#both coexisted back then so they can coexist today when talking about the history of it

[that-cunning-witch]

I think something people need to understand is when we talk about an ancient culture or deity with a queer context, we are often not holding those topics and beings to the same standards we hold today.

Whenever someone comments on the queer history of Ancient Greece (for example), there's always at least one person who says, "well the Ancient Greeks weren't the best people" often referring to pedophilia or sexism, and therefore we shouldn't be talking about these queer moments. Because apparently, if we discuss them in any positive light, we are also accepting of the rampant pedophilia and sexism of the culture at that time.

Do you see what this creates?

If we can't talk about these queer moments in ancient history in a positive light, we must only be able to either talk about them in a negative light or just not talk about them at all. In other words, either paint queer history as a bad thing or just not mention it at all, as though it never existed.

Do you see the problem here?

This isn't to say that we shouldn't talk about the inherent problematic nature of queer culture back then. Yes, Ancient Greece had homosexual relationships, but they were typically between two men in an obvious power dynamic, aka an older man and a younger boy. A homosexual relationship between two men of similar age wasn't as common as we would like to think.

But to say we should discard or discredit all of ancient queer history because of these issues is just blasphemous. It is actually powerful to discuss these topics in a positive light while acknowledging the problems in modern time.

In our time, we have the ability to hold these discussions. These opinions. To be able to say "I'm happy there was trans representation in the Dionysian cults" and "I don't like how during Bacchic frenzies rape was the norm" in the same breath is powerful.

We need to show the world that we have existed since the beginning of time. We need to give a middle finger to every fucking person who tries to take our history and cleanse it for the palettes of the average cishet population.

But to try and sterilize the reality of queer history or, worse, ignore it all together in fear of being lumped in with the history that clearly is not okay, is what the other side wants. They want you to be in fear of queer history. They want you to stop talking about it.

Don't let them erase queer history.

[scuttle-buttle]

Chapter 11

WC: 2077

Rated: E

Chapter Tags: full on angst, discussions of emotional trauma, mild depictions of blood/gore, mentions of self h*rm & su*cide, mentions of child abuse, discussions of physical disabilities, institutionalization, some dialogue & plot canon to TV show, hurt/comfort

🧠

The rest of the conference went by much like the first day did. Both you and Laszlo bought a few books for your collections. An ease had settled over your conversations with the help of Sara and John's presence; you spoke more freely with each other. You tell yourself it is not because he's going soft on you or vice versa, but rather that you have found yourself in this imaginary bubble where you happen to get on well. It's inevitable that it will pop once you’re back at school and Laszlo will revert back to his usual callous state.

Laszlo. It still felt odd to think of him like that, rather than by his title. You couldn't lie, it gave you a sort of thrill. Even in your dreams you had only called him by his honorific. Thankfully you didn't have another dream after Friday. You couldn't escape the feeling that you'd said something incriminating in front of the man in question. So you chose to pretend it didn't happen.

Monday morning came and you headed to the train station. Once again he had secured a private cabin for the journey. This time you came prepared with a book since you had yet to replace your broken phone.

"Thank you again for inviting me to this, I really enjoyed myself. It was really nice of the department to foot my travel expenses, the hotel was really fancy. I may have helped myself to a mini-bottle or two," you joked.

"There is no need to worry about the department's finances; they were not involved."

You pause. He paid for you? Laszlo did say he would take care of the arrangements; but the four-star hotel, the private compartment train tickets, the admission to the conference, and every meal? Shit, that must have been a fortune, hundreds of dollars at least.

You don't know what to say, so you settle for an awkward "oh." A moment passes before you add "I appreciate that, um, I can pay you back. Might take some time but I can."

The professor is flippant in his reply. "There is no need, it was well spent for the research and knowledge acquired." He opens his book signaling the conversation is over.

You lick your lips. Fine then, I'll just consider it payment for emotional suffering and damages of the last eight weeks.

The first few hours of the journey were spent reading one of the new books you picked up at the convention. Occasionally you would peek over the pages at the professor. He was engrossed in his own selection; sometimes he would pause to write down a thought.

Around the seventh hour of your journey you had given up on reading anymore in favor of looking at the fields outside. The silence was comforting.

Laszlo had trouble concentrating on the book in his hand. He saw you as a conundrum. One minute you could be sociable and teasing with your comments, then next you were biting at his throat with your quick wit and fierce ideals. He decides that he wants to know what made you into who you are today. Now is as good a time as any.

His eyes on you cause a tingle up your spine but you ignore it. Laszlo breaks the silence; "may I ask a personal question?"

"You just did," you answer, still peering out of the large window. He huffed once, amused. At his following silence you face him. You raise your eyebrows to signal him to go on with his question. Curiosity grows at the thought of what he intends to ask.

"Twice now you have made implications of a traumatic past," he begins.

Bubble popped.

Interrupting, you snark "is this the part where you psychoanalyze me, doc? Because trust me, I've been through enough of that." You pick at the lint on your jeans.

Laszlo tries to choose his words more carefully the next time he speaks. "What I mean to say is, the first afternoon in the classroom where you defended that student you implied you had been witness to a trauma. You then displayed signs of anger and embarrassment before leaving prematurely. Yesterday you mentioned having entered a psychiatric facility. As an alienist I can't help but find myself curious about your experiences."

You slide your eyes to meet his from across the cabin. Your face is devoid of any emotion. "We all have our demons. Even you can't argue with that."

Your jaw clenches. Everyone had warned you. They all said he would try to worm his way into your head to figure you out. All the reviews, the gossip, everything. It was a big fat 'I told you so'. You give a pitiful laugh at the situation. "You know, everyone told me that you would pull this stunt."

He seems confused by your statement. "And what is that?"

"That you'd get inside my head and try to figure me all out or whatever. You already know I googled you beforehand, what everyone says about your methods. By now I assume you've done a little research yourself. I promise you there is nothing exciting here," you scoff and point to yourself.

"You would be correct in your assumption." You chew at your cheek as he starts. "I do know some of what happened in your past. Yet I also know that society likes to dilute the truth into something either more palatable, more entertaining, for people to consume greedily. What I want to know is what you have faced. How you have not allowed the experience to overcome you so much so that your humanity is erased like the characters I lecture on."

Eyes closing of their own volition you are thrown back in time to that night so many years ago. You didn't talk about it anymore. Bitsy knew of course, but that was the extent.

Laszlo waits. He knows this is likely to push you over the edge if your history with him means anything. Quite frankly, anyone would be tossed to their limit at his interrogation had they gone through what you had. John always told him that he needed to work on his bedside manner; that he had a habit of coming on too strong in his pursuit of learning the intricacies of the human mind. But your earlier comment about being sent to a so-called 'nuthouse' rubbed him the wrong way. It left a bad taste in his mouth. He needed to know. He needed to understand.

Laszlo can imagine the reprimand that he would receive from John and Sara for this. Just as he considers apologizing for his intrusion you open your eyes.

"She was fine. None of us suspected anything was wrong. I came home from having dinner with some… boy, and she had locked herself in the bathroom. She- she must have started over the sink and moved to sit on the side of the tub. She was hunched inside it when I got the door open. I pulled her out. Blood was… everywhere." Your voice is clinical as you explain.

"After, I shut down. So I checked myself into a psych ward a few days later when I couldn't get the feel of her blood off my hands. It's slippery, you know. And it smells. You wouldn't think so but it does." You clear your throat. "I did the therapy, took the meds they prescribed, all the standard treatments. Later I started watching true crime documentaries. I'd heard about exposure therapy so I figured the more I saw the gore, the less the image of my dead roommate would bother me. And it did help. The nightmares stopped after a while, I came back to school. I was better, just not the same.” You had watched the passing landscape as you explained. Turning to face him you speak again. “That's why those pictures didn't bother me. They weren't anything I hadn't seen before."

He contemplates you. The discovery and subsequent loss of your friend in this manner would no doubt cause lingering effects to your psyche. A stain that would forever remind you. "I offer my sincerest condolences. I do not presume to know what that would be like to experience, but I am glad you sought help afterwards. To make the choice to alleviate yourself of your own suffering where possible.”

As he says this he realizes that your anger towards the idea of being enslaved to unconscious impulse makes perfect sense. It explains why you focused so much energy on defending your belief in free will. That you have the power to choose how you carry your joy, your anger, your healing. It reminds him of how he held onto his own guilt and hurt, ignoring how it festered within him for so long. He feels as though he needs to share a piece of himself with you.

“I played piano as a child, quite well too. My mother hoped I would someday make a career of it. I vividly remember playing Mozart’s Concerto for Piano No. 20 in D Minor at a holiday party when I was seven years old. It was my favorite to play.... It requires two hands." You finally look at him. "My father...” He pauses to gather himself.

Now it is the doctor that cannot meet your eyes. As you listen you feel your confusion grow. How could he have been a talented pianist if he only had full use of his left hand? Unless..., the realization dawns on you just as he continues, his words slow.

“My father had two sides. One loving and the other brutal, the two often coexisting. It was something as trivial as putting me to bed, I recall... A game of tug of war. We were laughing…” He inhales a sharp breath. Already you can feel the tears begin to blur your vision. “I don't remember if he was drunk or if I said something that offended him. He must have pulled my arm behind my back.” Laszlo exhales shakily. “In small children, fractures can often affect…” he trails off, unable to finish. You can hear how he barely holds himself together.

Your heart aches for the broken man that sits in front of you. He never let on how much his arm bothered him, at least not within your presence. Suddenly you don’t see him as this rude, insufferable, obsessive man, but instead as someone that spends his life trying to protect himself. He projects his own anger and hurt so that he may, just for a minute, forget about his own demons. He wants to help others even when he feels he cannot bear to help himself.

But unlike you, he has to live with the physical reminder of his past every day of his life.

You stand and move to sit on his right side. Before allowing yourself to think too much of your actions, you place your hand atop his own, curling your fingers around his palm and squeezing delicately. You don’t bother wiping away the tears on your cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Laszlo;” the whisper is barely heard above the sound of the train. A second passes where you fear you have overstepped and offended him by touching the affected limb. When his thumb tightens against the backs of your fingers you know he is not. He holds you in place.

“You asked me how I kept my humanity. How does anyone really? We learn to take what we get and we carry it in a bag. Sometimes you have to drag the damn thing behind you. But eventually the weight gets less and less if you allow yourself to move forward, even if it’s still there with you all the time. I dealt with what happened years ago and it does still haunt me. It’s easier now than it was, but… I- I suppose I’ve learned from you too. Sitting in those lectures and hearing you talk. We can either let it haunt us for the rest of our lives… or we can accept it… and use the memory of our pain to help ourselves and others.”

“I’m not sure the choice is entirely in our hands.” His tone is mournful.

You turn to smile at him through your tears. His own eyes are bloodshot. “I disagree. If it weren’t, if we didn’t have the freedom to choose that, we’d all be murderers.”

Tag list

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[aterlupus]

Varis's Speech Transcription (Part 1 of 2)

Part Two: Link Here

I've been meaning to post this for a while since I talk about it a lot but I want to finally have it written out. This will be a long post since I am essentially posting the entire cutscene three times over (The English Text, the JP Text, and my translation of the JP text.) Please note I don't consider myself fluent in Japanese and I do not claim this translation is perfect. This is why I post the JP text alongside it in case there is some things of note I might have missed.

If you ever see an asterisk in parenthesis like this: (***) it corresponds to a footnote at the bottom of the post. 

OK to Reblog

...

ENG: Varis: Esteemed representatives of the Eorzean Alliance -- on behalf of the Garlean Empire, I thank you for inviting me here today. As this parley was convened at your request, I invite you to speak first.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：エオルゼアの盟主たちよ我こそ、ガレマール帝国第二代皇帝ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴ ァスである。 まずは聞かせてもらおうか、停戦を訴える貴公らの言い分を……。 TL: Varis: Lords of Eorzea, I am the second Emperor of Garlemald, Varis Zos Galvus. First, you should let me know what you have to say about the ceasefire. (*)

ENG: Nanamo: Very well, Your Radiance, I, Nanamo Ul Namo, Seventeenth in the line of Ul, should be pleased to oblige you.

JP: ナナモ・ウルナモ；それでは、わらわ、ウルダハ第十七代国王、ナナモ・ウル・ナモより、エオルゼア都市軍事同盟の総意を伝えよう。 TL: Nanamo: Now then, let me, Nanamo Ul Namo, 17th King of Ul'dah, convey the consensus of the Eorzean Military Alliance.

ENG: As recent events in Ala Mhigo and Doma have made plain, the subjugation and exploitation of neighboring nations is not a sustainable policy.

JP: ナナモウルナモ：貴国、ガレマール帝国の力による支配は、一時は成功しようとも、必ずや綻びが生じることは明白アラミゴ、ドマでの戦はその証左であった。 TL: It is clear that rule by the power of your country, the Garlemald Empire, will surely break even if it succeeds for a while, and the battle in Ala Mhigo and Doma was proof.

ENG: Should this day end in war, you may very well defeat us, but you will never extinguish the people’s desire for freedom. Though it may not be in our lifetime, there will be another revolution, another war, and the cycle will continue.

JP: ナナモウルナモ：我らはたとえ、此度の戦に敗れたとて幾世代にもかけて、自由を求め戦い続けるであろう。この終わりなき負の連鎖は、ここで断ち切らねばならぬ。 TL: Even if we lose the battle, the fight for freedom will continue for generations to come. This endless negative chain must be broken here.

ENG: Doma has entered into a concord with the nations of Eorzea. A partnership wherein we recognize one another as equals. Garlemald could be afforded similar treatment. You need only set aside your ambitions and join us in paving a path towards peace.

JP: そして、我らエオルゼア諸国、並びにドマ国は、各々が独立を保ちながらも、確かな同盟関係を結んでいる。そなたらガレアン人国家とも、平和裏に手を取ることができるはず。 TL: And as well, the countries of Eorzea were able to form a solid alliance with the countries of Doma, all while maintaining their independence. If this is the case, then we should be able to peacefully take hands with those of the Garlean Nation. Now is the time to abandon your grudges and desire for control, and seek a way of coexistence, is it not?

ENG: Varis: Hmph! You will not win me over with sophistry, Your Grace.

JP: ヴァリス・ゾス・ガルヴァス: フン…説弁だな。 TL: Varis: Hah, So that’s your excuse?

ENG: As you know only too well, this alliance lacks the strength to keep the peace within its own borders. Even now, your struggles with the beastmen continue unabated.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：いまでこそ同盟関係にあるのやもしれんが、エオルゼアとて、かつては国同士の戦争や内乱が絶えなかったさらに言えば、今なお「蛮族」との争いを続けておる。 TL: Maybe you call yourself an alliance, but Eorzea is still fighting with the “Barbarians”(**), and once before, the wars and civil wars between your nations were constant.

ENG: Divided, you sow this fertile soil with the seeds of your differences and reap naught but discord and chaos for your trouble. Eorzea must be united under one leader, one purpose. I would offer you both and bring an end to your strife.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：断言するが、国が分かたれていれば、争いの種は尽きることはないすべての民が、ひとつ理想の下に集わぬかぎり終わりなき負の連鎖とやらは、断ち切れはせぬというものよ。 TL: Varis: I do affirm, that if the nations are separated, the seeds of conflict will never run out. Unless all people are gathered under one ideal, the endless negative chain will indeed never be cut off.

ENG: Lyse: With all due respect, Your Radiance, the only thing that you offered the people of Ala Mhigo was fear and hopelessness.

JP: リセ：お言葉だけど…帝国に支配されたアラミゴでは、属州民は自由を奪われ虐げられ、恐怖と絶望の下で生きていたそれが、帝国の掲げる理想というものなの。 TL: Lyse: If I may have a word... In Ala Mhigo, which was dominated by the Empire, the people were deprived of freedom, oppressed, and lived in fear and despair. That is the ideal of the empire.

ENG: Hien: The citizens of Doma can also attest to the meager alms of Imperial Rule. There is no purpose to be found in a life of oppression, each day more uncertain than the last.

JP: ヒエン：ドマも同じだ……。支配された民は圧政に怯え、明日をも知れぬ身に、皆、震えていた. TL: Hien: The same rings true for the people of Doma, the ruled people were terrified of oppression, and trembled in the face of tomorrow.

ENG: Lyse: Our people are willing to die for their freedom. A great many already have. And countless more will, if we don’t put an end to this madness here and now.

JP: リセ：結果、自由を求めて戦が起こり、多大な犠牲が出ることになった。帝国のやり方は、悲惨な争いを生むだけなんだ。 TL: As a result, war broke out for the sake of Freedom, and at a great cost. The Empire’s way only creates disastrous conflicts.

ENG: Varis: We brought order and stability to your lives. This madness and bloodshed is of your own making. You broke the peace, not Garlemald.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：統治者に逆らい争いを起こしたのはそちら。圧政を敷かざるをえんのも、反逆者が絶えぬため従っていれば、平和は約束されていたものを・。 TL: That was those who fought against their ruler. The reason why we have put up these oppressive rules is because peace was promised if the Rebels obeyed, but they only continue to rebel.

ENG: Raubahn: Peace? Order? You kill our people, despoil our lands, take everything that is ours. And what? You expect us to lick the boot that grinds out faces into the dirt?

JP: ラウバーン：仲間を殺され、祖国を疎潤され、すべてを奪われた者たちが、大人しく従うことはない反旗を翻すのも当然のことではないか………？ TL: Raubahn: Our friends were killed, we were deprived of our homeland, and deprived of the ability to rebel against the Empire, and what of the sacrifices of those who obeyed quietly...?

ENG: Varis: I expect you to weigh the costs. To recognize that countless lives have been lost on both sides in pursuit of a greater good -- and to not squander all that we have achieved in a fit of petulance.

JP: ヴァリス・ゾス・ガルヴァス：その反逆によって出たこちらの犠牲も、決して少なくはない。戦死した兵らにも、それぞれの人生があったのだ。尊い犠牲を無駄にせぬためにも、歩みを止めるわけにはいかん。 TL: Varis: The sacrifices made by the Rebellion are not small. The soldiers who died in the war also had their own lives. You cannot stop walking this path, so that you do not waste their precious sacrifices.

ENG: Aymeric: Your Radiance, I fear I can personally attest to the dangers of pursuing one’s vision with such righteous fervor.

JP: アイメリク：では、私から少し話をさせていただこう。 TL: Aymeric: Please, permit me to talk a bit.

ENG: For a thousand years, the Holy See of Ishgard waged war with dragons. A thousand years of sacrifice, of sorrow and hate, in which we bathed in the blood of friend and foe alike. Had it gone on any longer, we may well have drowned.

JP: アイメリク：我が国、イシュガルドは千年にわたってドラゴン族と戦ってきた。双方とも犠牲の山はうず高く積まれるばかり、戦はどちらかが滅びるまで続くものと思われた。 TL: Aymeric: My country, Ishgard, has been fighting dragons for a thousands years. On both sides, the mountains of sacrifices were piled up high, and the war was expected to continue until one of us died out.

ENG: Yet we have chosen to raise ourselves out of this bloody spiral, and have since made peace with our former enemy.

JP: アイメリク：しかし、我々とドラゴン族は千年の禍根を乗り越え、竜詩戦争を終結させ、融和の道を歩み始めたのだ貴国との間にも、必ずや和平の可能性があるはず… TL: Aymeric: However, we and the dragons overcame this millennia of wrath, and ended the Dragonsong War, and we have begun a path of reconciliation. There must be way... to have peace with your country.

ENG: Varis: So I understand. No doubt the dragons were more receptive to your overtures in the wake of their leader’s demise.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：その融和とやらも、竜の頭目かの邪竜を殺すことでのみ、成し遂げたと聞くが？ TL: Varis: I hear your reconciliation was only achieved by killing the Evil Dragon, the Head of the Dragons...

ENG: You speak of peace, yet use war to achieve it. Your father would not have bothered to obscure his intent with honeyed words. He understood that strength is all that mattered in the end.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：私は、美辞麗句を語る責様より、強大な力によって、すべての者を統べようとした先の教皇にこそ、共感を覚えるのだがな。 TL: I sympathize with the Pope, who tried to rule with great power, rather than to shift responsibility by speaking in rhetoric.

ENG: Without his clarity of vision, I can but wonder what will become of Ishgard and her people. There was a time when Garlemald too lacked a leader of conviction. Weak and unable to wield magic, we were at the mercy of the strong, from whom we sought refuge in the bitter cold of the north.

JP: ヴァリス・ゾス・ガルヴァス：まったく話にならぬな………。そもそも、「己の国」とやらの定義は何なのだ. ガレアン族は、故郷を追われた民である先天的に魔法が使えぬ我らは、領土争いに敗れ、北方の寒冷地に追いやられた歴史を持つ。 TL: That is to say... In the first place, what even is the definition of “My country”? The Garleans have a history of being displaced from their hometowns, who are congenitally unable to wield magic, and have been defeated in territorial disputes and driven to the freezing regions of the north.

ENG: Were it not for the discovery of ceruleum, and the subsequent development of magitek, we might never have gained the power to take back which was rightfully ours.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：そこで青燐水を発見し、魔導技術を得たからこそ、領土を取り戻し、強国へ成長することもできたが…それまでは厳しい生活の中、苦汁をなめてきたのだ。 TL: It is because we discovered ceruleum, and acquired the ability to wield magic skills, that we were able to regain territory and grow into a powerful country. Until then, it had been a bitter and difficult life.

ENG: Merlwyb: You speak as if your people were the first to have been driven from their homes. Limsa Lominsa was built by wayward souls in search of a place to call their own. On the shores of Vylbrand we found it, and from those humble beginnings did we grow and flourish. And all without robbing our neighbors of their liberty.

JP: メルウィブ：我らリムサ・ロミンサの民も、同じく故郷を追われた身だ。それでも、新天地を切り開いて海の都を築き上げた。だが、必要以上の拡大はせぬ。不遇な境遇だからとて、侵略が肯定されるわけではない。 TL: Merlwyb: The people of Limsa Lominsa are also displaced from their hometowns. Still, we opened up a new world and built a city of the sea. However, we didn’t expand more than necessary. The aggression is not there because of the unfavorable circumstances.

ENG: Varis: So sayeth the pirate. Am I to believe that you simply asked the kobolds to yield up their lands, and that they were happy to oblige you? That you did not drive them out like rats in the hold of one of the man ships seized by your “privateers”?

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァスさすがは海賊、略奪が日常ゆえに忘れてしまったか？バイルブランド島を、先住民のコボルド族から奪ったことをもっとも、蛮族を駆逐するとは、よい心掛けだがな。 TL: Varis: As expected from a Pirate... have you forgotten this because looting has become an every day occurrence? Taking Vylbrand Island from the indigenous Kobolds was the best way to get rid of those Barbarians.

ENG: I will concede that, after centuries of exile, reclamation may be mistaken for invasion. Nevertheless, it is not -- and those who till stolen soil have no right to object when cast out in turn.

JP: ヴァリスゾスガルヴァス：ガレアン族が故郷を取り戻すまでの数百年間で、その土地に根付いた民にとってみれば、我らは所詮、侵略者。相互理解などという、生ぬるいもので共存できようはずもない。 TL: In the hundreds of years it took for the Garleans to regain their homeland, for the people rooted in the land, we are, after all, invaders. There is no way we can coexist with lukewarm things such as a mutual understanding.

ENG: Kan E Senna: Your uncompromising nature rivals that of the Ixal. They too lament circumstances which they themselves perpetuate. Were they but to embrace peace, we would welcome them with open arms. Indeed, some few have done just that, and now receive the Twelveswood’s bounty.

JP: まるで・…行き場がないと嘆き、黒衣森の恵みを奪うことで精霊の心を乱す、イクサル族のようです。しかし、そんなイクサル族のなかにも、己の拠り所をみつけ充足を得た者たちもいます。 TL:  Kan E Senna: Ah... It’s just like that Ixali tribe. You lament there is no place to go, and are like them, who disturb the Spirits by robbing the Blessings of the Twelveswood. However... there are some Ixal Tribes who have found their own bases, and they are satisfied.

ENG: Kan E Senna: Would that your people might learn from their example.

JP: カヌ・エ・センナ：ガレマール帝国にも、拡大路線だけでなく、民の幸福を実現する、ほかの道があるのではないでしょうか？ TL: Kan E Senna: Isn’t the Garlemald Empire not just an expansion route, but a way to achieve a means of well-being for the people?

ENG: Varis: You would dare compare us to the birdmen? You who thought to invoke the Twelve and threaten all of creation?

JP: ヴァリス・ゾス・ガルヴァス：まさか、我らが蛮族に喰えられようとはな・。容易く神に救いを求めるそちらこそ、世界の脅威だ。 TL: It is impossible to compare, considering you would have been consumed by the Ixali if not for threatening the whole world with the summoning of your Gods...

ENG: I came here in the hope of finding some speck of common ground, but I see now these discussions will accomplish nothing. Despite what you people may believe, I am not wont to choose the sword over the olive branch. ‘Tis but a pity men are loath to accept one without first being shown the other.

JP: 少しでも停戦の可能性があればと、会談の申し出を受けたものの、このままでは、将が明かぬな。 こちらとて、無駄な血は流したくないのだがやはり、武力で語り合うしかないということか。 TL: I was offered a parley if there was any possibility of a ceasefire, but I believe it has been made clear to me... I don’t want to shed wasted blood, but after all, I have no choice but to talk only by force. (***)

ENG: Alisaie: Wait, I beg you! This meeting was supposed to be a chance to find a way forward together, not to bemoan the missteps which brought us here.

JP: 待ってせっかく、敵対し続けてきた者同士が会談の場を持てたのだから、もう少し話し合いましょう。 TL: Wait, we have been hostile this whole time before even having a chance to meet, so please, let us talk a bit more!

ENG: Please -- if you truly consider violence a last resort, there must be a way we can come to an agreement.

JP: お互い戦いを望んでいないのなら、過去の非をあげつらうのでなく、停戦に向けて歩み寄るべきよ.  TL: Alisaie: If you don’t want to fight each other, you should walk towards a ceasefire instead of blaming the past.

ENG: Nanamo: As Mistress Alisaie says, we did not come here to bicker over the past, but to discuss how we might strive towards a brigter future. Emperor Varis, may I suggest a short recess, that all present might compose themselves prior to begin anew?

JP: ナナモウルナモ：確かに……その通りじゃ。この会談は、お互いの未来に向けて話し合うはずであった。ヴァリス殿、議論がもつれてしまったいま休憩を挟んで、皆で頭を冷やしてから、改めて話し合わぬか。 TL: Nanamo: Certainly... That’s right. This talk was supposed to discuss each other’s futures... Lord Varis, now that the discussion has become muddled, let us take a break, cool our heads, and then discuss again.

ENG: Varis: Very well. I pray this intermission will suffice to move these talks in a more constructive direction.

JP: ヴァリスゾス・ガルヴァス：よかろう。一服の後に、建設的な話ができることを期待しているぞ。 TL: Good luck. I hope we can talk constructively after the break.

...

*Worth noting Varis did not actually give them the same sort of in like he did in English, in Japanese they begin to tear into him with no prompting to do so, making them appear even less professional.

** In saying “Barbarians” in quotes, He means the beast tribes. Garleans refer both to Eorzeans and the Beast Tribes with the term Barbarians, which is why he highlights this, because he knows the Eorzeans consider the Beast Tribes to be lesser, while Varis considers them to be the same.

*** He is essentially saying the group has not really given him a chance to talk about peace at all, and therefore, he will talk about peace only by force. (Essentially saying “I suppose I’ll actually be able to talk peace with you once I defeat you. Because we aren’t talking about it right now.”)

...

I’m breaking this post into two so this is the end of the first cutscene, the second one I will link to later.

[obeymeshallwedate-latinplayer]

Traditional costumes part 2

Remmember, GN!MC. And stay for a big hollyday surprise!!!

Beel (Chiapas La chiapaneca)

·         Wearing the typical costume of your state, always made your heart expand in your chest, that night wasn´t the exception, using all the elements of nature made you really happy. That night Lord Diavolo prepare a big dinner to celebrate the exchange students, most likely he just wanted to take a break from the exams that you took a week ago. So you prepare yourself with the very best clothes you had.

·         Beel knocked in your door, saying that it was about time to go out, and he only heard one single scream from you that he panicked and with frenetically movements he opened your door. You were almost done, but usually your grandma would do the last touches for you to be ready, that made you sad. And Beel noticed it.

·         With a silent movement and a soft whisper in your ear he asked what was wrong, and how he might help you.

·         “You know Beel, this is my evening dress, not only because it´s beautiful but… It´s all about the story behind it: This costume was created towards the end of the 1920s, (1926-1927), when a highly successful theatrical company from Central America arrived in Chiapas de Corzo. In her first performance within the state, the lead singer performed a song that was called "Las Chiapanecas", in honor of her audience. The most popular story in terms of the traditional clothing of this state is carried by the Chiapas, who year after year parade showing their wonderful dresses. Characterized by its multiple colors and flowers; generally, on a black background, the traditional dress of Chiapas women represents the different ethnic groups that coexist in their region, such as the Tzeltales, the Lacandones, the Jacaltecos, the Choles and the Tojolobales, among others. Likewise, reference is made to the immense variety of botanical species that exist in Chiapas, since it is a state in which all kinds of ecosystems converge, from the mountainous places of the sierra to the coastal towns. In the case of men, allusion is made to elements such as the sun and rain, so necessary for the fertility of the Earth, and protection against the forces of darkness. The men also remember the Spanish conquerors, imitating certain characteristics of Europeans such as their blond hair; through the headdress that they put on their heads.”

·         Beelzebu wasn´t a man of tons of words like his older brothers, he was a man of actions. He hugged you as tight as he could (without harming you of course) after the hug he just smiled at you. “You are the connection in the three realms, but those are some complicated words that Lord Diavolo usually use, you are all of them for me, the flowers and plants, the mountains, the sierras and the ocean, for me. You are all of them and more.”

·         That made your heart “Doki, doki” yes, maybe that was the last thing you needed, like a magical spell just for you.

Belphie ( Traje Mestizo Quintana Roo) 

He was sleeping in your room, nothing out the ordinary, most of his weekly routine was staying in your room sleeping, until he sniffed something different. He might be sleeping under your bed when he found out the costume inside the box under your bed. Was it like a good luck item? Or did you just didn´t wanted to see it again? He approached his left hand until he touched the box, he took it out and opened it.

In that moment he understood why you were hiding it, the costume was so beautiful. If someone else saw it, they would sell it, eat it, or use it, even asked you to use it. When you opened the door, and found him with the costume you screamed with full joy. “OH BELPHIE DARLING, YOU FOUND IT! I thought I lost it!” So you weren´t trying to hide it? You lost it? In your own room? Heh what a weird human.

“You know, my great grand mother made this for the generations after her. She would always be telling us Mestizo clothing is particularly representative clothing of Yucatan, and has been associated with Quintana Roo clothing. This is due to the proximity that exists between both states and of course, because both complement each other as tourist poles in Mexico. Particularly, the mestizo woman's costume is made up of a huipil embroidered in cross stitch, whose motifs go on the collar of the garment, the hem and the skirt. While the man's is much simpler and he only wears a shirt and pants made of a raw blanket, matching with a plaid apron, leather espadrilles and a palm hat.” You said with a big smile in your face. “Maybe we could ask her to make you one of it What do you think?”

He nodded, you looked so excited about it, that he almost forgot one little thing, How old was your great grandmother? He panicked just a little, but he recover the posture and with the nicest smile he could use, he said. “Well… But first how about you showing me the costume and then we could ask your great grandmother about it”

You smiled once again and ran into your bathroom, it was going to be an amazing evening.

Diavolo (Sn. Luis Potosí, “Las huastecas.”)

It was a nice party for you, some of the greatest demons were at the castle, the brothers tried to protect you as much as they could, but they did had their own responsibility’s, being the seven rulers of the Devildom wasn´t a simple task, and you knew it.

Diavolo tried to approach you on multiple times, failing everyone of them. Until a duke actually came and talked to you. It was notorious you were uncomfortable, he was touching your most precious clothing, and making some rude comments about it.

When Diavolo was about to make his intervention, you took the demons hand and with a scary smile, you started. “It might not be as beautiful as you may think, but at least my dressing has a bigger meaning that that tuxedo of yours, my culture is not for you to make fun of, it deserves to have respect.” After that the prince of the Devildom approach to the both of you, as an excuse for you to join him for some drinks.

Both of you went out of the party, the garden was nice and the moon in the Devildom was brighter that night, Diavolo took your hands with his. “You are a brave human.” He started. “And you look delightful tonight, like someone full of dignity that can rule along with me.” He kissed your hands with the respect that he might show to his fiancé.

“You know Diavolo, my culture is a descendant from the Mayas, we use a tangle that reaches a few inches below the knee. It is made of a white blanket or a plain black cloth on the back; the front has four planks. Is held up by a factory-made sash with red and blue speckled stripes and has a braided fringe at both ends. The blouse or loose jacket is made of flowered calico or pink or blue artisela; It has puffed sleeves, high neck and pleated bib, ending at the waist with an olán or loose skirt that covers the girdle. On top of the blouse, we wear a white cotton quechquémel entirely covered with worsted embroidery with cross stitch. I am proud of my culture.”

As soon as you conclude he smiled, and asked you nicely to go for a dance. After that night he will make that duke pay for what he has done.

Barbatos (Oaxaca, Traje de las tehuanas)

After visiting the human realm your grandfather gave him a nice CD full of music, Barbatos wasn´t the musical type of demon, but he accepted it anyways. After a few months the whole devil castle would have music that was just nostalgic for you.

One day you decided to go on your Huasteca outfit, not the casual one, but the gala. If Barbatos wanted to you could dance for him. When you arrived to the castle there he was, his usually stoic face turned into a surprise one when he saw you enter. His eyes started to shine like a small child when they saw a candy store.

He walked as fast as he could to see you, that was the first time he was close enough to listen to his breathing. He even started to say: “This typical costume was born in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, using it both the Tehuanas and the Juchitecas, it is said that it is a living costume, since they use it in any type of celebration, making it current over the years, even with the countless modifications it has undergone. t was in 1853, when the composer Máximo Ramón Ortiz composed the musical theme known as the Sandunga, that is when the Tehuana costume managed to cement its fame and prestige as a characteristic of the Oaxacan culture.”

You looked at him astonished, he even knew the history behind your costume, with a laugh caught in your throat you smiled at him. “It was a present from my family, sometimes I miss going to the river in Oaxaca, or even talking with my family in Zapotec.”

He was clearly impressed about the details in the costume, he even took your hand and ask you if you could dance with him. With a big smile you nodded and enter the castle.

It was a nice dance between the two of you, he even made your favorite  tea.  

Simeon (Yucatán Terno) 

He was researching old cultures for his new book, until he found out something he missed while thinking, you were like an expert of the topic, right? Maybe you could tell him more about it, so he ran into the house of lamentation, hoping you could help him.

And there you were, using a beautiful costume, while talking with Satan, his heart started to beat faster, as he heard your story.

“Its origin dates from the time of colonization; When the Spaniards arrived in Mexican territory, they were surprised by the beauty and high quality of the blankets woven by the indigenous people, so they began to create adaptations taking various elements from both cultures to create what we know today as the suit or gala dress. for women and the mestizo costume for men.”

That would help him develop one of his new characters, but when you saw him in the door threshold, immediately your face became red. He notice it and laugh. He actually took your hand, and asked Satan nicely that he needed a piece of advice from you.

“You look stunning Mc.” He said to you while looking right into your clothes. “I must say, this is the nicest surprise of them all. Is it an important day for you to wear it?”

“Not at all, sometimes I only use it so I feel more at home.” With that say the both of you stayed talkig for a while.

Luke (Baja California Sur. Flor de pitahaya) 

He was with you, watching the nicest video of the whole realms, something about the dance in front him made his heart a happy heart.

“Mc! This is beautiful!!” You looked at him with a warm smile, and told him, it was your mother dancing for a festival.

“You see Luke, my mother is a folkloric dancer, this dance in specific is from our state, and the full outfit has a big meaning and even a history behind it.” When you concluded, he looked at you with those big blue puppy eye of his, you pat his head and started.  “Some people say that this suit was created in 1951 as a result of a summons issued by the government of General Agustín Olachea Avilés, others, that it was in 1955, since there was no suit that represented our state. At that time, "period costumes" were used, since other states had a representative costume since ancient times, that is why this call came out in order to have a "symbol" that represented the roots of the inhabitants of Baja California Sur, being the winner "La Flor de Pitahaya” The Pitahayo is a cactus that grows in Baja California Sur, both on the coast and in the mountains, and when it blooms, it shows an abundance of nutritional wealth with its fruit the Pitahaya that peninsular indigenous people and now inhabitants have enjoyed for years.”

He was amazed, “You know Mc! I´m just a young angel, but listening to the story makes my heart melt, Is it normal?” with a warm smile, you told him: “Well, of course it´s normal, my stories have that magical power!”

After that day Luke would practice his dancing for you to be proud of him, sometimes he even saw you using the dressing for important parties in the castle of Diavolo. It was so nice!

He even saw your performance once, when he went to visit you at the house of lamentation, and he knew, he needed to work harder if he wanted to have an opportunity to dance with you.

Solomon (Nayarit  traje de los wixárikas)

The both of you went to the Human realm, he needed to know more of you if he wanted to teach you even better, your family actually welcome him with a big surprise and a big meal, your family was known for using the traditional costume almost the whole year, so everybody knew how proud you were with it.

Solomon received  one of the largest lectures you had heard from your father. “The typical costume of Nayarit corresponds to the clothing of the Huichol culture, or as they prefer to be called: wixárikas. Most of these descendants of the Aztecs live in the Sierra Madre Oriental. The female version of the typical Nayarit costume is quite simple, compared to its male counterpart. This includes an embroidered blouse and a skirt, it also includes a cloak embroidered with flowers that serves to cover their heads and a quechquemitl as a complement. The quechquemitl is a triangular garment with a central opening that in pre-Hispanic times was reserved for the goddesses of fertility, or for certain women of the nobility who identified with these deities. Men wear more elaborate garb. All his garments are decorated with beaded embroidery and brightly colored threads: the shirt open on the inside of the sleeves (cuarri), the pants (breeches), the cape (turra), the sashes that hold the cape and the backpack that crosses his chest. They use symmetrical designs loaded with symbolic, mythological and magical elements. For example, a zigzag can represent lightning (associated with rain). These embroideries are, at times, so profuse that they do not reveal the white fabric in the background.” Solomon just stayed astonished when your father finished the lecture, he made it in one breath, that was amazing, and yet he wanted to use the clothing.

After a few days his dream became true, when your grandfather gave him his very own clothing, the old man said that if he was going to teach you, he must use it for now on.

Solomon was a happy little baby, and he would brag about it in front of the demon brothers, and even in front of Diavolo. Maybe the two of you could go into a party with matching clothes, just like your grandma and grandpa do.

After a while he got used to wear the costume your family gave him, and he even have a time record, and if you want to help him, that would make him as happier as a human could be.

He was grateful for the gift and having you in his life.

It is I, the writer behind the headcanons, So! For the hollydays I´m planing to make place for 9 comissions! (Originaly they were 10 but someone won one of the space) So you can ask about culture, romance, comedy etc. Remmember, I usually write for Latin American Mc, but if you have another idea for another MC, we can make that happen! Anyways, thanks for the support! And I will be reading you!!! Happy Hollydays. 

[x0401x]

Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #1

Feel free to message me about possible corrections, and please consider supporting the creators by purchasing digital copies of the official releases: Novel || Manga || Fanbook. In case anyone is feeling generous: Ko-fi | PayPal. ( ╹◡╹)っ’･*

Index || Next →

Cleopatra’s Pearl

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I had a night shift in my part-time job at the TV station. I continued working there for just a little, to an extent that wouldn’t get in the way of my Saturday part-time at Jewelry Etranger.

Only the channel of the station I worked for was displayed in the muted TV of the night shift room. There was a history-type quiz show going on when I came in at six. It wasn’t a genre that I had any particular interest in, but…

“Hey, Richard, do pearls really dissolve in vinegar?”

“Cleopatra’s anecdote?”

“Whoa, as expected of a jeweler.”

“This is common knowledge.”

It was said that Cleopatra, once the queen of Ancient Egypt, had a battle with the Roman general Antonius as to which of them could arrange the richest dish. In a direct attack, Antonius showed her rows of delicacies from all over the world, but the queen used an unpredictable move. She dissolved one of the large pearls that she wore as earrings with vinegar that she had poured into a cup, drinking it up in front of Antonius. By the moment she smiled at a dumbfounded Antonius, saying that she could use the other side in case one had not been enough, their contest was already over.

As I talked about the anecdote of the unexpected trick, Richard nodded with a composed face. “That is Plinius’s description of it, right? If you look for a book called ‘Naturalis Historia’, you will find it written there.”

“So it’s true?! No, that’s impossible, isn’t it...? Vinegar can’t really dissolve pearls, right?”

“Depends on its density. If the acidity is strong enough to affect your body after you drink it, it can indeed dissolve pearls as well. But then I cannot conceive that the Queen of Egypt drank it.”

“Thought so...”

“I believe it is unreasonable to expect chemical accuracy from ancient Roman literature, but at the very least, it conveys the romance that he was attempting to tell. The worth of Cleopatra’s large pearls must be immeasurable.”

I had never seen pearls being used much in Etranger, but were there any requests from the clients, this magus-like jeweler would always stock up the necessary goods in rows. As I asked how much a pearl cost, Richard answered that it depended. When I formed a big circle with my fingers and asked, “What about this?”, the beautiful man sighed.

“A gem worn by a royal is a special good among special goods. There are no other comparable items for sale in this world. Therefore, the speculation of ‘how much this costs’ has next to no meaning.”

“So no matter how much money you pay, there’s no way you can get your hands on something that doesn’t exist.”

“Exactly.”

Antonius’s treat was food. It was not cheap, but one could manage acquiring it with money somehow or other. In contrast, Cleopatra all too abruptly dissolved something unique and drank it. I see.

“That’s Cleopatra’s value, huh. So moral of the story is that, even if it wasn’t true, Cleopatra was a step above in sagacity.”

“Right you are. Authenticity aside, it is possible to do a rough analysis from the nature of the anecdote.”

“Cleopatra loses in the end, though.”

Antonius and Cleopatra did join hands, but in the end, they lost to a different general who had come from Rome and both died. Apparently, the new general had no interest in Cleopatra’s beauty. It wasn’t like everything would go well for someone so long as they were good-looking. My break time had ended there, and right before the end credits, I received a task to guard the studio’s management counter.

I would take the night shift four days a week until I started working in this shop, and thinking back on it now, my body sure had endured it. My skin was three times bumpier than normal when I woke up after sleeping until eight o’clock in the nap room. I was by no means a peerless beauty type like Richard, so this was the kind of experience where I became self-aware that even the things we couldn’t see would wear down little by little. Speaking of which...

“Is something the matter, Seigi?”

“No... I was just thinking a bit about the relationship between beautiful people and gemstones.”

Gems lasted more than people. Richard had said before that stones nestled close to people’s lives.

“Gems are stones, so they don’t get damaged so easily and stay beautiful for about forever, right? The reason why rich people feel like collecting them might not be just for using up their fortunes.”

All human beings grew old. Someone had also told me in the past that “luxury is the same as dirt to the wind”. But I could understand why someone would want to think that, by some sort of exception, they would never age and things would always work out for them.

After all, stones – being stones – would retain their beautiful forms.

Richard exhaled curtly with a “hun”, sipping his royal milk tea. Today’s serving was a work I had confidence in.

“Seigi, do you know how pearls are made?”

“Eh? From oysters, right?”

“Precisely. In order to tell apart the way they are formed from the way that minerals form in the ground, they are called ‘carbonate minerals’. As oysters have soft bodies, they are weak to pollution and pain, and dealing with them normally requires meticulous care. It is exactly because they are sensible natural creatures that they have been loved as symbols of beautiful women since times of old. From the fact that the shellfish is nurtured for a long period and born out of the mother’s body, it is also popular as a protection charm for childbirth.”

“‘Carbonate mineral’... something like calculus?”

“You say such emotionless things. It can be considered a delicate gem, close to human flesh. If the owner can successfully manage to coexist with it, it can guarantee a graceful beauty.”

A sensible gem born from shellfish. Hence the “coexistence”. As expected of a jeweler. He said some smart things.

Had Cleopatra also tried to explain herself away to the enemy general like that? She probably had. But it’s useless when it doesn’t work.

“Would it have been useless to give the pearl that she had set aside to the attacking Roman general and say, ‘Please pardon us with this’? It wouldn’t work, huh...”

“You sure are obsessing over it. If Cleopatra had won against Rome’s Octavianus, history might have changed.”

“That’s a hindsight-based opinion, isn’t it? Beautiful people are also part of this world’s riches... Ah, just now! It’s not like I was saying this and that about you!”

“I get it, I understand. Do not shout so loudly,” Richard said, making a bitter face.

My apologies. Up until now, I had been complimenting the appearance of my beautiful boss over and over countless times, and would end up praising him too much, making his face get suspicious. Regardless of the day.

“Survival tactics sure are difficult, both now and in the past.”

“Gemstones cannot speak or hold grudges. They do not increase in numbers if left alone. While their owners change as the people in power are replaced, stones simply exist. The beauty of stones lies in their thoroughly passive charm. Even if there are interpretations for them, they cannot interpret people. That is exactly why people can accept them without any ado even if they belonged to an opponent. The same would not apply to a living person.”

“Speaking of which, it was said on TV that Cleopatra committed suicide in the end, I think.”

If she were truly an unmatched beauty, she might have had her life spared even if she had lost the war. But in that regard, I felt something like pride from a queen who had fought carrying a nation on her back. Like, “I am not the same as gemstones”. It wasn’t as if I knew what the actual course of events was, though.

“Gems also have it hard. Even if they’re cherished because they’re oh-so-pretty, they can’t pick their own fate.”

“So you say there are stones that complain about their own sorrows? How surprising. To think your knowledge of the spiritual side of things would be this deep.”

“That’s not what I’m saying...”

Richard asked, “Is that really so?” and I furrowed my brows. Eh?

“Stones also choose people.”

“You saying that for real?”

“For real. It is like a chance encounter. Just as people choose one another, stones choose people as well. It is precisely because fate ensues that they settle into a person’s hand, I believe.”

“Hearing you say ‘for real’ is kinda... nice.”

“Ha?”

“The gap is incredible, like seeing Cleopatra chug down beer from a tankard... Ah... Sorry about that.”

Richard cleared his throat in displeasure and stated, “Tea” with his usual tone. Whenever he was a bit embarrassed, he would chase me away into the small kitchen.

Today’s snack for the Etranger staff was ramune that we received from a client who had come from the Kansai region. The pastel-colored little spheres were tightly packed inside a lovely box that looked like those hat boxes from department stores. They dissolved in bubbles once we put them in our mouths. Though they were delicious and pretty, as one would expect, eating them in heaps with the clients while talking about stones could have a bit of a bad effect, and I felt like it would make me laugh, so we decided to finish them in private.

“I can even bet on it, but these are definitely tastier than a pearl dissolved in vinegar.”

“What do you intend to bet? How foolish.”

Richard and I absent-mindedly ate the sweets that most certainly neither generals from ancient Rome nor the Queen of Egypt ever got to tasting. We ate and ate but there was no end to them. While we were at it, it felt like we were binge eating pearls, which made me feel just a little sorry for Cleopatra.

As I grimaced a bit, the unrivaled beauty raised an eyebrow only slightly, looking puzzled, and then began wolfing down the ramune again.

[beevean]

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

[Translator’s note: here is the original article written by @latin-dr-robotnik​​, originally written on the 18th of May 2020]

Today we’re going to talk about one of the aspects SEGA is more secretive about: Sonic’s relationships.

[Translator’s note: this article was written to celebrate Seaside Hill Paradise’s 200th entry. If you’re fluent in Spanish, I highly recommend you to check it out! And if you aren’t, go follow Latin’s Tumblr blog if you haven’t already and you’re into Sonamy, analyses, gushing about music and shitposts.]

This article concludes my Sonamy trilogy, and I recommend you to read the previous two articles: “SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonamy dynamic” and “’I love you’ – forbidden words in Sonic”. This means this is a shipping article – if you’re not interested into another essay about the love life of a blue hedgehog, I can redirect you to other articles such as “Sonic and speed: are we misunderstanding them?” and “What went wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces?”.

Everybody else, welcome to today’s article!

It should be noted that this article focuses more on the semi-official and strictly official aspects, since there is really not much to say about the fandom. Nowadays the fandom has a relatively peaceful coexistence, creating art, fanfics and more, for all kind of ships; sometimes there’s an occasional fight between ships or a ship that clearly is not appropriate… but besides that, everything seems relatively calm, at least in my experience and compared to other fandoms.

Too cool for relationships...

Few things are as mentioned and yet silenced by the official SEGA media as the fateful words “girlfriend” and “Sonic” put together. In official terms, Sonic has always been this young, cool hedgehog, with a pure love for nature and never too worried about life, but with a moral code that makes him fight against injustices. During his first years, Sonic was almost impatient and a little emotionally distant, although as it was the ‘90s and things were not so clear for the young SEGA star, different interpretations would take the character through different paths - some more radical than others. As the years went by, and going through many redesigns, certain aspects of his personality would be perfected, exaggerated, or even flanderized. His position on relationships, on the other hand, would remain relatively constant over the decades, with a few particular exceptions.

The this is that Sonic, in the words of his own creator Naoto Ohshima, has always been considered “a young man with a child's heart”, which has helped to substantiate and understand why the character would remain relatively distant from his feelings, and much closer to his own interests associated with the life of adventure.

... or is he?

Despite everything I just said, they tried in many occasions, if not succeeded, to give Sonic a girlfriend, with various results.

As carefree as Sonic is, and as much as SEGA tried to clarify this point over and over again, the people behind his character have always tried to introduce one or more relationships into his life. Even Naoto Ohshima himself has made his own suggestion as to who might be a hypothetical partner for his character. The different interpretations I’ve mentioned have tweaked Sonic’s character to make it more apt to certain types of dynamics, and the cultural gap between the East and the West (which I analyzed a few years ago with the first article of this “trilogy”) also has a considerable impact on the type of relationships that would be established for Sonic from very early in his history until today.

Author’s note: the concept of “Sonic + human woman” of 1990 wasn’t completely forgotten, no no, it was brought back 16 years later, in… well… the worst way possible.

Let’s see an example. Going back to his very origins, in his pre-Sonic 1 sketches Sonic was often depicted with a stereotypical damsel in distress, Madonna, his own “Princess Peach” that ended up being scrapped for many reasons, including the similarities with Super Mario. As the years have gone by, this concept has not disappeared, but rather the writers and directors of the series have taken it down different paths over time. While Madonna was too cliché, other candidates for the role of “Sonic’s girlfriend” would quickly appear to try different dynamics, directly or indirectly endorsed by SEGA.

Sally Acorn

For many years, Princess Sally was for Western fans the first person who came to mind when they thought of “Sonic’s girlfriend”. Since 1993, and for 2 more decades, her relationship with Sonic has gone in many directions, but fundamentally the most amazing thing about this whole situation was that she was Sonic’s official girlfriend (at least in the Archie Comics canon). It was also one of the many headaches for SEGA in the last decade.

Originally a fellow fighter against the macabre Robotnik from the 1993 animated series Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic and Sally’s relationship was always marked by their opposite personalities; while Sally tends to plan ahead and is much more focused on the seriousness of the task, Sonic was the type to destroy robots first and think later. “Opposites attract,” they say, and by the (premature, I might add) end of that series both were already more than friends. They had already kissed a couple of times.

At the most critical moment in their relationship, Sonic, after a year of being missing in space and presumed dead by everyone, returns to Mobius only to end up back in potential danger, decides to ignore the wishes and warnings of Sally, who’s clearly emotionally traumatized and stressed by both the general situation and the responsibilities she had to carry out for her kingdom in the absence of her parents. The result of this explosive cocktail was one of the most infamous scenes in all of Archie Sonic, "the Slap", where Sally finally reacts violently to Sonic's selfish statements. The hedgehog's response? Well, a long exposure to the screams about her experience - also traumatic - up to that point. In the end, both end up screaming and crying in front of virtually everyone.

What followed in the next decades was an expansion of that original SatAM canon in the Archie Comics, in which its various writers introduced varying degrees of drama and increasing conflict to demonstrate the strong bond between them, destabilizing or even stabilizing it again, multiple times. They would be together for some time, then they would be apart, eventually rekindling the flame of love passionately, until a final sacrifice on their part and the eventual resetting of the entire Archie Sonic canon.

In their last years, after the Super Genesis Wave, Sonic and Sally’s relationship went back to being platonic. a good friendship with the advantages and disadvantages of their personalities - Sally’s leadership and Sonic’s extreme confidence - while the focus was put on the flourishing relationship between Sally and her best friend (and old computer!) Nicole.

Regardless of the way their relationship ended, it's undeniable that Sally has left a huge mark. Being a product of the West, her existence was never really accepted by the Sonic’s Japanese creators, but because the bulk of the fandom is here in the West, Sally's presence has been strongly associated with Sonic, the Freedom Fighters, the comics... and also the ship wars between her and the character we’re going to talk about next. Her very existence was a living contradiction to the Japanese central canon, an official girlfriend who broke all the ideas that existed for Sonic in terms of his conception of relationships and lead him through unique paths. Whether for better or worse, Sally broke the mold.

Eimi. Rosy. Amy Rose.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there’s Amy, a character that was originally conceived as the Minnie to Sonic’s Mickey, but with her own dynamic.

Despite Amy’s existence being strongly tied to Sonic’s, once again Sonic Team tried to avoid the classic cliché (in this case to copy Mickey and Minnie), opting then to establish Amy as the one interested in a relationship, while Sonic runs away from this idea. For this dynamic to keep working, Sonic’s feelings have to be kept hidden, with excuses like his “shyness”, which leads to ambiguity, or because, as said before, of his “child’s heart”.

The most interesting thing is that Amy kept her canonical status of “self-proclaimed girlfriend” since 1993, which makes her “official” and “not official” at the same time, but there are some traces left from the Sonic manga of 1992 (which in turn influenced Amy’s original design), where a prototype version of Amy (or, as it was spelled there, Emi/Eimi) played the role of Sonic’s girlfriend (or Nicki’s, to be more precise). With this detail in mind, Amy can be considered, at least in the East, the very first “Sonic’s girlfriend”, even before Sally – but her situation is much more complex.

Sonic Mega Drive (top) and Sonic Boom (bottom), representing some differences in different Sonic continuities.

In any case, the manga would be the first and only time Amy was officially considered “Sonic’s girlfriend”, because in the following decades and in several continuities the core of their dynamic shifted to Amy chasing Sonic. Both would get closer or further away depending on each case (in Fleetway, for example, Amy ends up marrying another character, while in Archie Sonic there would be only a few instances of potential interest, quickly overshadowed by convenience or other things directly or indirectly related to Sally), but generally no continuity would establish an official relationship. In some cases, such as Japan, it wouldn’t even be necessary to clarify the state of the relationship, since their cultures accept more easily the dynamic that Sonic Team proposed as an “official relationship”. Just looking at the artwork highlighted on Sonic Channel (run by SEGA of Japan) shows how much more accepted the relationship is, even though Sonic Team’s official artwork still avoids any kind of public confirmation. (Author’s note: I’ve written more about Amy according to the East and the West in the first article of this trilogy)

Unlike Sally, there is no “opposites attract” situation between Amy and Sonic, and, at first, there is no prior friendship from which a potential relationship could flourish. We witnessed their dynamics from the first moment they met, and it would not be until years later that there would be a minimal basis for interaction from which various official continuities would bring both characters closer together.

Technically Amy already knew that her destiny was tied to Sonic and the events of Sonic CD on Little Planet, thanks to her tarot cards (an element that has disappeared since then), but for Sonic it was just another day of adventure, and although we’ve seen how Amy's feelings have progressed, mostly in Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic has never reflected on his personal feelings; it’s an aspect of the hedgehog that to this day remains a mystery to the audiences.

Also unlike Sally, Amy has appeared in multiple continuities of all kinds and because of that her relationship with Sonic has been affected in various ways. The main videogames canon has remained ambiguous and unchanged for 25 years: Amy would stay close to Sonic and offer some good moments to reflect on her feelings about him (some of which I mentioned in my post about Sonic Unleashed and Amy’s emotional support), while Sonic would remain distant, uncomfortable, shy, and, more recently, potentially affected by her apparent loss.

Sonic X is the first official attempt (by Sonic Team no less) to offer an expanded view of our characters. There’s a lot of discussion about how Sonic is slowly opening up to Amy’s advances, and these developments follow a line that we discussed in previous articles of this trilogy, and how, during the 2000s, the Japanese writers of the series kept slowly deepening the interactions between the two, reaching very important symbolic moments like Sonic X Ep. 9, 52 and 76, among several others. I am purposely leaving out specific details to direct your attention to this fantastic thread by Yvanix Rose that highlights some key details about how this continuity worked the Sonic-Amy dynamic. [Translator’s note: the thread is in Spanish]

Sonic X, episode 76.

Another essential continuity for the development of this dynamic was Sonic Boom, since, despite having been a separate continuity with its own interpretation of the characters, its existence managed to influence the main canon in some way in the years that followed its original release in 2014.

Sonic Boom made two important changes in the dynamic: Amy did no longer externalize her feelings with the same frequency or intensity (speeding up a process that already started in the main canon in 2008), and Sonic was noticeably more nervous and insecure of his feelings for her, even being jealous in several occasions. These changes got the dynamic closer to the “friends who have secret feelings to each other but they’re too shy to admit it” trope, and in the second season it could even be said that there are signals of the “secretly dating” trope. Nothing was officially confirmed yet, but the changes to the dynamic offered a fresh perspective to work from: winks and inferences about a relationship that was not talked about but seemed to happen behind the scenes.

Sonic Boom S1E16.

Sonic Boom’s approach also opened the door to working a little more on the characters’ new personalities. Taking a little inspiration from the original foundations of Sally and Sonic’s relationship, Boom now presented situations where Sonic and Amy’s perspectives actively clashed with each other, leading to discussions and moments that showed a little more of the mundane details of the friendship they had, rather than appealing to more classic behaviors of the main canon, like Sonic leaving the scene in a hurry. Considering the way things turned out the last time we saw this kind of dynamic on screen, it was pretty safe to assume that their new opposites were now attracted; the implied secret dating and so on only helped to give it more sustenance - which the fandom would eventually take to the extreme.

And lastly there’s IDW Sonic, the comic series that replaced Archie Sonic after its cancellation in 2017, and the most recent arc that offers an interesting perspective. Starting its continuity from the end of the events of Sonic Forces (which at the same time took on certain characteristics from the post-Boom era, particularly as far as Amy is concerned), IDW Sonic didn’t waste any time in presenting the way in which it would carry out its dynamic between Sonic and Amy.

Amy makes her feelings for Sonic very clear, and he is surprised but unable to match them. However, Sonic doesn’t want to outright reject her, and suggests that she come with him; she refuses, claiming that she has duties to the Resistance, setting the tone for the rest of the series. (IDW Sonic #2)

“Sonic’s girlfriend” today

As I mentioned earlier, after the reboot Sally was no longer considered Sonic’s girlfriend, and her disappearance after the cancellation of Archie Sonic in general is a sign that we may not see her ever again, even as a friend. As of today, in 2020, only Amy has been left in her “unofficial, but…” state, with various minor events taking place both in the main canon and in IDW Sonic:

In 2018 the official SEGA shop wrote a description for a piece of Amy Rose merchandise that said “celebrate 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend”; the mistake wasn’t immediately corrected, despite the fandom pointing it out immediately.

The video game canon has remained dormant, with Team Sonic Racing in 2019 featuring more of a regular friendship between Sonic and Amy, sharing rivalries and quiet moments alike.

On the other hand, since IDW Sonic and Sonic Boom laid their foundations, we've begun to see a certain shift in the way the two characters are presented. While we’ve talked about IDW Sonic already, Sonic’s social medias have done multiple “Twitter Takeovers” where Sonic characters answer questions from fans, and Sonic has always answered more like his version of Boom to the inevitable question about Amy and his “feelings”.

Recent official animations like Sonic Mania Adventures and Team Sonic Racing Overdrive have shown Amy flirting with Sonic in a more casual way.

The current dynamic seems to be pointing towards “Sonic’s hidden feelings”, and I think we are at a perfect point to change the approach. SEGA in general seems more open to the idea of bringing these characters closer, probably as a marketing strategy, but without yet separating themselves from the central ideas that defined the dynamic for the last two and a half decades.

Conclusion

The idea of “Sonic’s girlfriend” has been one of the most experimental and controversial in the almost three decades that this series has been around for. SEGA has opened the door to all kinds of ambiguities, developments and interpretations, all with their pros and cons, instead of settling on a definitive position. As iconic as these characters, conceived as Sonic’s “romantic interests”, have become, they have also had their share of criticism and controversy, especially in the fandom.

The presence of Amy as the only “official but self-proclaimed girlfriend” today says a lot about the control SEGA (specifically SEGA of Japan) regained over the characters, after decades of interpretations that offered different alternatives with various degrees of success. At her best, Sally represented an ideal relationship with Sonic, much more complete and profound than the back-and-forth game between Amy and Sonic. But at her worst, this same relationship represented everything wrong that could happen by associating Sonic with the emotional spiderweb of a romantic relationship. SEGA hardening its control over the characters seems to have put an end of this type of situation where Sonic ends up being involved in a romantic telenovela, but at the same time it has revitalized the flirting game and the implicit associations that give fuel to the fandom fire.

From my humble interpretation, I think we’ve reached a point where Sonic and Amy have shared enough stories and moments to solidify the core aspects of their personalities and their friendship, allowing them to take the next step, which is to play around with the idea of “something else”. 25 years ago it was hard to see how these two characters could work together beyond “it’s SEGA’s word”; today there’s enough of a story to find a rhythm and chemistry for them, and the series of situations they've put themselves in (e.g. IDW Sonic’s plot arcs) are increasingly helping this case. The topic of “Sonic's girlfriend” may be a controversial one for SEGA and the fandom in general, but the doors have slowly been opened for this debate to develop and be investigated with interesting results, and I think that, in this new decade of 2020, there’s a unique potential to explore this kind of discussion, without sacrificing in any way the central principles of Sonic as a character. Thank you for joining me in these 200 entries, and hopefully we’ll see each other for many more.

[wallofweird]

It's making me nervous that JH keeps making comments about not focing love with Madison.

Right. Well, the first thing I have to say about all this is: I’m not worried at all, if anything, I’m optimistic. I'm stating this first and explaining why because this might become a long answer, so I’m letting you know in case you don’t have the time/disposition/patience to read all of it or at least now at the moment.

The first thing we need to remember about headlines is that people usually make it dramatic, they carefully pick the most ambiguous or potentially concerning words, usually out of context and use it as a title to get clicks. They could’ve gone with something like “it’s an amazing story”, but that’s not engaging. On the other hand, “You can’t really force love”, certainly is. It’s all clickbait.

So, Justin teases: “I’ve said this before: You can’t really force love. It doesn’t work.”

And that is actually him making a reference to this old answer:  

“Love is a strange thing. If you let it [love] happen, it could be wonderful. If you try to force it, then you’re always going to be searching for something that maybe never was there in the first place. And not only that, but maybe you didn’t even really want. You’re shutting yourself out to things, because you had this idea about what your life was supposed to be. And there it was right in front of you.”

For me, that was a great analogy between Kevin’s relationships with Sophie and Madison, with Kevin letting love happen to him with Madison instead of trying to force a fantasy he had on his mind like he’s done before.

And these are more important parts of interview:

Coming into Episode 5, is there any lingering doubt in Kevin’s mind about the path he’s forged with Madison? Or is he full steam ahead on “This is a good thing, and it’s all going to work out?” 

I think the doubt is showcased in Kevin in fear. The fear that it might not work out. Gosh, I mean what if they can’t coexist together and be this cohesive unit that comes together and raises these kids, and he [only] sees them on the weekends? There’s all of that stuff. Probably, those are the things that keep Kevin awake at night. He said as much in the last episode. He sits there and stares at the ceiling and worries. All that worry comes from fear, the fear that it absolutely will not work out and that he’s trying to force something.

I’ve said this before: You can’t really force love. It doesn’t work. He’s also in a little bit of a predicament. It’s not like he’s dating a woman that he doesn’t want to be dating. He’s in a situation where she’s having his babies. And he has, his whole life, been bound by this idea that he wants to be what his father knew he could be. Because that was cut so short, Kevin doesn’t give himself the breaks that maybe he should. He doesn’t cut himself any slack… and then he finds himself in a bigger predicament. It’s not him messing up for the sake of messing up or being selfish, as we saw him do several years ago. It’s that he puts a lot of stress and pressure on himself, and that sometimes can lead to the balloon popping, so to speak.

It seems like the movie he’s currently filming is not going to help, with a hard-to-please director who has gone out of his way to let Kevin know he’s not going to pat him on the head. Tell me if you think I’m wrong, but it feels like Kevin has some impostor syndrome going on here.

I don’t think that’s overstated. I would say he’s going through yet another existential crisis. [Laughs] If I were his therapist, I would say you’ve got to prioritize the things in your life that are important to you and not live your life for other people. If you look at what he’s actually been able to accomplish, he’s dedicated to being an amazing dad and raising these kids together. Whatever that thing ends up being with Madison, he’s going to give it his all. His career is on track. This won’t be the last movie in the history of the world. Maybe you say no to the movie, or maybe you can do both. Maybe you don’t have to be there every waking moment of the babies’ lives. There are other things that you have to do. You have to leave and go put food on the table. There are other things. Live your life for yourself a little bit. But I don’t know if Kevin does that. I think he’s so focused, and he’s on a mission. With a good heart, but just sometimes a little bit misguided.

How clearly is Kevin seeing Rebecca’s level of mental decline right now? It can be a hard thing to accept.

I think that’s part of the stress. That’s why he’s eager to have these babies, and he wants his mom to meet the babies. Look, he’s aware that this decline is degenerative. It’s not going to get better. You have moments where it might be like, “She’s better today than she was yesterday. She’s better this week than she was last week.” But it’s a degenerative disease. There’s a fall-off. I think he wants to make sure that he has these babies and his mom meets them and spends as much time with them as she possibly can have. And also maybe that might actually…sometimes when you spend time around animals or babies or whatever it slows down the demise of your disease. So he’s definitely aware of all of that. [In the pandemic], how are you…gosh, that’s a stressful thing, too. If you have these twins and I want them to meet Mom, but I can’t right now. It’s not safe. It’s like every single second you hear the clock ticking. Kevin’s got a biological clock, let me put it that way. [Laughs] Kevin is the only man alive that has a biological clock that’s ticking.

The way I see it, there are two ways to interpret this quote about not forcing love:

1) He is not in love with Madison and is trying to force a relationship.

2) At some point, Kevin will have some sort of nervous breakdown and question everything, his relationship with Madison, fatherhood, his actions as a son, brother, actor, person... Including maybe how Madison feels about him, their compatibility and the functionality of their relationship. Does she feel the same way he feels about her? Is she all in with him, his career, the fact sometimes he has to stay away and maybe even travel to a whole different country to shoot a movie? They might love each other, but love isn’t enough. Take Kevin and Zoe as an example, they were in love, but they wanted totally different things. And their love wasn’t enough, because Kevin’s biggest dream was to have a marriage and kids, but Zoe didn’t want children. So, if it doesn’t work out, it can get messy. They will have to share custody, not Kevin nor Madison will be with the babies every single day, there are a lot of different outcomes their relationship can bring.

I personally go with the latter, specially considering everything Justin has said so far and how we was referring to his own answer about Kevin letting love “happen to him”.

Also, because Madison has never forced Kevin to anything. They had known each other for 2 years, they weren’t close friends, but there was a sense of familiarity and camaraderie there and they even got to hang out with each other a few times. 

With Kate included, yes, but the three of them were comfortable and used to it, as you can see here, with Madison silently asking for Kevin’s support, Kevin backing her up, smiling and appreciating her little quirks etc.

And both and Justin expressed how they saw Madison as part of the family, even before the pregnancy:

Moving forward, Madison reveals the pregnancy to Kevin on March 5h, since then the show has implied they had talked and hung out before breaking the news to Kate and Toby and Kevin moving in with her, which happened in May.

The show hasn’t really specified when they got together and if it happened immediately after their second time or if they danced around it a little bit before starting a romantic relationship, but since the time they slept together again, they have shown that they do talk,  

notice when the other is bothered or worried about something,

think of little things to please one another,

that they share a bedroom now,

and have a routine at home, having meals together, etc.

I mean, the very fact he was already about to put his shirt on before Madison told him to indicates that they they know each well, that they can predict what the other is thinking, that they have a little system of their own.

It’s also stated that Madison knows about Kevin’s ‘broken parts’

and she trusts and believes in him.

Plus, not only that, but she doesn’t think they’re flaws at all.

The fact she thought she had lost her babies and she just wanted KEVIN’S company shows their relationship was already considerably serious back THEN:

And THIS IS KEVIN after their second time:

He is embracing her and has his fingers wrapped around her arm, sort of locking her in, he is fondling her hair, when Madison slightly moves her head he goes down to her shoulder because while he doesn’t want to wake her up, he still just can’t bring himself to stop touching her, he is savoring the moment, he is savoring Madison. There are many ways they could’ve implied they had slept together and introduce the beginning of their relationship, but they specifically chose THIS WAY because they were making a POINT.

And when when Kevin proposes, you can see a little hesitation, like it’s not a in-the-spur-of-the-moment-kind-of thing, 

that he’s actually been considering it for a while, his head is telling him to wait a little longer, but his heart is telling him to just act on his feelings and he ultimately goes with the latter.

You can see there is a bit of nervousness and vulnerability when he pulls down her mask because he didn’t initially understand her response:

and and THIS is his reaction when she accepts:

This is simple and pure fulfillment.

Yet, Madison understands how Kevin can get ahead of himself, which is why she gives him an out, but Kevin chooses not to take it back.

And he says that very with confidence and determintion.

Plus, he goes around referring to Madison as his fiancée to strangers.

Madison wasn’t forcing Kevin to do anything and he wasn’t forcing himself to do anything either, he was being genuine and acting on feelings he had both shown and mentioned multiple times, not only to her but other people as well.

Emphasis for him getting emotional just by TALKING about her here.

If ANYTHING, I’d classify his actions as impulsive, but not exactly rushed. He might have let his heart take the lead, yes, but he’s known Madison for 2 years before they hooked up, they had been talking and hanging out together and alone for about THREE months, they had been QUARANTINING together for around MORE THREE OTHER MONTHS. I think their peculiar situation actually justifies getting engaged so fast, they have spent a lot of time getting to know each other better and developing feelings for one another, not to mention the knowledge and familiarity they already had with each other since 2018.

And Justin himself has mentioned that Kevin is more thoughtful about his actions now and that he considers Madison and their children as well:

So I doubt he would’ve proposed and stuck to that proposal if his heart wasn’t settled on it, specially with the way he looks and talks about her. I believe that he is starting to get nervous now that there are a lot of things going on or about to happen.

Before, Kevin and Madison were in their little bubble, living together, getting to know each other, falling in love, dating, in a certain way, we could compare it to a honeymoon.

Now he is back at work, Rebecca still has a degenerative disease, her memory will deteriorate, she will lose her autonomy at some point, he is away of her, he is still at odds with Randall, he is away from Randall and his nieces, he is away of his uncle and second father figure, the babies could be born at any moment, he is afraid of not being a good father, of passing his problems on to his children, about his age, physical appearance, sobriety, he wants to do this movie so he can get a big award and bring Rebecca along with him to see it, he worries about doing things right with his relationship with Madison... And that’s all happening in the middle of a pandemic. it’s A LOT OF STRESS.

Now, add Kevin’s overall self-consciousness. Kevin is naturally insecure. He’s said and shown that multiple times for all these years. He doubts his talent, intelligence, wisdom, maturity, it took him a while to see himself as someone that could be a father and responsible for another human being. When things get though, his nature is to doubt himself, to think he’s not good enough, not capable enough, he’s gone as far as thinking that his issues weren’t worth of attention and care, that his parents didn’t love him as much as his siblings, he almost gave up starring on his old TV show because he didn’t think he was funny enough, there is a scene from season 1 when he’s reading the script of the play and he starts questions if if he even UNDERSTANDS the play. 

And as Justin emphasized, he just keeps adding things to his plate, he got a part on a movie when he is about to become a father of two and has a lot of things happening in his family, not to mention his own physical and mental health.

So, I can see a moment when Kevin is overwhelmed and he has a nervous breakdown and questions everything he does, including as a fiancée and/or he overreacts and thinks Madison doesn’t reciprocate his feelings and his mind just goes to the worst case scenario, like maybe things don’t work out and he loses her while also not getting to be as involved in their children’s as he expected because they’re not together anymore. Which makes sense considering this is his most mature relationship to date and he is dealing with problems he’s never dealt with. He’s gonna freak out at some point. Plus, it also matches what Justin said on this very own interview:

Also, on this one:

And despite the dramatic and exaggerated headline, he added this as well: 

And said this quite recently too:

So, he will probably panic at some point, which is normal, but like Justin pointed it out, it’s out of a place of FEAR, not second thoughts. If things don’t work out, it affects him, Madison, the children, Kate, Jack and Toby to the very LEAST, because they’re all close... However, it will work out and Madison will help him ease and navigate this situation better as well. They’ll be partners and work as a real couple should and does.

STILL, Justin always likes to remind us Kevin is all in. He did it now:

and for the past NINE months:

So, my guess is that he is overwhelmed with all things considered and maybe getting a part on this movie isn’t helping and he might even get to the point of having to prioritize things, but whether he has to choose between his family and the movie or manages to balance both out, HE IS PUTTING HIS FAMILY FIRST.

Plus, if you watch the promo, Madison reminds Kevin he promised he was “all in” and he replies "I know what I said”, with calmness, certainty and determination.

And they also have these clothes on:

Then, you have them in different clothes,

on what appears to be the next day.

And you can see they tried really hard to capture the most enigmatic expressions,

but on the last picture you can see a smile forming on her face.

And since the article affirms there will be a direct answer to that on the next episode... 

Madison having a smiling on her face gives me enough reason to do the same myself. 

[mimik-u]

Multitudes

Summary: On the 6,242nd anniversary of Pink Diamond's shattering—nearly a year after the Diamonds discovered the existence of Steven—Yellow Diamond, as she always does, searches for Blue. Pre-movie.

Note: It has been far too long since I've written Bellow Diamond, and I've needed this very story lately—something about allowing yourself to feel your emotions while also continuing to move forward.

AO3

—

It is with a studied rhythm that Homeworld’s twin suns pull each other up through the darkness, blanketing the sky in a soft pink glow as they ascend, going slowly, all gentleness. Yellow Diamond watches the familiar spectacle from her latticed window, hand beneath her chin, mind elsewhere as the fractured light glances off the angular planes of her face.

To a being who has lived ten thousands of years upon years, the emergence and passing of a new cycle is but a blink of the eye, a meaningless unit in the long linearity of her given lifetime. And yet, as she has learned so viscerally in even just the past six thousand years alone, the surest, and perhaps only way to measure time is to judge it by the movements of the other gems around her.

And by other gems, she means Blue Diamond.

For she always means Blue.

Her strength, her weakness, her light, her darkness, her partner, her monomaniac fixation, her fellow goddess, her friend.

(The dichotomies and multitudes of their relationship have always stunned Yellow Diamond at best and scared her at worst.)

For six thousand years, she scheduled her entire existence around knowing exactly where the other matriarch was at all times. In-between court sessions and trials and all of the various other councils Yellow convened alone, she sent Pearls to inform her of where Blue Diamond was and what exactly she was doing. The trail of her mourning was as readily available to her as reports on potassium deposits in faraway colonies.

She learned, intimately, that Blue rotated between haunts every so often like an organic beast migrating between seasons. Each spatial relic of Pink Diamond’s past were but pastures to graze in prolonged misery.

Against her own volition, Yellow came to understand that some cycles, by the sheer fact of what they once were, were harder for Blue Diamond than others.

The anniversary of Pink’s emergence into the world.

The day they decided to bequeath her her own colony.

The remembrance, the haunting, the sadistic exhibition of her shattering.

Before they laid eyes on what they had thought to be her shards, the Diamonds had never truly known pain, the sharp dimensions of it, the astonishing depths. 

When Blue Diamond’s screams rent the air for the first time, the entire Earth seemed to scream with her, wailing an unholy, feral song to which the three deities did not know the lyrics, though they sang along anyway. With their hands outstretched towards the colony Pink Diamond had once called home, they tried to fill in the melody the best that they could.

And they corrupted hundreds upon hundreds of gems.

And they shattered thousands more.

Because they had never lost anything before then.

And they wanted to make someone else and everything else feel the extent of their loss, too.

It is not an excuse.

A justification either.

It is only history, raw and unsanitized.

Yellow Diamond abruptly closes her eyes against the rosy sunrise as though stung, her fingers spidering against her tall nose.

Today would have been the 6,242nd anniversary of the shattering. 

Nearly a year ago, they learned that everything they had ever assumed about their beloved Pink Diamond was a lie—including this very date.

Still, the old memories come unbidden—the shards, the terror, the ungodly screaming. 

And yet, the familiar is now tempered by the newer sensations that have surfaced to foreign planes in her mind ever since she has met, loved, and wanted to do better for Steven Universe: the guilt, the helplessness, the fragility of everything, of it all.

When Yellow Diamond snaps her eyes open again, the images still burn the backs of her retinas, and it all comes together in one jangling, dissonant, clashing symphony—lights and noises, echoes and pale ghosts: the shards, the guilt, the terror, the helplessness, the ungodly screaming, the fragility of everything, of it all.

She is naked.

Fifty foot tall, the fragments of thousands of gems all over her hands, she is exposed.

With a violence that startles Pearl—who’d been running algorithms on her screens—Yellow stands up from her alcove, stretching her long limbs extensively, as though trying to excise something out along with the stiffness, too. 

“Sorry,” she says gruffly, glancing away. (She’s working on it—she is—but apologies still don’t come easily to the matriarch.)  “Just have somewhere I need to be.”

With a few quick taps of a nearby panel, Pearl pulls up and enlarges a video feed of the throne room. A snatch of heavy blue fabric dragging against the floor is all she needs to see.

“... that wouldn’t happen to be the throne room, my—I mean, your—um, Yellow Diamond, would it?” (Pearl is working on it—she is—but thousands of years of ingrained slavery are hard to completely forget, too.)

Relief mixed with gratitude mixed with awkwardness darkens the gold around Yellow Diamond’s sharp cheekbones.

“Thank you, Pearl.” 

A similar blush scribbles itself across the bridge of the smaller gem’s nose. 

“Of course.”

(They’re both working on it—they are—Diamond and Pearl alike, trying to figure out what it means to be companions in Era Three. Equals. Maybe one day, friends, if such an unstudied phenomenon can happen between them after all these unchanging cycles of mastery and slavery.)

(But she wonders to herself—she wonders this every day—is there grace enough in this universe for the Diamonds?)

(Is there such a thing as absolution and reprieve?)

Brow furrowed above her eyes, Yellow finally sweeps out of her chamber, heels clicking reliably against the marble veined floor. 

(She doesn’t know.)

(She isn’t sure she wants to know.)

The passage between her chamber and the throne room is a covered bridge, the path intricately laid, sunlight slanting through the arches and onto her handsome armor in patches. 

She doesn’t stop to look below—doesn’t have time to spare even though she has all the time in the world—but even as she walks, she can hear all the many ways that Homeworld is changing, the echoes of the reforming city drifting up to the palace like sacrificial smoke. There is the humdrum of communication—talking and conversing, snatches of loud laughter. And there is the steady thrum of ship traffic zooming through the brightening sky. 

She knows, without looking, that there are flashing colors and newly constructed infrastructures. Councils are being formed, the judicial system overhauled independently of the Diamonds' oversight. Representatives for the various Gem types are elected fairly and democratically. An economy based on rare rocks—locally sourced from Homeworld’s own Kindergarten—is slowly but surely being constructed by business minded Peridots. Gems from all eras and cuts and cabochons are cohabiting side by side, communing and learning to coexist without prejudice and fear.

Their world, for the first time in millions of cycles, is evolving.

For good and for the best.

With a pang that tightens her diamond as she finally approaches the intricately carved double doors leading into the throne room, Yellow Diamond wonders what it means that she is falling into the same pattern she has threaded year after year for 6,242 years.

Do Diamonds ever change their facets?

Or are their hardnesses immutable, unchanging?

(She wonders—she wonders this every day—if one day the universe will pronounce judgment on the three of them for their crimes against Gemkind?)

(Will doing better be enough to lighten the sentence?)

(Is doing better the same as being better?)

She curls her fingers tightly around one of the quartz handles and pulls outwards, her nerves suddenly electrified as the square of light from the door slowly pools into the throne room and across the floor, inching and seeping until it touches the hem of a heavy, dark robe. 

“Yellow.” Blue Diamond looks up, awed. “You remembered.”

As has been the Diamonds' shared habit lately, she's kneeling in front of the warp pad, cerulean fingers neatly templed on her lap, her posture reminiscent of the weeping statues in the Saturnal Spire, many of them immortalized in prostration. Yellow can see the traces of wetness beneath her grooved eyes, a telltale and familiar sign of what has already passed and what is yet to come. 

“Did you think I would forget?” She asks, immediately loathing that the question sounds so vulnerable and needy, as though she’s dependent—and maybe she is—on a negative answer.

“Truthfully?” 

“Yes”—she interjects impatiently—“I always want to know your truth.”

But, to Yellow’s surprise, Blue laughs quietly, the edges of her plump, blue lifted along the contours of her smile.

“Stars above, you still never wait for someone to finish their thought, do you?” 

“I didn’t intend to interrupt! I just—“

“Yes, I know, Yellow. Come.” Blue Diamond extricates her hands from one another and pats the empty space next to her. “Be with me, please.”

It is an irresistible request, an invitation that Yellow could never refuse (though she has never fully tried). With a few, stiff strides, she join the other matriarch on the floor, sitting crosslegged, even as her armored spine is ramrod straight. 

Appropriately chastised, her cheeks are dark with golden flush.

“Are you happy now?” Yellow mutters beneath her breath.

“Yes,” comes the quiet reply that very nearly paralyzes her. Perhaps realizing this, Blue Diamond extends the same hand she used to gesture towards the floor and places the tips of her fingertips on the spines of Yellow’s gloved knuckles. “I am…. in my own small way—happy and also undeniably sad. It is a curious contradiction.”

“Oh,” Yellow Diamond can only say, swallowing hard. 

“Oh,” Blue Diamond agrees, leaning—softly, very gently—against her, so that their shoulders touch. Her silvery hair falls to the side at the movement, the light from above crowning her head in liquid amber.

In gold.

“I didn’t wish to be alone today,” she admits, frowning, “but for the last six thousand and sundry years, you have unfailingly ensured that I never was alone on this date... even when I thought that I wanted to be, even all the times I pushed you away.”

Yellow‘s breath hitches, shallow of air.

They’ve scarcely talked so openly before, even now, and perhaps especially now that the Diamonds are trying their damnedest to amend the wrongs of their pasts.

Even beyond that, intimacy is hard.

Indeed, it is one of the few lessons that the resilient general has yet to master for all of her focus and control.

She still doesn’t have all the steps in order yet... if there are even quantifiable steps to intimacy at all.

“You pushed me away often,” she finally says, and try though she does, she can’t quite keep an accusatory tone out of her voice. 

(Even if the Diamonds don’t wear their wounds, that doesn’t mean they were never inflicted.)

“I know,” Blue confesses, closing her eyes tightly against what Yellow knows to be a deluge of memories. “I knew all along most likely. I wanted to hurt you as were hurting me. If I could make you feel even a fraction of the misery that I did... if I could make any gems who crossed my path understand... I was quick, injudiciously so, to do as much.”

The matriarch is precise when it comes to identifying and analyzing her own emotions—incisive—another ability which Yellow never quite learned in thousands of millennia.

“We don’t have to talk about this now,” she says quickly, “if it’s too much.”

(It's always too much for Yellow.)

“But I want to.” Blue abruptly opens her eyes, and Yellow is startled to see that they’ve hardened, her expression pinched. “I mean, I suppose I need to... for there is this feeling in my chest, Yellow. It pulses in my very diamond and has expanded with each passing second that I have been up today. And I want to get rid of it—I must.”

Her fingers tense where they rest upon her hand, and the space between palm and knuckles, blue and gold, is electric with energy, pulsating.

The column of Yellow Diamond’s throat is thick, sticky with feeling.

“I have a feeling, too,” she admits, her voice surly. “When I awoke... and recalled what day it was... I couldn’t shake it.”

Blue’s eyes are wide and tired, weary with six thousand cycles of mourning. The carnage is pooled all over her face. It scarred both of them. It nearly maddened White. 

“Name it, Yellow,” she whispers, and it is almost a supplication, desperate and reverent on the Diamond’s lilting tongue. “Please.”

What is there to do but comply?

What stands between her and a handful of words except her own sheathe of an ego of a personality?

Yellow Diamond flinches before she ever opens her mouth, half-hating and entirely fearing what she is about to make their reality.

“I miss her, Blue.”

“And?” Because Blue Diamond knows—she always seems to know—when her sentences are unfinished, when words remain unspoken. 

Yellow’s eyes burn, the leakage threatening to spill out.

“And I feel guilty about it, for missing her now… after what we did to her... after what we have done to so many other gems.”

To ourselves, too.

To each other.

More unspoken aches, though the merciful Blue Diamond is kind enough not to call her out on them.

A single tear glances down her long, oval face, collecting calmly on the point of her chin.

“How can we be moving on,” Yellow continues, wiping roughly at her eyes with her other hand, “if we are here again? The same place we have been every year for the last six thousand years? On the floor, broken. Our world is turning, Blue! Evolving! Transforming! Do we not revolve with it?”

If this is the pattern and the routine to which they inevitably return, does this not mean that they will one day become stagnations and calcifications?

Monuments and monoliths to their own shattered pasts?

What is all their progress, their actions and their actions and their atonements and their actions, if they cannot ever abstain from this vicious ceremony?

Will they still be here, six thousand years more from now, missing a gem who will never come home to them again?

Will there never not be a day when a rosy, pink sky doesn’t evoke her name on their tongues?

Pink Diamond.

She used to sing flowers into full bloom.

When Blue isn’t immediately forthcoming with an answer—her dark lips parted slightly in silence—for the first time in the entirety of her existence, Yellow feels no triumph in being right.

There is no pleasure in the conception and epiphany of their eternal damnation.

There is only acceptance, she thinks, glancing down at the warp pad, dull and empty. 

(Steven hasn’t visited in twenty-one cycles now.)

Stoic and unceasing resignation.

“Yellow Diamond...” A tall hand cups her chin gently and draws the general’s gaze upwards until all the goddess sees is blue. Her eyes. Her complexion. Her alice blue hair. Her lips. Blue Diamond looks at her all over, and there is an ancient sadness engraved in all the geometric lines of her face. “Do you really believe that multiple things cannot be true at the same time?”

“I—“

“No,” Blue cuts her off firmly. “Let me finish, please. We have done horrible things, and we are trying, every day, to do better. We hurt Pink immeasurably... and we are hurt—stars, we will be devastated—by her loss forever. Those sentiments are not mutually exclusive.” Blue’s voice hitches, her warm breath so close that Yellow can feel it on her skin. “They can’t be... or else, what do we have to look forward to for the next thousands of years of our lifetimes? How can we deal with the enormities of our lives if we do not allow our lives to be enormous—both an exemplar and a testament to complexity?”

Yellow stares at her companion incredulously, wanting to believe in the grandiosity of their existences (again) but not quite daring to (as she had once so easily done before).

Dichotomies and multitudes and holistic systems of so many moving, working parts—Yellow Diamond, for all of her intelligence and logic and ratios and statistics, does not know how to compute them. Her morality has always been a straight line that favors extremes, tilting like an unbalanced scale, from one weighted end to the other.

“But you feel it, too,” she argues hoarsely. “You have a feeling in your chest as well.”

Her gaze unwittingly travels down to Blue’s gem, gleaming brightly against her cerulean complexion.

But the other Diamond, fingertips still captured beneath her chin, doesn’t allow the moment to linger, insisting, with a gentle nudge, that Yellow Diamond holds her head up high.

“And so this just means we have a final pair of questions to ask ourselves, yes?” Blue smiles lightly, all tenderness and sadness, all warmth and terrible grief.

Dichotomies and multitudes.

They stun Yellow Diamond, and they perplex her, and they frustrate her to no conceivable end.

Even now, she isn’t sure that she’s following, and yet, as the two of them sit here—linked by touch and millennia and memories—she knows, without ever being able to articulate the sentiment into words that would matter or make sense, she would follow this gem to the ends of their world, conceivable or otherwise.

“What do we do with this feeling now that we have it?" Blue’s smile only deepens, becoming more felt, arctic eyes melting. "And how do we make sure it doesn’t go to waste?”

Her face shines in the brilliance of the warp pad’s newly glowing light.

“Today,” she says, “we allow ourselves to feel the pain of losing Pink... and we play with Steven Universe... and we not only love him, but show him that we do.”

“And tomorrow?” Yellow dares to ask.

A concentrated beam whooshes downwards from the ceiling of the palatial hall.

“Tomorrow”—Blue Diamond squeezes her hand—“we can move forward again... hand in hand.”

There are colonies to continue dismantling and long corroded infrastructure to repair. Homeworld’s grid system needs to be replotted, and a Kindergarten on Iphigenia would be a meaningful location to repurpose as an organic life conservation facility. Transportation services between Homeworld and Earth are still being configured, especially given Earth’s less than spaceship friendly atmospheres and surfaces. Former gem experiments require a delicate unraveling and a reckoning both for Yellow Diamond who ordered them to be carried out in the first place. Blue and White and Yellow Diamond alike, all three of them in harmonious union and sync for the first time in thousands of years, want to build a memorial spire in Sector 9 for the Rose Quartzes to inhabit if they should so choose—a place of rest and healing, circled all throughout with restorative waters.

“I... like the sound of that.” 

The tentative beginnings of hope creep into her low voice.

“I thought you would,” Blue teases as particulate matter and atoms and long reclaimed stardust begin to arrange themselves into the boy named Steven Universe.

“We start now.”

[turtletotem]

KissCam

@kernezelda Here is the Cherik fic you won in the second Star Bright release party challenge! I hope you enjoy!!

Inspired by this video clip :)  Also on AO3.

En Sabah Nur portrayed for us here by Oscar Isaac sans smurf makeup.

.

Charles wasn't much of a sports fan, but he wasn't opposed to attending the Yankees game. He'd been following the story of Yankees player Carl DeMarco, who was fighting to keep his contract after coming out as a mutant. When the very handsome Egyptian immigrant who had become Charles's coffee shop pal suggested they make the Yankees game their first date, therefore, Charles was all for it. He bought a "NY <3 DeMarco" flag, wore his big red M lapel pin, and let En Sabah Nur pick him up in a startlingly expensive Mercedes-Benz.

En Sabah Nur had always been friendly, witty, and attentive at the coffee shop, but today he was distracted, constantly on his phone, and far too smug about his car and his expensive clothes, expecting Charles to be impressed. Charles, who could have bought the clothes, the car, and the coffee shop and still had room for a yacht in his monthly allowance, was not impressed. Just because he preferred broken-in tweed jackets and lowering his carbon footprint with public transit didn't mean he was going to get stars in his eyes at the sight of a Rolex watch.

Perhaps Raven was right, Charles thought with a sigh as he paid for his own hot dog and tried to block out Sabah's irate phone conversation. Raven had seen them together often enough—she worked at the coffee shop, which was why Charles went there—and she was convinced he only wanted Charles for his body.

There were worse things to be wanted for, honestly. It was all very well to be loved for your mind, but Charles had encountered enough telepathy fetishists to find a certain relief in straightforward physical lust.

The two seats on Charles's right had been empty; now, with the game about to start, a man about Charles's age helped a frail but bright-eyed older woman into one of them, and sat down next to Charles himself.

"Hey!" Charles barely rescued his soda from the man's careless elbow.

"Watch it!" the man snapped, as if Charles had been the one at fault, only to pause and grimace when he realized his mistake. "Um… sorry."

"No worries," Charles said lightly. "Of course you're focused on your—mother?"

"Yes," the man said, and turned back to the woman in question, fussing over her comfort until she batted him away with a fond expression. He settled in next to her, looking disgruntled.

"Sorry again, about that," he said after a moment, shooting Charles a sideways glance. "It's too cold out here for her, but she's a big baseball fan—us immigrants have to love the Great American Pastime, right? And she insisted on coming to support DeMarco. You're a fan of his, too?" He nodded at the flag.

"Mutant solidarity!" Charles said, flashing his M pin. "Oh—what's that you've got on yours?"

"Mutant solidarity." The man's grin was all teeth, but in a surprisingly attractive way. In terms of appearance he was right up there with Sabah, in fact, lean and chiseled with fascinating gray-green eyes. It took Charles a moment to force his gaze onto the pin the stranger wore in the same place Charles had his mutant M. This pin was larger and made of multicolored metal, a rainbow flag with an M in the middle, and words along the top and bottom. QUEER FREAK.

"Oh, I love that!" Charles cried. "Where did you get it? I'd love to have one!"

The man's cheeks reddened and he looked suddenly bashful. "I made it. I'm a magnetokinetic—I work with metal." He opened his hand, and the pin lifted from his jacket to settle into Charles's hand.

"That's brilliant!" Charles knew he was getting overexcited in the way Raven always teased him about, but he couldn't help it—the infinite variety of mutation was always so fascinating. "Oh, but I couldn't take yours, you need it to show your support—could I commission one from you? Do you have a card?"

"Sure." The man let his pin return to his jacket, and fiddled in his wallet for a minute before handing Charles a card with a phone number, email address and the words Erik Lehnsherr, Custom Metalwork.

"What's your mutation?" the man—Erik, the trim-yet-spiky German name fit him perfectly—was asking.

"I'm a telepath," Charles said, and this was always the tricky moment, seeing how a new acquaintance—even another mutant, sometimes especially another mutant—would react.

"Impressive," Erik said, his eyebrows lifting, and his mental sense (even muted by the thick shields Charles had to erect in a crowd like this) was all interest and admiration, no trepidation at all.

"You're a telepath?"

Charles turned toward Sabah's voice, sudden and sharp on his other side. "Yes? Hadn't I mentioned that? I usually do, I'd rather know sooner than later if it's going to be a problem." That last sentence came out stiffer than Charles intended, but this date already hadn't been going well…

But Sabah didn't look panicked or judgmental. He was smiling, with (finally) a spark of focus in his eyes. It should have gratified Charles, but somehow it unsettled him instead. He tried to remember what Sabah had said his mutation was.

"Quiet now, boys, the game is starting!" Erik's frail mother said excitedly, and they all turned their attention to the ballfield.

It wasn't long, though, before Sabah leaned in close to Charles and caught his eye. Can you hear this, Charles? Can you hear me thinking?

With an inward sigh, Charles replied, Yes, I can hear you.

Sabah's smile widened. That's amazing. What else can you do? Can you…

The stream of obscene scenarios and intricate fantasies that followed could not have all occurred to En Sabah Nur in the last three minutes.

"I'm trying to watch the game, Sabah," Charles said loudly. "We can discuss all that later."

"Oh, okay," Sabah said in a tone that made Charles wish he'd phrased that differently. Something more like We won't be discussing that at all. It wasn't even that Charles was opposed to using his powers in bed; there was indeed some incredible fun to be had that way. But…

Erik, frowning, leaned in close to his other side. "Is this guy bothering you, um… Mister..?"

"Xavier," Charles said automatically. "Charles Xavier. And no, of course not, he's my date, we're just—I'm just—"

"You're just realizing he's a jackass?"

Charles couldn't repress a snort of startled laughter, but was saved from further conversation with either man by DeMarco taking the field. All four of them cheered wildly, waving their flags and, in the case of Erik's mother, unfolding a small banner that she made Erik help her hold up.

The announcers were talking about DeMarco's mutant coming-out, of course, and how various parties were trying to get him disqualified from the league.

"Unbelievable nonsense," Charles said, just as incensed now as the first time he'd heard it. "His mutation doesn't even have anything to do with his performance. The man talks to plants, for heaven's sake."

"It shouldn't matter if his mutation was 'always wins at baseball,'" Erik said next to him. "Everyone's born with natural advantages and disadvantages, they shouldn't penalize DeMarco any more than any other player with the lucky genes for strong arms and long legs."

That sparked a lively argument, which Charles found more intriguing than irritating; Erik had several good points, some of which Charles struggled to refute, and while he criticized Charles's logic without mercy, Erik didn't seem to be remotely angry at him personally.

"What do you think about it, Sabah?" Charles said eventually, chagrined that he had half-forgotten his date.

"Oh, I'm sure you're right, Charles," Sabah said absently, one eye on the game and the other on a text message.

"You're terribly distracted today," Charles said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Something wrong at work?"

"Oh, you know, there's always something." Taking the hint, Sabah put his phone in his jacket pocket. "If it were easy to take over the world, everyone would do it, right?"

"Er, right," Charles said, trying to remember what it was Sabah did for a living. He was starting to realize he didn't actually know very much about this man, for all of their cozy coffee shop conversations. The 'take over the world' remark had to be a joke, his expression indicated it was a joke, and yet… jokes had a pretty distinctive mental feel, almost like a lie but without the ill intent. That hadn't felt like a joke or a lie to Charles's telepathy.

"What are you and this guy arguing about, anyway?" Sabah asked.

"Mutant rights, what else?"

"Well, I'm in favor of them," Sabah said dryly. "The natural order is for the strong to rule the weak, and mutants are the next step of evolution. Eventually, mere humanity's going to be left in the dust. The sooner the better, in my opinion."

Charles blinked at this calm, confident declaration of a borderline genocidal sentiment. "Well, that's—I mean, mutation is evolution in action, but mutants are human, the next step of humanity, not—I mean we're considerably more alike than not, and there's no reason we can't coexist peacefully—"

"If one or the other has to be on top," Erik said on his other side, "and history suggests one does, it should be mutants. But," he sighed, "in my experience it's a lot easier to say 'screw the baselines' than it is to look at the actual baselines around you and say 'screw you.' My daughter Anya's baseline. My mother's baseline." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at her, then did a double-take. "And she's taken off her coat! Mama, what are you doing?"

"That one itches, schatz. Look, Frankson is going to take third base—yes, he's doing it! Look at him go!"

"Here, she can wear mine," Charles said, shrugging out of his coat; he had a heavy sweater underneath and was a bit overwarm with both.

"Thanks," Erik said, and bullied his mother into the coat.

"If you think he's wrong about things," Sabah murmured to Charles, "you can just… change his mind, can't you?" His voice was disturbingly sultry.

"I certainly cannot," Charles replied coldly, but Sabah only chuckled and turned his attention back to the game.

When Erik settled back into his seat, Charles, feeling squirmy and embarrassed that Sabah had even brought that up, changed the subject. "You have a daughter, you said?"

"Yeah, married my high school sweetheart before I realized I was gay—big mistake for both of us," oh good, he was single, "but it brought us Anya." He started showing Charles pictures on his phone of an elfin dark-haired nine-year-old.

"Oh, look, she has your chin!"

"Yeah, poor thing…"

Mama Lehnsherr gasped and started slapping at Erik's arm.

"What? Mama, what?" Erik cried in alarm, but she was laughing, pointing at the Jumbotron.

"Look, Erik, we're on the KissCam! Or, no, your new friend and his sweetheart are in the center—"

So they were, Charles saw. Saxophone music swelled through the speakers, and all through the stadium people were laughing and cheering in anticipation. Charles had to admit to being charmed by the idea of being on the KissCam; it was delightfully silly and romantic. He turned to Sabah—

Who was on his phone again, turned entirely away from Charles with his finger in his other ear.

Fine. Actually? More than fine.

"Shall we?" Charles said, turning to Erik on his other side.

Erik's eyes widened. Then he smiled, that wild-looking show of teeth that Charles had instantly found endearing, and leaned in. Their mouths met in a warm, firm press that felt shocking and new and yet strangely familiar, as if some deep unconscious part of him had been expecting this, waiting for this. For Erik.

Charles was dimly aware of applause and catcalls, of a surge of laughter throughout the stadium as Sabah turned around and began sputtering in outrage, but he didn't care. As far as he was concerned, the date was over—and something else, something much better, was about to begin.

[militant-holy-knight]

Clarifying the Crusades as “Defensive War”

Or How NOT to Do Crusader Apology

I felt the need to write this blogpost because there is a massive (but understandable) misconception that comes with defending the Crusades among people that know they have been smeared by liberals and revisionists, but are prone to commit serious blunders themselves because they lack historical knowledge about them. Some view it as a proper belated response after centuries of Islamic aggression which may be the case, but that is a gross oversimplification of what actually happened. But there are a lot of subtle details that get lost which result in constructing a very idealized view of the Crusades as an pan-Christian cooperation effort to destroy Islam. As an historian specialized in this time period and someone who goes at great lengths to defend them from political activists, I must advise fellow apologists to not fall into certain traps when talking about it.

The Context of Islamic Aggression

The Crusades officially began in 1095, but their origins can be traced back as further as the rise of Islam almost five centuries prior. Previously Christian lands such as Egypt, Syria, Palestine, the entirety of Northern Africa and Spain fell at Muslim rule and even then this didn’t stop further attacks all over the Mediterranean and Southern Europe from Arab pirates.

It’s important to note that the vast majority of this aggression directed at Europe was committed by the Umayyad Caliphate, which was established after the death of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, the fourth caliph of Islam (and first Imam of Shia Islam). This caliphate practically continued the policies of expansion laid out by it’s predecessors but following the Battle of Portiers and the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (both Christian victories that halted any expansion into Europe), the Umayyads entered a period of decay and a lot of infighting took place where they were replaced by the Abbasid Caliphate. This one was a lot less violent and more interested in consolidating it’s power by fighting rival Islamic empires than waging war on the infidels. One such rivals were the Seljuk Turks, a recently converted people that became displaced from the Turkic regions into the Middle-East.

The immediate cause of the Crusades was the Seljuk’s advance into Eastern Anatolia gobbling up huge parts of the Byzantine Empire and eventually culminated in the Battle of Mazinkert where they dealt a crushing defeat and the Emperor was captured, throwing the Empire in disarray. Alexios Komnenos was the emperor that sent letters of help to the Pope asking for relief - which was no easy task since the Catholic and Orthodox churches have parted ways over a series of theological, ecclesiastical and political disputes. Pope Urban assembled the Council of Clermont where he pledged Catholics to take up arms to 

This is No “War on Terror”

A often cringy apologist statement I see thrown out is that “The Crusades were waged to stop Islamic aggression” because I know any debater is gonna pick that one apart and embarrass the one who said it. The reason why its said is because 1) apologist observes there was historical preceding violence against Christians 2) therefore the Christians are fighting back. However, it’s important to note that by the time the Crusades were declared, there was no realistic chance of Islam ever taking Europe by military power because of the dispute between the countless Islamic states like the Abbasids, the Umayyads, the Seljuks, the Fatimids and etc. 

The contemporary rhetoric of the Crusades at the time was “retake the Holy Land”, not “stop the invasion”. While it’s perfectly plausible that Urban II did fear a potential invasion in the future should the Byzantine Empire collapse, the average crusader at the time did not sell his possessions and donated his lands to fund the expedition to possibly die in a far away land to preserve their Earthly way of life. He did it for the salvation and expiation of his soul - that is what he believed in. I think this isn’t acknowledged by apologists - whether they be actual Christians or secularists themselves (yes they exist) - because it’s embarrassing to admit at one point this is what Christians believed, but that is what history taught us whether we like it or not.

The one context where you could conceivably call this particular campaign a “defensive war” was to lend assistance to the Byzantine Empire, given they were in a time of crisis and needed all help they could get. Might as well call the ones to preserve the established Crusader states that were under threat. The problem is that it leads to another misconception made by Crusade defenders...

Christian Unity Was Lacking

While it’s true that Pope Urban was successful in inflaming the crowds of Europeans at Clermont about the atrocities reaped on the Christians of the East, another common misconception made by modern apologists is that they were acting like how Catholics and Orthodox do today, they were going to liberate their brethren and then leave them be. Due to the East-West Schism that took place just a few decades ago, the reality was far more cynical: The Catholic Church had no intention of restoring of restoring the reconquered lands to the Byzantine Empire and all Crusader states were to be under Latin jurisdiction, ruled by Latin Catholic monarchs with Catholic clergymen. As far as the Catholic Church was concerned, the Eastern Orthodox Church was schismatic and was to be brought into heel rather than left to coexist.

It’s well documented that Western knights disdained Byzantines for their seemingly effeminate and hedonistic manners, finding them unmanly fuccbois, while Byzantines wrote how Catholics were rough, uncivilized brutes, unworthy of being considered “Romans” and more akin to the Germanic tribes that overwhelmed the Western half centuries ago (though to be fair they weren’t entirely lying about that last part). And that is not even getting into the countless conflicts between Crusaders and Byzantines because I’d be here all day.

It’s inconvenient to point that the Crusader states were often in a very fragile state and requesting aid from Europe, since after the First Crusade was successful, many Europeans returned home and very few capable people were left to manage it. Yeah, yeah, we have better things to do so hold tight, m8s. This reality shIts all over the commitment that Christians had in solidarity for their co-religionalists. So Crusade apologists need to be careful in framing these campaigns as motivated by that motive.

There Were Actual Defensive Crusades

The real irony is that they existed after the period even if we don’t traditionally associate with them. the Fall of Constantinople heralded a new chapter in the war between the Cross and the Crescent with the Ottoman Empire beginning an expansion campaign rivaling that of the ancient Umayyads. Even before the city fell, the Ottomans had already consumed chunks of the Balkans including the entirety of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia and Wallachia. Even though the Crusades to retake the Holy Land fell out of fashion by the time of their rise, the situation now changed - the enemies were right at the door instead of thousands of miles in faraway lands and the Byzantine bulwark that withstood for 1000 years is no more.

This time there would be no bullshitting - Catholics and Orthodox would have to cooperate again to deal with the Ottoman dragon and there was no time for squabbling. Cooperation was increased with Albanian Catholics and Orthodox setting aside religious differences and form the League of Lezhe, Pope Pius II interacting with Wallachian Orthodox ruler Vlad III Dracula and Catholic king Matthias Corvinus lending his Black Army to Moldavian prince Stephen III to triumph against the Ottomans at Vaslui. There were officially sanctioned Crusades like the Crusade of Varna and the Crusade of Nicopolis, but they were major Islamic victories over the Christians. 

There can be no denying that the Christian campaigns (whether they were Catholic and Orthodox) against the Ottomans were defensive and fit the conventional understanding of a crusade, whether it’s a military campaign sanctioned by the Pope or simply any war waged by Christians. The reason why the Balkans are ignored is because the Holy Land Crusades are the more lasting ones in the modern public consciousness and still believed to be the cause of many political problems today between the West and the Islamic world (which is rich, since the latter never gave a flying shit about the Crusades until they were on the receiving end of colonialism for a change). Other factors can be accounted like the Protestant Reformation taking everyone’s else attention and being more comparatively significant and that these particular wars were not for people’s souls, but for their lives, their lands and loved ones.

So to my fellow apologists: be careful when you say “the Crusades were defensive wars” because if the other side is more knowledgeable than you, they are going to take up to task and debate you if they can. You need to be prepared to acknowledge the little subtleties of history and remember that the current “bro” relationship between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy was not the same as it was for medieval times, let alone was a motive for the Crusades because one side viewed the other as f*gg*ts and the latter viewed the former as brainlet cavemen. And more importantly, educate yourself about the wars in the Balkans and Eastern Europe which is surely a fun subject to study since many historical legends emerged from this period like Saint Stephen, Vlad the Impaler, Skanderbeg and John Hunyadi. 

They were all crusaders but you didn’t knew about it.

[ununniliad]

WikiLull EXHALE: “After the After”

November 15th, 2016. The lawn outside LNHQ, which is currently in the process of being rebuilt.

There was a great battle here.

...well, since this is the headquarters of the LNH, there have been many great battles here, and many more yet to come. But today feels like the day after a great, terrible battle, tho in fact it's been a week; coming down from the edge is like that, sometimes. And in a way it's been much longer, almost four years; recovering from trauma is like that, sometimes.

Nevertheless, the battle is over. There's a wind through the trees, blowing off the brightly-colored leaves; the world is stepping back, sitting down, and letting out its breath.

A single oak leaf, red and mottled with brown spots, tumbles down through the air, whirling in the cool autumn breeze. It flips, floats down... and disappears into a bubble of swirling darkness, inky colors shimmering and shifting like an oil slick on its surface. The bubble grows to the side of a person, then pops - and Cheesecake-Eater Lad and Token Girl tumble to the ground. A moment later, a tall, muscular blond woman with red eyes and subtle Star Trek-ian ridges on her face lands solidly on her feet - Captain LNH.

Token Girl coughs, pushing herself up, hands on her knees. "Whew. Felt like I was gonna turn inside-out."

Captain LNH chuckles, helping her to her feet. "That's what it's like, traveling from Looniverse-Astaroth, gateway to the Deep Omnilooniverse."

"Yeah, I think I liked it better back when we called it alt.comics.lnh." Token Girl stretches her arms, hands palm-out in front of her, and lets out a tension-releasing yawn. "How're you doing, Cheesy?"

Cheesecake-Eater Lad pounds himself on the chest and coughs. "Good thing I have such a strong stomach, that's all I'm saying." He shakes his head and turns to Captain LNH. "And you really want to... I mean, of course it's your decision."

Captain LNH nods firmly. "It is, and I do. I'm not..." She looks up at the LNHQ. "Not ready to come back."

"I get it... I think." Cheesecake-Eater Lad puts on a brave smile, but its edges start drooping. "I'm just... you spent so long in your own head. Uh, you didn't have a body at the time, but you know what I mean."

"Right, yeah. But not..." Captain LNH grabs her own shoulder, squeezes it. "Not all of us heal by talking about it. At least not right away."

oh god please let me step away from this awkward conversation, thinks Token Girl.

"Right. Well." Cheesecake-Eater Lad takes Captain LNH's hand, puts his over it. "I support you. And the Deep Omnilooniverse couldn't have a better defender."

Captain LNH smiles, a soft wave of starlight rolling thru her hair. "And the regular Looniverse couldn't have a better Anchor of Indulgence."

Cheesecake-Eater Lad chuckles. "Yeah, uh, you'll have to ask Unixepoch what that actually means, the next time you talk to him." He let go of her hands, and she took a step back.

"Will do. See you later, Tara!" Captain LNH begins to float up in the air, cosmic energy coalescing around her body.

Token Girl lets out a breath. "Right. Looking forward to it! Bring me some of the anime merch Looniverse-Murmur has, it looked amazing!"

Captain LNH laughs. "Gotcha. Oh, and keep an eye on the Loonited States for me. That new president..." She shakes her head, smiling. The energies swirl around her body, forming into a swirling bubble of bright colors, shafts of light shining out from the globular mass. It shimmers bright - then seems to zoom away, from every angle, until it is out of sight.

Cheesecake-Eater Lad takes off his toque, runs his hands thru his hair. "Whew." He turns to Token Girl. "We should probably--"

WHUMPF! He's lifted off his feet and up into the arms of a tall, pudgy, freckled woman who showers his face with kisses. "Oh my goodness dear I missed you!"

He squirms in her arms and laughs, wriggling out and onto the ground. "Jeez, hon." His cheeks are a-blush, and Token Girl smirks. "It was only a couple hours."

"Yes, and a couple decades before that, so forgive me my clinginess." She pulls him in close and presses him to her side.

He wiggles pleasantly, and a lithe, athletic woman in an abbreviated ninja outfit walks around his other side. She leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Hearty Homecoming, Husband! Our Wonderful Wife Was Worried, but your Safety Surely Seemed Secure, by Superhuman Skill and Cosmic Competence!" She slides in, snuggling both of them and smiling at Token Girl.

Cheesecake-Eater Lad blushes. "Ah, I believe you know my wives, aLLiterative Lass and Petunia Boonspackle."

Token Girl nods! "Right. aLLi's a co-worker, of course, and I met Petunia back during the whole Neme.sys thing."

"Ah yes, Tara the Multinaut!" Petunia releases Cheesecake-Eater Lad in order to clasp Token Girl's hand in both of her large, warm hands. "Thank you so much, for helping weave our timelines together."

"Aw, don't worry about it," says Token Girl, blushing herself. Gosh, this lady's presence feels comforting, like a crackling fireplace. "I've always been a shipper, anyway. And if the history where Cheesy's alive can coexist with the one where he's dead, it's a minor problem to make the one where he's married to Petunia coexist with the one where he's married to aLLi."

"'Specially Since Sapphic Sisters Surely Sign-off," says aLLiterative Lass. "Truly, Triads Treat Tenderly. Will you Witness our Wonderful Wedding?"

"Er..." Token Girl's eyes swivel back and forth. "Aren't you already...?"

"Separately," notes Petunia, "but since polygamous marriage is legal in this timeline [The Liminals #1 - Footnote Flower Girl], we wanted to let everybody know that this isn't two marriages, or even three, it's one big one." She puts her arm around aLLi, who rests her head on the taller woman.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," smiles Token Girl. "...unless I have to save the world that day, of course."

"Then that can be your present," says Petunia, smiling wide and giving Token Girl a thumbs-up.

"Precipitant Perfidy is a Powerful Possibility with that Present President," says aLLi, rolling her eyes.

"Now, now, let's save the politics for later. For now, we must be off~" Petunia hefts a squeaking Cheesecake-Eater Lad up under one arm, and aLLi under the other. "Picking up the daughters~"

"Right! See you later!" Token Girl chuckles under her breath as she watches them head off. Maybe this is what being the Looniversal Anchor of Indulgence means - making the people around you happy by making yourself happy. Well, good - they all deserve to be happy for a very long time.

She looks up at the clear blue sky, streaked with whispery clouds, and feels herself inch back from that sense of panic and emergency. There will be more emergencies, more world-shaking battles; but for now, she strolls casually back into LNHQ, looking for cheesecake.

The usual crowd is milling about in the lobby, chatting, getting the mail, rushing out to desperately stop a net.villain, learning the true meaning of Armistice Day, and so on. Subtle breezes flow thru the room, the tarp over the partially-destroyed wall flapping in the wind.

Token Girl makes her way thru the crowd with practiced skill, heading towards the hallway door until she spies a cluster of people and people-like entities that she can't let herself miss.

Escape Lass hefts a bowl of apples under her arm. "...can't sustain over-the-air signals, they just bleed out between the dimensional apertures, so we'll have to lay cable the whole way."

"Which is a problem," speaks the bowl of apples, in fact the MicroMAC Quadcore, "since it is an indeterminate distance which, likely, shall change in indeterminable ways over time."

"Right," says Escape Lass, voice filling with problem-solving enthusiasm, "which-- oh, Tara!" She bounces in her blue short-sleeve straitjacket towards Token Girl, wrapping her free arm around her and squeezing her tight to her side.

Token Girl squirms in surprise, but laughs. "Hey, Evie. Y'all about to head out?"

"I think we are," says Escape Lass, letting go of Token Girl and putting Quadcore in her arms. Token Girl blinks at the robot in disguise, who doesn't blink back, as his form currently lacks eyes. "Foreshadowing Lad, how's it looking?"

"Hmmmm..." Foreshadowing Lad stretches out an arm clad in green spandex, and smiles up at Escape Lass. "Feels like we're almost at a happy ending."

Escape Lass grins, takes Foreshadowing Lad's hand, spins him around, dips him back and kisses him, then lets him go~ The young man stumbles back into the arms of his other partner, Non-Judgmental Agnostic, who squeezes him in a tight hug.

"Man, everybody's in a triad nowadays," says Token Girl, chuckling and handing Quadcore back.

"We'd invite you in and make it a quad," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic in her soft, tinkling, quasi-divine voice, "but I'm afraid it would turn into a Great LNH Polycule and swallow Net.ropolis."

Token Girl flushes. "Uh, so uh, y'all are going to make your way back to your world, Escape Lass?"

Escape Lass nods firmly. "Right. We're going to head down into the depths of the LNHQ, down to the point where the LNHQs of different universes start mingling to save on storage space, and find our way home to the Legacy of Newfangled Hierophants."

"Newly designated Looniverse-Bael," speaks Quadcore.

"That's right, in the Deep Omnilooniverse... ah, dammit." Token Girl tsks at herself. "We could've had Captain LNH take you back."

Escape Lass shakes her head! "No, don't forget, we have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs back."

"Preferably in the form of interuniversal messaging system," speaks Quadcore. "If we can overcome these significant technical issues."

"That's right," nods Token Girl, dislodging some of the details she learned during that whole confusing shebang. "You got a lot of people who'd like to emigrate."

"Right, tho your Looniverse isn't our main destination." Escape Lass smiles down at Quadcore. "Somebody made us a better offer."

"Ohhhh..." Token Girl looks between the lady and the robot and it clicks. "Ohhhhh-- with *them*!"

Escape Girl laughs, fingers half-covering her mouth as her eyes sparkle, and nods. "Right."

"That's-- wow," says Token Girl, processing the idea. "A world with tiny robots and giant humans feels very Deep Omnilooniverse, but it's not what I would have expected them to--"

"Cower, fools!" A figure leaps into their midst, with the swish of a cape! He rolls back his head and opens his mouth to let out a megalomaniacal cackle!

"Ah-ha-ha-ha! Mueh-heh-heh-heh! ...how was that?"

"... it sounds like you're making progress!" says Non-Judgmental Agnostic supportively!

The figure smiles in delight. He looks like a very normal person, with hair a few tones darker than his skin and eyes that are a color. The only odd things about him are the crimson circuitry running down from his eyes, over his chin and down his neck, and the symbol on his forehead - a stylized sword tucked into a breast pocket, with fancy monogrammed initials on it - PE, for the Pocket Empire!

"...cool, hi," says Token Girl, eyeing the man. She'll have to catch up with WikiBoy on all his weird clones later, but for now, she's pretty sure this is... "wIkimus Maximus, right?"

"Correct!" says wIkimus proudly, idly battling his cape out of the way.

"Or should we call you..." Escape Lass tosses Quadcore to wIkimus and points a dramatic finger. "Our most thrilling enemy!"

wIkimus juggles Quadcore for a moment before getting his arms solidly under the bowl, then looks back at Escape Lass. "Mwa-ha-heh-heh-ho! That's right! Now that I have deposed the foolish Antiochus XXVIII, I am the one true leader of the Pocket Empire!"

"God, and thank you for doing that," says Escape Lass, shaking her head. "Um, and argh you fiend and such."

Token Girl has her arms crossed and her eyebrow raised. "That's a heck of a thing."

"It probably seems strange," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic, smiling. "But on many worlds, the rivalry of support is one of the strongest social bonds there is."

Token Girl nods, and leans away from the dramatically-proclaiming nerds so that her worlds can go straight to the ears of Non-Judgmental Agnostic and Foreshadowing Lad. "So... what happened to CassAIndra?"

Foreshadowing Lad sighs, a heavy weight on his brow. "Multi-Tasking Man thinks he can fix her."

"He'd be the one if anyone was," murmurs Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "They know each other from the inside out, now."

"Fair. I just wanted to thank her... well, hopefully I'll get the chance." Token Girl shakes her head. "And WikiMan?"

"His WikiPowers are lost," says Foreshadowing Lad, "and I don't see a future where he gets them back. He's now a fixed narrative being, based on his last edit."

"I don't think he minds much, tho," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "He gets to experience the childhood he never did the first time, with the MicroMACs as his friends."

Token Girl nods thoughtfully, eyes on Escape Lass and wIkimus. "And... mmm." She shakes her head. "I don't know. It feels strange that all the different factions, the Pocket Empire and the Guardiettes and the AniMACs and the MicroMicroMACs and everybody else, are still going to keep fighting each other, even tho..." Her forehead wrinkles, and she looks up at Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "Like, do they really have a reason?"

Non-Judgmental Agnostic turns her eyes up to the skylight over the foyer, watching the clouds swoosh by. She takes a deep breath, and in an 'I am reciting this from memory' voice, says, "Ever since the Trademarkers used their Alterscope to spy on the RoboMAC worlds, the MicroMACs have been fighting battles for the entertainment of others." She smiles at Token Girl. "They can be more than that, now. They already are. But doing huge, dramatic, splashy stuff for an audience - that's part of them."

"Like it's part of the LNH," says Foreshadowing Lad, nodding.

"Heh. I guess so..." Token Girl turns to Escape Lass and wIkimus Maximus and snaps her fingers, giving them the fingerguns. "Okay, I'm gonna head off. Catch you all on the flipside."

"Oh, before you go!" Escape Lass bounds forward and catches her in a hug. Token Girl squirms in obvious embarassment and quiet delight, and hugs her back.

After she's let go, Token Girl waves and heads out of the foyer and down the winding corridors of LNHQ, towards the cafeteria. As she turns a corner, a figure staring off into space collides with her, both of them falling on their butts.

"--oh, sorry!" The other one scrambles to his feet, and Token Girl can see that it's Can-Handle-Any-Type-of-Change-Except-For-the-Ultimate-Ninja-Wearing-a-Cape Lad, three-time winner of the Longest Name in the Legion contest.

"That's okay," she says, helping him up. "But are you all right? You seem, uh, distracted."

He shakes his head, blushing just a bit. "It's just..." He looks over his shoulder, then leans in to murmur. "I'm afraid my powers are malfunctioning."

"Ohhhh?" Token Girl felt a slight tinge of worry. CHAToCEFtUNWaCLad was a relatively new Legionnaire, but had already become one of their dependable stalwarts.

He nods firmly. "I saw Ultimate Ninja walk by the cape closet, and..." He breathes just a bit deeper. "I didn't feel anything."

"...ah." Token Girl's worry becomes a different kind of... melancholy, really. She had been right there when it happened, but...

"Me too!" Puts-Paperclips-on-The-Ultimate-Ninja's-Desk Lad, three-time loser of the Least Useful Power in the Legion contest, popped into the conversation out of nowhere. "I just got a new jar of clips and they've just been sitting in a drawer all week!"

"Oh, man!" says Can-Handle-Any-Type-of-Change-Except-For-the-Ultimate-Ninja-Wearing-a-Cape Lad. "It's weird, isn't it?"

"It's super weird!"

"Mmmm..." Token Girl draws in a breath. "Well, maybe you should go to Doctor Stomper and have him check up on your powers."

"Ooh, yeah, good idea. Thanks, TG!" The two of them head off in the general direction of sickbay, chattering about the weirdness of the day.

Token Girl rubs her upper arm, getting some of that stiff tension out. She was there when it happened, but... she's not supposed to say anything. She's still not really sure that was the right choice, but it's...

Well, it's what Ultimate Ninja wanted, so.

She makes it down to the cafeteria, grabs a slice of one of Betamax's weird culinary experiments (in this case, pizza with black bean sauce and cotija cheese), reflills her canteen from the water filter, and takes ten to relax, sip, eat and process.

Just about ten minutes later: "Hey, mind if I sit here?"

Token Girl is tired enough that her first impulse is to pull out one of her trademark snappy comebacks so she doesn't have to People any more. But she recognizes the voice, and its owner doesn't count as a People, he counts as a Friend; so she looks up and gives a tired but sincere smile. "Yeah, sure!"

And Wikiboy sits down, putting his Szechuan tacos and soda on the table and smiling back, with just a touch of hard-earned confidence. "How've you been?"

"I've been..." Token Girl rolls her mind over a chaotic landscape of emotion... "I've been a lot. How about you?"

"Uh... also a lot, I think." Wikiboy adjusts his hair and straightens up. "Adjusting to how my powers work now, and the new... part of me, I guess you'd call it."

Token Girl nods, the questions that have been on her mind for a while rolling to the front. "Yeah, uh, did you absorb, like... the whole Apathy Beast, or...?"

"It felt like it at the time, but now it just feels like..." WikiBoy puts his hand over his chest, and takes a deep breath, stilling. "...like an extra bit of... weight? Calmness? Metaphysical machinery?" He shrugs! "Something like."

"Right. But you can still be edited?"

"Yeah, that still works about the same way. It's just that I can ignore edits if I really want to." He looks out the window. "It's kind of... the power to Not Care."

A little wave of regret sloshes on the shores of Token Girl's brain. "Gotcha. ..can you edit yourself?"

WikiBoy stares out the window, quiet for a long while. "...I don't know. When... when we were all together, all in one body, I could, but... I haven't tried since." He takes another deep breath, straightens up, and turns to her with a smile. "Someday, I guess. But right now, it feels like..." His smile droops just a bit at the edges. "WiKaine messed himself up real bad by editing out everything he couldn't stand."

Token Girl summons up her ultra-secret net.ahuman power, Being Distractingly Light and Humorous. "You mean Axen Kiwi, the No One of WikiBoy, right?"

WikiBoy blinks, then laughs. "Oh, god, yeah. I forgot about all the convoluted video game nonsense for a bit."

She grins. "Kingdom Hearts references are the natural destination of ridiculously convoluted crossover plotting."

"They really are." He shakes himself and runs his hands thru his hair, blushing a bit as he realizes how vulnerable he'd been. "I think he ran off into the Deep Omnilooniverse in the end. I hope he finds something to..."

"...put in that literal heart-shaped hole in his chest?" Seeeecret power!

"Oh, god, that's right. WikiBoy laughs. "Jeez our lives are hilarious sometimes." He shakes his head ruefully. "I didn't really get that, when I was the butt of all the jokes."

Oh no, the secret power backfired and now a huge wave of guilt is swamping Token Girl's brain! "I'm--" She stumbles. "I'm sorry if I ever--"

WikiBoy holds up a hand and looks her in the eyes. "Don't worry about it, please."

"...you sure?"

He picks up his taco and gives a big, performative bite, chewing and swallowing. "I was--" Slurp crunch smack. "I was created to be the butt of all the jokes, the one who just takes abuse because it's not as funny if I get revenge. That's who my Writer needed me to be... a harmless fantasy, something you write to find the happy buttons in the folds of your own brain and push them, and maybe find other people with the same buttons that'll enjoy it. That's who I was, then, and... I'm kinda proud of it?" He takes another bite, and licks his fingers. "Yeah, definitely this weird existential pride."

"I don't really get it," says Token Girl, "buuuuut that's good?"

WikiBoy giggles and lets out a little snort. "Yeah, it is. But then other writers got ahold of me, ones with different buttons, and they decided to take the elements of the fantasy and use them for a different kind of story. Like Jay Edidin embracing Chris Claremont's version of Lee and Kirby's Cyclops - finding the part that appeals to you. That's what collaborative fiction universes are about. And now I'm who I am right now." He pulls out a wet-wipe and cleans off his fingers. "There's plenty of room in there for different interpretations, too. I still get into wacky unfortunate comedic peril." He tosses the wipe on his tray and leans back in his chair. "I dunno. It's weird to think about who I used to be, but... yeah, I'm not sorry I was him."

Token Girl looks at WikiBoy, relaxing, thoughtful, and warmth swells in her chest. "I'm proud of you, man."

"Awh. Well." WikiBoy blushes, straightens up, and grabs the rest of his taco, shoving it in his mouth and mumbling "Thanks." around the food.

Token Girl chuckles. "So, uh... what haven't we... oh, yeah, WikiCide. He decided to become your evil opposite, huh?"

"Yeah~" WikiBoy swallows. "I'm proud of him, too. He's had a longer path than I have, even, but I think he's gonna do a great job."

"Four outta five ain't bad, I think," says Token Girl.

WikiBoy nods, and streeeetches and yaaaaaaaawns. "Mmmmm... I think I'm gonna go take a post-lunch nap."

"Hey, nap buddies~" Token Girl holds up her fist, and WikiBoy bumps it. She stands up and stretches. "See ya when I see ya."

"See ya too, assuming I have eyes at that point." WikiBoy stands up and picks up his tray.

Token Girl turns to go... ponders for a moment. "Hey, WikiBoy?" She snaps her fingers. "You're an SD Deathscythe."

"...yeah, sure~" WikiBoy poofs into an adorably chibi battle robot holding a glowing laser scythe, and toddles off on his chunky robotic feet.

Token Girl makes her way out of the cafeteria and down to her room without any more run-ins. She shuts the door and leans back on it, closing her eyes. Jeez, what a day. And it isn't over yet, but she can kick off her big stompy boots, hang up her button-covered denim jacket, flop into bed, cuddle a body pillow with a badass anime girl on it, and take a nap.

...she dreams of patterns in the sky, lines that aren't lines and gods that are great rotating symbols, and she watches the lines separate until the symbol is gone, and she watches Discord wave as she passes...

Token Girl wakes up 23 minutes after her alarm was supposed to go off. Oh, crap, she's supposed to get the Metatronium Sifter back in-- oh crap oh crap oh crap!!

She pushes her feet into her boots and wiggles her heels into place, grabs her jacket, and charges down the hallway to the transporter room. Parking Karma Kid is there, sitting behind the console and watching a compliation of ridiculous Grand Theft Auto vehicle tricks on his phone.

"Pete!" Token Girl says, leaping onto a transporter.thingy pad.thingee. "Gotta be at a place right exactly now! Address!" She throws a paper airplane at him.

Parking Karma Kid catches it out of the air and unfolds it. "So you're asking me to drop you off, not in some open space at sea level, but inside a mid-city building on the fifth floor?"

Token Girl nods desperately!!

Parking Karma Kid cracks his knuckles. "Thanks! But next time, give me a hard one!" His fingers dance over the console and she's gone~

Token Girl materializes in the hallway outside apartment 507-- whew, only a minute and a half late. She knocks on the door, and a kinda butch lady with short curly hair and devastating cheekbones opens it - "Terrible" Maddie Turnip. Token Girl holds out her hand, Maddie grabs it with a little grin, and they go up, down, left, right, wiggle your pinkies - the old Radikool Kidz Klub secret handshake. Then Maddie pulls her forward unexpectedly into a brief but strong hug that makes Token Girl gasp - not unpleasantly - as the air is squeezed out of her.

Behind Maddie, on the couch, are two people. One is a tall, dark-haired woman with a sort of 40's pinup girl look and an infectuous smile - Forgotten Gal. The other is a scrawny young man of Polish descent, with long blue hair and wearing a lemon-yellow T-shirt and blue jeans - Skrajny the Multinaut.

"C'mon, c'mon, I got a cherry crumble in the oven." Maddie leads Token Girl in and sits her down in a big plush recliner, a plate of dessert pressed into her hands.

"Okay, okay," laughs Token Girl. "But just one slice for me, please, I've got a dinner date." She takes the proffered fork and nibbles - delicious. "Lessee, uh..." She reaches into her satchel and pulls out a weird, septagonal device. "Here ya go, Skrajny."

"Please, call me Kacper." He says 'Casper' but Token Girl's gone thru enough baby naming sites to know how it's spelled. Kacper takes the Metatronium Sifter. "Tho I don't know what I'm gonna do with it."

"We'll figure it out," says Forgotten Gal, squeezing Skrajny's hand and giving him a reassuring smile. Token Girl notices that she's still wearing the Nostalgic Brace she'd gotten... somewhere along the line, Token Girl wasn't really sure. But it counterbalanced her forgettability, for people who had an emotional investment in her - which everyone in the room definitely did.

Token Girl decides to jump directly to the elephant in the room. "You're definitely not going home, then?"

Kacper sucks in a breath, lets it blow out loose lips. "...I want to go back. I want to help my people, the ones who are still trapped in that messed-up imperialist view of the multiverse." He puts his hands out in front of him and shakes his head. "But the Ordered Realities bureaucracy would hunt me down as a deserter even if I wasn't keeping the Idoloid technology. It's much safer, for now, for me to stay in an unregistered world where their influence is strictly indirect."

Maddie nods. "'Sides, this way, we can keep each other safe."

"Hell yeah!" Forgotten Girl pumps her fist. "Heroes together!"

"Woo!" says Kacper, giving a thumbs-up.

Token Girl grins and finishes off her bit of cherry crumble. "I'm glad to have someone like you on the force, Maddie."

"Heh, well." Maddie puts down her beer and gives Token Girl a tired but sincere smile. "Thanks, but I ain't on the force anymore."

"...oh. Uh." Social snafu? Had something happened?? "Sorry???"

"Nah, it's okay." Maddie sits back, arms crossed. "You're right, I was a good cop. But I was mostly good at not being like a cop's supposed to be. And after we found out..." She shakes her head. "Some of Shadez Radikal's people were... acquaintances, maybe even kind of friends. People I thought I could count on - people who'd given me orders. And I thought about those orders..." She shrugs. "I'm done with necessary evils. Or as done as you can be, in this world."

Token Girl let out a breath. "Yeah, that's fair. And like, who even knows what the laws are gonna be like with that new President."

"Oh lord, that guy," says Maddie, shaking her head and tilting her beer back, pouring the rest of it down her throat, then letting out a satisfying belch.

"Coulda been worse, tho," says Forgotten Gal, punching Maddie lightly in the shoulder.

"Yeah," says Token Girl, shaking her head too. "Anyway, what are you gonna do now?"

"You wanna take this one?" Maddie says to Forgotten Gal, who smiles and leans forward.

"We're gonna try and make something new. A place for Weird People."

"While everything was going down, we ended up getting to know some of your Shadow People," says Kacper.

"And we had ideas, and they had ideas..." says Maggie. "And a lotta those ideas were compatible."

"It's gonna be a place where weirdos like us can just, like, live, and support each other," says Forgotten Gal, eyes sparkling with possibility. "Without having to worry about cops, or CEOs, or weird people in frog masks, or any of that."

"Sounds great," says Token Girl. "But..." She rubs her chin thoughtfully. "Isn't that basically the LNH?"

Maggie lets out a little bark of a laugh. "Kid, you got a flippin' ninja death machine for a leader. It ain't an egalitarian society yet, that's for sure."

"...yeah, you know, fair, reasonable."

"Besides," interjects Forgotten Gal enthusiastically, "we can have more than one!"

"We gotta have more than one," says Maddie. "As many as we can get, I think."

Token Girl mmmmmms. "Good point..."

"It's like the Powernauts taught me," says Kacper. "You gotta spread the power around."

Token Girl giggles. "Right, and--" She's interrupted by her phone, which belts out a rousing chorus of 'Yappapa'. "Aw shoot!" She bounces to her feet! "Gotta get going to dinner!"

"Hugs first!" Forgotten Gal leaps up and hugs her, and Token Girl puts up only minimal protest. Maggie pushes herself to her feet and wraps her arms around the both of them with even less protest, and after a hesitant moment, Kacper joins in. Token Girl feels embarassingly warm and snuggly and appreciated, and only lets it go on for so long before she squirms out and away.

"See ya!" Everybody waves as she heads out the door.

This time, she walks to her destination; it's only a few blocks down the street, and exercise is always a useful prelude to the kind of food you get at the Pizza Pit.

At the door, she checks her phone; 7:57 PM. Awesome, just a couple minutes early. She slides inside and finds a place to lean up against the wall, looking up at the stage. She wouldn't want to miss this - the very last performance of the Cool Name Band.

Merissa is absolutely shredding on the bass, and Kid Occultism Kid is leading on guitar. Keeping up the beat is, of course, Deathspork: The Terminator on drums, with accompaniment by Amnesiac Brad Pitt on saxophone. And belting out the vocals at the top of her lungs is the one and only top of the pops, Rock'n'Roll Lass!

The crowd looks up from their pizzas, at the stage usually reserved for animatronic animals and karaoke performances of Baby Shark, enraptured by the sudden sense of something special happening; a magical alchemy that will disappear after tonight, and somehow, that feels okay; somehow, that feels right.

Token Girl leans back and lets the sound wash over her; the secret chord that pleased Discord. She hadn't been able to appreciate it properly before, either during the Secret War of the Bands or during the moment they had played to the universe itself. Now... her eyes lid, and her breath slows, and something opens up in her chest, and she lets it flow thru her...

When the music ends, she opens her eyes, stands up, and streeeetches. It feels like she's taken another nap, but she's absolutely brimming with energy...

"Thank you, Net.ropolis!" shouts Rock'n'Roll Lass. "Never forget where the rock came from! Good night!" The curtains swish closed, and Token Girl slips around the side and heads backstage.

The five of them are in the dressing room, taking off their stage makeup and chatting, letting themselves wind down too. Token Girl knock-knocked and leaned in. "Hey! Got a minute for your biggest fan?"

All five look up and all five smile, tho Deathspork's expression is annoyed at his own happiness. Rock'n'Roll Lass crosses the room, grabs Token Girl's hand, and pulls her up close in a sororal fist-clasp. "Glad you could make it, babe."

Token Girl feels that warmth rise to her cheeks again. "Wouldn't miss seeing y'all off!"

"Indeed, you are just in time!" Deathspork rises, having strapped his drums to a wheely cart, and gestures grandly. "For our alliance has been fruitful-- but now it must end! You have earned my respect, but the next time we meet, it will be-- as enemies!!"

Merissa rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. "Dude. PLEASE get over yourself and you might stop sucking."

"Verily," speaks Kid Occultism Kid, "you have far greater potential than you allow yourself to know. Especially on the drums."

"Bah!" Deathspork opens the stage door and sweeps dramatically out of the Pizza Pit. Tries to sweep dramatically out of the Pizza Pit. Trips on the steps and falls out of the Pizza Pit.

Screaming.

"...right," says Token Girl. "How about you, babe?"

Rock'n'Roll Lass laughs. "Yeah, I'm headed off too. Got to get back to the '60s and make sure all the 'classic rock' isn't being produced by white boys." She shakes her head. "'Classic'. Man, what a trip."

"Hang it loose!" says Amnesiac Brad Pitt, throwing up the horns.

Rock'n'Roll Lass raises her eyebrows and chuckles. "Yeah, you do you! G'night, folks!" She steps carefully over Deathspork, and disappears into the night.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering our repast for the evening!" Kid Occultism Kid thrusts out a hand, and the wood warps within the dressing room wall, turning into a mystic swirly portal! "Shall we?"

Merissa rolls her eyes. "You really didn't need to be that extra." She walks up to the door... and blasts it into tiny pieces with her Ultra-Mega-BIGGUN! "Not when you could be that extra!" >:D

"oh my god you nerds." Token Girl stepped thru the pieces of broken door, pulling Amnesiac Brad Pitt along with her. Kid Occultism Kid waves their hands, and a giant arrow appears, guiding them to their table. A waitress drops off their pizza and gets Merissa's signature, and they dive in.

"So," says Token Girl, dipping one of their gloriously greasy breadsticks into marinara, "how are you holding up, Brad?"

"Ah..." Amnesiac Brad Pitt shakes his head. "I don't think I'm going to call myself that anymore." He gets up and stands behind his chair, putting one hand on the faded First Trenchcoat draped over it. "After the other Brad Pitts formed the Idolon of Millions and sacrificed themselves, the idea of holding up that name, that legacy... that's not what I am."

Kid Occultism Kid swallows and says, "And what, then, would you be?"

"I'm just a memory of what came before." The former Amnesiac Brad Pitt puts on the First Trenchcoat and turns towards the door, but stops for a moment, looks back. "I'm just... a Memento."

"...uh," says Merissa, "you weren't in that movie."

He freezes. "Wait, really?"

"Are you thinking of Guy Pearce, maybe?" says Kid Occultism Kid.

"Well shit." The still-nameless Idolon turns around and sit back down at the table. "So... how about that election?"

The tension breaks and the table turns into a caophony of nods, sighs, mumbles and eyerolls.

"Like jeez that new President," says Merissa, shaking her head. "I mean, I was too busy to run, but..."

"Yeah," says Token Girl, "but... it could definitely have been worse."

Merissa pauses, remembering, and nods firmly. "Yeah, it really could..."

"And for now," says Kid Occultism Kid, "we shall look forward, to the future. To what we can do to keep this from happening again - to make things truly better."

"Hear, hear," says Mr. What's-His-Name.

Between them, the foursome quickly finish off the pizza, the breadsticks, and the side order of wings. Token Girl lets out a satisfied belch, and Merissa gives her a high-five. "Okay," she says, "I'm gonna head back to LNHQ, how 'bout y'all?"

"I'll totes come with," says Merissa, picking up her bass.

"I shall stay here and help our friend consult on a new moniker," says Kid Occultism Kid.

"yeah thanks," says you-know-who.

The two of them head out the door, into the cool autumn night, gibbous moon waning overhead. As they walk, Token Girl feels Merissa's demeanor change, from the chill relaxed lady she likes to project to the insecure teenager-esque being she actually is (in Token Girl's estimation). Something wants to come out, but it can't be forced, so she waits...

They're almost there when Merissa turns to her and bursts out with a "So hey..."

"Yeah?" says Token Girl, like she hadn't been waiting.

"It's just..." Merissa fidgets, and her face wrinkles up in the frustration of being kuudere, trying to hold back her feelings to maintain her persona of Cool. Thankfully, she isn't very good at it, and the words come spilling out. "Do you really think we can make stuff better? Like, the world almost went totally to shit! It's fucked up in so many different ways! I don't think..." Her voice softens, and she turns her gaze away. "I don't think anybody, no matter how cool and powerful they are, can deal with it by themselves."

Shit. Token Girl does not consider herself anything like 'good at this stuff'. Fearless Leader or Catalyst Lass would be much better at the encouraging speeches, and Special Bonding Boy or Fairy Princess Lad would be much much better at the talking about feelings. But, well, she was there and now she's here, so she takes a deep breath and...

"...yeah, I think you're right. Like... during all the shit that happened, all of the crazy and cosmic and depressing and amazing stuff-- I couldn't have done any of it by myself. Which..." Okay, here goes. "Which is why we all had to do that together. So many of us had to take it on from so many different angles, your band, the Powernauts, Captain LNH and Cheesecake-Eater Lad, the MicroMACs, Maddie and Forgotten Gal, Escape Lass and WikiMan, all the WikiBoys, all of us... We had to come from different places, different backgrounds, different powersets and different stations in life, because we were all needed, we all helped in different ways."

Merissa's eyes are wide and-- oh, dear, yes, they're sparkling. Well, at least it's working - better wrap up while she's ahead.

"So like... yeah, I do think we can stuff better, but only if we keep doing that. If we all value each other's efforts, and don't stop supporting each other - the front line fighters, the healers and comforters, the big public speakers, the logistics nerds, the hyperspecialists..." Token Girl chuckles. "And the token weirdos like me, who just happened to be in the right time and place to kinda, give a little push in a helpful direction."

"...hey!" says Merissa, snorting. "Don't be so down on yourself, grandma. You did a lot of the work too." She shrugs~ "Not as much as me, of course~"

Token Girl laughs. Oh thank fuck it worked. "Grandma, eh? Well, sonny, er, little lady... no, that sounds dumb, I don't know how grandmas talk."

Merissa lets out a gigglesnort. "Okay, okay, so stop talking. See you in the morning, I'm gonna do something cooler than hanging out with you~" She runs down the sidewalk to the back door of the LNHQ, swings it open, and yells, "Also you're rad and thanks!" before disappearing.

Token Girl chuckles, running her hands thru her hair as she saunters thru the back door. Whew. It's been a day of far too many emotions... time to vegetate.

She finds her way to the TV room, the hallways gently guiding her as always. Forsaken Lass and Net.Access are on one of the overstuffed couches, making out and oblivious to the world around them, so she flops down on the other one, next to Fuzzy. "What's on the boob tube?"

"Well, I don't watch the news a lot," says Fuzzy, flipping from channel to channel like it's 1992 or something. "But I figured this was important." She stops on an image of a podium with American flags around it. Vaguely stirring, vaguely patriotic music was playing.

"...welp," says Token Girl, running her hands thru her hair. "Let's do this."

The vague music quiets, and a warm and enthusiastic announcer comes on, completely unfazed by what he's about to say. "Ladies and gentlemen, in his first address to the nation, please welcome the new President-Elect of the Loonited Sates of Ame.rec.a..."

A person walks up to the podium. A person both of them recognize. A person both of them have fought with. And before last week, the last person either of them would have expected to see up there...

"...Bad Judgment Boy!"

The Icon of Ill-Considered Ideas strolls saucily up to the podium. He's wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Che Guevara on it and tight shorts that say "JUICY" on the bottom. He grabs the microphone (causing a screech of feedback) and addresses the nation.

"Hey guys! Wait, there's a teleprompter. My... fellow... Africans..."

An aide runs up to Bad Judgment Boy and whispers urgently in his ear, but he waves them off.

"Look, look, I know you wanted me to talk about the economy or whatever, but let's focus on what's really important: Me! See, I'll be great for the Ame.rec.an people. Most politicians are big in debt to shady figures in industry. But all the shady figures *I*'m in debt to disappeared last week, so it's fine!"

Token Girl watches, open-mouthed, for as long as she can stand. Then she grabs the remote, clicks off the TV, and falls back on the couch. She looks up at Fuzzy. "...well, it coulda been worse, right?"

Fuzzy chuckles. "It really could have. But..." She scratches her head. "I still don't understand how the heck he won!"

Token Girl sits up and shakes her head. "I should head to bed." She stands up, streeeetching out. "But I'll tell you what I can tomorrow." She walks to the door, but turns when she gets there. "And we can start at the end." She gives Fuzzy a wink, then ambles away.

Fuzzy shakes her head. "Good night." She turns to the camera. "And sleep well, when you do."

----

Author's Notes: So, the thing is...

I had SO MANY PLANS for WikiLull. And they grew, and they grew, and they just kept growing. And I realized - what I really wanted WikiLull to be was a catharsis to all the pain and awfulness of the 2016 election, all of its causes and all of its effects. And that's just too big for one story to be.

So instead, I decided to tie off the loose ends, and take a lot of the places Jeanne and I had wanted characters to go and just move them there, and leave the Looniverse with a good status quo. And get it done before the 2020 election, eheheh... just under the wire.

The Deep Omnilooniverse is, of course, a parody of DC's Dark Multiverse. Jeanne and I were originally going to call it the "Dark Omnilooniverse", but using "dark" like that is overdone and carries Weird Racial Overtones, and the play on the idea of the "deep web" was really compelling. All of the Deep Omnilooniverse worlds mentioned in this issue are named after demons from the Ars Goetia, because we're fancy like that. It's not very well-defined here, so feel free to go wild!

[cosmic-hearts]

sunshower | lee jeno

lee jeno x reader 

genres; fluff, romance, very slight angst 

warnings; real cringey and cliche tbh (but otherwise none)

summary: a sunshower is a meteorological phenomenon in which rain falls while the sun is shining. 

You always knew you were a child of the rain. In fact, the day you were born, the city was struck by one of the heaviest thunderstorms ever in history, and for the first few days of your life, lightning bolts would clash in deafening roars and hail would descend, spiralling sharply through the chaos under the grey skies as you slept soundly through it all. Born of storms and raised by thunder, you felt most alive when the cold wind nipped at your ears and icy droplets of rain pricked at your skin, sending spurts of electricity shooting through your system. 

You also knew that not everyone liked the rain. In fact, some others hated it. This fact irked you very much— after all, who could detest of the feeling of sweet little drops of coolness kissing one’s skin lightly, like sprinklings of stardust, of the misty, elusive wind gently nuzzling one’s hair like the touch of a familiar lover?

Well, apparently Lee Jeno did. 

If you were the heiress of the storm, Lee Jeno was the descendant of the sun. 

For into his veins were woven sunshine and daylight, and when he smiled, his eyes morphed into sunbeams, casting rays of light so unbelievably bright. The only thing dark about him was his hair, but even so, it was a luxuriant sort of black that shone under the sunlight, giving it a dappled glow. His very being exuded warmth, drawing people to him like moths to a flame. Unlike the storm which holds a more covert, concealed sort of charm people find harder to uncover, the sun’s glory is highly visible, its warm rays easily felt and indulged in. 

That was Lee Jeno. The polar opposite of you. 

And you were perfectly happy to stay clear of him like you always did; after all, how could the sun and the storm coexist? 

He couldn’t seem to do the same, though. 

The clashing of elemental forces began when he caught you playing truant during gym class. In your defence, you simply couldn’t help yourself; the skies had darkened to a lovely silvery hue and a light, hazy drizzle had begun. This kind of rain was one of your many favourites, because it meant that you could frolic freely within its depths without fear of getting too wet and therefore sick. You had tried going out into a massive storm before, and it hadn’t gone down well with both your immune system and your parents. 

So the weather was simply irresistible, and the rain had called enticingly out to you in sweet, seductive whispers. You couldn’t miss this opportunity. And so when you thought no one was paying attention, you slipped quietly out of gym class and headed straight for the rooftop, where you could bask in the pure, unadulterated joy of being alone with the one thing you love most. 

All was well, until a voice struck you out of your reverie, and that’s when you looked up to see Lee Jeno coming towards you with a frown on his usually cheerful face. 

“What are you doing out here?” His voice is muffled slightly by the pitter-patter of raindrops colliding onto the cement beneath your feet.

Truth to be told, this is the first time you’re seeing him upset. Usually he’s always smiling, and nothing seems to faze him. 

“I could say the same to you,” you shoot back, annoyed that your peace has been disturbed. You’re not antisocial—at least, you wouldn’t admit you were—but you just really treasure your alone time. Being with people drains the energy out of your system, but for Lee Jeno, it seems like he thrives off being around others, like a leech feeding off their energy. 

“I followed you,” Jeno says matter-of-factly, “I was curious.”

You roll your eyes and swing your feet over the ledge, dangling them over the cityscape below you. Jeno’s eyes widen at this and he immediately rushes to your side, placing his hands firmly on your shoulders, steadying you. 

“What are you doing?!” He exclaims, visibly shaken by your bold action. 

His touch sends heatwaves of shock burning through your skin and fizzing through your nerves. Perhaps it is because he is the sun and you are rain, so his touch feels extra hot to you. So warm and foreign is this feeling that you almost flinch under his palm. 

“Look, it’s fine. I do this all the time,” you say curtly, moving your shoulder ever-so-slightly to shake off his hold. 

At this, Jeno sighs, resigned to your unwavering obstinance. “Okay, fine. But you’re gonna catch a cold if you stay out here for too long.”

“Jeno, why do you care?” You weren’t trying to be a smart mouth, but you genuinely could not fathom Lee Jeno’s sudden interest in caring for your welfare. You two had never been close, nor was he responsible for you in any way.

“I’m class president. It’s my duty to look out for my classmates,” he says robotically, and it sounds rehearsed to your ears. 

You smirk a little. “Go look after the rest of them at gym class then. Make sure they don’t get hurt.” 

Jeno sighs, before crouching down on the ground and taking a seat beside you. He crosses his legs, though; he harbours no particular desire to fall to his death. 

“I was just worried, all right? I mean, who goes out to the rooftop in this weather?”

You ignore his yapping by your ear, instead holding out your hand, imagining resting all your burdens and troubles on your palm. With every raindrop that comes into contact with your palm, you feel life’s worries being washed away into oblivion, gifting you with a clean, fresh slate that’ll last until the next rainfall. You’d been doing this since you were young; it amused your parents to no end, but no one understood the significance of this little ritual you held dear to your heart.

“You’re noisy,” you say, your tone not biting or sharp but more factual. “You talk a lot, Jeno.” 

At this Jeno stops rambling, opting instead to scratch the back of his neck with his hand. “Ah, really? I’m just… trying to fill the silence, I guess. You’re really quiet, you know.” 

You smile slightly and turn your head to the side so that Jeno can’t see it. 

“I have to go now. I’ll just… tell Mr Kim that you’re not feeling well.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You’re not going to report me?”

At this, Jeno chuckles lightly. “Hey, I can’t fault you for hating fitness conditioning, can I? Who in their right mind likes burpees?”

You actually don’t mind the burpees, but you decide not to tell him the real reason you’re skipping. Not that you mind, but he’d probably brand you a freak if he didn’t already think you one. Again, not that you mind.

“But I will report you if you really get sick in the rain. Here,” Jeno says, shrugging off his jacket and placing it around your shoulders, as if it were the most natural thing to do. When his fingertips accidentally brush against your neck you feel a warm, crimson blush creeping across your cheekbones and you’re momentarily dazed. Every time he touches you it feels like you’ve been grazed by a ray of sunlight— so warm and gentle it feels that you honestly can’t find it in yourself to complain. Plus his jacket feels so cosy, and despite it being oversized it somehow manages to be a perfect fit for you. And you’re a sucker for oversized sweaters, especially during the rainy season.

“Much better,” he declares in satisfaction, “I’ll see you in class later.”

—

You don’t know what came over you when you caught sight of Lee Jeno a few weeks later stuck at the school gate, unable to go home because of the pouring rain, and instantly deciding that you couldn’t just pretend to not notice him and leave. 

You take a deep breath, braving yourself for the sacrifice you were about to make.

Marching right up to him, you thrust your only umbrella into his hand, before turning immediately on your heel and running off into the embrace of the heavy downpour, hearing Jeno yell your name amid the howling winds but refusing to look back.

I must be the greatest fool ever, you think to yourself as you feel your clothes beginning to cling to your skin, and cringe at the feeling of water seeping into your shoes and permeating through your socks. You weren’t exactly the most self-sacrificing person, and you have no idea what possessed you to act like an impulsive, idiotic teenager incapable of rational thought.

Cheers to getting a hell of a dressing-down from your mom about running in the rain. This wouldn’t be the first time, but if she knows you did it deliberately to help someone else, especially since it’s not like you forgot your umbrella or anything… You couldn’t even begin to fathom the consequences.

You reach the traffic light, where unfortunately you have to wait in the rain for the light to turn green, and in the meantime, the cold begins to ooze into your bones. The harsh wind pinches the tips of your ears and an involuntary shudder passes through your body. It’s especially cold today; you really don’t get cold easily and in fact you revel in it most times, but this is just too much. 

Suddenly the rain pouring over you seems to cease; it’s as though an imaginary umbrella has been held over your head. When you look you, you realize that it’s not an imaginary umbrella but a real one, and with a jolt you realize that it is in fact your umbrella and Lee Jeno is towering over you, his expression dark, perhaps even darker than the clouds marring the sky. 

“You’re so stupid, Y/N,” he says in a chiding tone, and you feel like a scolded puppy, but at the same time you can’t ignore the feeling of his warm breath hitting your cheek as he wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close to him. The chill in your bloodstream begins to abate, replaced by a tingling sense of warmth that Jeno’s body heat provides. 

“Why the heck did you do that? Shit, you’re cold as ice. You’re gonna get sick tomorrow,” Jeno says, eyebrows furrowed deep with lines of worry. You looks even more upset than when he did when he caught you on the rooftop, and it scares you a little since Lee Jeno is never upset. 

“I-I’m fine,” you begin to stutter but you can barely squeeze another utterance in when you break out into a violent sneeze, and Jeno tightens his grip around you, pulling you impossibly closer to him.

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop,” he says, tone softer now, eyes gentler, too. You can barely hear him against the sound of rain lashing against the sidewalk but you know that his voice is strong and firm and strangely enough it comforts you, makes you feel safe. 

For the first time, you learn what it feels like to bask in someone’s warmth and company, even if no words are exchanged. Sometimes, silence deepens relationships the same way conversation does.

Honestly, It feels nice. 

It feels even better when Jeno hands you his sweater afterwards, a big grey oversized thing which smells warm and lemony and fresh, and makes sure you’re all snugly wrapped up before leaving you. 

That same day, after the cessation of the storm, a dazzling rainbow breaks through the saturnine clouds and you feel your heart lift with wings of hope. 

—

You hold two freshly washed and dried, neatly folded sweaters in your arms as you walk towards Jeno’s locker, where he’s standing with his back against the metal door. 

Just as you’re about to call out to him, a girl walks up to him and when Jeno sees her he breaks out into the largest smile you’ve ever seen, as if he’d just struck gold. It struck you then, how good they looked together; they both had that million-dollar smile that could light up the world and give direction to all the lost planets of the universe; they both had beautiful, bright smiling eyes, and they both looked like the world around them had dissolved into oblivion as they basked in each other’s company. 

You watch as the girl slips something into his hands, and his smile grows impossibly larger; it’s almost blinding. He places his hand on top of her head, ruffling her strawberry blonde tresses while she pouts in pseudo-annoyance.

If Jeno was your sun, this girl had to be his.

A slight, painful twinge seizes your heart. It’s slight, but it’s sharp. 

For you were perfectly aware that you could never be his sunshine.

Eyes downcast, you turn away from them and slip back into the shadows, just as huge storm clouds begin to loom in the overhead sky.

—

“I knew I’d find you here.”

The chilly winds that whipped your hair into tousled, tangled locks ceased the moment Jeno snuck out onto the rooftop to find you, armed with a big grin and his usual cheery countenance. You give him a feeble smile in return. 

“Here, take this. It’s good for colds,” Jeno says, thrusting a thin tea packet into your hands. 

“I’m not sick.”

“Hey, just take it, all right? I literally had to beg my sister for it; this is her favourite tea and she refuses to share it with anyone. After you braved that storm yesterday you’re bound to get a cold sooner or later.”

“Your… sister?” 

“Yeah, my little sister. She’s a selfish little brat, but I managed to convince her to give me one. Promise me you’ll drink it, I have to do all her chores for tonight in return,”Jeno says, insistent, as he curls his lips into a pout. How adorable. 

“O-Okay,” you say, still reeling slightly over the shock of having discovered that the girl that nearly caused you to lose your composure, was, in fact, Jeno’s younger sister. That explained the undeniable genetics.

“Thank you, Jeno,” you say sincerely, slipping the little packet of ginger tea in your coat pocket, “Help me say thank you to your sister as well. She’s adorable. You’re really lucky to have her.” She’s really lucky to have you. 

Jeno’s eyes widen at this and he nudges your shoulder in disbelief. “Hey, what are you saying? She’s lucky to have me as her older brother! The things I do for that little rascal. There was this one time she…”

You would have liked to say that you were paying attention to Jeno’s words, but unfortunately you were only paying attention to him; you get sucked into the gentleness of his gaze and it’s hard for you to focus on the utterances leaving his cherry lips. His eyes are beamy black, like pools of obsidian ink, yet their shine is so impossibly lustrous that it captivates you in a stronghold and refuses to let you go. 

And that’s when you realize that you’ve fallen irrevocably in love with the sun. 

—

With the cognizance that you had fallen in love with Lee Jeno, the boy who had been handcrafted by Apollo himself, came the crushing realization that your feelings would amount to nothing. 

He would never like you in that way, not when you two were polar opposites, elements of nature that should not and cannot coexist. He was a brilliant, vivid flame; you were the wind that snuffed it out. It wasn’t that you looked down on yourself or anything or thought that you weren’t good enough for him, you just thought you two couldn’t be more incompatible and being around him would just drive the wedge deeper into your heart, the wedge that told you that you two would never work. 

So you began your heart-wrenching struggle to distance yourself from him, to pretend that the spark between you two didn’t exist, that your feelings for him didn’t exist.

Jeno isn’t dumb; he’s painfully aware of the way you avoid his gaze, respond to his morning greetings with a perfunctory nod, pick the seat furthest away from him as possible during classes and bolt out of the classroom as soon as class ends, before he has the opportunity to get to you. He’s also deeply plagued with the worry that he’s scared you away with his advances; what if you found him annoying or worse, feared him? He’s tried his best to befriend you in the gentlest way possible, suppressing the urge within him that desires to let his true feelings out to you, telling himself not to rush things. 

Yes, Lee Jeno is in love with you, perhaps even more so than you were with him. He had been deeply intrigued by your love for the rain, by the way your eyes lit up whenever there was a downpour, by the way you so intrepidly embraced the element most people shied away from. The day you sacrificed your umbrella for him, as he watched your silhouette fade away into the rain, he felt so loved, but he also felt so damn angry at you for compromising your health for his sake, and a sleepless night confirmed that this mess of emotions was symbolic of the love he harboured for you. And soon it manifested in every little thing; just meeting your gaze was enough to make him weak, every friendly touch he shared with you was enough to set his heart on fire. He wishes so badly to be able to hold you closer, but he knows that you’re too amazing to fall for a guy like him, and he’s content with just being friends and getting to see your smile everyday. 

So it pains him to no end when you avoid him, and he spends every waking moment trying to figure out why.

Then it hits him.

What if you found out?

The thought is absolutely unbearable, and as though he’s been galvanized into action by some unseen force, he races out into the pouring rain onto the rooftop, where he knows you’d seek refuge. 

Indeed, there you sit, holding out your hand to the sky, letting the drops of cool rain rinse away the worries on your palm. Unbeknownst to Jeno, today you had mentally placed on it your love for him and commanded the rain to wash it away into obscurity. Usually this ritual is a refreshing process for you, and lifts all your burdens off your shoulders, but today it simply makes your heart grow heavier, and with every drop of rain that lands on your skin you feel a sort of aching emptiness gnaw away at your soul. 

I’m sorry, Jeno.

Suddenly, your feel a strong, warm grip on your outstretched palm, and as you squint you realize that Jeno is in front of you, interlacing his fingers with yours as he brings your palm down, away from the rain and by his side. 

He takes a deep breath, and as you look closely at him you realize that his face is wet and his eyes are red, and you can’t tell whether he got soaked in the rain or he’s been crying.

“Hey,” he whispers, his voice a soft baritone, and your resolve just about crumbles right then and there. You didn’t realize how much you missed his voice, his face, his presence, his everything.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, stepping closer to you, your legs almost pressing against his torso. “I shouldn’t have fallen in love with you.”

That is when your universe ceases rotation.

“Y-You what?”

“I’m in love with you, Y/N. I know I ruined things between us by falling in love with you, and I’m really sorry. I just… I can’t help it. I know you don’t feel the same way, that’s why you’re avoiding me, but I really needed to talk to you and—,”

“Lee Jeno, stop it.”

Jeno’s eyes widen in hurt and his grip on your hand loosens, his gaze downcast. “Sorry.”

“N-No, that’s not what I meant. I have something to say.”

You suck in a deep breath, and when you take his other hand in yours, he looks up at you again, question filling his eyes.

“Listen carefully, all right? I… I’m not avoiding you because I don’t like you, I’m avoiding you because… I like you so much that it hurts being around you knowing that you won’t like me back.” 

It takes a moment for the impact of your words to hit Jeno, and when it finally registers, when he’s untangled your mess of verbalization to uncover your heart that now beats for him, he breaks out into the most beautiful smile, eyes disappearing into little crescents. 

“Will you let me show you how much I like you?” Jeno asks, puppy eyes alight with hope. 

You nod slightly, and Jeno raises both hands to cup your cheeks. His touch feels like the soft caress of warm sunglow, and you feel your cheeks burn in all their crimson glory. If Jeno noticed it, he doesn’t show it, as he’s too busy trying to calm his own beating heart. His eyes flutter shut and he presses his lips against yours, and all your thoughts halt. 

His lips are slow, sweet and gentle against yours, and yet it is more than anything you could ever have imagined. The kiss is soft and mellow, a beautiful emblem of your newfound, realised love. It is at that moment that you finally understand what it’s like to be sunkissed. 

When you two finally part you see that the sun has emerged from behind the dark clouds, casting its rays around you and Jeno in a warm embrace, but it’s still raining. The raindrops capture the sunlight during their descent, resembling little bits of spun gold fresh from the heavens. 

A sunshower.

You look at Jeno and smile. The sun and the rain can become one, after all. 

“You know, I used to be jealous of the rain that fell on your skin,” Jeno says, breaking the silence.

“Why?”

“It was closer to you than I’d ever been.” 

It’s a terrible, cheesy line, probably stolen from Tumblr, but you smile, taking his hand and lacing his fingers between yours. 

“Not anymore, my sun.”

a/n; aye its my first full-blown nct dream oneshot! hope you guys like it even though i cringed sooo hard when i was proofreading this and i legit regretted writing it lmao but i still wanted to put it out,,, feedback would be much appreciated :) also i haven’t forgotten about the jaemin fic i promised... like ages ago lmao i should really get down to it

[zenosanalytic]

Star Trek: Picard: Et in Arcadia Nego

Watched the last two eps of Star Trek: Picard today and...

I felt like it was just a series of disappointing copouts (:T

Killing Picard only to transfer his “engrams” to a synthetic body? Copout

Preventing the SynthCiv Federation from arriving rather than ending the series with The Federation confronting them with organics protecting synths while Picard passionately argues to them that History isn’t Fate and organic&synth life can choose to coexist? Copout

Deus Ex Machina-ing in Soong’s bio-son to explain away the holes in the Maddox storyline? Copout.

Throwing in an “evil” Android murdering an “innocent” one to cast The Choice btw self-defense and oblivion into stark black&white terms rather than dealing with it honestly&sincerely? Copout

Having the Evil Romulan Boyfriend both betray his sister at the end&having his myth directly match what the beacon will do&having the humans&Elnor(who’s sect of nun-assassins are sworn-enemies of the Tal Shiar) just decide to go along with his plan immediately? Copout.

Having Data still be “alive” as a digital copy so he&Picard can say their goodbyes and he can die on his own terms? Copout

the list goes depressingly on and on (:T (:T There’s even minor stuff like the Romulans just Poofing a fleet of hundreds of warbirds out of Nowhere when they’re SUPPOSED to be too devastated by the supernova to even police their own borders, or the Fed(having equally pulled back from the Neutral Zone, which is FAIRLY close to Sol and Vulcan, iirc from TNG: Unification part 2) doing the same to oppose them&protect the planet.

I also have some entirely idiosyncratic, stylistic objections. To have a plot so focused on Data and Soong-style androids NOT include Geordi just doesnt make much sense to me. I mean sure: he’s technically a starship engineer, but he was basically Data’s medical officer for the entire time they knew each other, repeatedly did complex brain surgery on his positronic matrix, and as such easily had more hands-on experience with Soong’s systems than anyone alive. The idea that Maddox could have succeeded without his input is about as difficult to believe as Picard not asking for his help in saving Data’s legacy(or him not finding out Picard was up to something odd involving Androids and tracking him down to help on his own initiative). I mean: Picard loved Data, was even, in some respects, a mentor, but Geordi was his BEST FUCKING FRIEND. Like: they hung out EVERYDAY. They talked about EVERYTHING together. They practically lived in each others’ pockets. Not having Geordi in this series borders on unconscionable.

And where the hell was Q? I can see Q ignoring the whole thing up to the last two eps, but beyond that? Would he REALLY sit on the sidelines while the LITERAL MASS-EFFECT REAPERS get called(not even ONE time-stopped moment to mock Picard? No Metajokes abt pre-wwiii computer games getting it right??)? And he absoLUTEly WOULD NOT just sit on his hands while Picard dies. He just wouldnt do it. COULDNT. We know this for a fact because, of course; it’s happened before and Q took the opportunity to Scrooge him over it. There’s basically No Way Picard wakes up in that chair, looks up, and DOESNT see Q in Data’s old uniform&makeup staring back at him with mockery, and cynicism, and maracas.

Anyway! Everything else about the series was ok; the plot was where all the major problems were to me. The acting was fine(a little forced in places, but that’s what you get with an overly Convenient plot), the costuming and set-design was great, I thought the casting and writing were good. ST: Picard has plenty of great art and good ideas(like dealing with the realities of Picard’s age and regrets) but it lacked followthrough; again and again, it failed to commit to its own premises, and ultimately that hurt it as a story for me.

[silkpunk]

Fur and flesh to metal and fire: Native woman as embodiment of cultural tradition and anti-colonial re-configurations of steampunk in “Good Hunting”

Introductory note

I’ve seen tumblr posts and opinion pieces praising and condemning the animated adaptation of Ken Liu’s “Good Hunting” in Love, Death + Robots. Whether positive or negative, most comments are brief and reactionary, with some expressing awe towards the steampunk and Chinese folklore elements, and/or disappointment towards its depictions of sexual and racial violence. I’m writing this post as an appeal for viewers and readers to consider the centrality and depth of European colonialism to the narrative, and attempt to interpret the story’s denotations on the dynamics between the European colonizer, the colonized man, and woman in the aftermath of the Opium War. This post draws heavily on Ken Liu’s original text in addition to the Netflix adaptation.

Summary:

The gendered Chinese folklore of the Huli jing and Good Hunting’s subversion

Colonial British “progression” (in the form of steam tech) displaces Chinese folklore

The Body is Political – conquest of body and land

The Empire’s Subjects Strike Back – Re-programming steampunk for decolonial resistance

Personal evaluations on adapting text to film

The gendered Chinese folklore of the Huli jing and Good Hunting’s subversion

The text introduces the huli jing as a figure of Chinese folklore: one that, like the succubus of the West, is a predatory female that seduces and preys on men. It is a folklore that reflects male anxieties of the dangers and dirtiness of female sexuality:

[1]

“You must save him,” the merchant’s wife had said, bowing like a chicken pecking at rice. “If this gets out, the matchmakers won’t touch him at all.” [2]

The huli jing is a figure heavily entrenched in the Chinese psyche as promiscuous, immoral, and sexually devious, to the extent that it even permeates the language: “huli jing” is widely used today as an insult against sexually deviant women (usually against 小三 / 3rd party / side woman, like slut / bitch). Liu’s depiction is thus very explicitly and purposefully subversive in its attempt to give the huli jing a voice, to testify to their innocence (or at the very least, blamelessness):

“She liked her freedom and didn’t want anything to do with him. But once a man has set his heart on a hulijing, she cannot help hearing him no matter how far apart they are. All that moaning and crying he did drove her to distraction, and she had to go see him every night just to keep him quiet.”

This was not what I learned from Father.                                                          

“She lures innocent scholars and draws on their life essence to feed her evil magic! Look how sick the merchant’s son is!”

“He’s sick because that useless doctor gave him poison that was supposed to make him forget about my mother. My mother is the one who’s kept him alive with her nightly visits. And stop using the word lure. A man can fall in love with a hulijing just like he can with any human woman.” [2]

Liu makes his intentions clear in the comment:

In writing this story, I wanted […] to turn the misogynistic huli jing legends upside down. In these legends, usually composed by male scholars, the huli jing is a dangerous feminine creature who uses her sexuality to deprive men of their vitality and essence. My huli jing questions that narrative. [3]

Following Yan’s appeal and the brutal death of her mother, the protagonist Liang and the viewer/reader alike become convinced of her innocence and the huli jing‘s victimhood – we become aligned with her. And indeed, the text seems to unite the native Chinese characters and folklore across gendered and human/demon fault lines against the greater threat of foreign colonizers.

Colonial British “progression” (in the form of steam tech) displaces Chinese folklore

The narrative is set in the aftermath of the Opium War, and the British occupation of Hong Kong (around 1841). Though Yan and Liang reside in a more rural area, the British presence is strongly felt, mainly through the steam trains and railways that come to penetrate the landscape:

I had heard rumors that the Manchu Emperor had lost a war and been forced to give up all kinds of concessions, one of which involved paying to help the foreigners build a road of iron. But it had all seemed so fantastical that I didn’t pay much attention. [2]

The train is widely presented as a symbol of modernity that the “progressive” British colonizers attempt to bring to their “backward” colonies in their civilizing mission [4]. The “advancement” of the steam train is clearly antagonistic to the “primitive” native religion – they cannot coexist, and with colonization, the occupier’s system of logic, truth and tech displaces native belief, practice and magic:

Thompson strode over to the buddha and looked at it appraisingly. […]

Then I heard a loud crash and a collective gasp from the men in the main hall.

“I’ve just broken the hands off of this god of yours with my cane,” Thompson said. “As you can see, I have not been struck by lightning or suffered any other calamity. Indeed, now we know that it is only an idol made of mud stuffed with straw and covered in cheap paint. This is why you people lost the war to Britain. You worship statues of mud when you should be thinking about building roads from iron and weapons from steel.”

There was no more talk about changing the path of the railroad.

After the men were gone, Yan and I stepped out from behind the statue. We gazed at the broken hands of the buddha for a while.

“The world’s changing,” Yan said. “Hong Kong, iron roads, foreigners with wires that carry speech and machines that belch smoke. More and more, storytellers in the teahouses speak of these wonders. I think that’s why the old magic is leaving. A more powerful kind of magic has come.” [2]

Note the privileging of the new and inorganic (roads of iron, weapons of steel) over the old and organic (statues of mud and straw) – the landscape (and later, Yan’s organic body) transforms in this manner. Yan details how the changes affect her: she can no longer transform at will, and barely hunts enough for survival.

Liang is likewise affected. The text explains his decision to leave for British-administered Hong Kong: colonization renders his family’s demon hunting business obsolete, and his father takes his own life:

People stopped coming to Father and me to ask for our services. They either went to the Christian missionary or the new teacher who said he’d studied in San Francisco. Young men in the village began to leave for Hong Kong or Canton, moved by rumors of bright lights and well-paying work. […] As I let his body down, my heart numb, I thought that he was not unlike those he had hunted all his life: they were all sustained by an old magic that had left and would not return, and they did not know how to survive without it. [2]

Regardless of their previous antagonism, human and demon, man and woman alike are dispossessed by colonialism. For the native woman especially, this colonial invasion is particularly intimate, as it occurs at the level of the sexual.

The Body is Political – conquest of body and land

I believe that Good Hunting illustrates how the native woman embodies the culture of the colonized, and thus her body becomes a site of political and sexual contestation. I base this belief on notions from Frantz Fanon’s essay, “Algeria Unveiled”, in which he describes the psycho-sexual antagonism arising between the white French colonizer and the veiled Muslim women of Algeria. Needless to say, real-life accounts differ from fictive re-imaginings, and the cultural configurations of French Algeria and British Hong Kong are definitely inequivalent, yet, they share common rhythms in the dynamic of sexual violence between white colonizer and the exoticized colonial subject.

Fanon explicates how the veiled Muslim woman’s body came to represent the whole culture of the colonized peoples of Algeria:

One may remain for a long time unaware of the fact that a Moslem does not eat pork or that he denies himself daily sexual relations during the month of Ramadan, but the veil worn by the women appears with such constancy that it generally suffices to characterize Arab society. We have seen that on the level of individuals the colonial strategy of destructuring Algerian society very quickly came to assign a prominent place to the Algerian woman. The colonialist’s relentlessness, his methods of struggle were bound to give rise to reactionary forms of behavior on the part of the colonized. In the face of the violence of the occupier, the colonized found himself defining a principled position with respect to a formerly inert element of the native cultural configuration. [5]

In short, the veil, a “formerly inert element” of Algerian Muslim culture, gains significance because it becomes a marker of that culture, a marker of difference, under the white colonizer’s gaze. To eliminate native culture, it is therefore imperative to eliminate the veil, and the native Algerian reacts by resisting this unveiling. In this manner, the Algerian woman’s body becomes a site for colonial conflict. This is why imperial expansion and territorial conquest is inextricably tied to rape – think of the pervasiveness of “rape and pillage”:    

The history of the French conquest in Algeria, including the overrunning of villages by the troops, the confiscation of property and the raping of women, the pillaging of a country, has contributed to the birth and the crystallization of the same dynamic image. At the level of the psychological strata of the occupier, the evocation of this freedom given to the sadism of the conqueror, to his eroticism, creates faults, fertile gaps through which both dreamlike forms of behaviour and, on certain occasions, criminal acts can emerge. Thus the rape of the Algerian woman in the dream of a European is always preceded by a rending of the veil. We here witness a double deflowering. [5]

Thus, it is at this site of sexual contestation of the woman’s body that struggle and resistance takes place. To me, Fanon’s conflation of the woman’s body to the native land and culture allows us to better understand Good Hunting. Yan’s identity as a huli jing already presents her as an embodiment of Chinese “old magic”. With British industrialization and influence, Chinese magic is quelled, and Yan loses her powers, symbolizing the disempowerment of Chinese culture.

As colonial steam technology dominates the landscape, native magic weakens, as does Yan’s body. The violence exacerbates when the characters migrate to the centre of colonial administration – Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. Here, there is a gendered difference in the way Liang and Yan are brutalized. Liang’s engineering talent is discounted – the native’s labour is exploited and undervalued.

“Are you the man who came up with the idea of using a larger flywheel for the old engine?”

I nodded. I took pride in the way I could squeeze more power out of my machines than dreamed of by their designers.

“You did not steal the idea from an Englishman?” his tone was severe.

I blinked. A moment of confusion was followed by a rush of anger. “No,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I ducked back under the machine to continue my work.

“He is clever,” my shift supervisor said, “for a Chinaman. He can be taught.”

“I suppose we might as well try,” said the other man. “It will certainly be cheaper than hiring a real engineer from England.” [2]

This is immediately followed by a scene of British clients sexually harassing Yan, now a sex worker.

The dialogue deliberately frames their subjugation as racialized. Liang adapts to colonial Hong Kong but he is not a part of it – he becomes educated in the technical language of the colonizer, replacing his inherited knowledge of magic with that of steam, but his racial difference is constantly referenced (perhaps he’s “white but not quite” [6]). He is a “Chinaman” regardless of ability and any attempt at assimilation. This discrimination occurs in the capacity as employer-employee, master-servant, at the meeting point of the train operations room, the workplace. For the native woman, due to the colonial sexual appetite – the tradition of rape and pillage – violence occurs at the intimate meeting point of her body, on which white expectations of her race are burdened – note how the stereotype of Chinese industriousness is used to pressure her into sexual labour. The colonizers feel entitled to the servitude of both native bodies – the man’s labour, and the woman’s sexual subjugation.

The text notes that this violent encounter leading to Yan and Liang’s reunion happens on a culturally significant date:

“Don’t let the Chinese ghosts get you,” a woman with bright blond hair said in the tram, and her companions laughed.

It was the night of Yulan, I realized, the Ghost Festival. I should get something for my father, maybe pick up some paper money at Mongkok. […]

“It’s the night of the Ghost Festival,” [Yan] said. “I didn’t want to work any more. I wanted to think about my mother.”

“Why don’t we go get some offerings together?” I asked. [2]

Similar to Día de Muertos – the Mexican Day of the Dead – the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival is a time to remember and honour the deceased. It is believed that the gates of the underworld open during the seventh lunar month, and the spirits of the departed return to visit the living. We follow Liang’s thoughts as he realizes it is the night of Yulan, and immediately encounter Yan, which might suggest to us that she is a ghost of sorts coming back to haunt him – she represents an old culture, dead or dying. The story connects the violent encounter, the sexual degradation of Yan’s magic-drained body, to the death of Yan and Liang’s parents, and maybe even the death of Yan herself. Colonial violence corresponds to the death of native culture.

To further cement this idea that the colonized woman’s body is conflated to the land, Yan’s body comes to receive the ultimate abuse from the figure of the governor (or the governor’s son, in the original text). Her sexual perpetrator is not an everyman, but the political representative of the British colonist; where Yan embodies native Chinese culture, her rapist embodies the British colonial administration. He ravages and consumes her body as a colonizer takes and devours territory – I think the showrunners deliberately portrayed him as obese to evoke a grotesque image of imperialist greed and over-consumption of the colonies’ resource. (Of course, this has problematic real-life implications on public perceptions of fat people.) He takes her organic body apart and reconstructs her to his own fetish fantasy of steel and chrome – just as Britain fragments, reforms, reshapes China’s trade, opium economy, and territory (e.g. Hong Kong), to its own will.

Yan’s rape and reconstruction is thus conflated to the political conquest of China and Hong Kong. (Jameson’s notion of the national allegory comes to mind. [7])

The Empire’s Subjects Strike Back – Re-programming steampunk for decolonial resistance

In Good Hunting, the mode of S/F (= speculative fiction / science fiction / science fantasy) enables imagination of how the native can re-appropriate and re-configure the colonizer’s weapons against them. Ken Liu notes:

I think there’s a paucity of good steampunk that addresses the dark stain of colonialism in a satisfactory way. Like many of my stories, this tale has an anti-colonial theme. [Yan] says, at one point, “A terrible thing had been done to me, but I could also be terrible.” It is about as succinct a summary of the experience of being a member of a colonized population as I can give. [3]

A recognizable figure of Buddhism is shown before Liang and Yan move to Hong Kong, in the form of a Buddha statue. Yan is shown in the same frame bowing to it, aligning her with the natives’ religion and again, reinforcing her as a representative of native culture. The next encounter with a religious figure comes in the form of Guan Yin, and if the friend I consulted is not mistaken, it’s possibly the incarnation with 千手千眼 / “The One With A Thousand Arms and Thousand eyes”:

The buddha Amitābha, upon seeing her plight, gave her eleven heads to help her hear the cries of those who are suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempted to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that her two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha came to her aid and appointed her a thousand arms to let her reach out to those in need. [8]

This statue looks on, and takes up the entire frame as the rapist-governor cries out in pain offscreen while Yan attacks him with her new mechanized strength, her body no longer victimized but newly weaponized, declaring “I could also be terrible”. The Guan Yin statue frames Yan’s act as one of divine retribution – an individual woman’s rebellion that draws strength from a wider colonized peoples and their religion. Though her organic magic had been forcefully amputated and replaced with the colonizer’s inorganic steam tech, the image of Guan Yin suggests that the old culture is not dead, but reborn in a new incarnation, to deliver comeuppance.  

(Personal disclaimer: it is with bitter irony that I must admit my estrangement from these figures – so feel free to add or counter this if you’re more well-informed on the significance of Guan Yin and Buddha here.)

As I’ve mentioned before, Liang’s proficiency in the colonizer’s language of technology functions as a means of his survival, but this same distancing and Othering of him by the colonists keeps him from fully aligning himself with them, and he readily repurposes his mechanical expertise for the antagonistic cause of rebellion, thus engineering not a steam train (weapon of British imperial expansion) but a huli jing (weapon of Chinese folklore and emasculation, albeit the target of emasculation has shifted). The same technology that drove out the magic is now used to empower that folklore.

In these acts of re-configuration, I see an endeavour to visualize how a threatened culture can survive and thrive in the future. Creators like Ytasha Womack emphasize how the S/F genre of Afrofuturism (emphasis on “future”) is necessary for black persons to imagine a future with themselves in it, to provide a vision of empowerment, possibility, and survival [9]. Good Hunting’s narrative, though more of an alternate history, similarly offers a positive possibility in which Chinese culture and mythology is not smothered by colonialism and technological change, but adapted to it:

The old magic was back but changed: not fur and flesh, but metal and fire. [2]

I would also tentatively speculate that perhaps this narrative of colonized man allying himself to empower colonized woman is also driven by an impulse (maybe underlying, at the level of the subconscious) to quell male anxieties of colonial domination and complicity in female subjugation – to re-imagine a history where the figure of the Chinese male is less of a passively helpless witness to sexual abuse, to his country’s subjugation, but an active agent able to empower her. In other words, it could be a case of ‘fantasy as coping mechanism for trauma’ – re-imagining the outcomes of a traumatic past such that the victim-survivor overcomes his abuser (in this case, I see it coming from a male perspective).

Finally, I think this ‘weaponizing the colonizer’s own tools against him’ works on a metafictional level as well: the English language has long been the medium and weapon of English / white supremacy. See Macaulay’s minute on education in which he basically appeals for Indian colonial subjects to be educated in Eng to transmit British ideas, modes of thinking, systems of thought [10]. English language and literature works to naturalize anglo-imperialist modes of reasoning, to colonize the imagination. I like to think that for Chinese-American Ken Liu to tell this story in English is a re-purposing of the language to bite back at the colonizer. And if we regard the steampunk trope as a playful British fantasy of Victorian-era aesthetics, Liu’s re-fashioning and appropriation of the trope – to infuse it with a tale of colonial vengeance – is akin to Liang and Yan’s appropriation of the colonizer’s own weapons. Liu’s act of writing Good Hunting may be exemplary of how “the empire writes back with a vengeance”, to quote Salman Rushdie [11].

Personal evaluations on adapting text to film

I find that the animated adaptation has a heavier “male gaze”, a term coined by film critic Laura Mulvey: mainstream cinema is a product of patriarchal institution, and most films assume the perspective of a male, while the female is configured onscreen as erotic object [12]. To borrow Linda Williams’ words, “the bodies of women figures on the screen have functioned traditionally as the primary embodiments of pleasure, fear, and pain” [13]. The animated adaptation appears more explicit in its spectacles of female nudity and victimhood, evident in the shots panning up Yan’s legs as a harasser raises a cane to lift her dress; over her struggling, restrained, unclothed body; and over her face contorted in fear and disgust. I’ve wondered if this is necessitated because the showrunners need to show her ordeal whereas the writer only need tell it – in film, we do not get to hear her recount of suffering and survival as much as we see it. Yet, I’m fairly convinced the perspective has a focus that deliberately eyes the female form for sexual gratification –  exemplified by shots of her glutes, bust, and unnecessarily bared breasts.  

Science fiction, steampunk and machination has high visual appeal; they delight and enthrall as visual spectacles. It is unfortunate when narratives that indulge and play with such spectacular concepts remain coloured by patriarchal desires, and become so heavily infused with the sexual indulgence in disempowered women. This conventional fanboy approach to steampunk / SF – the entitlement to consuming fantastical tech and women –  almost repeats the desires of the European colonizer-rapist that Good Hunting condemns: 

In a city filled with chrome and brass and clanging and hissing, desires became confused” [2]. 

It is my personal conviction that the adaptation somewhat diminishes (but doesn’t erase!) the anti-colonial impact of the original text through its lapses into the impulse to consume the colonized woman’s body – the same impulse that the text works so hard to undo. So, as much as I enjoyed this and most other episode of LDR (because as a series, it’s not that much different from other mainstream depictions of women i.e. I’m sensitized and used to it), it would’ve benefited greatly from a purposeful questioning of, and distancing from, the mainstream male perspectives of science fiction.

Concluding Remarks

Even with these shortcomings, Good Hunting is undoubtedly rich in cultural meaning and purposefully, powerfully anti-colonial. It is vital to acknowledge its value in destabilizing colonial mindsets and tropes, instead of shallowly and reflexively dismissing its whole narrative for containing sexual and racial violence, and how it doesn’t comfortably fit into contemporary, widely-accepted, Western expectations of ‘girl power’.

Ken Liu’s text does not bemoan the victimization of Chinese culture in the post-Opium War period of colonization, but re-configures, upgrades, modernizes, adapts the old magic to its new technological environment, with the stubborn anti-colonial tenacity for continued cultural survival.

References:

1. “Good Hunting”, Love, Death & Robots, Netflix

2. Ken Liu, “Good Hunting”, 2012

3. Ken Liu, Story Notes: “Good Hunting” in Strange Horizons, 2012

4. Science and Technology: Transport: Railways - The British Empire

5. Frantz Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled”, A Dying Colonialism, 1965

6. Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”, 1984

7. Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, 1986

8. Wikipedia, “Guanyin and the Thousand Arms”

9. Steven W Thrasher, “Afrofuturism: reimagining science and the future from a black perspective”, 2015

10. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on Education”, 1835

11. Salman Rushdie, “The empire writes back with a vengeance”, 1982

12. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, 1975

13. Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, 1991

[trashmagines]

Invitation: Various Mutants x Mutant!Reader

TrAshy Says: Heyo lovely people. Felt angsty, might make a part two if it comes to that, idk. Reader has the power of hemokinesis (bloodbending anyone?)

Warnings: Violent themes, takes place after X-men: Apocalypse 

You heatedly make your way to your dorm room, Kurt hot on your heels. You’d been watching the news with him, Jubilee, Scott, and Jean; the world had been in disarray ever since the Apocalypse event, and more crimes against mutants were being committed every day. The latest one had been violent, and the young boy hadn’t survived the attack. Your blood ran cold just thinking about it; people were already calling the perpetrators ‘heroes’.

It made you sick. It made you angry.

“Y/N, are you okay? Jean changed the channel...” “I’m not okay, Kurt, and I’m not sure how any of you are okay after seeing that either.”

Your arms were crossed and you were staring pointedly at the wall, willing yourself to calm down. You hadn’t meant to answer so harshly, and you felt a little bit of regret when you heard the light shuffling behind you. Sighing heavily, you drop your arms to your side but you don’t turn around. 

“I’ll be fine, Kurt. Just let me cool off, okay?”

A hand lightly squeezes your shoulder before you hear the distinct sound of Kurt teleporting away. Defeated, you walk to your dresser and rummage through the top drawer until you find the envelope. The message inside was simple and to the point.

‘When you’re tired of hiding, when you want to fight, you have a place with us.’ -Magneto

You didn’t know much about the history between the professor and Erik Lehnsherr, but you knew they had a difference of opinion regarding the coexistence of humans and mutants. You’re still not sure how Magneto found you and you assumed you weren’t the only person to have received this message, but the fact that you had made you feel...special. Powerful, even.

“Y/N, may I come in?”

You’d been so lost in thought that you hadn’t heard the soft whirring of Charles’ wheelchair. Kurt hadn’t bothered to shut your door, but the professor respected his students’ privacy enough to wait in the hallway instead of just barging in. You quickly tuck the envelope under your pillow and sit on the edge of your bed before answering ‘Sure’, and Charles wheels his way into your room to sit before you. 

“I’ve been informed that you saw something upsetting on the news today.” ‘Damnit guys...’ “Yes, I did.” “Would you like to talk about it?”

You shift uncomfortably under Charles’ gaze; did you really want to open up this can of worms?

“Why do you have so much faith in humanity?”

Charles contemplates his answer for a minute, his eyes boring into yours as if he’s trying to read your mind without actually reading your mind. 

“I suppose it’s because not all humans are bad, just as not all mutants are good. But there are grey areas, Y/N. Most people, human and mutant, are not just either or.” “Yeah, but... doesn’t it, like, piss you off? Knowing what’s happening to people like us?” “It saddens me. People fear what they don’t understand, and that fear usually leads to acts such as what you saw earlier. The world has become more hostile since the Apocalypse incident, but it is my hope that we can get things back on the right track.” “That’s all fine and dandy, professor, but while we’re all here hoping, mutants are being targeted. It’s not fair; I don’t want to just sit and watch people get hurt, I want to do something about it.” “And what is it that you’d like to do?” “Fight back.”

You answer before you have time to stop and think about what you’re saying, but both you and Charles are aware that those are your true feelings. Charles exhales softly, his expression a mix between sad and disappointed, as he glances over to where your pillow is resting.

‘Oh shit, he knows.’

“I do. These...invitations have been popping up randomly under students’ doors. Most were given to me as the recipients found them to be unsettling, yet you still have yours.”

Suddenly you feel very out of place, and you can’t bring yourself to respond. You knew why you kept it, and you suspected the professor knew too. 

“Y/N, Erik’s crusade has only one outcome, and it will not end well for either party.”

Charles holds out his hand and you reluctantly give him your invitation. He offers you a soft smile and then exits your room to leave you to your own devices. You shut your door behind him and lie on your bed, the conversation replaying in your mind as your eyes drift close.

The knocking on your door is what awakens you, and judging by your clock you’d been asleep for a good few hours. The door opens to reveal Jean and Jubilee, the former holding a paper plate and the latter cradling a few drinks. 

“You missed dinner so we thought we’d bring you something.” Jean smiles.

You’re grateful as both girls sit on either side of you, Jean handing you the plate in the process. They’d ordered pizza, most likely to appease Peter, and your stomach thanks you for the large bite you take. 

“Thanks, guys.” you say when you’re about halfway through your second slice.

Both girls nod, and Jubilee pops the tab on one of the cans she’d been holding before handing it to you. You smile and chug half of the fizzy liquid, and out of the corner of your eye you can see Jean looking at you.

“What?” “Nothing, it’s just... Well, are you alright?” she questions. “Yeah, we heard the professor came to talk to you.” Jubilee adds.

You’re not really alright, but you’re prepared lie anyway, mainly so everyone will drop the subject. Unfortunately, Jean had already tapped into your thoughts before you could answer.

“I got one of those envelopes too. Charles is right about Magneto, you know. The guy is bad news.” “At least he’s doing something. Yeah, most of the things he’s done are awful, but at least he’s not hiding and pretending that things are just peachy. I mean, you guys saw the news; it’s chaos.”

The room goes silent as you toss your now empty plate and pop can into your bedside trash bin. You look between the both of them and they eye you back, contemplating your words. 

“So yeah, it’s like super bad, but anything Magneto would do would just make things eleven times worse. I’m glad I didn’t get one of those invites; I’d be creeped out!” Jubilee exclaims.

She picks up the other unopened pop cans and stands, motioning for Jean to do the same. Jean offers you a half-smile, and they both tell you goodnight before exiting your room. Alone yet again, you change into your sleep wear and climb back into your bed, your mind now on the state of mutant affairs. The others either just didn’t get it, or they truly believed that things would improve with a peaceful approach. 

But you understood. The war had already begun, and you knew which side you were on.

[writingismyhappytime]

Crime and Punishment (Part 1)

Chris Cerulli x Reader

Warning: language, vampires, witches, Magic.

A/N: hi guys! Here's something new I hope you like, it's going to be a little different from the recent fics I've been posting. Let me know what you think!

Description: Vampire King Cerulli and you, the witch coven leader, have to team up to take down something attacking both of your people in the city you coexist in. You don't exactly get along, but with the help of his trainee vampire Vinny, and your ghost Claudette, you're sure you can work together long enough to figure it out, or die trying.

You hate waiting, especially in lobbies with the fluorescent lights and elevator music. It's been a long enough day as is, and now you've been drug to the museum over some nonsense you're sure.

You cut your eyes at the vampire standing a few feet from you, a bored expression on his face as he typed on his phone. He looks more like a businessman than the king of the undead, black coat with the collar flipped, tie the color of blood.

"You look nice today," you say after a moment, your voice full of sarcasm. "Drink enough virgins dry? You have a little color in your cheeks."

Cerulli glances at you. "I can see the sacrifice of children has done nothing for your personality."

You snort, crossing your arms as you stand beside him.

You're a witch, a snooty, brazen one at that. You lead the strongest coven that has ever graced the world, and therefore, you're sort of the wiccan leader. Your kind looks up to you for advice and leadership, which you've always been rather reluctant to give; you didn't exactly want to be the boss, but it sort of happened.

Cerulli is the vampire king; tall, dark, and handsome, he looks like he stepped right out of a Dracula movie.

You're not sure how old he is, you've never asked, but his mannerisms remind you of someone from the eighteen hundreds. You know he only became the king after his creator died, passing the unfortunate title off to him. He's always so cold, unreachable, it's like you're talking to a brick wall most times.

But then there are other moments when those hazel eyes of his seem so soft, so... human.

But he's about as human as a bear is.

"So, to what do I owe the misfortune of being in your presence?" You say after a moment, glancing over at him beneath black lashes. You don't dress like a typical witch leader, Cerulli will give you that. Your hair is long and loose, you wear many bracelets, but you don't wear flowing skirts or walk around burning sage; he's seen you most often in combat boots and clothing fit more for a rock concert. How you've been successfully leading anyone for the past thirty years is beyond him, but somehow you seem to make it work.

He knew your mother, Clarissa, and he respected her. She built the coven you now rule from nothing, finding stray witches and building bonds with them. She was a people person, full of laughter and sunshine, where you're like a beam of darkness bouncing off the walls. No one knows who your father is, not even you do he supposes, and Cerulli thinks the poor man probably got off easy escaping while he had the chance.

"Charles called a meeting for us, obviously." Cerulli responds, checking his silver cuff links. His black hair is slicked back, revealing the unnatural paleness of his skin, only made more obvious by the ink coursing it. He's always dressed so sophisticated, you look out of place standing beside him in his immaculate suit and tie, spikes jutting out the many piercings in his ears.

You wonder what he was like as a human.

"Charles never calls us in together, though. What do you think is happening?" You respect Cerulli, he's smart and conniving --- the only disappointment in your mind is that he's the stereotypical brooding, dark vampire and has absolutely no personality! He could like kittens, or enjoy knitting, or something interesting! Instead, you're fairly certain he lives in a cave with bats hanging from the ceiling, skulls and other bones skittered about and maybe a harem of enthralled groupies in chains for aesthetic.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," he responds coolly, arching one black brow down at you. Doesn't help the bastard is so tall, he towers over everyone. You don't like him glowering down at you all the time, but even in the most tolerable heels you can't reach his height.

"Right. Because you have so much to be doing right now." You scoff, tapping your nails impatiently; it's so easy to insult him. "Got fresh meat waiting for you back home?"

He rolls his eyes. "You're insufferable."

"Thanks, do my best."

"Chris! (Y/N)! Wonderful the two of you could make it!"

You and Cerulli look over, spotting the smaller man standing in the doorway opposite of where you bicker. He's only about four feet tall, with wide rimmed black glasses and a beaming white smile. His hair is thinning in the middle, gray mixing in with the white, and you can practically smell the stress rolling off of him despite his misleading smile.

"We didn't have much of a choice, you summoned us." You say after a moment, straightening. You know you and Cerulli are standing rather close, and despite the fact you tease and torture him, you don't dislike him entirely. You trust him if it comes down to it, against yours and everyone else's better judgment.

You're sure he can hold his own, he's lived as long as he has for a reason.

"Oh, (Y/N), I know you wouldn't have come if you didn't want too," Charles sighs, and turns, walking back into his office, leaving the door open in invitation. You and Cerulli exchange a look before following him, the heavy double doors shutting behind you by themselves.

You glance around the small office, noticing the files piling up on the oak desk, how the bookshelves in the corner are in disarray. There's a potted plant turned over, some papers still in the floor on the red rug that has... scorch marks?

"It smells of magic in here," Cerulli says after a moment, his nose curling at the acrid scent. He raises a hand to his mouth against the hideous smell. "What's happened?"

"We were robbed last night," Charles answers, pressing stubby fingers against his suit jacket. He adjusts his glasses before he goes to his chair, sitting down rather heavily and disappearing from sight. You give it a moment before the chair slowly rises, making it possible for him to sit at a normal height and see the two of you. "Someone broke into the museum."

"What could you guys possibly have in this place someone would want?" You ask skeptically, your skin prickling. What would someone want with dusty old artifacts? Everything in the museum is from the humans, nothing magical --- anything with any sort of magic tie is immediately turned over to the community it belonged too, whether it be witch, vampire, or etc. The museum is more like a tomb, full of artifacts from long lost civilizations. Charles runs it, and typically during the day, it's open to the public and bustling with humans. You don't visit often, you don't see a point in revisiting the boring past, and Charles rarely asks you too.

This must be extreme circumstances.

You're sure Cerulli must love walking down memory lane when the dinosaurs roamed and virgins were sacrificed in flames.

"I'll have you know, this museum is very interesting!" The shorter man huffs indignantly at your comment, displeased; must you always toss on his career? "We are keeping history alive here, reminding everyone of where they came from! You might find no use in it, but others disagree!"

"Charles, what has been taken?" Cerulli asks, irritated; is it possible for anyone to stay on task? He has important matters that are being postponed due to this meeting, he doesn't have time for it to take much longer! He wants to know what was taken and how it pertains to him. Listening to you agg on the short man will only lead the conversation to hell!

"Well," Charles fidgets slightly in his chair, causing the metal to creak as it rocks back and forth. "As you both know, we were housing a very special artifact from the medieval era."

How are you supposed to know that? "Okay, and?"

"This artifact was made by Aradia."

You straighten immediately at the familiar name. Aradia, the original witch from Tuscany, is basically looked as the "mother" of all witches for lack of a better term. Most think she's just a myth, but you're a descendant of her line, your family tree is so detailed it dates back to her... just nothing before her. It's as if everything started with her, that magic suddenly existed only once her presence became known to the world.

"You had something made by her and you didn't tell me?" You demand, staring at the smaller man incredulously. The hell? He's supposed to tell you when something comes in, that's the agreement! Why else would your coven still be offering funds to keep his stupid tomb of artifacts going? "Why would you keep this from me? She's ---."

"We were studying the artifact, it just arrived two days ago." The museum curator interrupts quickly before your rant can get started; he'll never get a word in edgewise if he let's you go too long. "We were still unsure of its connection, I didn't honestly believe it held any connection to her until it was taken, only suspicions!"

"Are you kidding me!? You should have told me the instant that thing arrived so I could have protected it! Anything made by Aradia is sacred, it's powerful and needs protection --- no wonder the blasted thing was stolen!" You fume; how could he not tell you? You're the leader of the witches, you're supposed to protect them and magic from any and all threats, and there was an artifact who belonged to the mother of all witches in town and you didn't even know!

"What, exactly, is the artifact you keep speaking of?" Cerulli asks after a moment of silence. He's heard the name Aradia before, but it holds no significance to him. He doesn't care of its origin, only its supposed worth. He checks his watch. "And what does it do?"

"It's a goblet, made of immaculate wood. We think it's dated back to the original times, and the condition," the curator starts, only to stop at the two very unimpressed expressions he receives. He sighs, then continues. "It was excavated out of an old abandoned site in Tuscany, where the supposed goddess lived."

"She wasn't supposed," you snap, your hands going to your hips; everyone always wants to speculate if she was real or not, when obviously, she existed. She wouldn't be written as so and hailed in so many oral stories if she didn't have some origin. "She's as real as you and I!"

"I never said she wasn't real, obviously she was." Charles says calmly, the light glinting off his glasses as he adjusts them nervously. "Not much is known about Aradia except she taught witchcraft."

"She was a goddess, the mother of all witches. Without her, I'm not sure that any of us would know about magic," you respond, frowning. "Why were you excavating a site in Tuscany, anyway?"

"We were just doing some digging, you know how it is. Harmless, really, just searching for any treasures that may have been overlooked by the human eye." Charles quickly brushes off the question, which immediately annoys you. "We found the goblet buried deep within the earth."

"How do you know it was hers?"

"You can feel the magic on it, even now. It makes the skin prickle, which means it holds some sort of significance."

"Maybe. Doesn't necessarily mean that she made it, now does it?" You're skeptical. "There's been many powerful beings throughout the ages. Besides, Aradia was poor, she ---."

"Are you really arguing with me about this? I know it's an artifact, it came from a very popular place she used to visit. Can you just take my word for once?" Charles interrupts, looking annoyed. "Point is, it's been stolen, and was the only thing as well. They tore up my office until they found the file on it, got it out of the wards, and disappeared with it!"

"Well, see if you'd told me about it, I could have put up stronger wards," you grouch, not about to be deterred. "Being robbed is your own damned fault, and I hope you haven't doomed all of us because of it! Really, Charles ---."

"Don't patronize me, I was going to tell you eventually! I just wanted to be sure!"

"Eventually isn't good enough!"

Cerulli groans out loud, leaning back on his heels as he casts his eyes to the heavens.

"Enough of this bickering!" He snaps, interrupting the two of you mid-hiss. He glares at you before turning his black gaze on the curator. "Why does this pertain to me in any damned way?"

"Oh, well, we're pretty sure it was a vampire who took it." Charles shrugs, as if the words aren't going to completely upset the man standing in front of him. He actually summoned you both at once so he wouldn't have to face you separately, at least the presence of the other is sort of a damper.

Cerulli's expression darkens. "You think it was one of mine?"

"Well, not necessarily yours," Charles fidgets uncomfortably; this is the part he was dreading. Cerulli rules his roost with an iron fist, and anyone who crosses him doesn't have a happy fate. He's not known for his mercy or his kindness, and Charles isn't necessarily saying that it was one of his vampires that stole the goblet, just... "Just... a vampire."

"And you've proof of this?" It's quite brazen to accuse a vampire of such theft, especially in the king's district.

"Whoever stole the goblet may have been quick, but they obviously didn't think about the security cameras." Charles turns, and he opens the drawer of his desk, lifting out a remote and clicking one of the buttons. You turn, eyes flicking to the wall where a painting slowly rises, revealing a TV hidden behind it.

Fancy.

The screen is in color, and you can see the warehouse where the artifacts are stored. The lights are still on, as they always are, crates and other large boxes dotting the concrete ground, a light flickering in one corner as it goes out. There's some statues covered in white sheets, which you find creepy, and some empty glass cases.

You don't immediately notice anything, and you wait impatiently, wondering when the thief is going to strike.

"You see, it was around midnight when he took the goblet, right out of that crate. I had wards all throughout that warehouse, there's no way he could have gotten through unless he was thoroughly educated in their removal. Even then." Charles sighs as he takes his glasses off, rubbing his tired eyes.

You purse your lips.

Did you miss something?

"I can see why you would think it was one of my kind, but I can assure you, none of my brood would be so foolish as to touch an object such as that. Should it not be cursed, it would be of no use to us." Cerulli scowls, displeased; he saw the vampire moving across the screen, much too fast for the regular eye. To any mortal watching, it would have just seemed like the lid of the crate moved an inch, nothing more. "However, I know of no rogue vampires in the city either."

"So it seems we have a mystery on our hands then," Charles sighs, nudging his glasses back up his thin nose. "A witch object, stolen by a vampire. You two must understand why I wanted you directly to be here, not one of your advisers."

You didn't even see anything get stolen!

Shit, maybe you should invest in some glasses. You glance back at the screen unhappily, but you know there's no way you'll see what they did. Vampires move so quickly, it's hard for your kind to even see them, unfortunately.

"I wish you'd told me of this sooner," you finally say, your voice completely serious this time. You're troubled over this. "I wish I had known."

"I know, and I apologize. I meant no disrespect, I was just unsure if it held any magical qualities that would be of any interest." Charles says as sincerely as he can muster; he'd been worried, admittedly, about the consequences of this conversation. He knew it could go one of several different ways, most of them ending with his head on a plate or turned into a tree, which seems to be your fondest type of torture.

Where Cerulli is known for his merciless kills, you... rather like to be creative with them.

What a pair of leaders you two make.

You run your ringed fingers through your hair with a sigh.

"Alright, so take me to the warehouse, I need see what I can find out. If he broke the wards, there's going to be some sort of trace of it." Honestly, vampires are not handy with magic, so you figure he didn't do the job alone. There had to be someone else who broke the wards, meaning another witch, meaning one of yours. You're sure Cerulli has already made the connection, although he would never mention anything to you; well, he avoids talking to you if he can, so anything he finds out, he's not going to share no matter how significant.

You doubt this is going to go well.

~~~~~~~~

Cerulli is silent as he watches you pace around the box where the goblet was stolen. He'd decided to accompany you to the warehouse, leaving Charles back in his office. He stands completely still, watching you just out of the circle of light zeroed in on the crate. His hands are clasped behind his back, and he's just... waiting.

Your face is serious for once as you pace, and he can tell you're doing something. Your fingers are trailing above the box, never quite touching it, light glinting off your painted nails. Your brows are creased in concentration, and your lips are moving wordlessly.

He can feel your magic, it makes his skin prickle and burn, and he much dislikes the scent of it. He can smell it all throughout the warehouse, it makes his nose feel numb it's so strong here. He knows he shouldn't linger, he has a very important meeting in an hour, but curiosity has gotten the best of him.

"Alright, so every single ward on this warehouse is gone," you say after a moment, your fingers finally going still. "Whoever was with the vampire made sure he wouldn't trigger a single one to alert anyone to his theft."

Ah, so you've caught on that there must have been an accomplice, good for you.

"So a witch then," Cerulli says after a moment, seeing your nose curl. He says it quite point blank, but not with any judgment.

"Possibly." You allow, disliking the thought of one of your own being so deceitful. "It's the only explanation for the way the wards were broken. It's darker magic that did this, anyway."

"Why do you say so?"

"Well, these wards," you gesture vaguely, glancing suspiciously at the sheets covering the statues; you have this phobia of them moving beneath them, that really there's someone standing there and you just don't know it. They're suspicious and you've seen your fair share of horror movies. Being a witch won't stop someone from shanking you, after all. "They're powerful, Charles doesn't mess around. Whoever did this knew where they all were and were very meticulous in canceling out every single one. But there's no way they could have known where they all were unless they've been scouting the place a week, but..."

But Charles said he's only had the artifact two days, which doesn't make sense. So either Charles lied to you, or... well, he probably just lied to you to cover his own ass, which only pisses you off more.

There's no telling what he just let happen.

If the object does belong to your ancestor and used in any ritual, it's sacred, and it has the residue of her power. The mother of all witches has been dead since the 1300's, and you'd prefer she stayed that way; the only reason someone would want a possession of hers is to either resurrect her for worship, resurrect her and steal her power, or something just as bad!.

You chew your lip worriedly; this is... a really bad situation.

"I'll inquire around my brood," Cerulli says after a moment, reluctantly gliding forward after a moment. He comes to a stop beside you, sniffing slightly; he can smell the vampire that was here, but he doesn't know the scent as one of his. "Find out if there's a stray in my area."

"Alright." You rub the back of your neck, grimacing. "I'll check around too."

Cerulli inclines his head. He doesn't honestly intend to keep in touch with you, there's no point. Any information he finds he will relay to Charles directly, or at least, that's what he would typically do. However...

"I find it strange that they were able to cancel out every ward," he comments after a moment, leaning back on his heels. "Don't you?"

You send him a look. "Obviously."

His lips twitch. Perhaps you're not as dim as you act, if you've already caught on that this was an inside job. He just can't understand why Charles would bring the two of you into the fold and go through so much trouble; obviously he could have kept the artifact hidden and neither of you would have ever known.

Interesting.

"Well, I must be going," Cerulli glances at the silver and black watch on his wrist for probably the hundredth time. "I have appointments to keep."

"Guess you can't leave those virgins waiting, huh?" You say thoughtlessly, seeing his eye twitch just the slightest; okay, so you don't mean to be snotty towards him all the time, sometimes it just comes out. You pick at him, you try to rile him up so he can have some personality! He doesn't need to be so stoic and stereotypical all the time.

"Goodnight, (Y/N)," He mutters, turning on his heel sharply. You sigh as he stalks off, heading for the open bay doors where his town car sits, lights on and the engine rumbling. Of course he has a driver, waiting for him behind the wheel.

Cerulli glances back at you as he gets into the car, opening his own door instead of waiting for someone else to do it like you expect.

You're not looking at him anymore, you're gazing down into the crate where the goblet once was, lost in your own thoughts.

Sometimes, he feels bad for you, thinking about your life. Only daughter of renowned Clarissa, a descendant of the mother of witches, you never stood a chance at being average. He wasn't surprised when you took over the leadership of the coven, just pleasantly amused when you actually did well and keep everyone in line.

Discipline is never easy but always needed.

Still, there's something about you --- you're more than you appear to be.

Perhaps he will keep in touch after all.

Perhaps.

~~~~~~~~ "My lady, I do not think this is wise," the ghost worries, wringing her hands as she follows you back and forth across the room. You're gathering your clothes together, shoving them in an overnight bag. You have intentions of paying a visit to an old friend, one whose magic you easily recognized from the scene of last nights crime. You'd kept the information to yourself, you didn't want Cerulli knowing about it.

"You never think anything is wise, Claudette," you grumble, zipping your bag. Claudette is the ghost of a housemaid, who died at an unfortunately young age and has haunted the house for as long as you remember. When times are peaceful, she's transparent, but the ghost can almost pass for human when she tries. She was your nanny when you were young, keeping you out of trouble while your mother ran the coven and the front of a bookstore.

"I am cautious and concerned of your well being is all," the ghost reminds, clasping her hands in front of her. She wears a dress from the 1800's, with a high black collar and long sleeves, a white apron over her clothing. Her dark hair is wound up into a tight bun at her head, and her eyes were once a pretty green. You're fond of her, one of the reasons you've not vanquished her or sent her soul on to the afterlife when you're perfectly capable of doing so.

Your house was once the home to a wealthy gentleman, complete with chandeliers and gas lamps that are pure decoration now. Claudette may keep it spotless, but you can't imagine she enjoys being in the home that she died in, especially since her late employer stabbed her to death with a fire poker in the upstairs study and shoved her out a window; lots of laudanum will make you go a bit bonkers.

"I know, and I appreciate it. I really don't know what I would do without you," you say, giving her a genuine smile as you slip your bag over your shoulder. "I'm just going overnight, I won't be gone long, so don't worry. Just keep the house safe and I'll be back before you know it."

Claudette frowns. "What if you are gone longer and some of the witches notice? You know one of them will fight for your position!"

"You act as if I'm going to the Bermuda Triangle." You shake your head. "I'm just going out of town like four hours drive, tops. I just need to check on Lydia."

"Lydia is a troublemaker, my lady. Tis why your mother banished her," Claudette warns. "She's not one to be trifled with."

"I know." You remember Lydia from when you were young. Her and your mother were close when you were a child, but then she just suddenly disappeared. It was only later when you realized she had been banished. Your mother never worried about just having one type of witch in her coven, she didn't discriminate between light or dark, and somehow the mixture has always worked. Lydia just couldn't get along with the other witches, and would use her powers to torment them instead of playing by the rules.

You understand why she was banished, although she obviously didn't go far from the city. You could have picked out her magic anywhere, it was so unique. She's the one who deactivated all of the wards meticulously, that much is clear to you.

Just not why.

Is she after a relic of Aradia, hoping it will give her a power boost? Does she intend to put it on the black market?

Why is she involving herself with vampires after she spoke against them for so many years?

That's what you're going to find out.

"I'll be back tomorrow. Should anyone ask, tell them I had to make a trip and they can always reach me." It's like Claudette ignores the existence of cell phones. "Alright?"

"Yes," Claudette says reluctantly, following you out of your bedroom and towards the front of the manor. "Although I still do not believe it wise. Those who are banished should not be brought back into the fold."

"I'm not bringing her back in, I'm just going to visit," you respond; you're not an idiot. You haven't been leading the coven for thirty years just on luck.

You turn just as you reach the front doors, looking at your friendly ghost.

"You're going to be alright for a night, aren't you? No more staring forlornly out the attic window and causing more rumors?" you say lightly; everyone believes the place haunted, and they're not wrong, it's the entire reason your mother decided to move in. What better place to live then somewhere no one wants to visit?

Claudette looks miffed. "That was a hard time, I was trying to come to terms with my situation! You try being dead and trapped in the same house forever!"

"I grew up here, I know it can be a prison." you shrug, shifting the weight of the bag on your shoulder. "Just keep it safe for me while I'm gone."

"As you wish," Claudette bobs her head. "Just be safe, and protect your amulet."

Your hand rises automatically. The gold amulet you wear is always tucked beneath your clothing, out of mind, out of sight. It's the entire reason you're not aging, why you still look young and not in your fifties. It belonged to your mother, and kept her alive and youthful for a good hundred years before she was killed. Of course it went to you, and it keeps you going. Should you take it off, you would begin to age like normal again, but you'd rather not. You're not ready to give up on life just yet.

You're sure others know about the amulet, but it's not something that's to be brought up in casual conversation. You don't mention it, and so no one else does. Not even the vampires question why you stay so young and leading your coven whereas the members themselves age and die off.

Circle of life, unfortunately.

Ah, well.

You'd better go witch hunting.

~~~~~~~~

"Allen, you say?" Cerulli says the name, disliking the taste of it. He stands at his study window, overlooking the fountain in the center of his garden. His hands are tucked carefully into his suit pockets, eyes thoughtful. "He's the stray?"

"He's not entered the city that we know of, sire. He's always stayed on the outskirts, so we took no worry of him," Vinny says hesitantly, unsure of his king's response. He's new to the position of the messenger to the king, as the last one died rather abruptly when he forgot to inform the King of some crucial news.

"Well, it seems he has entered the city under our watch, which is rather unfortunate." Cerulli mutters, glancing over his shoulder.

Vinny flinches.

Cerulli is in his office, where he conducts all of his business. The window he stands at leads out to a small balcony, the black curtains drawn back to allow the moonlight inside the room. Thick carpet covers the floor, wooden bookshelves lining every wall covered in tomes and manuscripts of old. Strange, unorthodox skeletons in little glass cases dot every other surface, and a large globe of the world stands as decoration at the far side of the room. A red velvet sofa sits against the wall below a painting of Cerulli in his youth, as a human, and before his large curving desk sits two more antique chairs.

The room fits him entirely, and Vinny always feels out of place when he has to come inside.

"Where has he been lurking? What is the residence?" Cerulli asks, his voice sharp. He's impatient to know what's going on and how it's connected to the witches, he certainly doesn't want any trouble. It's hard enough keeping a pack of vampires peaceful and not ripping out the throats of humans every time they lose their temper --- cleaning up the mess is such a hassle. He certainly doesn't want a war with your kind, you more specifically.

You're both leaders, of course of completely different kingdoms, but uneasy allies just the same. He has to admit, he's used to you leading the witches at this point and can't imagine a new monarch, he doesn't like change. He wants this situation to go away quickly and quietly.

"Some house out near the swampland, I can get the address."

"Who lives at this house?"

"Lydia St. Thames, I think."

"Is she human?"

"Witch, but banished." Vinny only learned all of this a few minutes ago, and he quells before Cerulli's withering look.

"One of our kind has been fraternizing with a witch and I was not told of it?" He hisses, turning abruptly to leave the moon at his back. He glares at the quivering vampire a few feet away from him. "How incompetent are you fools!?"

"We, we were unaware of her status! Our scouts didn't feel the information pertinent as the vampire was just supposed to be passing through!" Vinny gasps, holding up his hands in a placating manner. "I'm sorry, my king ---."

"Excuses! Have the scouts brought in immediately and questioned of all their knowledge on the witch and the vampire! I want to know everything about them by the time I return!"

"Return?" the messenger squawks in surprise, watching as the King strides towards the door.

"Yes. I'm leaving. Don't disappoint me." Cerulli growls, his black eyes brushing over the other vampire and making him feel very, very small.

"Yes, sir." Vinny wouldn't dare.

Vinny lets his breath go the moment the king leaves the room, pressing his hands against his knees as he tries not to panic. How he got stuck with this job, he'll never understand, he's new anyway! Only around a decade old, and he only transferred here because his maker was disappointed that he didn't quite turn out as planned, that he wasn't vicious and wanting to rip the throats out of virgins or steal candy from babies.

He literally got kicked out of the nest, and Cerulli took him as a favor, he knows that. The king hasn't been terrible to him, he's actually a decent guy, but yeesh, can he be terrifying! It's those black eyes, the barely controlled rage that sometimes pushes at the precarious hold Cerulli has against it.

Vinny isn't sure why the king is always so on edge and ready for a fight, but he has more self-control than the young vampire has ever seen in anyone. The king always just breezes through, pretending he's calm and calculated, amused at certain situations and not at all affected, but Vinny's been around him long enough to know that's not the case.

The king is ruthless, and the fact he actually let his anger show makes Vinny even more concerned about what might be happening.

What's so important about a banished witch, anyway?

Is she going to herald the end of their world as they know it?

Vinny sighs, and runs his hands through his brown, frizzy hair, trying to smooth it out of his face. He better do as the king said, bring all those scouts in for questioning. Pity the poor vampires who didn't relay the important information the king wanted. At least he's not one of them.

He never wants to be on the receiving end of the king's wrath.