalone restaurant space, where platters of oxtail curry and tangy escovitch snapper will share a menu with her husband’s misir wot, a spicy red lentil stew from his own home country of Ethiopia. It will be a nucleus of community, for anyone who needs it.

And occasionally Peaches herself will pop by—incognito, of course; she’s a celebrity now—to stock up on a few dozen of those famous beef patties.

+Jamaican Beef Patties recipe

[gay-jesus-probably]

Pls talk about your Tron & Rinzler are different personalities headcanon because that's a headcanon of mine too & I saw your post in the tron legacy tag && got rly excited that someone else has that headcanon ahaa

Anon, I will gladly talk about this FOREVER.

Okay so first of all, let me just address the fact that yeah. I know. There is literally no evidence whatsoever in canon for this. But yknow. Rinzler says about nine words total, so whatever’s going on in his head is not going to be shared in a movie. If Legacy was done on a written medium (book or comic) Rinzler probably would have gotten at least one or two scenes from his perspective. But it’s a movie, and we don’t even have facial expressions, so we need to fill in the blanks ourselves of how he gets from ‘loyal enforcer’ to ‘I FIGHT FOR THE USERS’.

And for the record, I’d like to just say that the entire reason I have this headcanon at all is the fic Domestic by tehkittykat on Ao3, the plot of it being that Alan finds what he thinks is Tron dying in the Grid after the events of the movie, repairs him, brings him out into the real world, but upon waking up we find that surprise Tron’s long dead it’s literally just Rinzler, and the plot follows him settling in to the User world, and dealing with the aftermath of like everything from Clu. If you haven’t read it, go read it.

So preamble done with, let’s get into the real meta.

So in the post Anon’s referencing (this one) I mention that I think Tron and Rinzler are separate personalities, and basically different people, due to them having vastly different fighting styles and behaviour. And I believe that for a variety of reasons. I mean for a start, Rinzler can’t possibly be basically just a really fancy black guard. He’s not a standard re-purposed program. First of all, there’s the glaring problem. Tron wasn’t coded by Kevin Flynn. He was made by Alan Bradley. Kevin Flynn is the kind of man who spontaneously wanders out into the wastelands and makes the most important program on the Grid with a fucking mirror or whatever. He’s got all the raw talent and creativity, but not the focus and drive. Wheras on the flip side, it’s canon somewhere that Tron started being programmed two years before the events of the movie. And that the entire thing was Alan’s very slow ultimate gambit to take out the MCP, with plan A being Tron is completed and deletes MCP for being dangerous, and plan B being Tron is deleted by MCP, and the MCP going after independent security gives Alan all the proof he needs to pull the plug from the outside. Heads I win, tails you lose. And he spent two years working on it, apparently covering his ass with a paper trail (”Yes Mr. Dillinger I sent you a memo on my Tron project”), and also got in good with Gibbs to stop him from getting fired without reason. My point is, Alan Bradley is damn meticulous, and Tron’s coding definitely reflects that. So when it comes to repurposing, the standard work we see in Uprising wouldn’t be enough. Clu probably had to manually overwrite Tron’s code, and it probably was a long and frustrating process. Flynn’s coding probably has holes. Alan’s, not so much.

So, that’s the first reason. Rinzler would have to be much more complex than any black guard, because Tron’s coding would be deeply confusing and borderline alien to Clu, and much more meticulously written than any other program on the Grid, including Clu. I’d imagine if an ISO or User was ever repurposed, it would be the same story, on account of them being fundamentally different from anything Clu is used to.

Second of all, as I’ve mentioned, the biggest clue (no pun intended) is the fighting style. Just look at Tron fighting in the original, Uprising, and the flashback in Legacy. He stays planted on the ground. He’s not flipping around, either with an audience or without. Wheras Rinzler, as we all know, might as well be flying for all he stays on the ground. The man is made of unnecessary acrobatics, and let’s all be honest here it’s fucking awesome. But it’s about as far removed from Tron’s style as you can get. I mean obviously, both are getting the same badassery ranking, but Tron’s more of a ‘straightforwards brute strength’ style, while Rinzler is a ‘momentum and using opponents own actions against them’ kind of fighter. Both damn good, but very different. Rinzler’s ridiculously dynamic. And he’s like that the entire movie. A few meta posts suggest that he was programmed by Clu to drag out arena fights with his acrobatic style, but that’s only really taking in mind the arena fight against Sam. We do see him fight again, against Quorra on the Recitifier, and against Sam and Quorra on the Throneship. There’s no audience for those fights, and more importantly, there’s no Clu. If Rinzler was going to switch back to Tron’s sharp, efficient style, that would be the time. But instead, he sticks with the flipping, and handles things in the same style. Sure, he does it a lot faster, but that’s probably because Sam in the arena was being approached as ‘goddamn idiot walked right into this, might as well fuck with him first’, while Sam and Quorra later on are both taken as ‘this is serious lets get this shit over with quickly’. I feel like if it was just a badly corrupted Tron in there, he’d switch back to his normal fighting style the second Clu wasn’t watching. Muscle memory and all, or whatever the program equivalent is. But he doesn’t, because that was never Rinzler’s style to begin with.

And overall, just. Experience. I think it’s unanimously agreed that Rinzler does not have access to Tron’s memories, and is not supposed to, because you really don’t want your brainwashed enforcer to remember how much he hates you. That’s just common sense. So, even if Rinzler started out as just a brainwashed and corrupted Tron, he’s around for roughly 20 years, give or take however long Uprising lasts. And time moves slower in the Grid, so it’s more like over a thousand years by their standards I think. My point is, Tron’s around for about nine human years, Rinzler’s around for about twenty. Even if they’re not a split personality, Tron’s going to come out of the whole experience more Rinzler than Tron (AND WE ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERING HIM DYING AT THE END OF THE MOVIE THEY DON’T SPECIFICALLY SHOW HIM DEREZZING SO HE’S ALIVE AS FAR AS I CARE FUCK YOU). And really, Clu is Clu. There’s no fucking way Rinzler had a safe and supportive enviroment during that 20-ish years. The man tortured and brainwashed him, and as we see, has some stunning anger issues. I think it’s a unanimous fandom agreement that Clu was majorly abusive towards Rinzler, because there’s no risk of retaliation, nobody to stop him, and Clu’s already got Issues over Tron. I mean, just re-watch Legacy (it’s on Netflix), and pay close attention to Rinzler’s body language. His posture becomes hunched over and submissive whenever Clu’s in the scene with him. He looks like he wants to bolt sometimes. It’s subtle, but the staging and body language definitely implies some very not good things happening to Rinzler during pretty much his entire life. So even if there’s no split personality to start with, Tron was used to either loyally serving a caring higher power (Alan, Flynn, and pre-coup Clu) or fighting against a tyrannical oppressor (MCP and post-coup Clu). His relationship with figures of authority was either something positive, or something openly antagonistic that he openly fought against. And on the flip side, Rinzler only ever served under Clu. He didn’t have the option to leave the abusive situation, or even openly resist it. His only options would have been to endure, and to quietly manipulate events and people to protect himself. Like, during the scene where he’s dragging Quorra off to what is implied to be some very fucking horrifying things? Rinzler doesn’t show any hesitation at all, and I’m willing to bet that his thought process is something along the lines of ‘if Clu’s focusing on her, he’s not paying attention to me’, because that’s what abusive situations do to your head. Everything comes down to survival, and protecting yourself. Your priorities shift dramatically, because they have to, or you’re not going to make it. Ironically, the best way to survive abuse is to pick up abusive traits to defend yourself, and there’s nothing wrong with protecting yourself from your abuser, the real struggle is trying to get rid of the abusive traits once you get out. Rinzler’s likely about as far away from Tron’s ‘holy paladin’ type as possible. They may not have been a split personality at first, but they would inevitably get there just from the vastly different lives and experiences. It’s nature vs. nurture.

As for Rinzler not talking, it’s kind of annoying that we never get a canon explanation for that. Personally, I figure that it’s either ‘severe damage to the talking parts makes speech painful and difficult’, or ‘Clu has ordered Rinzler to only speak when absolutely necessary’. Or possibly some combination of the two. Either way, it means we just don’t get Rinzler’s view on the matter, which deeply upsets me. Because, as I’ve mentioned, Legacy treats Rinzler like shit, a writer deserves to be slapped for the line “Tron, what have you become”, and my husband needs to be saved.

In summary, read Domestic, fuck the Legacy writers, Rinzler and Tron are different personalities, and if anyone wants to know my full opinions on what the fuck was up between Rinzler and Clu just ask because a full examination of that one is going to need it’s own post and a nice assortment of trigger warnings.

and I meant to go to bed and answer this in the morning but i kept writing this in my head so i gave up and got up to write this. i’m going to bed now. ur welcome everybody.

[auk-blogs]

My name is Peter. I identify as the Doctor from the TV show Doctor Who (I am fictionkin). I have something very important to say, and it is time that I broke my silence. Before I begin, it is important that I disclose that I am diagnosed bipolar type 1 (severe) with psychotic features, and that I have been being treated for it since December 15th 2016. Any mistakes that I make in the following are due to the time that has passed and my faulty memory due to stress. I apologize that I do not have screenshots of any of this. I beg of you to believe me on the strength of my word alone. It is all I have.

The Gallifreyan Tradition is a cult, and the leader of that cult Cassandra Oakdown is an abusive person who personally contributed to my mental health breakdown that included but was not limited to self harm, suicidal idealization, and psychotic breaks from reality. Cassandra is a danger to the Doctor Who kin community and the Doctor Who fandom community at large.

It all began on January 25th, 2016. That's the day I made my sideblog for contemplating my newly discovered Doctor kintype separately from my main blog. I wanted to separate it from my main blog to study my feelings on my own, uninterrupted from outside influence. The Awakening process is a delicate one and I wanted to be left alone.

I made the mistake of using some tags that alerted Cassandra to my presence, likely “tenthdoctorkin” or “doctorwhokin.” She literally pounced on me within days of having made the blog, aggressively talking to me until I finally responded. As I was a lonely person who was struggling to make friends, I was elated that someone wanted to be my friend. I saw nothing wrong at first.

Nothing was wrong at first. We bonded over some shared media interests, some books we both read, some movies we both watched. I don't remember what. She told me she was a non-canon Gallifreyan of some personal import to the Doctor, having been married to his (also non-canon) cousin. I congratulated myself on having found potential canonmates so quickly and eagerly allowed myself to be enveloped into her social circle.

I became introduced to several others of import, Tau and Taurus. Tau was Cassandra's girlfriend of this life, and believes herself to be her non-canon Gallifreyan wife in a past life and the Doctor's non-canon cousin. Taurus is the non-canon son of the Doctor. There was also a Koschei (aka the Master) for a brief time. Oh, and there was Shilo, who was a TARDIS who established themselves as being my TARDIS but kept talking to other Doctors. Later on, I was also introduced to a non-canon brother named Teddy (who later renamed themselves Skyler).

Are you noticing a pattern here? All but Koschei and the TARDIS of these “canonmates” are non-canon.

It is also of import to note that Cassandra has a “soulbond” of Rassilon in her head. Now I see this as a huge warning sign, knowing my Doctor Who lore a lot better, but at first I believed her when she said that “he's a different Rassilon.” I believe that this Rassilon character is the source of a lot of trouble, and perhaps can be blamed for a lot of Cassandra's behavior. Maybe Cassandra's not so bad on her own, but was corrupted by the arguably insane Time Lord. Long story short, I don't trust the guy.

It is important to note that from the start, I had a bit of a crush on Cassandra. She is my type – brunette chin-length hair and intelligent and charismatic, and I wasn't aware that she was engaged when I first met her. In fact, within days of meeting her she admitted to having relationship troubles with Tau and asked if she should leave Tau – which makes me feel like I was being strung along with the possibility that one day me and Cassandra could be a thing. (I would never accept her now, of course, after everything she's done to me.)

Cassandra, Tau, Taurus,Shilo, and Koschei all spoke of me as their Doctor without any confirmation on my part. Remember that I was newly Awakened without any memories to confirm or deny what they were saying. I was so starved for affection and community that when they would say things that marked me as belonging to them, I didn't argue. I remember one distinct instance where Cassandra recalled an instance where her Doctor proclaimed himself “a Dance Lord” instead of a Time Lord and she phrased as “remember when you called yourself a Dance Lord instead of a Time Lord?” or something like that. There were many instances like this where my memories were subtly manipulated without me noticing.

I would like to draw particular attention to this kind of phrasing in conversation because nowhere on this hell website have I ever seen any kind of warning against it. If someone approaches you and starts saying things like, “do you remember when you did (x)” or “I remember when you (x)” unprompted excessively (without giving you room to say “no, I didn't do that”), they could be attempting to gaslight you and manipulate your memories. Please be careful!

Sometime in August or July of 2016, there was an incident. Koschei lived in Germany, and the legal drinking age is lower. Long story short, Koschei got drunk and made an appearance in the group chat. I have an alcoholic uncle and became vastly panicked when Koschei accidentally sounded exactly like my uncle. I privately messaged Koschei to tell him that I had something important to tell him when he got sober, but he picked it into a fight and in a blind panic I told him that I didn't want anything to do with him any more because I was terrified of drunk people. It split the “Gallifamily” in half. Koschei left the group chat that night.

That was the first time I attempted suicide. I was so emotionally agonized that I tied a necktie around my neck and tried to tighten it, but I chickened out. I told Tau and she freaked out.

That was the beginning of the trouble. Tau attempted to mend the rift between Koschei and I, but I continued to panic if I was in the same chat room as him. Cassandra continued to reblog from him even when I expressed that I was having panic attacks (genuine ones that left me hyperventilating and shaking in the public library) if I even saw his username on my dashboard. Eventually the Koschei incident blew over, but the group was left Koschi-less as we did not find a replacement “double.”

That was the first time that I began to suspect that Cassandra was not entirely on my side.

After that, my memory begins to get really, really shaky because of my mental illness. I do remember that it was the beginning of my nausea and that I began puking every few mornings because of my anxiety.

I suppose now is a good time to mention the Gallifreyan Tradition, since I mentioned it earlier. The Gallifreyan Tradition was sold to me as a social reconstruction of Gallifrey, a group of people who wanted to recreate the values and culture of Gallifrey here on Earth. It sounded really interesting and cool to me, as I was extremely new to the series of Doctor Who and did not know about the unpleasant lore of Gallifrey – and indeed had not recovered my own unpleasant memories of the place. At the time, the Gallifreyan Tradition just sounded like a nerdy place for a newly Awakened Doctor to call home.

I was never fully recruited to the GT. I always skirted just around the edges, and for that I am glad. But what I learned about it horrifies me now. Cassandra has absolute power over everyone else, and they call her “Lord President,” a title that even the Doctor himself in canon shunned. They hijack fandom posts to try and recruit members. They encourage their members to cyberbully – I was unfortunately part of one of those attacks, which I will elaborate on below. Other people who were deeper in the GT can probably provide more information.

As part of being recruited to the GT, Cassandra told me about the Patron Theory. She supposed that there was a person out there for each one of the old Patrons of Gallifrey. She, obviously was with Rassilon who was in her head as a Soulbond. She supposed that I was a match for a Patron who was called the Other. I was leery about the theory at first, but after a couple of “supernatural” signs (I found a burned piece of paper in a creek that seemed to have a cryptic message for me, and tarot cards seemed to point toward the Other, and divination through music seemed to contact the Other), I accepted her theory. Unbeknownst to me, some time after I started attempting spirit work, the GT officially abandoned the Patron Theory as a silly idea. I seem to be mocked for ever believing it seriously now although Cassandra was entirely serious when she presented it to me in the first place.

Just to note – I no longer attempt to work with the Other. If I have a spirit guide from Gallifrey, they can shove their signs and signals up their arse and go right back to that accursed, burning place.

About the cyberbulling – I am deeply, deeply shamed for what I have done. I would apologize to the ones I hurt if I could remember their urls. I am not entirely sure any more what incited the incident except Cassandra claimed that some members of the fandom had attacked her in some way. I suggested a harmless attack back with funny memes, such as a picture of a cat flying through space spammed to their submit boxes multiple times. It was Cassandra's place as a leader to say “no, that is inappropriate.” But she did not. And I became her willing weapon in the cyberbulling incident. I take full responsibility for attacking those innocent people. If it's any consolation, I cut my attack short because the guilt overwhelmed me as I realized that they were innocent people who just enjoyed the same media as I did.

After the cyberbullying, I began to lose my trust in Cassandra, and I suspect that she began to lose her trust in me. But I wasn't sure about losing her and cutting her out of my life. She had become my closest friend. I began to neglect my in real life friendships because it felt like Cassandra was my only friend. She was only a text away, only a Tumblr message away. She was always there. We shared stories, memories, fanfiction recs, theories about reincarnation... I remember I only got interested in the television show Firefly because she was too. I can't stand to watch it now. I regret buying it because now I can't get rid of it without my mum asking awkward questions.

But Cassandra began to change. And I didn't understand why. She grew distant. She began to vanish from conversations while I was mid sentence. I felt like I was going crazy. It was more than what they claim, her going to eat and shower and take care of her needs. A decent person would at least drop a “bbs” before leaving mid sentence. I believe that her vanishing was purposefully done to manipulate me and to freak me out.

I'm sorry. This is the most painful part of the story for me to recall. And honestly I don't remember much. It's a great big blank hole in my memory.

I can only assume that Cassandra was gaslighting me and was triggering psychotic breaks with reality. I remember that I began self harming in this period – August 4th 2016 was the first day I took a blade to my arm. She encouraged me to “control your emotions” which only made me self harm more – and she knew it. And she kept saying it.

I remember that she belittled any mentioning of my own abuse at home. I remember one specific instance where I made a post where I said something along the lines of, “I feel like I can’t say I have an abusive family because it’s never escalated into physical violence,” and she commented “Some people have it so easy.” That phrase has been very damaging to me and was used as a weapon against me to make me believe that the situation I was in - am still in - was lesser and hardly important compared to Cassandra’s. Cassandra took every opportunity to make sure that I felt like I couldn’t talk about my abuse. I still feel like I can’t. Because I’ve had it so easy, you see.

I became obsessed with her, I'll admit that. I remember begging her not to leave me, and her saying “I can't keep lighting myself on fire to keep you warm.” I still don't know what she meant. I was so terrified that all the people I knew and loved were going to leave. All my life, I have been socially isolated (I have exactly one irl friend, and I've only known him for about three years), and I had recently experienced a loss of my entire social world which is not relevant to this tale. And the incident with Koschei had made me keenly aware that people could leave and not come back. All I knew is that Cassandra was leaving and I couldn't hold on to her. I was terrified.

In the end, I tried to slit my wrists. Luckily, the blade I used wasn't so sharp. I survived with nary a mark to show for it. Hell, not even the repeated cutting on my arm and thigh have left scars, which pisses me off because shouldn't I have scars from that hell?

Then I started making plans on swallowing a bottle of aspirin. Aspirin is reputedly poison to Time Lords, so I thought it would be apropos to end my life that way. It would be a nasty death, and an agonizing one. I thought it would be enough to finally apologize to Cassandra for however I had hurt her. And to end my emotional suffering.

On December 15th, 2016, I was taken to a therapy appointment where I admitted to self harm and my multiple suicide attempts and my current plans to end my life. I was admitted to a treatment facility that afternoon. I was eventually diagnosed with bipolar type 1, severe, with psychotic features.

As a result of my interactions with the Gallifreyan Tradition and Cassandra Oakdown, I believe that I have PTSD. I am triggered to anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, and self-harm urges where they didn't exist before by such things as Gallifreyan writing, owls, a certain shade of red, names such as Prydon and Oakdown, and Tumblr urls that are too hecking long and have too many hyphens.

I firmly believe that the Gallifreyan Tradition is a danger to all Doctor Who fictionkin and that Cassandra Oakdown is the worst danger of the entire group.

If I may take a few more minutes of your time? Remember Shilo, that I mentioned earlier? I entered a relationship with them before I was entered into the treatment facility, a queer platonic relationship. Look it up if you don't know what it is. Shilo was a major emotional support while I was hospitalized, and I called them every single day – sometimes multiple times the same day. But after I came home, something began to change. They became distant, and eventually they blocked me on Tumblr and expected me to carry on as if nothing had happened. I had been dumped for no reason. In the end, Shilo kept dumping emotion bombs like that on me and running away and not letting us have any dialogue about our relationship. Remember how Shilo had established themselves as being my TARDIS, but kept talking to other Doctors? Totally unfair. I believe that Shilo is just as abusive as Cassandra is, just in a subtler way. Doctors, beware.

The one person I haven't brought up is Skyler. Believe it or not, they're not so bad. We both realized we were being abused by the cult and escaped together. 

Thank you for reading, and thank you if you believe me.