#but the way you were presented with fragments that depicted not so much a story but a true understanding of exactly how much you have lost

[englishmagic]

Ugh. You know when you experience the most amazing piece of art in your entire life and then you wake up and realise it was in a dream and you have not a shred of the talent and budget to realise it in real life and the dream is fading so the whole concept is about to be lost forever

[shoechoe]

Hiiii attacking your ask box while I procrastinate 😛

So regarding Passione’s structure: Been doing a lot of reading lately on the mafia and have found that interestingly, the Neapolitan mafia is generally much more fragmented than other mafias in Italy, particularly the Sicilian and Calabrian mafias (the Cosa Nostra and ‘Ndrangheta respectively).

That is to say, the “boss of bosses” model seen in other mafias is not really present in Calabria and Naples, where the gangs are instead smaller and more numerous, controlling many minor sectors of criminal society instead of one broad huge, organization blanketing massive swathes of the land.

This makes me think about the odd way that Passione’s hierarchy is illustrated when we’re being given exposition about it in the story. Although Passione is depicted as this pervasive, all-powerful thing, it seems to be very horizontally organized overall, which makes me wonder: Is Passione a singular gang, or is it meant to be more of a replacement for the Camorra in the story altogether, i.e. a loose coalition of clans operating broadly under the same roof, but generally independent from one another?

Or is it some weird mix of both? Each “squad” seems more like its own distinct thing than a unified part of a larger whole given all of the infighting, but everyone ultimately takes orders from Diavolo anyway. I wonder if the Camorra also still exists in this universe, parallel to Passione…

The structure of Passione seems to be rather lacking in middlemen altogether: there aren’t many “tiers” of it to climb. There’s the grunts, then squad leaders like Bruno or Risotto, then caporegimes like Polpo, and then directly above that is Doppio+Diavolo.

The structure at the top is definitely fucked backwards no matter which way you look at it because Doppio/Diavolo is his own boss and his own henchman at the same time and he doesn’t seem to have a consigliere or any other personal advisers—just his personal guard, who seem to mostly just be… hitmen? There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that Cioccolata, Squalo and Tiziano et al. conduct much business for the gang. They’re just… attack dogs, I guess ?

(To note, the official illustration of Passione’s hierarchy says that the position that belongs to Doppio should be a consigliere, but this is more of a non-combative, lawerly, legal-counsel type role which is something that Doppio appears by all accounts to be woefully inadequate for, so this doesn’t really make sense.)

There’s also oddly not much mention of blood relatives within Passione: I don’t think we hear of any gangster characters who are actually related to one another, which is highly unusual for the mafia. Is it because near everyone seems to be a stand user, save bottom-tier lackeys like Luca? Do they put less stock into blood relations in Passione because of this (and maybe also because of the boss discouraging such things)? Do they skip over most of the formalities of being “made” because they find the stand arrow test to serve as a sufficient initiation? This is the stuff that keeps me up at night.

That is some very interesting real-life context. The only gang I've read a book on so far is Cosa Nostra, but organized crime in Italy definitely goes beyond that and varies from mob to mob. Personally, I doubt there was too much thought put into how Passione replaces the real-life mob structures in Italy; Araki was probably just thinking "media-like depiction of an Italian mob" and didn't pour himself into study of real-life mob structures or anything.

I always kind of assumed other gangs were practically irrelevant, since conflicts with other gangs are never mentioned and Passione seems to be so powerful that it's basically the "main" mob in Italy due to its high concentration of Stand users and monopoly on the drug trade. (Though Purple Haze Feedback isn't canon, it does make a point that Passione is powerful beyond powerful in terms of mobs with Giorno in charge.) Though, there really isn't enough info given to tell, just like a lot of things with the mob in VA, lol.

I have also noticed the whole "consigliere" deal before- I made a post about it some time ago. Personally I get the feeling that VA was just using "consigliere" functionally as a synonym for "underboss", since they mention a "right-hand man" in the structure. It's a little annoying and inaccurate, but what can you do?

The lack of family dynamics playing a role is definitely something I noticed Passione strongly breaks away from real-life mobs in. The concept of family is extremely important in most real-life Italian mobs, with gang higher-ups often operating within families and successors being sons of the boss. Passione, on the other hand, seems to have absolutely none of this.

This also makes Diavolo's hatred and avoidance of family really interesting, and indeed, what causes Vento Aureo's attempts to have Passione mimic a "typical mob structure" come out extremely broken. There is nobody planned to take over if something happens to Diavolo because Doppio is his underboss (who wouldn't work as a successor for obvious reasons) and he cut off all potential family and connections to people besides himself. I guess that just goes to show Diavolo's sheer confidence in himself and his distrust of anybody else that might replace him. He also might have just truly not given a shit about what will happen to his empire after he dies.

Passione is, in my opinion, a pretty simplistic idea of a mob. It's written just enough to get a vague idea of what it's like and also to get the plot working, but upon further inspection, you really realize just how vague it is as an organization. It makes me want a prequel to see how Diavolo started all of it even more lol.

[karama9]

Conversation with Hylia

This is part of a story I’m working on. If it doesn't get cut, anyway.

Link is praying to Hylia in an effort to either restore the Master Sword or get some divine inspiration on how else to go about it. The map and features of Hyrule in the story are based on Breath of the Wild, and the statue Link is praying to is the one in the Temple of Time on the Great Plateau. Link, however, is an OC of mine - this story would be taking place a very, very long time before Breath of the Wild but very, very long after Ocarina of Time.

***

Link stood in front of the giant statue, sword in hand. He was here for a specific reason but the familiar feeling didn’t seem to care – as usual, the mere sight of a statue that was almost certainly not an accurate depiction of the Goddess as she looked when she lived as a Hylian was enough to trigger a strong reaction in the oldest part of his soul. 

The feeling wasn’t all that definite. Link wouldn’t have known why the statues consistently made him so sad if not for the memory fragment he’d got from his very first lifetime. 

The memory was one of the flashes he’d gotten when he’d gone through the recall ceremony his parents had rightfully forbidden and that he’d done anyway. It hadn’t been much, but having seen it over and over again in his dreams made it quite intelligible to him. He’d seen a young girl with blond hair and blue eyes ageing and drifting away while he remained locked in place. The girl was reaching out for him, he was reaching out for her, but they were both powerless, separated forever. 

Officially, Hyrule did not know whether the first hero was the father to the children of the Goddess reborn as the first Zelda. History said the Goddess had chosen a Hero she knew would do anything for her, but what their relationship actually was wasn’t known. 

Most people sort of figured they had been a couple and that the bloodline of Zelda was also the bloodline of the first Hero, even though the Hero’s soul did not tend to be reborn within it. But as popular as the theory was, it was still just a guess with next to nothing to back it up. 

Link didn’t need to guess and didn't need proofs. He knew for a fact that the Hero had been completely consumed with love for his Zelda, and had still been at the time of his death, and he knew she loved him back. And rather than being able to reunite with her in the afterlife, the hero was trapped in an endless cycle of rebirths, forever separated from her spirit, which had moved on. 

Link cleared his throat. 

“Hello Hylia,” he said. The feelings that belonged to a man thousands of years dead threatened to flow to the surface. “He yearns for you,” he said. “He misses you so much I can feel his pain.”  

The statue made no response, but Link felt a bit lighter. It was usually how it went: acknowledging the feelings, in the third person, eased them back deeper into his own mind, out of the way of his current life.  

There was nothing he could do for his past life. Even Hylia was powerless on that score. He needed to focus on the present and the future. 

“I need your wisdom,” he told the statue.  

Deep within, a small part of him wanted to say he needed her love. He ignored it, because there was simply nothing else he could do.

[tigger8900]

Goliath, by Tochi Onyebuchi

⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's just a few short decades from now and humanity has moved on from Earth to the stars, leaving those without the means to pick up the pieces planetside. Even as those with privilege begin to colonize space, the people left behind — largely Black and brown — defy their poisoned environment and crumbling infrastructure, banding together to create safe havens. And then the colonists, those who'd once fled, began to return, seeking new experiences and a return to authentic living back on Earth. Featuring an ensemble cast, this novel seeks to explore not just the Earth's demise, but also the story of what comes next…and who stands to inherit that future.

I've often said that speculative fiction is very much of the time it's written. Accordingly, this novel, begun in the mid-2010s and published in early 2022, is very much of our times. And yes, it is very political. How could it not be, with themes including eco crises, mass incarceration, white supremacy, class and racial privilege, healthcare inequality, police brutality, white flight, and gentrification? The job of good speculative fiction is to use a fictional narrative to illuminate something of our own time and place, and in that regard this book is stellar.

The book's biggest strength — its varied cast of characters, painting a picture of the future through several distinct narratives — unfortunately also contributes to its biggest weakness. This is due to the way the story is told, with the narratives fragmented and presented non-linearly. While I believe my sense of the whole is complete, or near enough, I'd honestly struggle to tell you, start to finish, what precisely befell each character in the story. There's nothing quite like seeing a character pop up in a scene and having to pause, confused, and think to yourself: "I thought he was dead by now!" I'm not sure that reading it again would help. I think I'd likely have to break out the index cards and start laying the plot out down the hallway to make complete sense of it. Honestly, some kind of dates on the sections would have helped, but that would have ruined the near-future feel of the disaster so I understand why the author left them out.

I also have to mention that this book frequently calls upon Christian themes, ones that go beyond the David and Goliath reference. It's not terribly surprising, given the historical role of spiritual leaders in community organizing, but based on what blurb you read it's easy to get caught off guard. I will say that the book was never preachy, so this is certainly the better kind of Christian-inspired fiction, but if you're someone who avoids such references for whatever reason you might want to give this title a pass.

On a similar note, there's something about the gay couple in this story that gave me pause. Specifically, it's that the only gay couples are among the colonizers. All of the people who'd been left behind on Earth were depicted, as far as I could tell, pursuing exclusively cis-het relationships. I know I'm prone to paranoid reading when Christianity and queerness meet, so I've spent a fair bit of time turning this over in my mind before I sat down to write this, to try to be as fair as possible about a book that, overall, I enjoyed. Ultimately, I don't see any evidence that the author was attempting to make a point by writing it this way. I'm not mad about it. But that doesn't mean that this doesn't have the potential to be disturbing to some readers, so I wanted to mention it.

Last, but not least…do the horses die? Mild spoilers ahead, stop reading now if you don't want! A handful of wild horses are rescued and adopted as community livestock. These horses later die in a stable fire. Their demise is not narrated in detail, but it's made clear that they don't survive.

[sheriff-caitlyn]

Souls in Runeterra

AKA: Life, death, and the biggest threats to this natural cycle within League lore.

In the original lore, with the exception of Demacia (and, to a certain degree, Ionia), Runeterra was largely depicted as a secular world; phrases about the capital-L Light and the idea of spirits were vague and unsubstantial when it came to deciding what the various nations believed in and why. It wasn’t until the introduction of Illaoi in late 2015 that there was any solid notion of actual quote-on-quote ‘gods’ at all. This large, loose gap in the lore led me to theorising and worldbuilding that there had been gods once, but there weren’t anymore. Considering the nature of the world as tied to rhythms of warfare/violence and peace, it seemed entirely possible that some ancient battle - perhaps one of the first Rune Wars - resulted in an obliteration of deities, and thus an increased focus on mortal power and ingenuity instead. That would certainly explain the barely-filled gap in such a vast and important section of worldbuilding. 

As I was focused on writing about Piltover, I saw Runeterra’s natural secularity meshing well with the City of Progress’ idea of a scientifically-ordered world. Yet, at the same time, even a place that has order and precision at its core has a wilder countryside, has ghost stories and spooks and folklore, has a melting pot of cultures, and - in my canon, at least - a significant population of Kindly Folk out in the marshes (Lulu has a fae following her, and The Glade exists, so surely there must be other Courts!). There are things that cannot be explained away by looking to the future or focusing on the numbers; there are things in Piltover’s past that might have been forgotten, but still have bearing on the present, and the future. And so the phrase ‘good gods dead and buried’ came about, as an exclamation of surprise or exasperation. Piltover’s understanding of history crystalised in this small phrase: some gods were dead, some gods were buried, and some gods - if they were lucky - were both. Piltover had gods once. Maybe all of Runeterra did. But there were Rune Wars, and power-hungry mortals, and adventurers and deceivers and power-plays from beings Elsewhere, and this world was rendered without actual active deities.

And so if the gods were dead, buried, or both, what happened to them? Looking at the Journal of Justice, at the Shadow Isles, at the very concept of magic, and at the in-game events like the Battle of the Freljord, I came to the conclusion that life and death on Runeterra is a much more fluid thing. For every culture within the world, there is a different way of explaining it, but it boils down to this: Existence is perpetual. When you die, your soul returns to the world. I posited previously (way back in ye olde 2014) that in Runeterra:

There is no afterlife, no heaven or hell or purgatory, because there are no gods to decide such things. [...] When you die, your lifeforce, your soul, goes back into the world. Maybe a powerful soul can linger, not like a ghost but more as an enriching force that makes a certain bloodline more powerful, or bestows a landscape with better crops, hardier animals, and so on. Maybe reincarnation is possible, if the soul is strong enough or their work unfinished while they were alive. The soul is more powerful than the body, and it is possible that it could linger in a pocket of energy within the world.

A life is born, a life is lived, a life disperses back into the world. But not whole. There is a sense of fragmentation, that everything you were breaks up: some parts might go to nourish the places where you lived, some might enter rivers or stone or forests or landmarks, some might enter the magic stream, some might enliven animals or plants. Some souls might be blown far across the sea or to the other side of the continent, following longing or curiosity felt in life. Most importantly, some pieces of personality might be reborn into a new person; not necessarily reincarnation, but certainly rebirth. Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted. This includes what happened to the gods: slain, imprisoned, unmade, weakened or somehow destroyed, their essence has gone back into the world. What was once divine is now mingled in with the soul-stuff of mortals. Pride, ambition, a hunger for power, maybe even memories might surface now and then, but the gods themselves are dead, buried, or both, in the natural cycle of life and death.

This particular understanding (plot-hole filler?) has influenced my worldbuilding for this blog, in everything from Piltover’s present to its history as well as to the world at large. This concept could be enshrined in spirituality or religion, or accepted as a secular fact: life goes on! There is no end! You are a fragment that becomes something wholly new before breaking apart again at the end of your time on the planet! Different takes on the same situation allow for a lot of expression cultures and societies. For instance, in Demacia the soul could be seen as part of the Light, the same magic that fuels the powers of the royal and noble families (Jarvan’s shield, Garen’s regeneration, Lux’s prismatic magic); it could be spun to the idea of Demacian purity, that all good sons and daughters never stray far from the proper order of things; that life is a holy thing, perhaps as the basis for a cultural religion. Another example could be in the Shuriman enshrinement of powerful personalities, the Ascended. In a nation fractured by warfare and climate and a history of loss and struggle, the idea of souls being being fractured and dispersed by the natural cycle of life and death could be seen in Shurima as terrifying, anathema, a horrible punishment, something to be fought against by a powerful life and a proper burial. The fact that Azir (released late 2014) was entombed in a particular way, his body completely preserved, prevented his soul from rejoining the natural order, and he returned with all his memories intact. The game mode of Ascension also felt like one was collecting the power of other souls, imbuing oneself with stolen power briefly. This very act would be seen as an abomination by many cultures, though within the Shuriman culture it may be an honour to become part of an Ascended’s lifeforce, to be a part of something greater, something close to godly. There is so much variety in the method of approaching a single thought, in depicting a natural cycle through various cultural lenses. But no matter how it is depicted, all the cultures on Runeterra have an understanding that life and death on the planet matters, and that there is a sense of a cycle. Even Death in Runeterra is represented by Kindred (released late 2015): psychopomps who take the form of a wolf and a lamb, creatures of the natural environment. Unlike other psychopomps, however, their role is not to shepherd the soul to the next plane, but to be an end, freeing the soul from a physical form and returning it to the cycle; death comes from close and afar, but the end result is always the same. Their very depiction as natural animals is proof of a natural cycle of death and rebirth.

So if there is a cycle, if there is no afterlife, what is the biggest threat to this, regardless of cultural belief? If all life on Runeterra constantly moves from one form to another, the biggest threats are Stagnation and Obliteration (capitals used for deliberate emphasis on a state of being). Stagnation would be the sense that souls are forced to remain in one single state in perpetuity, and Obliteration would be the complete destruction of the life force in its entirety, the removal of vital pieces of the natural lifeforce from the world.

I could refer to Azir’s entombment as an example of Stagnation, and it is... on a small scale. But if we want to talk about large-scale Stagnation? Let’s talk about Thresh. Released 2013 with a terrifying nursery rhyme soundtrack, Thresh was the Chain-Warden, a jailer who captured souls in his lantern and held them prisoner. He was a cruel and sadistic torturer in life, and in death his methods have only gotten more terrifying. Building on the vague but menacing lore of the Shadow Isles, Thresh was a bright new face to the horrors that happened ‘centuries ago’, to the former shining kingdom that fell to the darkness and the plague of undeath, giving us a new insight into what Runeterra truly fears in terms of the Stagnation of life and death. If souls are designed to fragment and dissolve back into the ether, then the idea of them being held in one form, trapped and enslaved, would be torturous on a spiritual and a metaphysical level. There is also the sense that Thresh would be able to torture these captured souls with various kinds of excess of sensation as well as the deprivation: you’re so used to having a body that being without one AND still feeling the skin being flayed off your back? Overwhelming torture. I was prompted in mid-2014 to write about the return of the Ruined King, focusing on the idea of the King’s Army: tortured souls and stolen corpses. Sensory deprivation, grief, being forced to remain in a single form long after death? Stagnation. Souls caught like this are constantly breaking down, refuelling based on their own power, caught in an endless cycle of self-cannibalism in order to survive, in addition to being physically, spiritually, and metaphysically punished by external forces. There is no renewal of the Isles, or the people, or the world: just isolation and punishment, an ouroboros of suffering. Small wonder Lucian (released 2013) was dedicated to hunting Thresh down. Maybe Lucian never thought he’d get Senna back (which he did in 2019), but he could at least bring back all that was stolen from the world’s natural cycle. Thresh, as an undead instigator of Stagnation, needed to be stopped and destroyed, along with the Ruined King. One day, maybe... 

Another kind of Stagnation is mentioned, briefly and obliquely, in the Battle of the Freljord event and through the character of Lissandra. Lissandra was released as a character that hides her true nature: in the lore, she is a centuries’ old Frostguard, undying, manipulating the histories of an entire nation to hide her power and her intentions. She, as a servant of the Watchers, wants the world to be frozen solid. The lore reboot of Ashe and Sejuani has them being reborn from heroes of the past, proving at least that they adhere to the global cycle, that perhaps certain shards of souls are strong enough to persist where they are needed. But in Lissandra’s continued existence, she represents and espouses the idea of Stagnation. Similar to the Shadow Isles, the Watchers want to maintain their power by the subjugation and control of the natural order and everyone within it, but not by pain or torture. Instead, the Watchers want to stop any change from happening at all. What they want is a cruel, unfeeling, unchanging state forever. Everyone exists as they are, or dies in the cold. And when they die? Well... True Ice could be powerful because it is what happens when a trapped soul can go nowhere but becoming crystalised magic. I draw this conclusion based on Kalamanda, from the Journal of Justice, and the idea that magic can become crystalised if it doesn’t flow. Sometimes souls become magic energy, so of course, then, souls can become crystals. And if there is nowhere to go but the ice? Then that’s how you get magic ice; weapons made from pure cold and pure misery. The Watchers’ goal is personal power, harvesting the Stagnated lifeforce of the world to make powerful weapons. But what do they need these weapons for? 

Why, to fight against their enemy, the Void, representatives of the threat of Obliteration, of course! The Watchers and the Void have been set up to be antagonists since the Battle of the Freljord event (this magnificent matchup since retconned, alas), with the idea of two massive unearthly powers using Runeterra’s resource-rich world as a playground to fuel either frosty status-quo egos or to feed the endless, ceaseless hunger of the Space Between The Stars. It really is a ‘whoever wins, we lose’ situation, the grand overarching battle for existince on Runeterra, which is undercut by mortal dramas of city-state rivalries, and individuals with power against their rivals, and so on. But I digress. 

The idea of Obliteration, of the complete removal of souls from the life-and-death cycle, is a threat that is best represented by the Void. In League’s inception, the Void has been characterised by characters that hunger, that wish to consume. Some of these threats use this hunger as a motive, for self-improvement or for personal strength or understanding. But hunger is hunger, and whatever the Void consumes is gone forever from the current plane of existence. The Void is not of this world. It is a plane outside Runeterra, perhaps even ‘outer space with a consciousness’, that is constantly pressuring on the planet and trying to get in. Sometimes, gaps into the Void are discovered by accident (see Kassadin, or even Rek’Sai’s arrival) or are deliberately opened (see Malzahar). The Void is a great nothingness, true oblivion, where the natural cycle of life and death will be completely erased and the world made physically and spiritually barren if Runeterra ever succumbs to the Void’s hunger. Scratch that - there wouldn’t even be a Runeterra, because it would be devoured and erased from the cosmos entirely. This isn’t just a matter of the world ending, this is the world being eaten. No matter how a culture views the cycle of life-and-death in Runeterra, the idea that the world could end in such a fashion would be terrifying to all peoples (unless you’re brainwashed or suicidal, Malzahar). The Rune Wars in the past might have threatened to end lives, turn entire countries to glass, or somehow upset an ecosystem to be nothing but hostile monsters and/or magic, but there would still be a world at the end of the wars. With the Void? Nothing will be left. Everything will be unmade, everything. It is a cruel and empty future.

So, to summarise: in Runeterra, rebirth is entirely natural, some people have power in their souls, memories of past lives are common. Undeath, a frozen wasteland, or the emptiness of space all act as the major threats to the natural cycle of life and death. These little facts have helped me move forward in understanding the cultures, societies, and personal beliefs of many of the characters within League lore as it stands in my interpretation.

[unofficialadamtaurus]

What makes me angry isn’t the fact that Adam and Blake ended up in an abusive relationship- what pisses me off is how lazy it was written. It feels like Adam, the White Fang, *everything* was written to be nothing but fragments that serve to accessorise Blake’s characters - and as such, they don’t need to be explored. They don’t have to be complicated. Adam isn’t a character on his own, he doesn’t have a canonical past, he didn’t have any motivation other than Blake - even him enslaving all humans falls second to Blake for some reason. Hell, even his brand, possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to him, isn’t about *him*, it was only introduced to show us how he manipulates Blake with it - that’s the only relevance to the story it had - making BLAKE feel sad. How did he get it? When did he get it? Why did he get it - all of this is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with Blake. Once his “character” has played it’s role as an “Blake’s villain”, he is disposed of. Thing is, “villains” are also individuals. The Joker, for example, isn’t just “Batman’s villain”. Adam didn’t feel like an individual, he felt like a tool. There was zero personhood to his character. Even otome game yanderes have more personality than Adam Taurus. “But adam is meant to be obsessed blake” - and that’s okay! Thing is, you can absolutely write a character that’s disturbingly obsessed with someone *but is still a character on their own*. The problem isn’t that you decided to write an obsessive character, the problem is that he is barely a character. There is *nothing* to him. The same could be said about the White Fang. It was nothing but “something that was stolen from Blake & Blake had to reclaim it” and once she did, the WF disappeared. No nuance whatsoever. Then there is the very nature of Blake and Adam’s romantic relationship - it wasn’t explored, it wasn’t expanded on, it didn’t feel like it was meant to be a representation of abusive relationships and how they impact people. It felt like it was just there to add tragedy to Blake’s character - we don’t see flashbacks or anything of the like, the only thing we see is that cringey line in Adam’s character short where mr. emotional manipulator, in a cOmPleTeLy unassuming and definitely Not-Evil voice says “Oh you want to abandon our cause? Just like your parents did? 🙃🙃😏😏😏😏😈😈😈😈😈👹👹” oh woah. That’s. that’s definitely what successful emotional manipulation looks like. That’s surely how it happens. 100/100 could relate. My ex did the same and I fell every time, especially with that evil smirky smirk. How inconspicuous. But yeah again it didn’t feel like a relationship between two characters, it felt like a little tweak added to make us feel a certain way about Blake. We didn’t have to *see* it, we were told that Adam is abusive & we know it made Blake feel bad and that’s enough. Thing is, I think that since abusive relationships are unfortunately something everyone has experienced, they should be explored with tad bit more attention and complexity. I don’t hate the idea of Adam and Blake being together and I don’t hate the idea of their relationship being unhealthy, I just hate how it was presented in the show.

“How inconspicuous” lmao

Tauradonna’s depiction also reflects poorly on Blake by making it seem like she fell in love with someone who, in canon, seems to have zero redeeming qualities and no honeymoon phase. Like girl, how did this even start? It’s one thing if we see Adam as a tragic character who started off good and was a good partner and got worse over time (or abruptly once Blake was largely under his power), but that’s not the case. He’s only ever cartoonishly manipulative and abusive.

What’s particularly annoying about Adam is that, while stories can have secondary characters without established backstories (there’s only so much narrative real estate, so to speak), Adam’s implied backstory was brought up suddenly and with dramatic emphasis minutes before he died without being explored. Like I mentioned in my post about Marrow’s throwaway systemic racism line: why bring it up if you aren’t going to talk about it?

[meimi-haneoka]

Akiho Shinomoto - a manifesto of love

Despite becoming one of my favorite characters in the whole Cardcaptor Sakura franchise (and I would’ve never expected to love a new character this much), I realized I’ve never spent a long post for her, like the ones I did for SyaoSaku or for Tomoyo and Syaoran long time ago.

And there’s a lot to say, because Akiho Shinomoto is actually the first character who has introduced the concepts of evil and child abuse in Cardcaptor Sakura.

Something that wasn’t even remotely conceivable until (almost) 5 years ago.

Often considered boring and weak from the CCS fandom, Akiho actually harbors an immense strength inside of her, which goes mostly unnoticed to everyone, in-story friends included. Let’s see why.

Sentenced to death, for lack of magical powers

Once upon a time, a baby girl was born in a clan of powerful magicians, the most ancient of Europe. Clan members seemed happy and curious about the new entry to the family. They had great expectations about what magic she would develop, as everyone else in that family. At the ripe old age of 1 year and a half / 2 years, the baby girl was expected to show some signs of magic, but she had none. But hey, maybe she would become powerful later, let's pat her head and wait patiently. At that time, the Clan still showed some kind of "attention" for her.

But by the time the girl was around 6/7 years old, no fragment of magic appeared in her. Unacceptable. She's the daughter of two top rank magicians, in a clan of magic prodigies. Yet, she showed none of those gifts. They kept comparing her with some boy, living in a far away country, part of another famous magical clan. The girl suddenly held no more interest for her Clan. They actually started seeing her as a stain on their Clan's pride. Suddenly, the focus was all on how they could surpass the other rival clan. The girl was left all alone. A magicless member of the family is a member who doesn't even deserve being talked to. An interrogatory, at most. Who cares if the little girl wants to socialize, if she wants to play, if she's the only young person in that Clan, already without her parents who died so early on? The only thing this girl was good at was reading books, so all that's she's allowed to do. Not even playing with stuffed animals. For some reason, she's allowed to keep only ONE plushie, which is basically everything to her. But books and dolls can't fill that sinkhole she's already feeling at such young age.

Obsessed with this "anomaly", when she was about 2 years old, the Clan had the baby girl examined by a member of a Magic Association in England, known to be the den of shady magicians. A 8/9 year old bored magic genius, named “Yuna D.”, was her examiner. The boy said "She's like a blank book". The girl grew up, and the situation was still the same. The disapproving stares of her relatives cut the little girl’s heart like a sharp knife. They called her “worthless”, “useless”. They even doubted she could really be the daughter of her powerful parents. So what should they have done? Let the little girl live her life like any other regular human being, or taking literally the words of a BORED, EMOTIONALLY UNDEVELOPED CHILD who literally spat out the first thing that came to his mind?

Although the choice should’ve come easily for any normal human being with a functioning brain, they actually went in the other direction, greedy for power. And so, they decided to treat the girl like a tool, using her to store all kinds of magic for them to use. If she couldn’t be of any help to her clan with her capabilities, they would give her a purpose.

On some kind of altar, halfway between a lab rat and the sacrificing ritual of a sect, the most ancient Magicians of Europe together with the Magic Association performed a dangerous magic on her, which afterwards would take its toll even on the casters: they turned her into a magical artifact, capable of engraving in herself all the magical books she would encounter, transforming her de facto into a book herself. As if this wasn’t horrifying enough, this spell will progressively try to crush her soul and conscience, until it gets destroyed completely. So when the artifact will reach its limit, it will be the death of her, as a human being. Only a shell of her will remain. And judging by what was said later on in the story, they actually hope for her to lose her consciousness completely, so they can make use of her more easily.

Afterwards, they burned the book they took the ritual from, so the procedure would remain in their knowledge only. Greedy till the very last drop.

Once their perfect magical tool was achieved, turning a little girl into some sort of artifact, both the Clan and their accomplices couldn't stop bragging about it. The only positive words Akiho has ever received in her life by her people were after she was turned into a tool.

With a newly found purpose for that stain on their clan’s pride, they sent her away into the world to collect all the magic books she could find and write their powers into her, even though she was still just a child. For reasons still unknown, Yuna D., the boy who involuntarily caused this horrible ritual to happen and basically condemned her to death, offers himself to accompany her. The very first decision he took in his own life. That decision will change forever the course of their life, for both of them.

Rising from the ashes, towards a future of hope

Rehashing Akiho’s past is important to understand her personality and behavior fully. CLAMP, in the Clear Card manga, have portrayed the story of her past in a very peculiar way: it starts as any other fairytale, with light tones and cute designs. But as the story progresses, and the horror ensues, the tone of the tale changes, and so the drawing style too. It becomes serious, and “realistic” (ad opposed to the initial cutesy style). What started as a possible generic fairytale, turned into a real nightmare.

On top of being deprived of the love of her parents ever since she was born, because apparently they died right after, Akiho spent her early childhood in complete solitude. Those magicians who were supposed to be her remaining family were too absorbed into their own greed for power, to consider the needs of a baby girl. Not to mention that they had some kind of disgust for her, for being magicless. She was denied attention, cuddles, conversations, play activities, toys. She was denied love and care. All basic things that contribute to shape the personality and psychology of a person. Akiho grew up with the conviction that she wasn’t worth any of that, because no one gave it to her. One of the complaints I have seen the most about her in the fandom, is how she’s always so apologetic, to the point of becoming obnoxious. If you think about it, one of the most prominent characteristics of her personality is how she continuously apologizes to people, thanks them for any smallest thing, and is always, constantly seeking validation. 

But if you stop for a second to think about her past, you’ll realize with dismay that those are none other than symptoms of the abuse she suffered in the past. She was called “good for nothing” and “useless” by her clan and the Magic Association, and those words carved themselves into her heart, forever scarring it. Akiho grew up believing that she was really worthless and good for nothing just because she couldn’t meet the expectations of her clan, and it’s apparent when we see her considering herself “extremely clumsy”, even though we have afterwards seen that she’s perfectly capable of cooking, sewing, even playing sports. She only needs the dedication of someone who would teach her that.

With a disastrous psychological situation like this, one would naturally wonder how this girl didn’t commit anything extreme yet. Completely alone in the world, deemed useless. Unloved.

Books, books were her first lifeline. The fictional, magical, wonderful worlds depicted in those stories saved her sanity, making her dream about a better life, about friendship, about love. They taught her everything. They gave her the hope that those things existed out there, and maybe one day she would be blessed with them too. The fantastical characters kept her company when no one was there for her (yet). And she loves them viscerally for that, to the point of seeing herself mending damaged books in the future, as a possible occupation. Just like they mended her lacerated heart.

The second lifeline was her meeting with Kaito. Uncharacteristically to him, Kaito showed immediately a kind and interested behavior towards her. This was so shocking, so incredible that Akiho’s first reaction to his introduction was to run away. No one ever addressed her with the intention of having a conversation. No one was ever interested in what she was reading. Even just by this you can get a glimpse of how miserable her life had been till then. Full of psychological issues himself, thanks to the human connection Kaito gradually turned his attentions towards Akiho from contrieved mannerism, to genuine and sincere gestures. Akiho can feel that affection, even if her self-criticism always pushes her to believe that she’s nothing more than “job” to him. It’s something small, but what she’s experiencing with Kaito is her everything, and more than she’s ever had.

The third lifeline is Momo: Akiho doesn’t know, nor remotely imagines she’s actually a living magical creature. But she has been her constant presence ever since she was born. Her connection to her is special, and you can see it in their daily (one-sided, for now) interactions. Akiho talks to Momo, she greets her when she comes back home, she constantly carries her around, she thinks about giving her a little dress as a present. Momo is Akiho’s strength. The love this girl pours into what she believes is just a stuffed animal is incredible. It goes to show Akiho’s immense capacity to love something/someone without expecting anything in return, but actually just enjoying the simple presence and courage they give to her. If you think about it, it’s the very opposite of what she experienced with the only human interactions she’s ever had before Kaito came into the picture. Her aptitude to selfless love is also remarked between the lines in chapter 49, when Akiho is telling Sakura about her relationship with Kaito. Despite all the ugliness she went through, she’s still able to find in herself the strength to overcome all of it, and change her life for the better.

This certainly hasn’t been an easy or quick process, because in the flashbacks of her journey with Kaito we always see her with a pensive/serious look. It must have been extremely hard to start trusting others, when she had no one she could count on in her own home.

Akiho’s capacity to love and rise from the ashes of her terrible past has been so contagious, that it has started to affect Kaito too.  As Momo said in chapter 51, once you’re given the reason to change, no person can ever stay the same. This must have been true for Kaito, but certainly for Akiho too.

I’m absolutely positive that Akiho (and possibly, Kaito too) will be the symbol for one of the most important, beautiful messages in the whole Clear Card Arc: even if your life isn’t perfect, even if your past scarred you in multiple ways, there’s always hope. Hope to turn over a new leaf and change yourself for the better too, in the process. Overcome everything that had you stuck in pain and grief. Achieve what you always wished for.

[2centsoframblings]

Two cents of ramblings on: “X -ex-: Yochō - AN OMEN” (OAV)...

...and why I recommend it.

GENERAL DATA

Title: X -ex-: Yochō - AN OMEN (X -エックス-: 予兆 - AN OMEN “X -x-: Omen - AN OMEN”)

Media: OAV

Adaptation of: “X” shōjo manga by CLAMP.

Genre: Action, Dark fantasy, Supernatural thriller

Directed by: Kawajiri Yoshiaki

Written by: Kawajiri Yoshiaki

Studio: Madhouse

Original run: August 25, 2001

Running time: 22:34

WARNINGS: There's murder, torture, death

The plot in short: Dreamseer Kuzuki Kakyō shares his story and some prophetic dreams he had about the incoming battle for the end of the world.

HOW DID I STUMBLE INTO IT

I’m a HUGE fan of the “X” manga so, of course, I wanted to see it.

THINGS YOU MIGHT WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE TACKLING THIS

I’ll mention the manga, the movie and the following anime series (by the way, nowadays you find this OAV sold along to the anime series of which it’s considered the episode 0).

MY TWO CENTS ON IT

THE SHORT VERSION… or what I can tell you about this while trying to keep spoilers at the very bare minimum.

Opening & ending: There’s no opening, the ending is “STRENGTH” by Koizumi Kōhei. The song is nice and its sad music is very fitting with the mood of this OAV. As for the visual… it’s basically a black background on which you see on the top the images of each character in the story and below it the character’s name and his voice actor, then, once they all had been shown it’s just a wall of text with the credits.

The plot: The idea of the plot is good and interesting! They managed to explore more the character of Kuzuki Kakyō and, using his visions, to give glimpses of the characters and the incoming conflicts of the story without spoilering too much the viewers.

The characters: As this is kind of a preview for the series, the only characters who is explored is Kuzuki Kakyō, while we only get glimpses of the others. Still Kakyō’s tragedy is well depicted and the glimpses manages to present the other characters as potentially interesting, especially since they often touch relevant moments of the story.

The visual: I’m not that fond of the character design and I hate they changed the eye colours since they actually were meant to mean something. I found the background poor with the colours opaque and the scenes often dark. In short I’m not really positively impressed by the visual.

The musical background: I enjoyed most of it so I think Satō Naoki did a good work with it.

Overall: Although the visual wasn’t that great I found the OAV intriguing and enjoyable, a great preview for the anime that made me hope the anime would turn out awesome as well.

THE LONG VERSION… or what I loved and hated about this with, of course, TONS OF SPOILERS.

There’s various things I liked about this OAV.

The idea of starting with the two Kamuis grabbing the swords, for example, it’s sure one that feels interesting if you never read “X” but that set you well in the mood of the story if you had, even though it wasn’t the first image of the manga.

I liked the idea of using Kakyō to narrate this story as it works well for many reasons. For start Kakyō wasn’t in the “X” movie so finally seeing him feels new and intriguing, then due to his nature as dreamgazer that can see fragments of the future it excuses/explains why this OAV shows us fragments of the future in an intelligent ways.

I liked how they tried to expand Kakyō’s story… even though the expansion didn’t really clear it much, if anything it makes it more confuse… I mean, in the manga it’s clear Kakyō is a prisoner and, when he tries to escape, he’s immediately shoot and then hospitalized.

Here though there’s an old lady, who’s apparently the master of the house, who pities him when she realizes he escaped, and the security is horrible, because Kakyō almost manages to reach Hokuto, so he could escape, but then if the men report to the old lady and the old lady didn’t mean to do him any harm, who shoot Kakyō multiple times?

It seems almost they were protecting him by keeping him jailed and someone else shoot him… so while on a side I want to praise the OAV for trying to give Kakyō more backstory… on the other I wish they had wrote it better.

On the negative notes instead we can already start to see changes on the characters’ characterization or in the story that will also later plague the anime series.

For example Hokuto dies calling ‘Kakyō’ instead than ‘Subaru’, there’s a first hint that Fūma is in the basket club when, in CLAMP’s intentions, Fūma was in the kendō club (though, okay, this is not really shown in the manga, where still we see him playing soccer, not basket, but only in a commentary on an illustration), Sorata’s kekkai, instead than cube shaped is a parallelepiped, Seishirō and Subaru’s meeting takes place on the top of a building and not in Nakano in front of the Sun Plaza, how Kakyō claims what he wants is regain the courage Hokuto gave him when he actually only wanted to die.

But in a short OAV you might miss them all and they aren’t really a trouble. I quite enjoyed how they showed those fragments of future one after the other, the fragments they chose, how well they connected the imagine of feathers to them, the fragments of future seems falling feathers and then, after seeing another feather fall in the water, the image shows us there are many feathers there and Kakyō comments:

Kakyō: Tragedy will repeat just like in the dreams, that is destiny. Everything just goes along its flow. There is only one future. Only but one.

And as he says so feathers starts moving as if following the flow, and then they connect to this scene the bit of Kotori saying the future hadn’t been determined yet and then of Fūma, or better, of KAMUI saying it has.

I mean, although not all the bits are connected perfectly, overall most are in a way that summarizes the series and its themes, so yeah, this was good.

As I already mentioned I hated how they changed the characters’ eye colour because there was a reason for them to be such colour… but this is a talk more fitting for the anime as in the OAV the implications couldn’t be seen yet.

Still, although it wasn’t visually great, I found the OAV pretty enjoyable, something I would recommend to any fan of the series… though I’m not sure if someone who’s not a fan would manage to follow it. But they can view it as a preview, a trailer of the series, and in this case it well works for its purpose and can already start to give you an idea if you’ll enjoy the series or not. So well, I recommend it.

And now let's end this with an AMV about this series I recommend watching Vater Unser

[valhallanrose]

Canary in a Coal Mine

When Senga Canonach takes the mantle of Baroness, eleven-year-old Catriona receives the first true explanation of what it means to be the oldest of her cousins. 

Some notes: Catriona/Astoria uses both she and they pronouns (she throughout this particular fic), while Avery Maollosa is strictly they/them. Both are nonbinary. 

Edrine (she/they/he), who is only mentioned in this fic, is genderqueer (referred to with they/them pronouns here) and will make a full appearance in the next fic. 

4.3k. I am unsure how to best label this, but for now, Cautionary CW for feelings and imagery of entrapment as a result of particularly controlling parental behavior.  

Fic Title: Canary in a Coal Mine by The Crane Wives

One thousand, two hundred and twelve. 

It was the number of individual pieces in the stained glass window above the stairwell, the one depicting their ancestor, Cliamon - their blade raised high overhead in a moment of triumph in they and their compatriots claiming of the territory that would become home to the Canonach family and all the relatives in between. Cliamon had been a force to be reckoned with, and for all the reading they’d done in their lessons, Catriona adored the stories of such a massive figure they could find such a connection to. 

Catriona also thought Cliamon would laugh at the prospect of one of their descendants waiting like a loyal puppy at the top of the stairs for someone to fetch her. 

Ever since Astor’s death, their mother had grown fearful, the leash tightening so much that Catriona felt she could have choked. Even though his death had been somewhat anticipated, it had left a shadow on Senga Canonach, and left Catriona to deal with the fallout. 

Which was why she was left alone, at the top of the stairs, waiting for someone to pass by that could escort her down. It was her mother’s rule that she were not to walk up or down the stairs alone, so that someone might catch her if she slipped, and it was her mother’s rule that she could never leave the estate without an approved escort. The group of approved escorts was extraordinarily small, even though the majority of the family had volunteered, which left Catriona within the boundaries of Castle Kintyre and the gardens beyond the doors.

She was pulled out of her reverie with the familiar sound of what she knew was a silver-tipped cane on tile, and beamed down at her grandmother as she approached the bottom of the stairs. 

“There you are, granny! Mother said you were coming home for the ceremony, but I was getting worried! When did you get here?"

“Oh, only last night, dear, and I got in late. You were already asleep, or I’d have said hello.” Myrna smiled as she made her way up the steps, surmounting the last and leaning in to press a kiss to Catriona’s brow. “There was some unexpected flooding on the roads through Ardaleith, but they were kind enough to let me stay a few nights at Ironhearth. I actually came with Baronet Avery and the Lady Rima. Little Edrine isn’t feeling well, so they’re home with their governess, but they wanted me to say hello to you. So...hello from Edrine.”

“Oh, I’ll have to ask them to say hi for me, too. Maybe I can write Edie a letter. I’ve always liked them.” Catriona giggled as Myrna straightened her collar, laying it neatly against the soft navy wool of her sweater. 

“Well, they seem to like you, too. I think they’d love a letter. You can even borrow my signet ring for the seal.” Myrna reached down to carefully smooth out the hem of her sweater, then smiled, one hand drifting up to cradle Catriona’s cheek in her palm. “Don’t you look dashing? Did you have any trouble with the kilt?”

“A little, but I think I got it. I poked myself with the pin a few times, though. Does it look okay?”

Her grandmother indicated loosely with a finger, and when they turned obediently in a circle, they were met with a broad smile and a nod from the woman in question. 

“Perfect. Now all you need…” Myrna tutted softly as she dug in her dress pocket, withdrawing a hair comb and offering it to the child. “I’d love to see that pretty face of yours. May I?”

Eagerly, Catriona turned, tracing her fingertips over the comb’s arch - made up of two hands cradling a crowned heart - and, when Myrna was finished twisting her hair up and off the back of her neck, passed it back to her so she could slide the prongs neatly into her hair. 

“There we are. Fit to rub elbows with some nobility, I think.” Myrna offered her hand to the child, which she eagerly took, the other hand resting on the heavy wooden bannister out of habit. “Shall we be off, then? We might be the subject of a search party if your mother doesn’t see us in our seats.”

*     *     *     *     *

The late spring breeze gently ruffled a few loose strands of hair framing Catriona’s face, turning their face toward the carefully trimmed hedges and the beds of colorful blooms in the butterfly garden. Bluebells and thistle, honeysuckle and heather, lavender and primrose, all only a small fragment of the sprays that covered this portion of the estate. 

Sitting through any sort of formal ceremony was painful for a child her age, but what stuck out to her the most was when her mother - in her crisp, emerald suit with the Canonach tartan pinned at her shoulder - lowered herself to one knee, and then the other in the garden gazebo. It made her Aunt Malvina nearly tower over Senga, even though Aunt Malvina was already tall, and made Catriona’s mother seem so small when Malvina raised the diadem before them all and laid it upon Senga’s brow. 

After the ceremony, when the guests followed in Senga’s shadow with raucous cheers and excited chatter toward the banquet hall, Catriona found herself drawn to the gazebo as the garden became comparatively empty. At the center of it was a flat stone, one that they knew had been torn from the earth at Mistwatch, with two indentations right beside one another in the exact place her mother had knelt.

Catriona lowered herself to the ground and smoothed a hand over the stone, her fingers dipping into the imprints and smoothing over the echo of dozens of knees before her mother’s had fallen there. 

In the same spot as Barons and Baronesses and Baronets many times over, her mother had knelt upon the stone, a fragment of Rosinmoor, and accepted the crown from Malvina as if it had been made for her head. 

And in a way, it had, forged in the fires of Ardaleith and delivered by Clan Maollosa upon their arrival the night prior. No two leaders wore the an identical crown, rather, Malvina had given up her own and allowed it to be reforged as an acknowledgement of the new reign to begin. Cliamon had worn no crown - the tradition began with their son, Donacha Carleigh - but their claymore had been passed down through generations, and it had laid in their mother’s hands as she swore to lead Kintyre with the honor and grace of all who had come before her. 

She couldn’t help but wonder how many more would come after her mother. 

Footsteps drew them out of their daze and made them look up - very far up, they realized, until they smiled with recognition and waved at the person in question. 

“Hello, Baronet Maollosa. Am I in your way?”

They chuckled, smoothing a few stray hairs out of their face and lowering themself to sit on the steps of the gazebo. 

“No, you’re alright. And Avery is just fine, remember?” They gently nudged her with their elbow, then extended their hand, cupcake carefully balanced on the small porcelain plate. “Saved you a cupcake. Your grandmother said you might be out here, and they were going fast. You like salted caramel, don’t you?”

Catriona blinked once, twice, hesitantly looking between Avery’s gentle smile and the swirl of frosting adorning the cupcake itself. It looked so unassuming, but...when was the last time she’d eaten something without her mother telling her to wait until someone else could taste her food?

“Granny said it’s okay?” She said after a moment, and Avery nodded, dragging the tip of their pointer finger over their chest twice. 

“Cross my heart. I’d swear on my mother’s grave, but my mother is still alive, so that doesn’t hold very much weight in regard to a promise.”

Catriona couldn’t help but giggle, gingerly accepting the cupcake and starting to peel away the paper wrapping on the outside. “Thank you, Baronet - Avery. Thank you, Avery.”

They scooted forward slightly so they could set their feet on the steps and the plate in their lap, humming softly as they peeled away the paper and swept a finger through the frosting. Beside them, Avery leaned back on their hands, sighing softly as they looked up at the rare cloudless sky. 

“Edrine was all torn up about not coming today.” They mused, and Catriona nodded, making sure to swallow her bite before answering. 

“Granny said they weren’t feeling well, so it’s okay. I don’t mind waiting to see them. Maybe they can visit when they feel better? Granny said next time, she’ll show us how we can set up a fort in the library, so long as we put the books back where they belong if we take them.”

“I think Edrine would like that very much.” Avery ruffled Catriona’s hair lightly, a smile playing at their lips when she huffed and tried to smooth her bangs back out. 

There were a few long beats of pause as Avery watched Catriona, the way she carefully picked at her hair and adjusted it so it looked presentable again. 

They’d always liked her - she was quiet, certainly, but she wasn’t shy. Avery had realized long ago that she chose simply not to speak if she had nothing to say, and if she did, sometimes what came out of her mouth made them bite their hand so hard it left marks for trying not to laugh. 

Really, she’d won Avery over when eight year old Catriona called them a ‘lily-livered arse’ at the dinner table for taking the last sticky toffee pudding. It had made them laugh so hard their chest hurt, and in an attempt to form a truce with the child, offered to split it with her instead. 

It had been a fair offering, it seemed, as they’d never been called such a thing again. 

“You know, I’ve never thanked you before.” They mused, dropping back onto their elbows before lowering themself to lay on the floor of the gazebo. “Edrine doesn’t have any siblings, and their cousins are all quite younger than them, so making a friend their age means the world to them. They look up to you - bloody better than the Griogal boy, don’t tell anyone I said that - and I am happy that they won’t have to walk this path alone.”

Catriona paused, tilting her head as she used the back of her hand to wipe the frosting away from her mouth. “What do you mean?”

Avery raised a brow, fingers lacing together to rest over their abdomen where they lay. “In regard to the Barony. You and Edrine are in a unique position, being so close in age and both with clear claims to your respective titles. It can be hard to live that life, there’s no doubt about that, but thankfully your mother and I are young enough to give you both plenty of time to find your way before that.”

Catriona stopped mid bite of the treat they had been given, their stomach suddenly heavy and the taste soured in their mouth. 

Her mother had said something like that, once, a hand placed on either of her cheeks and her rings - one a heavy opal from Catriona’s stepfather, the other the Canonach family signet - cold against her skin. 

You’re in a special place, sweet Catriona. One day Kintyre will be at your feet, but you cannot forget the difficulty you will face when it happens. I only hope I can give you enough time to find the way you need to go.

She swallowed slowly, then set the cupcake aside, half finished and suddenly not as appetizing.

“What are you talking about?” 

There were a few beats of pause before Avery sat up straight, a concerned look clear on their face as they turned to look her in the eye. 

“Catriona...honey, has your mother not told you?” They asked gently, and slowly, she shook her head. Avery sighed heavily, raking a hand through their hair before letting their elbows fall to rest on their knees. Catriona shifted, resting her hands on one of Avery’s arms and giving them a pleading look that made them suck in a breath through their teeth. 

“I don’t know, kiddo, I don’t want to upset Senga if she wants to have that talk -”

“I deserve to know.” The child said firmly, even as their eyes began to prickle with tears, even as their lower lip noticeably began to quiver. “It’s my life, too. It’s not fair to keep things from me.”

A part of her knew any child in Rosinmoor would have been delighted to have a life at any of the seven estates, and Catriona wasn’t oblivious to the privilege she had been given. But even if it were gilded in gold, a cage was still a cage, and Castle Kintyre had become hers. She envied her cousins, free to go where they want and do what they please, envied the stories of Rosafearn and longed to explore on her own, but it hadn’t been a part of the hand she had been dealt. 

But maybe...maybe if they knew what frightened their mother so much, they could try and ease her worries, and get a little more freedom in turn. 

At her desperate yet hopeful expression, Avery let out a frustrated sigh, propping their chin in their hands. 

“Your mother should have absolutely told you by now, but that’s a grievance I’ll take up with her. You’re eleven, you’re long since capable of at least understanding.” They grumbled, clearly irate, then straightened, tone softening as they addressed her again. “Catty, what do you know about the line of succession?”

“I know everyone’s names. There were a lot of people before Auntie Malvina.”

“Everyone?”

Catriona nodded eagerly. “Yes, from the family tree book in the library. There’s Cliamon, of course, and then Donacha Carleigh, Muiri Lùtair, Juliet Lùtair, and then -”

“Okay, everyone, I believe you.” Avery held up a hand, an amused look on their face. “Stars, my uncle would have loved you. I couldn’t remember what I had for breakfast when I was your age, let alone the whole family tree. But what I meant was if you know how each leader is chosen?”

She had to pause at that, brows furrowing, trying to recall back to that book - they knew it well, the carefully bound leather and the tattered navy ribbon tucked between the pages - but couldn’t remember anything like that from what they’d read. It was always simply passed from family member to family member, but minimal explanation as to why. 

“I don’t know.” She said eventually, and that sinking feeling grew somewhat heavier. “I thought it was because she just got married, I guess. I know when Aunt Malvina became Baroness, she had just gotten married to Aunt Lorraine, and mother just got married to James, but now that I think about it, I don’t remember if that was the same for great grandma Sorcha…”

Avery nodded slowly, setting a reassuring hand on Catriona’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “It makes sense. Don’t stress, Catty, it’s a reasonable conclusion. Would you like me to explain how it works?”

When Catriona nodded, they continued, eyes fixed on a vibrantly colored butterfly bush just beyond where their feet rested. 

“I’m the oldest of three, so the Barony was going to pass to me no matter how many siblings I had. But my uncle, the last Baron, was older than my father, so he was the heir. And before him it was my grandmother, the Baroness, who was the oldest, and then her aunt, and so on and so forth. But the one thing they had in common was that they were each the oldest of their generation of the family, and thus, the crown passed to them.”

Catriona felt as if they could have been sick. 

��Because they were the oldest.” She echoed, oblivious to Avery’s nod, as the realization dawned on them. 

She was the oldest of all their cousins. Sachairi was the same age - eleven - but was a few months younger, born in November to Catriona’s September. That distinction was made clear to Catriona at a young age by their mother, but they never understood why, nor did they particularly care for that exact reason.

Their chest squeezed, and it felt as if they couldn’t breathe, thinking back to all the changes they had witnessed since her mother had been announced as the next Baroness. She had a handful of ladies in waiting, like Malvina, and advisors and guards and never being alone and never leaving the palace without an escort just in case, because it was ‘better to be safe than sorry”. 

Catriona hated that phrase. It was the reminder she received every time she complained about any of her mother’s rules, because mother only wanted her to be as safe as possible, and she would rather be overprotective than risk something happen to her because she wasn’t safe enough. 

But knowing this, now? They felt as if they had no chance of leaving the cage at all. When she was old enough to choose to leave, she’d have to stay, because being the oldest meant you were supposed to be the Baronet. 

“But I know everyone’s name. Malvina wasn’t the oldest, Uncle Ualan was. And Aunt Grace and Cameron are both older than mother, so maybe our family is different? Maybe it doesn’t have to be the oldest, maybe I don’t - I don’t -” Catriona’s chest heaved, and she let out something between a wail and a whimper, making Avery jump as she began to cry. “I don’t want this, Avery, I don’t…”

Quickly, Avery scooped them up, pulling them into a tight embrace and gently rubbing her back to try and soothe her as she sobbed into the starched white collar of their shirt. 

“Okay, okay...Catty, breathe, honey, I need you to breathe for me. Deep breath in, deep breath out, okay?” Look at me.”

Slowly, Catriona looked up, and Avery dug a kerchief from their pocket, offering it to her when she dragged the back of her hand across her cheek. 

“You like your words, right? I have one I want you to remember. Can you do that for me?”

When she nodded, Avery gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Abdicate. It means to renounce, or give something up. I want you to remember that word, because you have a long time before you need to make the choice, but I want you to know that you have the choice - but abdicate is the word we use for saying we don’t want the title. It means you give it up to the next person, and they get to decide what to do. Your uncle Ualan probably abdicated - you’d have to check, but if he's older, it’s what makes sense - and I know your Aunt Grace and Cameron did. And I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you this, but you’re right, it is your life, and you deserved to know. I know it’s a lot to take in, but I hope that knowing all the options means you can make the right decision later, when the time comes, because you deserve that much. Okay?” 

She sniffled quietly, rolling her lip between her teeth, the simple white kerchief twisting between her hands as Avery leaned back to get a better look at her face. 

“Do you want to go find your mother?”

“No.” Catriona murmured, their grip almost white knuckled on the kerchief in question. “I don’t want to ruin her day. She’ll get upset.”

The ‘with me’ was unspoken, but Avery seemed to notice, brow creasing as their gaze fell to her tight hands and gently laid a hand over hers to try and ease the tension there. 

“What about your grandmother? I saw Myrna just before I came out, she was speaking with the Lord Consort Griogal, so she shouldn’t be hard to find given he’s wearing something of a peacock blue today -”

“I don’t want to go inside.” Catriona blurted out. “I...I’m sorry, Baronet, I shouldn’t ask you to -”

“Avery.” They squeezed her hand again, this time a little more firmly - not harshly, or painfully, but enough to make her look them in the eye as they gave her a comforting smile. “You’re not asking the Baronet to do anything. You’re asking your friend’s parent for help, and that’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Would you like me to ask your grandmother to come outside?” 

The child nodded, and Avery stood up, ruffling her hair gently before they stepped down onto the path again. 

“Stay here, sweetheart, it’ll be easier for her to find you that way. Shouldn’t be long.”

As Avery began the trek back to the great hall, they couldn’t help but glance back, watching Catriona slump against the rails along the gazebo steps and picking up the pace to cross the stones a little quicker. 

*     *     *     *     *

Once Myrna had slipped from the great hall, Avery couldn’t help but drift toward the broad windows overlooking the garden, following the small shape of the older woman until she came within sight of the gazebo and Catriona’s even smaller form leapt up and raced to meet her halfway. Myrna scooped her up and carried her further into the garden - and Avery found themself staring at the point where they disappeared, away from the gazebo and away from the castle to somewhere unknown. They were only broken from their reverie when arms wrapped around their waist, and had it not been such a familiar 

“Hello, darling.” Rima murmured, pressing a kiss to the back of their shoulder and lacing her fingers together over Avery’s abdomen. “You were gone for a while. Did you get lost in the gardens?”

“No, I was talking to Senga’s bairn. She wants Edrine to visit when they feel better.”

“Well, hopefully it’s soon.” Rima hummed softly, pressing her cheek to Avery’s back and giving them a squeeze as the music in the hall shifted to a new melody. “We should probably stop in Rosafearn before we travel home. They’ve got the candies Edie likes in one of the shops down there, it might cheer them up about missing the party.”

When Avery didn’t reply, Rima frowned, slipping around their side and tucking herself under her partner’s arm to get a better look at their face. 

“What’s wrong, Ave? You have that...face.”

Avery chuckled, turning their head to kiss Rima’s temple. “What face? You like my face.”

“I do like your face, but this is the ‘I’m having a crisis and maybe my dear wife can help’ face, and I am the dear wife.” She smiled cheekily as she pinched their side, glancing out the window briefly to see if she could find what they were fixated on and coming up with nothing. “Spill, spouse.”

After a few beats of pause, Avery sighed, leaning their cheek against Rima’s forehead and closing their eyes. “How much do you know about Senga?”

“Not much, she’s a little more than simply closed off. New Baroness, obviously. If you want to know about her, you might have better luck with Myrna or her husband. Or maybe Malvina, if you’re wondering about politics.”

“Mm. I thought so. Perhaps we should invite Myrna to stay with us again. I have questions, but...I’m not sure I should ask Senga, or I might make something worse.”

Rima pulled back slightly, brows furrowing and earrings tinkling as she tilted her head in curiosity. The wordless question made her spouse nod, glancing around to make sure they had no eavesdroppers before they continued. 

“Earlier, when I was talking to Catty...I mentioned that Edrine looks up to them because they’re in the same position. And she had absolutely no idea what I meant, but essentially I explained that I meant because they were both heirs, and she just...completely panicked. I think if I’d gone much further than I did she’d have a full panic attack right there in the garden.”

“She had no idea? We started talking to Edrine about it when they were eight for just that reason, so they weren’t blindsided by it.”

“Not a clue. And the way she reacted when I asked if she wanted her mother, it just…” Avery blew out a frustrated sigh. “Something doesn’t feel right, Rima, and I know it’s not my business, but -”

“If it were Edrine, you’d want someone to look out for them, too. I know.” Rising up on her toes, Rima kissed Avery’s cheek. “Myrna already asked to travel back through Ardaleith with us. Let’s get through the night, and tomorrow, we’ll figure out the next step.”

“Alright…alright.” Avery was quiet for a few moments before they spoke again, warm smile on their face. “What would I do without you?”

“Suffer, more than likely.” Rima lifted a hand as if to inspect her nails, her wedding bands flashing in the low light. “Or at the very least be bored out of your mind at formal functions. Admit it, I’m the life of the party no matter where I go.”

With a laugh, Avery pulled Rima into a tight embrace, ignoring her playful protests and peppering the top of her head with kisses before they set their chin on her head. Their gaze eventually drifted out the window again to the spot where Myrna and Catriona had disappeared, thinking of that white-knuckled grip she had had on the kerchief. 

But she’d be okay. She had Myrna, now, and Avery couldn’t think of anyone the child would want more for comfort considering how close they were. 

Avery just hoped Catriona would be okay long enough for them to do something. 

[beneaththetangles]

Leah for Rachel: On Tower of God

What do you desire the most? Honor and pride? Authority and power? Money, and all sorts of shining riches? Revenge? Helping, or saving, or mattering to someone other than you (even when you’re not piloting a giant robot)? Or perhaps… something even more significant, more transcendent?

No matter. Reach the top of the tower, and it will be yours. Whatever you may be looking for, you will find it there. That’s what its Guardian, Hadon, says. That’s what every character in this show believes.

Tower of God (Kami no Tou) tells the story of Rachel, the girl with golden eyes who left everything to climb, desiring to shine like the stars. And of Bam, the boy who went after her without a desire of his own. So starts a quite atypical shonen, based on a beloved webtoon, with cartoonish, colorful, quite original designs, powerful music (“TOP” by Stray Kids is an opening for the ages), references to the book of Genesis, and a deep, unflinching depiction of sin, by which I mean evil of the darkest kind, the only true evil, chosen by the human free will, in a way that can poison the universe and kill that soul forever.

The human heart and its darkness are certainly at full display at Kami no Tou. Its colorful tower of broken dreams and people who are constantly left behind has a constant aura of threat and dread, even in the more innocent scenes. Despite the swords, powers, characters who combine medieval, fantastic, contemporary and futuristic styles, and the clever ways of overcoming difficult challenges, this is not the Heaven’s Arena of Hunter x Hunter, and it certainly doesn’t have that show’s leniency with the murderous organizers of these challenges for super-talented individuals.

As Bam goes up, level after level, we come nearer to the ultimate temptation, the fall, the consequences like concentric waves, and the dark mystery of evil, a mystery that defies understanding and rational explanation. One that is linked with all the pain and suffering in the world, with the reason why reality (Kami no Tou’s and ours) constantly breaks into painful fragments and goes into cycles of horrifying self-destruction.

A nameless boy awakes without memories in a system of caves where he cannot see the stars. He is taken care of by a kind, joyful girl with golden eyes. She heals him, and patiently teaches him, and soon becomes his entire world. She has a dream, too—to see the stars, to shine like them. She will ultimately depart, leaving him behind to enter the Tower.

But he doesn’t want that. He wants to be with her. Not romantically, I think, or not exactly. “I belong to her,” he says. Rachel is, especifically, someone Bam adores, his point of reference for everything, and he just wants to have her around, even if it’s not as an equal.

At the beginning, I compared this show with The Divine Comedy, Dante’s medieval poem about following the light of the loved one who has departed to Heaven. But this is a show about Babel, about a world in which humans fight to reach the skies and become like God, masters of good and evil. In our world, the limits of human power, coordination and communication (miraculously brought upon humanity for the first time at Babel), avoid a sustainable deification. And the tower, thank God, is forever left unfinished.

Not so in Kami no Tou. The desires of the heart have been completely instrumentalized to serve the present ruler. The Tower stands, every floor as great as an entire continent, and the tower itself is an empire, ruled by King Jahad, a Darwinian monarch who was the last to reach the magical top.

The characters surrounding are dangerous people, who soon reveal that they are just broken, very human individuals with a desire so strong as to risk everything. Khun is a banished prince from a well-known, powerful family. Rak the dinosaur and Haru the samurai just want to be the strongest. Anaak seeks revenge. Shibisu would like to be rich. Endorsi is a Princess of Jahad, and needs to keep her status. These are all lovable people, fun and relatable, but something is clearly wrong with them all. And something is wrong with us, too. Bam is going to learn that in ourselves, just beneath our daily reality, there is unspeakable evil, irrational, horrifying, linked to the worst evils we know, only awaiting the opportunity to manifest itself. Indifference and hate for the people we are supposed to love. A thirst that could devour others if they get in the way. Monstrous vanity, lies, violence, dreadful, intimate idols. The deep betrayal of everything that is good and true, of God and of love. And the realization that all that has been there from the beginning.

Though I liked this anime from the first episode, I think it reaches his peak with a certain twist that everyone remembers. So, spoilers for Tower of God. And I strongly advise you to experience it firsthand.

Bam becomes popular in his circle of self-centered friends because of his selfless, innocent personality that reminds them of what they have lost, or just encouraged them to help him. He wants to be with Rachel, to help Rachel. And he works hard.

In The Pilgrim’s Regress, C. S. Lewis’ version of the classical allegory, every so often a chapter is titled “Leah for Rachel.” This is a reference to the story of patriarch Jacob, who worked seven years to marry Rachel, the youngest daughter of Jethro and his loved one, who tricked him into taking his eldest daughter, Leah, instead, so he would have to restart the process to reach Rachel. In Lewis, this expression refers instead to the pain of the human heart which falls into the trap of egoistic, self-centered sexual acts when its desire for the bright, the eternal and infinite, symbolized (Utena-like) as a castle in the sky, attracts it from the distance. But, as Kami no Tou tells us, it can be just about anything. A person or a relationship, a position or a treasure, a story we tell to ourselves, a moment of pleasure or a momentary relief, an urge, can seem to us like the shining gate to a greater, more god-like world, as stars are for Rachel.

It is only afterwards that the heart recognizes, with bitterness, that over the top of the tower, there is only a darkness that engulfs you, that becomes you, that is akin to voluntarily sacrifice love and meaning, bonds and identity. And that is what happens to Bam’s Rachel.

I always trusted Rachel to have a good reason for having abandoned Bam. As Khun, I saw the warning signs. Bam was not being objective. It is wrong to idealize a person so much, to adore her, to put the entire weight of your own existence on her. First, you will never know her this way. Second, you may be more easily tempted by evil, as she betrays your hopes. But Rachel’s smile was kind and humble, and she was somehow radiant. Her character design showed that someone had thought of her with care and admiration. She had taken care of Bam, a perfect stranger, as a kind, patient, loving sister would. And I think any of us, looking the sky at night, have been filled of this longing, this thirst that Lewis calls the “Joy” and the Spanish translation, el Dulce Deseo, the Sweet Desire. I certainly never expected the chosen one, for whom all those sacrifices had been made, to willingly push Bam into the abyss to go up. It is a perfect moment of treason, sound off, seeing her go up in slow motion while Bam falls.

And then, there is the flashback. Where we only had watched her sadness, her darkness, her bitterness, her vulgarity, her spite, her greed, were all revealed. A character who was full of light, able to inspire, freely scarred herself in such a way that the thought of her achieving her goal, watching the stars at the top, is just unthinkable. Hadon himself tells her that, when he sees her cowardice. It will never happen. She’s just not capable of that sort of pure happiness. And her inner evil does not cease to grow.

And, if you were wondering, Rachel is the character in which I see myself the most.

I am a sinner. By which I mean that I habitually do things that I judge to be monstrous, world-shattering, dark and loveless beyond all rationality. Not the sort of things that may end up with me in prison, perhaps, or not often. But maybe they should. There is a seed of destruction in them, sometimes so manifest to me that I hold no doubt that the distance between it and the more showy and horrifying forms of evil is only a matter of opportunity and means.

While I’m still young, I’m convinced that there are deeper sins in me I cannot yet fully grasp, like frozen icebergs beyond the surface of my mind and soul. Also, I feel loved by God, with a love even more devoted, sacrificial and deep than Bam’s love for Rachel, a love that would, and does, travel any distance and fight any enemy just to see me happy. Whenever I sin gravely, I freely and consciously choose to hurt and betray a real person who has hope in me, and who has bought an opportunity for happiness for me, my only opportunity for happiness, at the price of His blood.

My whole being and personality, created for the good, become a carcass, a walking lie. I’m totally conscious that, for any of them, it would be just and appropriate that I should never taste happiness of any sort in all eternity. And why would I do thing of that sort, again and again? I don’t really know. It is a whim, or something that shines, or a perverse hope that this time, I will reach some happiness that way.

So, as you can see, I am every bit a son of Eve, and every bit a brother of Rachel.

If what the presumptuously named Tower of God offered was real happiness, there’s no way King Jahad would be such an egoist, murderous jerk, or that his followers would be as petty, perverse, and traitorous as they are. Neither Rachel or I will become happy or God-like by ascending the tower of human power and human pride. If we aren’t deformed and destroyed during the ascent, we are sure to meet just pain and betrayal at the top.

The one who tempted Eve and Adam to sin was an angel already in Hell. In the case of Adam, there was also the person who had already fallen, and was not happier or wiser for it. In the case of Rachel, the people of the Tower play that role, because it will be interesting to see how low she falls. And she falls really low. I know this. To some extent, so does she.

But we both forget, because we see sometime pleasing to the eye, and we infer that it would feed our hungry souls, and that we would be wiser, more powerful, and happier, even if we have to deform and destroy ourselves and the people around us and betray the purest love to achieve it. Aided by the original tempter and other human beings, we convince ourselves that we will be like loveless gods, masters of good and evil.

And we are increasingly desperate to get it at any costs, whatever may happen. I don’t think the scene in which Rachel eats the red apple is unintentional.

Of course, this is only one form of temptation. After the Fall, we can ignore the fact that there are some things that are worse than pain, and even than death, and corrupt ourselves hoping to avoid something that we feel would destroy us. Rachel won’t face the terrible creature Bam, guided as he is by love, goes against. She lets Hoh’s life be destroyed. Sin destroys our own courage, our ability to be signs of God for one another, as we were created for. And the salary of sin is pain, confusion and death. And scandal, the strike against love and hope in the hearts of those around us, that may tempt them to sin, too.

Scandal is a sin Our Lord condemns in the strongest terms. “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Because, as we see with Bam and Rachel, what is done to the scandalized is just like that. To believe in true love, in God, in life, after such a betrayal is very difficult.

A scarred, somber, changed Bam emerges from the abyss, pursuing Rachel. This time, he wants an explanation. In future seasons, I think, we will see the extent of the wound she has inflicted him, and to what extent his innocent heart that inspired so many of the other characters and gave them a path has been hardened, and inclined to lovelessness and sin.

What will Bam do? I don’t know. What I know is what the One who has his place in my equation did, again and again. Which was, and is, starting again and again the path into the loveless and dangerous world of fallen Humanity to reach me again, and bring me such a love that I can be moved, and cry, and change.

Jacob worked for seven more years. Betrayed by a Leah, the Lord will still fight so that her inner Rachel arises, and ultimately triumphs, whatever it takes. So that the Tower is broken, and the bridge is built, one in which we can follow Christ in His Cross, in His Ascension, to the loving embrace of a Father who awaits every day His prodigal son, His prodigal daughter, to celebrate their rescue and restore their happiness. So that the present promise doesn’t become a lie, but a hopeful, humble truth so that we are able to bring hope, and not despair, to each other, On the only condition that we acknowledge our sins and confess them, putting them in His hands, Christ will return them to us as something that He willingly suffered for us, for love.

Our evil, Rachel’s evil, will be countered by a powerful, rich, sacrificial love which will become our own, for a beating heart of flesh, that of a hero, that of a heroine. One that is able to reach the true light our hearts thirst for, and display the true power and potential of the human heart and the human will, when they accept God, as shining vitrals, each with their own colors. If we cling to His hand and walk this path to the end, we will be saved.

What do you desire the most? Are you sure? Perhaps there is something even greater. A love that burns endlessly without consuming the loved one. A light brighter than the stars.

God’s way is not the way of Babel, the way of the world. He gradually purifies our wishes, enlarges our hearts, and shows us the true nature of those signs as signs of hope that bring us true joy when we are loyal to their true meaning, even when that entails going beyond them or rejecting them here and now.

When I thought Rachel may have had a good reason to left Bam behind, it was because these reasons exist in the path of true love. God pointed the stars to Abraham the nomad, old and sterile, promising to grant him the wish of his heart, to be the father of a great family, a great people. But when the time came, he had to renounce to everything, even to the son God had granted him, and hope against all hope, believing that God could even raise the dead. God gave Abraham what He had promised, and more that he could have ever hoped for, because that’s God’s own way of doing things, and that’s how He overcomes evil.

While they may not be not as corrupted as her, the characters of Kami no Tou generally reason like Rachel, not Bam. It was Hoh who was tempted and destroyed, but it could have been anyone. But sacrificial, generous, life-affirming, pure love like that of Bam, even if it entails suffering, has a great power of attraction, and its strength makes those who embrace it truly powerful. It creates communion. Its logic trumps the logic of this world, the logic of Babel, which rises against it, which tries to hurt it by temptation and scandal.

I hope Kami no Tou continues being the kind of show which illustrates this beautiful paradox. How those who cling to their own lives are lost, and see increasing despair, despite their efforts, but those who lose them for the sake of Christ, of the purer love there is, achieve true happiness. As Chesterton puts it in his Ballad of the White Horse:

“Our monks go robed in rain and snow, But the heart of flame therein, But you go clothed in feasts and flames, When all is ice within;

“Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb Men wondering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery“.

Let’s fight, not the fight of Babel, chasing after idols and illusions, but the good fight against evil and sin. And may Leah/Rachel, full of light and hope, come to cry and find salvation, and receive as a gift the shine of the stars, with a heart that can accept it, and a thousand other stars in her firmament.

=====

Tower of God can be streamed at Crunchyroll.

[kkysolo]

Stuck on You / Chapter One

You curse him for it, sometimes. Loathe him for it - for how he’s made you, his parents, his friends feel. How he’s broken them. Reduced all of you to nothing but fickle fragments that pass through time and space with little awareness, with little recognition, of what’s happening to them. At least, that’s how you feel. But the bitterness, the fury - it doesn’t last long. It never does.

Prologue 

Pairing: Ben Solo|Kylo Ren/Reader Setting: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, dystopia, modern, gangs. Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, war, gang violence, emotional hurt/angst, codependent relationships (eventual fluff, smut, romance).

A/N: Tense change from past to present because we’re shifting into the present timeline of the story. Also, if you’ve read any of my other work, you’ll know I tend to write in second person omniscient. I love a bit of head-hopping, keeps us on our toes, lol. It won’t appear in this chapter, but bear it in mind for the future. 

Chapter under the cut, and also here, on AO3. 

Summary: The year is 2084.

Despite its advances, society has collapsed on itself. The world is crooked, damaged, dying. Rezoned into new territories, separating the elite from the unworthy. Civilization is crumbling at your very feet, and in the midst of it all, your best friend, Ben Solo, has been missing for three years. You desperately cling to what’s left of him, hoping that he’ll come home, praying that things will fall back into place.

And then he does. And they don’t. Because life is different when you’re a scoundrel in the midst of a class war.

Now: 2084, Spring 

You’ve always hated spring. 

They used to call it the season of new beginnings, and new beginnings were good. But that was before. Now, starting over is nothing more than an expected, quotidian task each time the Empire rezones the land. Which is often. Too often to ever feel at home. Too often to ever really feel as though there’s a new beginning to be had. 

“It was the right thing to do, you know,” Rose smiles sympathetically in that way that she does, the kind of way that doesn’t make you feel pitied, but loved.  “Hm?” “Breaking up with Jon.”  “Oh,” you hadn’t actually given the situation much thought. He’d already retreated the back of your mind, an unimportant speck among an ocean of stress. “Yeah, I know.”  “Because you didn’t love him.” “I know.” “Because you love Ben.” “Rose,” you hiss, your head flying around the dimly lit room. Because that’s all it is, really - a room. They’d outlawed bars (at least, in the rezoned areas) six months ago. Your shabby little makeshift basement bar - ran by Ben’s mother, nonetheless - was an illegal, yet necessary sanctuary. “Would you stop? Someone will hear.” 

“Oh, stop,” she scoffs, taking a sip of highly illegal (and cherished) gin and lemonade. “As if everyone here doesn’t already know.”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, does it?” you mumble, twirling a bottle of beer between your hands. It’s a good one, not badly brewed and watered down. Leia, she gets the good stuff. How she gets it, you aren’t sure. “It’s not like he’s around.”  “He’s not dead,” Rose affirms. “He can’t be.” “What makes you say that?”

Because you believe it, too, you do. He can’t be dead - couldn’t possibly be gone. Because Ben, he’s strong. He’s good and he’s kind and he’s funny and brave and men like him don’t just die unknowingly. Men like him go down in glory - of that, you’re sure. 

“Because it’s Ben,” she shrugs. “He’s supposed to be running this place one day.” 

You nod, still dragging your bottle across the uneven wood of the table. 

“It’ll be awkward, though,” you sigh. “With Jon.” “You think so?” “I mean, yeah,” you lean back in your seat. “He’s still with the Resistance, I’m gonna have to see him all the time.” “Yeah, I mean, maybe missions will be awkward but,” she shrugs. “He’s not an idiot, surely he knows to, you know. Stay away.” 

You hum in agreement, taking a swig from your bottle. Ben would like this beer, you think. It’s bitter, like he likes. 

“Sweetheart,” Leia is behind you now, a gentle hand on your shoulder. “Could I ask a favour?” “Of course.” “Could you watch the place for me tonight?” She has that apologetic expression on her face she so often bears, and it pains you to think of her worrying to ask you something. “Han is home from his mission tonight, and I’d just love to see him, honey.”  “Leia, of course,” you place your hand atop hers. “You deserve all the time together you can get.”

And they do. They’d separated for several months after Ben’s disappearance, neither of them able to cope with the weight of it in a manner that allowed them any semblance of intimacy, any notion of peace. But they’d rekindled as much as they could of their relationship, and despite Han’s long missions, continued to work on it. 

“Thank you, honey,” she smiles softly, squeezing your hand before turning to a demanding patron. She gives so much of herself to so many people, you wonder how there’s any of her left. 

When Leia finally bids you farewell, you’re already shuffling around behind the badly crafted bar, held together precariously by planks and rusted nails. You’re not sure who built it - though you expect it may have been Poe - but you’re surprised it’s still standing after only one week of use. You pull another bottle of gin from a box on the concrete floor, and you scoff at the icy feel of it. The wicked cold from the exposed ground has kept it remarkably cool. You hope you’ll be able to shut the refrigerator off, in that case. It’s far too expensive to run. 

“Here,” you pour Rose another glass. She sits at the bar now, resting her chin in her palm. “Perk up a little, you’ve gotta keep me company.” 

Rose sticks her tongue out playfully. 

“Did you get settled in your new place?” She speaks into her glass and the sound of her voice vibrates through the liquid.

“Mhm,” You sigh, pouring a drink for yourself. It’s your second move of the year already - the Empire having pushed you out of every zone you’ve ever called home. When they come, ships and tie-fighters blackening the sky above you, you’re herded like goats to whatever new (and smaller) zone they deem suitable for nuisances such as you. For peasants such as you. “You?”

“Meh,” she shrugs. “I wish they kept me with you this time. I hate being by myself.” “Me too,” you murmur. And you do. You really do. “But it is what it is.” 

You glance to your left, eyeing the stacks upon stacks of boxes that pile up against the wall. All labelled ‘bottles’, ‘glasses’, ‘coasters’ in Finn’s terrible handwriting. There’s one that sits at the bottom, labelled only ‘our stuff’. Back in the old bar - the real bar - you’d had CD players (the old kind, from decades ago - you couldn’t afford anything else). You’d had string lights and flowers and Sabacc tables. You’d decorated the walls with photos - of you, of Ben, of the resistance. Of the people who owned and worked at the only establishment for fucking miles that conceived any happiness. And it was beautiful. It was perfect. 

“When’s Poe back?” Rose hums.  “I think he’s coming back with Han tonight,” She takes a sip of her drink. “Why?” “I really wish he’d move those fuckin’ boxes,” you grit. “Hide them in the back or something, but I can’t stand the sight of them.” 

Rose nods sympathetically. 

“He will,” She turns, then, as the sound of rain pummels against the ground outside. Though it’s a basement, there’s still windows, the kind that sit more toward the ceiling, the kind that are awfully awkward to open. She squints at them, and your eyes catch how she leans closer to get a better look. 

“You alright?” You lean toward her, resting your elbows against the bar. You can hear how it creaks with the pressure.  “Y-yeah I just,” she drags her eyes away, bringing her attention back to you. “I just thought I saw someone outside.”  “There’s lots of people outside,” you smile. “There always is.”  “No, I know, but they were like…” She looks back to the window. “They were crouching, looking in.” 

You sigh.

“Hopefully not an inspector for the Empire,” Rose turns back to you as you speak, and you smirk at her reassuringly. “That Armitage Hux prick has always had it out for me.” 

She laughs in that airy kind of way that she does, the kind of way that makes you bubble with gratitude - because you know her. You’re fortuitous enough, privileged enough to be around such a light, such an ethereal soul. You often wonder what you ever would have done without her. You often wonder if you’d have survived it - survived this, survived the loss of him, without her. 

“Maybe if you wouldn’t rile him up, he wouldn’t hate you so much.” “But it’s just so much fun to piss him off,” You grin. “He gets so flustered.” 

You stay like that, laughing together, until well after midnight. You’re glad for it, the distraction. You need it, even now. Even after all this time. Being alone - with your thoughts, with the gaping hole that sits inside your chest - doesn’t get any easier. They say time heals all wounds. You wish it would. It’s only made yours worse, only further infected it with spores of him, that burst and spread the ache right down into your bones. You curse him for it, sometimes. Loathe him for it - for how he’s made you, his parents, his friends feel. How he’s broken them. Reduced all of you to nothing but fickle fragments that pass through time and space with little awareness, with little recognition, of what’s happening to them. At least, that’s how you feel. But the bitterness, the fury - it doesn’t last long. It never does. 

When you trudge inside your new apartment (though new doesn’t seem very apt, perhaps crumbling would fit better), you feel him. He’s never been there, of course, but you feel him nonetheless. You feel him everywhere. In everything. And it haunts you - he haunts you. And he has no right to, because you know he’s not dead, he can’t be. 

You run through your nightly routine, finally readying yourself for slumber. You hope you’ll see him there, when you close your eyes and drift from hell into harmony. You hope you’ll find him nestled in the crevices of your subconscious. Because you know he’s there. He’s always there. And when you unlock your front door, when you prop open the windows before crawling under the sheets - you hope he’ll find you here, too. Nestled under the covers, waiting for him. 

And when you fall into deep sleep, into a dream - or a memory - of long ago, a dream of smiles and laughter and his honey-brown eyes, you don’t hear the door as it creaks and clicks open. You don’t hear the windows as they fall shut, the frigid breeze no longer assaulting the room. You don’t hear the footsteps, nor do you hear the breathing - panicked, rushed. 

When you’re asleep, you find him. And when you’re asleep, he finds you.

[jokertrap-ran]

(未定事件簿) EVENT!「致斯卡提的情诗」 [Tears of Themis] EVENT: A Love Poem to SKADI Translation (Chapter 1-06 新的发展: New Development)

*Tears of Themis Masterlist / Mobile Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *The tracking tag for ALL Event Stories will go under: #Tears of an Event *(y/n) is your name when in direct referral; otherwise referred to as MC.

Location: Vikya City

Johnny: Welcome back… That's not a bad look you have there; looks like you've gained much during your little trip.

MC: Yes; I've gained quite a lot of information as well as a new mindset.

Johnny: Great.

Johnny: It might be a little redundant to ask you this now, but...

Johnny: Do you still want to go down to the Mansion in person and explore its depths, beautiful young miss?

⊳Choice: Yes; I want to go there in person

MC: Yes; I want to go down to the Manor of Hermes myself and have a look.

MC: However, I'll be doing this with a different outlook than I previously had.

Johnny: A different outlook?

MC: Yes; just like I've told you before, the reason why I chose to head to the Mansion was because...

MC: Because of my "responsibility to Yao Yu and the potential readers of this article”.

MC: And I didn’t really care what the Manor’s like or what’s even inside it.

MC: But after these handful of simple investigations I did, I suddenly realized that...

MC: This “haunted” Mansion might actually be way more interesting than I thought.

MC: Those who know of the truth behind it protect it in every single way they can, sharing the same tacit understanding of keeping a sort of mutual “silence” about this matter.

MC: But why is this so? I wish to know of the truth. Therefore, I’d like to try my hand at it.

MC: That’s why, I’ll be going to the Mansion with this positive and open mindset from now on; this is what I truly feel. 

MC: I hope I will gain some meaningful things from this.

Johnny: Miss Yao was right; you’re really an eccentric one.

Johnny: Perhaps you may really be the one to bring a new “development” to the story that lies within that Mansion.

MC: ???

Johnny: It’s nothing; just me talking to myself.

Johnny: Oh right, let me give you a present as thanks for helping me collect the many different things for the Party.

Saying so, he procured a box-like object from his bag, passing it to me.

It looked pretty aged, like an old item that had seen many years. It had many marks on it, the "scars" left by its many years of age.

And it had a slightly odd-looking painting on its lid. There were four indentations on it, where something was seemingly supposed to be inserted.

Johnny: This box is called "Allie's Winter".

Johnny: The people of Skadi always say that "the things of utmost importance are always hidden the deepest"; and that Mansion's no different...

Johnny: The most special "truth" of it is hidden deep underground. And if that is what you ultimately seek, then "Allie's Winter" is an absolute necessity.

MC: You mean… There's a key or something hidden in this?

Johnny: You can understand it as such. However, the design of "Allie's Winter" is a little more complicated. Take a look here...

He pointed to the four indentations on the box.

Johnny: Each of these different segments are an imagery, representing something closely related to the Mansion: swords, flowers, some sort of strange symbols, and the flames of fire.

MC: Do these four segments… mean exactly what they depict?

Johnny: Originally, this box was embellished with matching gems inlaid in each segment when whole.

Johnny: But due to some unknown reasons, these gems have been shattered, and it's fragments are now scattered all throughout the Mansion.

Johnny: If you wish to learn of the "truth", then gathering all these fragments and piecing them together to make this imagery whole is what you should be doing first.

Johnny: Only when all of these gems are collected and placed together, will the four doors leading to the "truth" open.

Johnny: You'll be able to open "Allie's Winter" after you've finished investigating everything that lies behind those doors and obtain the final "guide" that'll lead the way.

MC: Alright then, I understand.

Johnny: Additionally, here's a friendly tip for you. Don't try to force "Allie's Winter" open. If it is ever opened in an incorrect manner...

Johnny: The mechanism fixed inside will destroy everything that's been hidden within.

☆⋅⋆…⋅─────────── ⋆⋅✾⋅⋆ ───────────⋅…⋆⋅☆

MC: …...

MC: And… Why did you give me something so important? Just because I wish to find out the truth of that Mansion?

Johnny: Of course not. If that was all you wanted to know…

Johnny: Then the current "truth" that exists within that Mansion would be enough to satisfy you, even if you didn't have "Allie's Winter".

Johnny: But what you've said earlier has proven and made me believe that you're different from those who act only for the brief feeling of gratification that comes after.

Johnny: You've got the qualifications required to possess "Allie's Winter" 

MC: So, you're saying that "Allie's Winter" is something that's only circulating within a very small circle of people?

Johnny: Well now… You'll know once you open that box.

Johnny: Alright, we've wasted plenty of time now. You shouldn't waste time; you should hurry and set out if you're already prepared.

Johnny: Adding on to that, if you happen to run into any difficulties in your investigations of the Mansion, and find yourself unable to proceed; maybe you can try going to the National Park of Mer De Glace and have a look there?

Johnny: An "eccentric" fellow has been there lately. Who knows, you might end up gleaning something meaningful from him.

☆⋅⋆…⋅───── ⋆⋅A Love Poem to SKADI⋅⋆ ────⋅…⋆⋅☆

Previous Part: (Chapter 1-05: The Ominous Place) | Next Part: (Chapter 1-07: The Beginning of a New Adventure)

[a-lil-perspective]

Remember Me/Holding On (For Dear Life)

A/N: The Bad Batch X Reader. Playing around with a scenario where the Bad Batch removed their inhibitor chips with Echo, thus forfeiting executing Order: 66, and they go incognito in faking their deaths thereafter. Reader doesn’t know so it’s full of angst? All-around switching up my writing a bit with this one. Feedback is always appreciated. Technically is a Reader insert but I also switched up the pronouns a bit. [Warnings: Mourning over death of loved ones, subliminal implication of suicidal thought] @shadow-hyder @starflyer-104 @thegoodbatch @kriffingunlucky @karpasia @obiorbenkenobi @everyonehasanindividuality (Tag List is open.:))

{~***~}

Clone Force 99. The Bad Batch.

A Clone Force To Be Reckoned With.

A whirlwind of gray plastoid and flashing crimson accents. A brewing swirl of personalities and a tempest of skill, bleeding together seamlessly. Much like their bond. Brothers by blood, and brothers in arms. A camaraderie unprecedented, a stellar example of unorthodoxy. Their story begging, no—demanding to be told.

I’m not the right person to do so. You’d do well hearing it from the four warriors themselves.

But they aren’t here. They’re gone.

Not gone... I must correct. Merely marching far away.

No, marching is too straightforward and monotonous for them, too regulated and predictable; a disgrace and offense to their overall prowess—those insufferable, lovable di’kuts.

Not marching: Clone Force 99 is ‘charging-headfirst-into-no-doubt-a-suicidal-battle-comprised-of-an-equally-crazy-strategy’ far away.

Yeah. That’s more like it.

Accelerated aging. The untrained eye would’ve been none the wiser. The span of a decade accompanying, yet their demeanors depicted a thousand lifetimes. Fine lines etched into coarse and defined features, each one a new resolve for each man to fight for more than just existing.

They constantly challenged me to find a new angle. Something I couldn’t find solely through the scope of Crosshair’s rifle. They cut through and canceled stereotypes, combatant through even the thick resistance of daunt and demoralization: a resilience stronger than even the sharpest cut of Sergeant Hunter’s knife. Their oddities and wonderfully endearing peculiarities: fully embraced and secured in a grip stronger than even Wrecker’s large endow of muscle. The four men: definitively and unknowingly hacking into and through even the most incredulous beings by way of their efficiency and bond—an impressive capability that gave even the ingenious Tech a run for his credits.

Their aura of commandeering and confidence incited fear, evoked jealousy, or channeled respect. I’d like to point out from personal experience that it was absolutely possible to acknowledge the manifestation of all three reactions simultaneously. The Bad Batch had a peculiar way of affecting people; almost comical, when I think about it. Enough to nearly bring a smile to my face.

They say a person never leaves you. Maker, I’m hoping that might be true. What started so perfect was over too fast.

They boasted a ferocity, but a tenderness. Each member carried their armor a little differently, a little heavier than the other. When you unlatched and peeled away the protective encasing, therein was a raw vulnerability: humanity. A vulnerability, not a weakness. A strength. One of many the unique quartet possessed.

At their core: living, breathing, feeling, humans; ideal candidates concerning the way war tried to brutally strip them of that very individuality. But they protected as fiercely as they fought. They loved as passionately as they clung to their varieties of honed adeptness. Their loyalty and liberty was as explosive as the colorful destruction left incessantly imprinted throughout battlefields.

It’s borderline treasonous to say, that the Republic could’ve majorly benefitted from some propaganda courtesy of those four. Oh, how many times I tried to convince their stubborn and surprisingly bashful selves of the prospect—seriously, wouldn’t four handsome Commandos inspire you?

They seemed to think otherwise. Kriff. From the outside looking in, I would’ve enlisted in the militia the minute I saw those dark clad figures, shrouded in enigma and purpose, handsomely poised just above the text of some patriotic slogan that would’ve captivated me in a state of naivety and infatuation. Yes please. Sign me the hell up.

Not exactly how our first encounter went, but, not that far off, actually. The Sergeant of Clone Force 99 can could recall the story in great detail.

It hurts. I want to lift the pen and stop. But I press on.

On a more lighthearted notation: what you probably also didn’t know is that the boys kept a running bet. Gotta keep things lively when awaiting their next set of intel, right? Though more often than not, the four men each managed to singlehandedly work up the energy of a wild Loth-Cat, and of their own accord, impatiently and prematurely sprung into action; innately preferring to take charge whenever opportunities present. The indefinite cardholders, if you will: you play on their terms, or not at all—a subtle implication towards their fastidious and absolutely brilliant battle plans. Part of their aesthetic and reputation, you could say. I say with all affection: pure mischief, that bunch.

To their enemies: may you experience reverence and/or embarrassment in the 250+ fluent ways the Bad Batch could (or did) utterly kick your ass. In which case: may you rest in peace thereafter. Take that, shabuir.

Anyway, I digress; though not before the brief accredit of my improved fluency in the Mando’a dialect directed to the tutelage of Clone Force 99. Their methods define as unparalleled and most certainly, never present with redundancy.

Betting was limitless to the four, especially along the seemingly most insignificant points of interest: Who can find the best hiding spot for Hunter’s thieved bandana? Toss some credits in. How long will Tech go without sleep this time? Credits in the betting pool. How soon will Crosshair run out of his next batch of toothpicks? Bet.

As for me? I would’ve bet on us. We were untouchable. I always told them it’d take a whole damn army to drag me away.

Ironically, it took a half-dozen Clone Troopers to drag me away from the gravely man bearing news of their tragic fate.

I lost a part of me I’ll never find. But as sure as it is my obligation and desire to consistently—always— remember those men in everyday passing, it is more my duty to make certain their legacy is not lost. It’s my priority, the dedication of time and breath, to depict the breadth of their influence.

You should remember the skilled men donning a palette of gray and red. The men adorning variants of a skull insignia and two matching digits: 99. Distinct characteristics, delineate biographies demanding to not be cast aside nor torn from the pages of history.

Ramikadyc—a Commando state of mind. An adjective of the Bad Batch. An inherence that extended beyond their overt classification, one that outreached towards others, an absolute; an honorable invitation bridging the gap and instilling unification between fellow Clone brethren.

A minuscule sampling scratched within this piece as a broken illustration, of the life of the greatest Commando unit to ever exist, and of incredible men.

This is not the end. It’s just the beginning.

Be’Bes’Bavar Ashnar Olaror.

The Cavalry Has Arrived.

{~***~}

Her swollen wrists flexed to knot the crimson accessory around the piece of flimsiplast at last; a seal. It never got any easier to re-read her hastily scribbled Aurebesh requiem. It folds in on itself, the material crinkles, informing the woman that her hands are trembling as she performs the simple task involving dexterity. A dark splotch newly materialized on the worn fabric of bandana vaguely registers to her, of the salty tears now welling in her eyes. She inhales sharply and awkwardly bends to lay the rolled note to rest in the garden of stone and corpses. And with it, the remnants of her already fragmented composure.

Her throat was tight again. She struggled in swallowing deep anguish amidst the sharp winds that chapped at her soft facial features and stung against the dry sclera of her red-rimmed eyes. The buzz of the cold did little to counteract the hot flush rising in her cheeks. Time hung in stasis, yet the throb of her ankles indicated a semblance of how long she’d actually stood motionless at the foot of the weathering graves.

Or maybe the ache was from the extra weight carried purposefully around her newly swollen abdomen; she could no longer tell which. The deep pang in her chest robbed her of a breath, and she felt as empty as the four corpses now six feet under the stars. The thud of a heartbeat—now two—felt cruel and indignant within the graveyard and for a millisecond, a sickly enticing one, the DC series cinched at her hip was, obscurely, the most alluring décor amid the melancholy earth.

She startled at the fleeting thought; gone as quick as it began, giving way to the flood of despair. Agony was quickly sinking it’s teeth, despondency was bearing it’s full weight on her shoulders, and respite has abandoned her. A strangled cry scraped from her dry throat, a familiar sound she’s produced a dozen times in the wake of his disappearance. Six months.

It felt like a lifetime.

She remembers in total recollection the last night she saw him. It replays like a broken holorecord every time her eyelids shut. A moment that robbed her of more time; a cruelty.

His dark eyes harbored solemnity. She gazed up in anticipation at him, a nauseating knot twisting deep in her belly. At the time, she didn’t register the feeling of dread. He told her not to worry, that everything will be alright. She should’ve been more intuitive, should’ve known those words were accursed in their own right; a distinct diction almost always bestowing a finality or goodbye.

But he was gentle and soothing with his words, albeit deliberate in presentation. In the quietude, she associates him with serenity. The man’s adoration for her transcended. His fingers curled around her own in emphasis as he pushed the newly gifted DC blaster pistol to her chest.

“From me to you.” A raised hand quickly cuts off her stubborn reiteration of her full capability and independence without the weapon in tow. “It’ll make me feel better for you to have this. Never know when you’ll need it.”

Times are changing. He desperately wanted to tell her, about everything.

“I just need you.” Her declaration is faint. The spindly man briefly clamps his tongue in quelling his own dire reciprocation threatening to spew. The faint ticking of a chronometer in the corner warns him not to break down and unravel here, it’s not the time. Not right now. Not yet.

Only when he departs.

“What you need is to be strong. For me. Okay?”

For the baby. She quickly extinguishes her pained cries. Her hand splays reflexively across her midsection in stoked remembrance, and the calloused pads of her fingers rub soothing circles in the stirring, where there was now pressure from the child‘s restlessness. Mando’a serenaded habitually from between her lips, along with a promise.

“Ner cyare ad’ika... I promise that you will know all about your family. Your Buir. Your wild Bavodu’e.” A strained chuckle unbridles, leaving a bitter taste, short and succinct before disappearing. A forlornly glance to the headstones. Her voice cadences. “They would’ve loved you. Someday, you’ll be able to feel them.”

“Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.”

Not gone, merely marching far away.

Something hopeful and inspiriting flits deep in her soul. Her lashes flutter upward and the stars are in a particular array of brilliance. It zips across the expanse of sky, like a ship jumping to hyperspace nearby.

“Ret’urcye mhi, ner cyare.”

Somewhere not so far beyond, she can feel his warmth; the tangibility of his deft fingertips resting assuringly at her shoulders, the wind now encasing her in a mimicry of his lanky but sturdy arms. She holds tight in his absence, and the wind resonates vivid echoes of his sultry voice just past the shell of her ear and bristles the stray strands matted to her tear streaked face.

He’s not here.

The sun remains persistent in rising and combating the dark, so she wills herself to stand amidst the devastation. An abrupt halt to her story—their story—left without a full narrative or plot to flesh out, now leaves her dubious over the already shrouded future.

A fond realization, no longer destined to be a memory—for memories are manifested from events already taken place—nevertheless flickers to the surface. The fondness remains just as palpable.

A memory never allowed to transpire, aggrievedly reminding her, a memory simply not meant to be. But she wills the strength to dream, anyway. She decidedly reaches for an alternate cover to write a new story in. It starts as a rough draft, but the growing bump of her abdomen is living proof of new beginnings, of continuing legacies and a beautiful piece that wholesomely envelops and accounts for the aching, missing one.

Not a memory; no. An assurance, a promising devotion to his origins inscribed on the delicate surface of her heart, and one day, sewed and etched into her child’s. Their child.

“Little Ram’ser: a sniper, just like your Buir.”

[dramastudent2021]

Making Performance 2 Blogs & Conclusion

Performance Overview

This American Life podcast autographically (mainly, aside from when they decipher Mrs Miller's letter) depicts a particular switched at birth story of the Miller's and McDonald's' daughters in Wisconsin, 1951. Our interpretation of the story's main themes/issues in which we are including: family (strongly family-orientated story, we see a journey of these two families brought together, but also how such a life-changing incident affects them individually and also as a family dynamic), relationships (permanently changing the bonds the family share etcetera. sibling relationships or parent/child relationships), community (both families express the importance of the involvement of being in a tight-knit Christian community. Many members of the church community suspect the switching of two daughters before the parents did. Lies/secrets (whether it is church members or the Miller family, some knew of the switch but kept it away from the women until they were told much later in life). Nature vs nurture (e.g. siblings Bob and Martha instantly connected, whereas Sue was raised with Bob but had opposite personalities, or when Sue was relieved for being brought up in the McDonald household instead of the Miller's because it was a different environment, etcetera). Betrayal (whether Mr and Mrs Miller's inability to speak out sooner on the situation, the Miller children, church community, or the hospital staff, they were blamed for not correcting the mistake sooner). Furthermore, favouritism (post-discovery of their switch, both Sue and Marti developed prominent insecurity in their relationships with the family they were brought up in, specifically, if they were going to be abandoned by their biological family member).

 In the beginning of the creative process, our group's creative vision for the performance was to initially decipher the switched at birth podcast in the category of events that happened within the story (Mrs Miller's letter, the Miller dinner party), potentially staging the piece where several characters are interviewed in 'present day' (for instance, Sue, Marti, Mrs Miller, and Mrs, McDonald) and having another version of these characters who re-enact present day's character's memories through visual flashbacks (some recorded, some live), we discussed the possibility of Mrs Miller's character writing or reading the letter in sections while flashbacks appear, our group mutually agreeing to wanting to captivating our audience's emotions through our themes (betrayal, relationships, etc), possibly showing the differences visually between both families (wearing contrasting colours, different lighting colours), involving the use of verbatim theatre by asking those closest to us what family means to them and quoting their response in our performance.  

 Some key dramaturgical decisions we made that led to creative breakthroughs/choices include: the back and white effect in our FlipGrids because not only did this help us to represent the era, but also later using this to differentiate the present to the compilation videos of the past, the layering of the distinctive audio (50s music, hospital sounds, etcetera) over visual/movement scenes, the use of some of our group's FlipGrid videos being trial runs/first attempts of some pre-recorded aspects (for example, in scene 1, specifically with the different colour bundled blankets for the audience to follow the babies being switched visually), the splitting of Mrs Miller's letter to the two women into sections so that the audience can see the progression of the story, and, additionally, the dinner scene and the creative changes in the true story (the emerging/changing the order of life events within the story) for dramatic effect within the performance.  

  Research

In a realistic scenario, the reality of having a child switched at birth with another infant is scarce. An article conducted in The Baltimore Sun in 1998 had reported that:'28,000 babies in every 4 million babies are switched at birth (some temporarily or permanently)' (Peterson, 2021). It equivalates to '1 mistake per every 1,000 baby transfers' (Gaille, 2017). During a short stay during a hospital (two days), an infant can be 'switched on average six times,' although the mistake is usually corrected before hospital staff hand over their infant. Between the years 1995 and 2008, 'only eight occurrences of baby switching were documented in the United States,' though such incidents were immediately corrected within hours or days of said mistake (Gaille, 2017).

 For switches that are not immediately corrected, legally, 'a hospital could be held liable under various theories including negligence, respondeat superior, res ispa loquitur, and negligent infliction of emotional distress' (Crane, 2000: 110). However, such liability 'only occurs if a patient suffers an actual injury' (Crane, 2000: 111). However, claims must be brought to court within 2-4 years (state-dependent) to avoid legal limitations.

 This American Life podcast delves deep into a particular switched at birth story of the Miller's and McDonald's' daughters in Wisconsin, 1951. Frequently referred to as the baby boomer generation, the 1950s was a decade and recovery and preparation for another war (Cold War). The societal norms of domesticity in the 1950s believed that 'marriage celebrated traditional gender roles' (Dorr, 2008: 27-48) in which 'women should be homemakers and men should be breadwinners' (Wikipedia.com). Author of Woman's Work: The Housewife, Past, and Present, Ann Oakley, describes a housewife's role to be a 'demeaning one, consisting of monotonous, fragmented work which brought no financial remuneration, let alone any recognition (Oakley, 1975: 23). A middle-class housewife in the 1950s duties consisted of 'organising and maintaining a home that emphasised the male breadwinner's financial success' (Oakley, 1975: 23). Many household manuals and cookbooks were released in this period, such as Robert Kemp Philip's Why Domestic Science: Affording Intellectual Reasons for the Various Duties Which a Housewife Has to Perform (1869). This manual which detailed the 'scientific principles which bear upon the Housewife's duties; so that she may not only know that she should do a thing, but WHY she should do it, and, knowing why to perform it all the more effectively and willingly,' (Philip: 1869: III). This lifestyle was a 'sought-after desire' (Gueren, 2011: 23), and having a 'booming economy,' made this lifestyle possible. By the mid-50s, '40% of Americans were living in the suburbs with, on average, 3.8 children, two cars and two television sets' (Zhang, 2013). For many housewives, their aspirations for a sense of individuality outside of being housewives and mothers, although 'only 38% of women went to college in 1958 compared to 57% in 1920, despite the availability of more federal aid to pay for university education in post-war America,' (United States House of Representatives, 2007).

 The domesticity of the standard 1950s family had a heightened 'model of masculinity that involved submission to Christ' (Coontz, 2007: 1208), with the Miller and McDonald family being a prime example of this. An example in their switched at birth story is when Mrs Miller was forbidden on acting on her maternal intuition of returning to the hospital because she instinctively knew Martha was not her child. Her husband reprimanded her because he did not want to return his child and 'obscure' claims that his 'hormonal' wife was so adamant about the doctor who had gracefully allowed his wife to deliver their child in the safety of the hospital. Mrs Miller quickly dropped it because she did not want to anger her husband further (as she feared him leaving her with their six young children to care for) but also because she had a sudden haemorrhage a few days after bringing Martha home. This instance was a depiction of the accuracy of sociological studies, making it 'frighteningly clear how frequent male aggression was and, indeed, how normal, accepted and silenced it remained,' that unfortunately, the Miller family were a subsequent example of that (Dorr, 2008: 27-48). The sad reality that domestic violence has only been a point of discussion legally around the world from the 1990s onwards and before the late 20th century, 'most countries there was very little protection, in law or practice, against DV' (Smith, 2008: 94).

 For our group's switched at birth performance, the companies/artists heavily influenced the development performance being Frantic Assembly and Mike Leigh. Frantic Assembly's works influenced us to tell an audience an exciting story in an engaging way, which is the quality we want in our piece. Additionally, a trademark element of Frantic Assembly's works is their creation of movements within scenes/piece in general, and including the creation of exciting transactions between scenes, which are elements we are highly considering to include in our piece in some way when we begin devising the staging of our piece. Another artist who has influenced us is Mike Leigh, who focused primarily on character-based devising. It will be a helpful attribute to our group's piece to educate us on successfully embodying our allocated characters in our piece through the close observation of Leigh's work.

  Digital Performances  

The three digital performances I have selected are Tom Marshman's Shakesqueer (2021), Sharp Teeth's Sherlock in Homes (2021), and You Are Here or Home: Part 1 (2021). These digital performances were used for inspiration for different techniques and additional dramaturgical options for our performances. While watching Shakesqueer (2021), I observed the combination of pre-recorded videos and live theatre throughout the performance. In terms of this dramaturgical choice that Marshman made, created a distorted reality and a non-sensical dream-like state that, left to audience's interpretation, could represent a coming-out journey through the mind's way of distracting us (overthinking – worry, wonder, fear of the reactions of those close to them but also society as a whole) and the desire for acceptance. The collaboration of different art forms/features (someone drawing a sketch live and Zoom's spotlight feature) provides the moment of intimacy the performer(s) aspire to achieve with their audience. Marshman's signature movements of returning to the closet throughout this piece and bringing us along with him indicated him experimenting (change of clothes) with different individuals and still being metaphorically in the closet to everyone. In the broader context of the piece being related to Shakespeare, it gave the impression of the lack of representation Shakespeare showed within his plays and sonnets.

Sharp Teeth's Sherlock in Homes (2021) was a fun spin-off of the famous Sherlock Holmes detective that was highly interactive in multiple ways (frequent polls, personal engagement – allowing the audience to directly interrogate performers before they switch out of the breakout rooms). This dramaturgical aspect demonstrated a considerable perk to live digital theatre space because it feels more of an online group discussion than heckling from a few outgoing audience members within a traditional stage environment. The latter seems more socially unacceptable even when it is significantly encouraged. The performers' digital frame gave audiences potential clues in the interrogation the audience members partake in. Our group considered this in the process of our piece (illustrating more show, not tell).

Abbey Theatre's Home (2021) was a pre-recorded digital theatre piece that delved into the mistreatment unwed mothers and children faced in institutions under Catholic rule in Ireland. Home (2021) was produced using relatively dark imagery to possibly signify its dark colour story with the dark contents of the piece, but also to illustrate the seriousness and lack of joy this period brought to many during this time in history.

  Evaluation  

In the aftermath of our group performance, I had my own individual creative development progress grow expediently as a performer, maker, and director through the drastic improvement in my ability to vocalise feedback within a group based on what I work well what needs improvement within our performance. Within the developmental process of our performance, the areas that worked effectively in our group, such as teamwork, went massively in our favour that we worked exceptionally well in being on the same wavelength not to have any substantial contrasting ideas on the creative direction the performance would go down. Each group member had an excellent work ethic/morale through our dedication and productivity during rehearsals in trialling out ideas early on, asking for feedback when applicable. My encouragement to other team members to contribute verbally to the significant creative breakthroughs to give their input before proceeding with other developments. The developmental process of the performance also came with its flaws that would occasionally hinder the progression of the piece. Examples of this include communication/listening (acknowledging and addressing any problems/queries group members had) and the group's inability to plan and organise (issues with scheduling had last-minute changes to rehearsals, confusing rehearsal times due to them changing weekly). I often felt like a hindrance with my lack of technical skills (editing videos together seamlessly, layering audio tracks and music over the visuals) and with the written contribution sector of our piece (script) due to my learning difficulty of dyslexia (group vastly progressing through the writing of the script and would slow the process down so would continue to contribute as much as I could verbally instead).

 In hindsight, if I were to do the same piece/something closely resembling this performance, I would want to educate myself before this semester's work in gaining the technical skills required to edit effectively because our group had a lack of individuals who could edit so the video content that needed editing fell on those who could do so. An important reminder I had whilst making this piece was time management. Time management was notably an essential lesson as a contributing member of this piece because I would actively check with group members due to having a busy weekly schedule for rehearsals that were at different times weekly. In future projects, I plan on using what I have learned to keep an open dialogue with future group members to clarify any uncertainties I have, no matter how small/insignificant I feel they are.

 The FlipGrid videos I felt were the strongest (access code: 388469):

Flipgrid | 2021mp2a

Flipgrid | 2021mp2a

Flipgrid | 2021mp2a

Flipgrid | 2021mp2a

Flipgrid | 2021mp2a

These FlipGrids were the strongest because they illustrated very early on in our performance's developmental process of our style (black and white) and helped us to see (in the third person) if we kept or remove any dramaturgical decisions our group made by (literally) stepping out of the frame.

  Bibliography

This American Life (2008). 'Switched at Birth.' Available at: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/360/switched-at-birth (Accessed on: Friday 7th May 2021)

Peterson, A L (2021). 'Mom Knew She Brought the Wrong Baby Home From the Hospital; 43 Years Later She Finally Reveals it to Her Daughter.' Available at: https://www.familytoday.com/family/mom-knew-she-brought-the-wrong-baby-home-from-the-hospital-43-years-later-she-finally-reveals-it-to-her-daughter/ (Accessed on: Friday 7th May 2021)

Gaille, B (2021). '21 Rare Babies Switched at Birth.' Available at: https://brandongaille.com/20-babies-switched-at-birth-statistics/ (Accessed on: Friday 7th May 2021)

Crane, R T (2000) 'Mistaken Baby Switches: An Analysis of Hospital Liability and Resulting Custody Issues'. Journal of Legal Medicine. Vol. 21, Issue 1 (March, 1), p. 109-124. DOI: 10.1080/019476400272828. Accessed on: Friday 7th May 2021

Gueren, C (2011). 'Identical Strangers: What Switched-at-Birth Twins Teach Us About Human Nature’. Psychology Today. Vol 44, Issue 5 (Sept-Oct), p. 23

Philip, R K (1869). 'The Reason Why Domestic Science: Affording Intellectual Reasons for the Various Duties Which a Housewife Has to Perform.' London: Houlston & Wright. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433006783413 (Accessed on: Thursday 13th May 2021)

Zhang, L (2013). 'The Pill: Birth of a New Woman.' Available at: https://archive.ph/20130105104848/http:/93778645.nhd.weebly.com/the-1950s.html (Accessed on: Thursday 13th May 2021)

Oakley, A (1975). 'Women's Work: The Housewife, Past, and Present.' New York: Pantheon Books. Available at: Woman's work : the housewife, past and present : Oakley, Ann : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (Accessed on: Thursday 13th May 2021)

United States House of Representatives (2007). 'Postwar Gender Roles and Women in American Politics. Available at: https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/Changing-Guard/Identity/ (Accessed on: Sunday 9th May 2021)

Smith, B G (2008) 'Domestic Violence: Overview'. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford England New York: Oxford University Press, p. 94 (Accessed on: Sunday 9th May 2021)

Coontz, S (2007) 'Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s James Gilbert'. The American Historical Review, Vol 112, Issue 4 (Accessed on: Sunday 9th May 2021)

Dorr L L (2008). 'The Perils of the Back Seat: Date Rape, Race and Gender in 1950s America.' Gender & History, Vol 20, Issue 1, pp, 27-48.

Wikipedia (2021). History of Women in the United States. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_women_in_the_United_States (Accessed on: Sunday 9th May 2021)

Marshman, T (2021). 'Shakesqueer' (Accessed on: Thursday 4th March 2021)

Sharp Teeth (2021). 'Sherlock in Homes' (Accessed on: Saturday 27th February 2021)

Abbey Theatre (2021). Home: Part One. Available at: Abbey Theatre | HOME Part One | Full Performance - YouTube (Accessed on: Monday 10th May 2021)

[artificiallyimplantedmemories]

@heroicpaths asked: 12. for one muse to wake the other because they’re having a nightmare  (from matt) meme: morning after starters

    Natasha is no stranger to the terrors of the night, waking with heart racing and breath threatening to gasp out of her. She tries to wake quietly each time, both because she's been trained to - one never knows who is around to see you at your most vulnerable - and because she doesn't want to wake Matt either. She's not always successful and, perhaps more worryingly, she doesn't even always notice that Matt has woken up until she feels a gentle hand in her hair, a grounding touch on her hip.

     It goes the other way too. Matt sometimes sleeps so fitfully that it's a miracle that he's functional the next day. Between staying up ridiculously late on patrol and having to work in the morning, if fragmented sleep gets to him, he might only manage three hours in a night. Natasha knows he needs more rest, but how can she possibly convince him that Daredevil can take a break when he can constantly hear things going wrong?

     Instead, she opts for gentle hands and gentle whispers, drawing him out of his bad dreams and bringing him back to the present. She lays her hands on his back and eases the knots away with practiced motions, even if she's tired too. She holds him close and kisses him until he's ready to remember that he's here with her and not lost in the haze that his mind has created.

     Tonight, it's his turn to help. Natasha had gone to bed without Matt, which is enough of a warning sign already that he follows soon after. He sits on the bed as she sleeps, reading the files for his newest case, when the tell-tale fidgeting begins. It's the barest hint of a thing, honestly, and Matt only spots it because he knows what to look for, but he reaches for her immediately. It's taken years of practice to get to the point where she doesn't pull a gun on him or worse for waking her up, but slow strokes across her arm and gentle whispered repetitions of her name being her back to consciousness.

     She shudders. These days, her nightmares usually revolve around Matt and Kiran being ripped away from her, sometimes because of someone who is out for revenge (against either Black Widow or Daredevil), sometimes because the shifter hunters have caught up to their child, sometimes... just because.

     She slides her arms around Matt, burying her face in his chest. Her breath only shakes for a moment longer before she has herself back under control, but her mind refuses to let go of the sight.

        (Both of them, dead in the apartment, torn apart by an explosive.                          Matt, curled protectively around their baby.           Matt, falling from a building, unable to deploy his cane in time,              Natasha's grappling hook not long enough to reach him.             Kiran, screaming as they're being dragged away while both          she and Matt are pinned to the ground by unknown assailants.   Natasha, returning home to find it empty, empty, empty like she deserves.)

     She curls in closer. She knows her brain likes lying to her but that doesn't always make it easier. Matt, darling beautiful Matt with his heart of gold, just holds her without judgement. He knows the monsters in her mind all too well.

     "Distract me," she says at last, when she can't make herself stop thinking about the terror stricken look on their faces. It would be easier if her dreams were more abstract, less realistic, more of a symbolic version of her fears instead of a real life depiction.

     Matt pulls her up to sit, kisses her gently and repeatedly, trading one sensation for another, until she feels a little less tightly wound, a little less tense. He pulls her his side, takes the file that's still next to him and places it on the side table for tomorrow, and begins speaking.

     "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman who lived in a little house in the mountains."

     Natasha can't help but raise an eyebrow. "A fairytale, Matty? What is this, a bedtime story?"

     "Hush. If Kiran can have one, so can you." He presses a kiss to her hair. "Anyway, she lived in a little house with her husband and a little tabby that liked to play outside. One day, the cat decided that the world was made for adventure, and against the warnings of his human parents, decided to go off on a journey. His first stop was the lake that was just visible from the house, shining under the bright sun..."

     Matt carefully details the cat's exploits, its trials and tribulations, the friends it made along the way, the ridiculous trouble it got into for sassing potential predators. Natasha finds herself snorting in amusement despite herself. It's a dumb story, but entertaining, and Matt does all the ridiculous voices for each character in such a way that she almost wishes Kiran was awake to hear it.

     "…and then the cat finally made his way home, having learned very much about the world. He'd go on another adventure some day, he was sure, but for now he was home and safe where he belonged."

     Natasha presses a kiss to his cheek. The allegory hasn't been lost on her: the cat could have been any of them, but the personality reflected their child well. She lets her eyes close, leaning on him. It's been almost twenty minutes since he started, and her eyelids are starting to droop again.

     "Wait," she says with a start, eyes open wide. "Does that make us married?"

     "Come on, at least give me a proper proposal first!"

     “I meant in the story, you goof!" She laughs, sliding down under the covers, though she keeps her hand in his. She can't help but ask: "Would you want that someday, if you ever hang up your cowl and I ditch my gun?"

     "What, marriage? Or the little house in the mountains?"

     "Either. Both."

     He shrugs, slipping under the blanket to join her, and leans in for a kiss. "You always did bring out the romantic in me," he agrees. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there."

     "It's not a no, then," Natasha says, and there's something a little like relief in her voice, even though the whole thing feels like an impossible dream.

     "Not a no," he agrees. He thinks about the ring he's been eyeing at the store across from the law firm, and smiles. And maybe not as far out as you think.

[onlineindus23]

ONLINEINDUS - Pakistan English News, Latest Pakistan News

Maybe the biggest and most inescapable issue in a specialized curriculum, just as my own excursion in schooling, is specialized curriculum's relationship to general instruction. History has demonstrated that this has never been a simple obvious connection between the two. There has been a ton of giving and taking or perhaps I should state pulling and pushing with regards to instructive arrangement, and the instructive practices and administrations of schooling and custom curriculum by the human instructors who convey those administrations on the two sides of the isle, similar to me.

In the course of the last 20+ years I have been on the two sides of training. I have seen and felt what it resembled to be a customary standard instructor managing specialized curriculum strategy, custom curriculum understudies and their specific educators. I have likewise been on the specialized curriculum side attempting to get normal schooling educators to work all the more viably with my specialized curriculum understudies through altering their guidance and materials and having somewhat more tolerance and compassion.

Moreover, I have been standard normal instruction educator who trained ordinary schooling consideration classes attempting to sort out some way to best work with some new custom curriculum instructor in my group and their custom curriculum understudies too. What's more, conversely, I have been a specialized curriculum incorporation instructor barging in on the region of some standard training educators with my specialized curriculum understudies and the alterations I figured these educators should actualize. I can disclose to you direct that none of this give and take between a custom curriculum and normal training has been simple. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling turning out to be simple at any point in the near future.

All in all, what is custom curriculum? What's more, what makes it so exceptional but then so unpredictable and questionable here and there? Indeed, custom curriculum, as its name proposes, is a particular part of training. It asserts its heredity to such individuals as Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1775-1838), the doctor who "subdued" the "wild kid of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936), the instructor who "worked supernatural occurrences" with Helen Keller.

Extraordinary instructors show understudies who have physical, psychological, language, learning, tangible, and additionally passionate capacities that go amiss from those of everyone. Unique teachers give guidance explicitly customized to address individualized issues. These instructors fundamentally make training more accessible and available to understudies who in any case would have restricted admittance to schooling because of whatever inability they are battling with.

It's not simply the instructors however who assume a job throughout the entire existence of a specialized curriculum in this nation. Doctors and ministry, including Itard-referenced above, Edouard O. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), needed to enhance the careless, frequently harsh treatment of people with handicaps. Unfortunately, instruction in this nation was, as a general rule, careless and oppressive when managing understudies that are distinctive in some way or another.

There is even a rich writing in our country that depicts the treatment gave to people handicaps during the 1800s and mid 1900s. Tragically, in these accounts, just as in reality, the fragment of our populace with handicaps were regularly restricted in prisons and almshouses without respectable food, attire, individual cleanliness, and exercise.

For an illustration of this diverse treatment in our writing one requirements to look no farther than Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). Furthermore, commonly individuals with inabilities were frequently depicted as scoundrels, for example, in the book Captain Hook in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" in 1911.

The overarching perspective on the creators of this time span was that one ought to submit to setbacks, both as a type of submission to God's will, and in light of the fact that these appearing mishaps are at last planned to one's benefit. Progress for our kin with handicaps was rare as of now with this perspective pervading our general public, writing and thinking.

All in all, what was society to do about these individuals of adversity? Indeed, during a significant part of the nineteenth century, and from the get-go in the 20th, experts accepted people with inabilities were best treated in private offices in provincial conditions. An out of the picture and therefore irrelevant sort of thing, maybe...

Notwithstanding, before the finish of the nineteenth century the size of these establishments had expanded so significantly that the objective of recovery for individuals with incapacities simply wasn't working. Foundations became instruments for lasting isolation.

I have some involvement in these isolation approaches of schooling. Some of it is acceptable and some of it is slightly below average. I have been an independent instructor on and off over time in numerous conditions in independent homerooms out in the open secondary schools, center schools and grade schools. I have likewise instructed in various specialized curriculum social independent schools that completely isolated these grieved understudies with inabilities in dealing with their conduct from their standard companions by placing them in totally various structures that were in some cases even in various towns from their homes, companions and friends.

Throughout the long term numerous specialized curriculum experts became pundits of these organizations referenced over that isolated and isolated our kids with incapacities from their companions. Irvine Howe was one of the first to advocate removing our childhood from these gigantic foundations and to put out occupants into families. Lamentably this training turned into a calculated and down to earth issue and it required some investment before it could turn into a practical option in contrast to systematization for our understudies with incapacities.

Presently on the positive side, you may be keen on knowing anyway that in 1817 the primary specialized curriculum school in the United States, the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (presently called the American School for the Deaf), was set up in Hartford, Connecticut, by Gallaudet. That school is still there today and is one of the top schools in the nation for understudies with hear-able inabilities. A genuine progress story!

Be that as it may, as you would already be able to envision, the enduring accomplishment of the American School for the Deaf was the special case and not the standard during this time-frame. What's more, to add to this, in the late nineteenth century, social Darwinism supplanted environmentalism as the essential causal clarification for those people with handicaps who digressed from those of everybody.

Unfortunately, Darwinism made the way for the genetic counseling development of the mid 20th century. This at that point prompted much further isolation and even sanitization of people with inabilities, for example, mental hindrance. Sounds like something Hitler was doing in Germany additionally being done well here in our own nation, to our own kin, by our own kin. Sort of alarming and unfeeling, wouldn't you concur?

Today, this sort of treatment is clearly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, in the early piece of the twentieth Century it was likewise inadmissible to a portion of the grown-ups, particularly the guardians of these debilitated youngsters. Hence, concerned and furious guardians framed support gatherings to help carry the instructive necessities of youngsters with incapacities into the public eye. General society needed to see firsthand how wrong this selective breeding and disinfection development was for our understudies that were unique in the event that it was truly going to be halted.

Gradually, grassroots associations gained ground that even prompted a few states making laws to ensure their residents with incapacities. For instance, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the primary white stick law gave people with visual deficiency the option to proceed when going across the road. This was a beginning, and different states did in the long run go with the same pattern. As expected, this nearby grassroots' development and states' development prompted enough tension on our chosen authorities for something to be done on the public level for our kin with inabilities.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy made the President's Panel on Mental Retardation. Furthermore, in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson marked the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which gave subsidizing to essential training, and is seen by backing bunches as extending admittance to state funded schooling for kids with handicaps.

At the point when one ponders Kennedy's and Johnson's record on social equality, at that point it most likely isn't such an unexpected discovering that these two presidents likewise initiated this public development for our kin with incapacities.

This government development prompted segment 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This ensures social equality for the handicapped with regards to governmentally subsidized establishments or any program or movement accepting Federal monetary help. Every one of these years after the fact as an instructor, I for one arrangement with 504 cases each and every day.

In 1975 Congress authorized Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), which sets up a privilege to state funded training for all youngsters paying little heed to inability. This was another beneficial thing in light of the fact that before government enactment, guardians needed to generally teach their youngsters at home or pay for costly private schooling.

The development continued developing. In the 1982 the instance of the Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, the U.S. High Court explained the degree of administrations to be managed the cost of understudies with exceptional necessities. The Court decided that custom curriculum administrations need just give some "instructive advantage" to understudies. Government funded schools were not needed to amplify the instructive advancement of understudies with incapacities.

Today, this decision may not appear to be a triumph, and actually, this equivalent inquiry is indeed coursing through our courts today in 2017. Be that as it may, since its getting late period it was made