#but they’re irreconcilable they can never come together

[oldfashionedhand]

Horizon Musings

The thing that was always missing from Horizon for me is that Shepard (i.e. the player) isn’t allowed to be in the wrong. Yes, I know Ashley or Kaidan not trusting Shepard after they pop back up from the dead after 2 years and are working alongside a terrorist organisation is a reasonable reaction. However, I would argue that the breakdown of their relationship (friendly or romantic) is framed by the narrative as Shepard being in the right and the VS being in the wrong for not believing in them. Especially as they are the only member of the Normandy crew to take issue with Shepard.

The key piece of missing dialogue for me is that the VS never asks Shepard to come back with them. Imagine how much more powerful Horizon  would have been if Ashley or Kaidan had pleaded with Shepard to return to the Alliance, where they can work with Anderson, Hackett, and the Council to stop the Collectors together and, more importantly, do it right. Imagine Garrus being extended the same offer, if he’s in the squad. Imagine the VS almost begging Shepard to walk away from Ceberus and the Illusive Man and just come home.

And then Shepard says no. Because Shepard knows going back to the  Alliance will mean debriefings, and meetings, and committees, all the while more colonies - colonies Shepard knows they could have saved - go dark. Because on a more selfish level, Shepard can’t stand to sit around and wait with nothing to distract them from nightmares of a cold, lonely death in the void. Because as much as Shepard thinks they’ve seen through TiM’s bullshit, they’re still taken in by the shiny box of toys, the familiar friendly faces Cerberus has surrounded them with, and a license to accomplish the mission however they see fit. But regardless of the reasons, Shepard still throws the offer back in the VS’s face. And the friendship or relationship breaks not because one side has done something “wrong”, but because the decisions Shepard and the VS have made - both parties fully believing they are doing the right thing - have put them on an irreconcilable path.

[angst-fairygodmother]

Light Fingers (The Umbrella Academy)

Diego’s vigilantism brings him repeatedly across the path of a young cat burglar. But as he finds himself developing feelings for the thief, he begins to wonder if there’s more to her than meets the eye, and whether they’re really on opposite sides. And as their relationship deepens, it brings with it a plot involving his estranged adopted father, and threatens to destroy all of them.

EPILOGUE: A HOUSE DIVIDED

Word Count: 1451 Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Reader Rating: T Content Warnings: swearing, references to violence (canon-typical), heavy angst  Cross-posted to AO3: here

Previous Chapter: Darkness Falls || Masterlist

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has stuck by me, read, reblogged, commented, messaged. I don’t know where I’d be without all of you (probably still back at chapter 3). While this is the end of Light Fingers, it is not the end of the story. I just need to take a little time and approach canon with care.

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A week of radio silence followed that night. As the days went by, you tried your best to return to your normal, to waiting tables and bantering with kitchen staff and trying to pretend you weren’t holding yourself together by a thread. 

Something immediately felt off as you entered the apartment one night after a double shift and dropped your keys by the door. Conjuring enough light to see and no more, you began creeping through the room. It didn't take long to see that all of Diego's things were gone - except Duncan, the dog snoozing blissfully on the couch. You weren’t surprised. After all, if he’d wanted to put things back together, or thought you could, he would have reached out before now. So instead he had quickly and quietly removed his presence from your apartment, and very likely walked out of your life without a word. The thought stung, that for all you had intertwined your lives, he was still able to remove himself in a day. 

The light on your answering machine was blinking, and numbly you hit the button and listened to Patch’s message. 

~

“Thank you for finally returning my call,” Eudora said exasperatedly, as she took a seat across from you in the little cafe the following Sunday.

“Sorry Dora,” you offered her a sheepish and regretful half-smile. “I haven’t really felt like seeing anyone lately. Besides, I didn’t want to put you in an awkward place. I know you and Diego were, are…”

“Close? The three of us all were. Why do you think I’ve been trying to reach you?”

You looked down, tracing the wood grains of the tabletop. “There’s no fixing this one, Dora. We’re...too far gone.”

“How? You two were good for each other. A blind man could see it.”

“Irreconcilable differences.”

“We both know that’s bullshit, Y/N.”

“I...made a choice. One Diego couldn’t agree with. We fought about it. And when he decided to walk out, I not only let him, I practically packed his bags. And in the end it turned out to be pointless anyway.”

Yesterday’s paper had contained an article about how the investigation into Reginald had been dropped for lack of foundation, and he’d been able to collect a substantial insurance payout for the warehouse, and the feds had offered an official statement of apology on top of everything else. You had scared a local alley cat with the tantrum that had followed reading that. Because of course, trying to take him down had cost you everything and he’d still won in the end. How else could it have gone?

“Why do I bother,” Eudora sighed with a frustrated gesture. “I should have known you’d be just as cryptic as he was.”

“It’s complicated, Dora, so it’s easier than trying to explain and sounding completely nuts. I wish I could tell you. But the details don’t really matter, just that I fucked up, big time, and I can’t undo it.”

She reached across the table to take one of your fidgeting hands in her own. “Y/N. Listen to me. I know you and I know Diego. It’s not too late for the two of you. I can tell how much you both still care.”

“It’s not about that,” you struggled to keep back your tears. “We just weren’t meant to be. Forcing it will only break things worse.”

You winced, the words sounding harsh and a little bit fake. But they were true, or at least that’s what you wanted to convince yourself of so that you could move on. 

“Besides, he came by when I was at work and took all his stuff. Doesn’t that pretty much scream final?”

“I’ve talked to him, Y/N. I’ve seen him. He’s really messed up. And I don't think he's eating much or sleeping at all if I'm being honest.”

“Why are you telling me this?” your voice trembled, heart breaking with every word. 

“You could find him, probably at the Lion,” she fixed you with a look and tilted her head to one side. “You could talk to him.”

You shook your head. “There's nothing left to say.” 

“You're really giving up that easily?”

You wanted to scream, or to somehow explain that it was anything but easy. But that it was the right thing to do. For Diego’s sake. He, and she, would understand someday, you had to believe that.

“Eudora, please.”

“Fine. If neither of you is going to fight for this, I guess I should just deliver you his message.”

Despite yourself, your heart leapt at the idea Diego actually had something left to say. And then it plummeted a moment later when you realized that whatever it was, he couldn’t say himself, he had to ask your mutual best friend to do it for him. 

“I’m sorry, that you’re stuck in the middle. You don’t...have to be our carrier pigeon. If you don’t want to,” you said sheepishly, shrugging slightly. 

“If I don’t, you wouldn’t communicate at all.”

“That might--”

“If you say it’s for the best, I will walk out,” Eudora snapped, making you reel back in shock. “I hate the cryptic non-answers, but at least it’s not full-on lying to me. So don’t start.” 

You swallowed down whatever you were going to say and sighed. “You said you had a message from Diego?”

“He asked me to give you these,” she laid a set of keys on the table. “Said the apartment was your home and he’d never dream of trying to take it in whatever divorce papers you end up filing. And that he picked up his things, which I know you saw. Anything he left behind, he said, is not important.”

You looked down at the keys, letting some of the tears you’d fought so hard against fall. 

‘He left me behind,’ you wanted to say. ‘He left us.’ But that wouldn’t be fair, or help anything, so you bit your tongue. 

“Y/N,” she sounded apologetic but you could tell she no more knew the words to say than you did. Instead after a moment, she carried on. “He also said that a gym is no place for a boxer, which I think was him trying to make a joke, and that at least if you keep Duncan, he’ll know there’s someone watching your back and making sure you come home.”

You couldn’t help your snort of disbelief or the bitter tone of your response. “As if I’m the one to worry about there, not him with his stupid vigilante crime-fighting bullshit. I only ever got involved in that because of him, for him.” Somehow, that was the thing that opened the floodgates and you began to cry in earnest. “Fuck, Dora. He’s going to get himself killed someday.”

She reached over to take your hand again, giving it a comforting squeeze. Silence reigned over you for a few minutes, while she let you cry it out and offered you quiet support. 

“He won’t,” she said, eventually. “We both know he’s careful, and insanely lucky. And…” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’m not going to leave him completely on his own. I’m in line for an early promotion, and then I’ll be able to have people looking out for him.”

You offered her a watery smile, almost laughing. “I don’t know what I’d do, or either of us would, without you.”

She shrugged. “Good thing you won’t ever find out.”

The rest of the conversation flowed naturally, as it always did, or nearly so. After a few stinted failures to start, you carried on as if it was any other coffee date. As you were paying your bills, the light caught the silver band still on your finger. You bit your lip, slowly sliding it off, its weight heavy in your palm despite how slim, how small it was.

“Eudora, can I ask one more favor?” you asked hesitantly.

“Of course, Y/N. What are friends for?” she said, offering you a smile.

You held the ring out to her. “Can you give this to Diego for me? And tell him that I’m sorry. And I still love him. No, actually, don’t tell him that. Just...that he should have this back, and I hope that maybe someday, I can be the person he saw who deserved it. Or something like that. I don’t know. It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” You shook your head, swiping at more tears that were threatening to spill. 

She flashed you a sympathetic half-smile. “I’ll give him your message.” 

Your fingers shook as you passed the ring over to her, a heavy weight of true finality settling over you.

[rallamajoop]

The Witcher: The Games vs The Books

Coming to the fandom this late, I can only assume the relationship between the Witcher games and the original novels has been long since talked to death by others. But I'm far too fascinated by the whole glorious mess that is this canon not to want to get down some of my own thoughts about how it all fits together.

See, on the one hand, the games (Witcher 3 especially) are arguably only too dependent on the novels to stand alone. They do a wonderful job of picking up a number of unresolved plot points the books left hanging, and a woeful job of explaining so much a player coming in cold would really like to know – Ciri's history with Geralt, Yennefer, her powers and the Wild Hunt itself just to begin with. This is an issue that only increases as the games go along: cliche as Geralt's amnesia may be, it's used to good effect to introduce the world to the player in the first game. By the third, Geralt has all his old memories back and two extra games worth of new experience, and good lord is it all alienating to the newcomer.

On the other hand, so much about the games (again, the third especially) contradicts the novels in painfully irreconcilable ways. That wouldn't necessarily bother me – adaptations are allowed to rework and reinvent, stories can and should evolve in the retelling – except, well, see point one above. So you're bound to come out of the games with a lot of unanswered questions if you haven't read the books, and just as many if you have.

Spoilers to follow, of course, for both the books and the games.

Here's one of the big ones: just how did the world – Ciri included – discover that one of her long-presumed-dead parents was actually alive and well and now ruling the entire empire of Nilfgaard? Fucked if I know. Neither the games or the novels have any explanation. In the novels, in fact, the world at large believes Ciri is married to the emperor of Nilfgaard. Naturally, this 'Cirilla' is a fake, but the scandal were the full truth ever revealed would redefine Emhyr's reign. Yet somehow, in the games, everyone seems to know he's Ciri's father, and that whole awkward incest angle is never mentioned. Continuity has been tweaked pretty significantly, and it's left to the player to guess how. If that wasn’t bad enough, the games apparently still included a Gwent card of the fake!Cirilla (artwork above) just to ensure maximum confusion.

Before I get too sidetracked with all that stuff that doesn’t add up though, there really is a lot to be said for what does work about how the games expand on the plot of the novels. The Wild Hunt itself is the big one. The spectral cavalcade appears several times through the novels and hunts Ciri across multiple worlds in the final book before apparently losing her trail and vanishing to make way for the 'real' big bad, never to be mentioned again. While TW3 left me pretty underwhelmed by the revelation that the spectral Wild Hunt were just a bunch of dark elves in skull armor, the books had introduced the Hunt and let us spend some time on the dark elves' world before we get the reveal that the two may be one and the same. So for all the ranting I could do about missed opportunities regarding the Wild Hunt, they're the natural candidate for the games to pick up on as their new big-bads.

To my surprise, Geralt and Yennefer's "deaths" and subsequent recovery in pseudo-Avalon also comes straight from the novels. That everyone thinks Geralt dead at the start of the first game isn't, as I'd first assumed, a convenient excuse to have him reappear with amnesia, but simply how the novels end. Why Ciri leaves them and goes world-hopping isn't clear, but "because the Wild Hunt was after her again" is as good a theory as any. So, another point to the games there.

And there's so much more. The Catriona plague has only just appeared at the end of the novels, but we know it's posed for a major outbreak – one that’s in progress by the time of the games. The second game in particular does a terrific job of taking the ambitions of the expansionist Nilfgaardian Empire and the still-relatively-new Lodge of Sorceresses and building an entirely new conflict around them – even taking two of the least developed members of the Lodge (Sabrina Glevissig and Síle de Tansarville) and expanding them into major players. Dijkstra similarly ends the novels on the run from those in power, and having already taken the same assumed name 'Sigi Reuven' he's using in the games – while the books assure us that prince Radovid will grow up to pay back his father's assassins (ie. Phillipa) and become Radovid the Stern.

The twisted fairy tale origins of the novels are something the games actually seem to have gotten better at as they went on: the 'trail of treats' to the Crones is the great example, the monster-frog-prince and the land-of-a-thousand-fables of the expansions are two more, and many more are hidden in sidequests. And I'd be remiss not to mention that in again asking Geralt to pick a side in the conflict with the Scoia'tael, the first two games not only recreate a scenario Geralt repeatedly deals with in the books, but a major theme. It's interesting too how much the broad structure of the third game feels like an homage to the books, with Geralt searching for Ciri, interspersed with sections from her POV. You can nitpick the detail of any of these examples, but the intent is unmistakable, and a lot of credit is due for it in the execution too.

Some of the detail that's gone into translating the world of the Witcher books into the games is just insane – not just in the geography and history of the place, but right down to the names of the wine you can pick up. There's the fact the Cat potion makes Geralt see in black-and-white, or the fact the basilisk and cockatrice monsters are clearly based on the same model, but the basilisk is reptilian where as the cockatrice is more avian – which is exactly how Geralt describes the difference between them in The Lady of the Lake. There's a point where Book!Regis recounts a detailed list of all the lesser vampiric species, ending with the only two violent enough to tear apart their victims: almost all can be encountered in the games, and the last two (Fleders and Ekimma) are indeed the most animalistic. This kind of thing is everywhere.

My favourite examples tend to be those that blend into the background if you haven't read the books, but will get a grin from those who have, such as a peasant in Velen who will call out to Geralt (paraphrased from memory, alas) "Sir, sir! We be up to our ears in mamunes, imps, kobolds, hags, flying drakes... oh, and bats!" – which is a lovely little reference to a couple of conversations from Edge of the World wherein Geralt explains that most of the monsters the locals want him to take care of don't actually exist. Or all those soldiers chanting "Long live King Radovid!" – natural enough, but it takes on a whole new life if you've read the passage in Lady of the Lake where the young prince Radovid grumbles internally about having to sit and listen to the city chanting 'long live...' to every other notable figure present except him.

Really, it would be faster to list the things the games introduced that don't come from the original source material in any obvious form, because it's a struggle to come up with very many. The villainous Crones of Crookback Bog and Master Mirror of the Hearts of Stone expansion are the biggest ones that come to mind, along with a great deal of the vampire mythology from Blood and Wine. To the witchers themselves, they’ve added mostly game mechanics: the use of bombs and blade oils, the names of most of the potions, and three new witcher schools (all with their own specialised gear). There are a number of new creatures and monsters – Godlings, noon-and-night-wraiths, botchlings, shaelmaars and so on – and though trolls are mentioned in the books, the games take credit for giving them so much character. Obviously, there are new characters, like Thaller and Roche – but not technically Iorveth, because a Scoia'tael commander of that name is mentioned in the books, if only in passing. And already, short of just listing off every new character the games introduced, I’m running out of ideas. Credit where credit’s due on that front: most of the new characters and locations they’ve created feel authentic enough that Kalkstein or Thaller would be right at home in the novels’ world.

But for all their dedication to the detail, it's hard to feel like the games have really managed to capture the spirit of the books in their storytelling: the mundanely corrupt bureaucracy that does so much to bring the world to life, or their cheerfully cynical sense of humour, or the flamboyant wonder that is book!Dandelion, or their enthusiasm for putting women in positions of power, or the bigger themes about the differences between the story that gets sung by the bards and what really happened – or so much else from the novels that came as such a surprise to me when I started getting really sucked in.

And if we’re going to talk about all the little things they got right, it’s only fair to point out there are just as many little things they got wrong, and sometimes pretty glaringly at that. "I thought you bowed to no-one" says Emhyr to Geralt – almost as if book!Geralt doesn’t happily bow in most every situation where it would be polite or diplomatic to do so. "This would never have happened if the council was still around!" says Geralt upon finding a sorcerer's lab full of human experiments – as if none of his experiences with Vilgefortz or the wizards of Rissberg ever happened, back when the council was very much still around. In TW2, he mocks the idea of a woman like Saskia leading a rebellion – almost as if women like Falka and Aelirenn haven't led some of the most storied rebellions in history (and we can't even blame the amnesia, because Geralt himself mentions Aelirenn later – oh yeah, this one annoyed me particularly).

 Book!verse 'Lady of the Lake' is basically just Ciri being surprised while bathing

Yennefer's studious aethiesm and willingness to desecrate Freya's temple is entirely in character – but only if we forget that she had her own personal religious experience with the goddess Freya herself in Tower of the Swallow. And then there’s the fact the Lady of the Lake is now a literal lake nymph who distributes swords to the worthy, as if no-one writing for the games ever got past the title of that particular Witcher novel (let alone got the joke). And the list goes on. It's easy to get overly caught up in contradictions like this – it's hardly as if Sapkowski's novels don't contradict themselves in places, as almost any long-running series eventually will – but it's going to stick out to those who’ve read the novels nonetheless.

While we're talking about how the games pick up where the books left off though, the big contradiction that has to be touched on comes in bringing Geralt back at all, at least in any public capacity. There's plenty to suggest that Geralt survives the novels' end and even goes on to have further adventures, but it's also pretty explicit that the history books record his death in the Pogrom of Rivia as final. The last two novels by order of publication (Season of Storms and Lady of the Lake) go so far as to feature characters far in the future with an interest in Geralt's legacy, and they discuss the matter in some depth. As far as the world knows, Geralt is dead.

  Book!Geralt fanart by Diana Novich

But it's hard to blame the games for ignoring this – true, thanks to Geralt's longevity, they could have set their conflict many more years after those future scenes – maybe even used Ciri's established time-travel powers to let you pop quietly in and out of the past (and, okay, now I've thought through all that, I'm kind of sad they didn't). But there comes a point where that kind of slavish devotion to preserving the source material really doesn't do a story any favours, and I'm not sure I could name any other successful adaptation that's bothered.

Besides bringing Geralt back at all, most of the bigger changes pertain to Ciri. In fact, as much as I'm about to get deep into the nitpicks below, you can make a surprisingly good case that the games have made only one really big change, and that's in simplifying the prophesies surrounding her. See, in the novels, all those world-saving prophesies aren't technically about Ciri, they're about her as-yet-unborn child. Who gets to impregnate her is the big driving force behind most of the villains of the books – one that all the main contenders seem to see as more of an awkward necessity rather than the inspiration for violent lust, but even so. To Emhyr, having to marry his own daughter is a bug, not a feature – but he's willing to do it to become the father of the savior of the world. But if Ciri is capable of fulfilling those prophesies herself, then Emhyr is already the father of the savoir of the world, and the revisions to his relationship with Ciri start to make a lot more sense.

Ciri's history with the Aen Elle elves seems to have been similarly revised – if not quite so cleanly. Avallac’h and Eredin are, naturally, both book characters – in fact, a lot of personality has been left behind in the books, since Avallac’h originally had a rather camp flair, and Eredin is less the power-hungry kingslayer you might imagine. When Geralt meets Avallac’h in the books – which happens briefly in Toussaint, for one of those "everything you're doing is going to make everything worse because prophesy" conversations – he's busy decorating a cave with fake prehistoric paintings in the hope of confusing future explorers. (Surprisingly, there does seem to be official art of this moment on one of the gwent cards – see above – though the Avallac’h who jokes about adding erect phalluses to the picture and admits his vanity won’t allow him to resist signing it hasn’t entirely survived the transition to the new medium).

We also meet the former Alder King, Auberon, whose death we see in flashback in the game. (Fun fact: Auberon is actually blowing bubbles through a straw in a bowl of soapy water when we first meet him in the books, hence the straw in the illustration below. The books just have more whimsy than any of the games would know what to do with.)

Ciri spends some time in the final book as a prisoner on the world of the elves, who are as keen as everyone else for their king to father her unborn child. Avallac’h eventually convinces her that this is all for the greater good: her child will be able to open gates to allow the people of her world to escape when the apocalyptic White Frost arrives. But their king, like most older elves, is impotent, leading to multiple nights where Ciri allows him to take her to bed (in some of the frankly more disturbing scenes of the series) to no result. Eredin, moreover, doesn't appear to have intended to poison the king: the vial that kills him was supposed to contain some sort of fantasy viagra, and even Eredin seems genuinely shocked to learn its actual effects.

Regardless, Ciri eventually discovers that Avallac’h and the Aen Elle have deceived her, and intend to user her child's powers to invade her world, not save it. Neither world is threatened by the White Frost for at least several millennia, it's just a pretext to make her cooperate. And so she flees, and Eredin (already leading his Red Riders aka The Wild Hunt long before he was crowned king) pursues her.

With the books as context, why Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h is very hard to understand. It's a little easier if that whole awful episode with her and the former king is subtracted out – Ciri's child is no longer necessary for Eredin's goals. So it's odd that the game still references the deadly vial Eredin gave to the king. Are we to suppose the vial genuinely contained poison in this version of continuity? I'd rather it didn't – Avallach's ruse is far more interesting if he underwhelms Eredin's support by revealing a half-truth – but the games aren't telling us.

And then we have to factor in that one last detail I'd forgotten when I originally started playing with this theory: TW3 does contain one last, dangling reference to the time the old king spent trying to impregnate Ciri, when Ge'els very reasonably asks why on earth Ciri would ever trust Avallac’h now. It's a damn good question, and the game offers no real answers. So in Avallac’h, we're left with a character who is vital to the final chapters of the games, who comes out of nowhere without the books as context, but whose role makes no sense with that backstory in mind. Frankly, the writers would have been much better off avoiding the whole mess altogether and inventing some new character to take Avallac’h's place.

The treatment of the White Frost is even more confusing. The books are ultimately fairly explicit about just what the White Frost is: a ice age, most likely caused by the same mundane climactic factors that produced the real ice ages of our history. The only escape is intergalactic emigration, as Ciri (or her children) might some day enable.

In the games, the White Frost has instead become some sort of nebulous, free-floating apocalypse which will eventually reach all worlds, which is basically fine – up to a point. We briefly visit a dead world that the Frost has decimated, and even the Aen Elle are now supposedly planning to invade Ciri's world because it threatens theirs as well (I mean, apparently – their motivations are so underdeveloped you could miss them by accidently skipping just one or two lines of dialogue). When the Wild Hunt appears, it's always in a haze of cold. Their mages can invoke its power still more dramatically through portals which can freeze you in your tracks. So obviously, the Frost has already reached their world, and time is running out, right?

Well, no – you visit their world too (again, briefly – to meet a character who has never been mentioned before and won't be again, for reasons which have also never been mentioned before if you haven't read the books) – and there's no Frost in sight, apocalyptic or otherwise.

So why does the White Frost follow the Hunt around? No idea. It's never explained.

At the very end of the game, a second "Conjunction of the Spheres" occurs (possibly because of the Wild Hunt's appearance?), and the Frost begins to invade (or possibly Avallac’h summons it, so Ciri can go into it and destroy it?) It's all painfully unclear. The game is too busy pulling a bait-and-switch over whether Avallac’h's betrayed you to tell you what's actually going on instead.

But if Ciri could destroy the Frost completely (at great personal risk, but still) why is this not more clearly set up? Why did the Aen Elle think that escaping to another world (which will ALSO eventually be destroyed by the Frost) was a better solution than sending Ciri to face the Frost directly? For which matter, why do the Aen Elle need Ciri at all if sending enough ships to carry an army is no problem? Why does Ciri spend so much of the game questioning Avallac’h's true intentions, if they were ultimately so noble? When did he tell her the truth? If Avallac’h did summon the Frost, why did he pick that particular moment? And if he didn't, and it all just happened spontaneously, we're back to questioning why invading that world ever seemed like a good solution to Eredin – it all collapses in on itself.

None of these questions couldn't have been answered with a little creativity, but then the game would've had to dedicate some real time to explaining its backstory and developing its core conflict – something it's bizarrely reluctant to do. And if you think I may be drifting from the point a bit in the name of getting all my gripes about the ending down in one place, you're not wrong, but I feel Avallac’h and everything surrounding him is pretty much the ur-example of what doesn't work about the way The Witcher 3 depends on the novels: the backstory the writers are building on doesn't actually exist in any format available to the rest of us.

There are plenty of ways TW3 could have incorporated its backstory into its own narrative (yes, even excluding the method "by expecting people to read many many more pages of text from in-game documents", because that's bullshit and always will be). There are times it does this brilliantly, such as in the quest ‘The Last Wish’: everything you really need to know is covered in Yennefer and Geralt's conversation in the boat, and without ever making the dialogue sound unnatural. In fact, TW3 has even more options here than many works with the same problem, because Geralt is famous and people already think they know his story. You could have bards singing Dandelion's ballads, you could have characters confronting him with misunderstandings about his past to force him to correct them. You could also have Geralt visiting people and places he knows Ciri remembers fondly because of the time they spent there together, or include playable flashbacks similar to the time you spend playing as Ciri. You could stick chunks of backstory in optional sidequests or scenes old-school fans can skip through quickly. So many of my questions (how did Ciri get so close to Yennefer if they were never at Kaer Morhen together? Why has no-one tried training Ciri in her powers before? What does the Wild Hunt even do while it's not hunting Ciri? Why is Ciri princess of Cintra if her father is Emperor of another country altogether?) could have been answered so easily.

Seriously, summarising the Witcher books is not that hard. Lots of things happen, but only a fraction of it is really relevant in retrospect, and you could hit all the major plot beats in a handful of paragraphs. (Heck, I’d do it here if this post wasn’t already ridiculously over long.)

But then, TW3 has a bizarre problem with leaving so much of its best material off screen, even from its own story. It's criminal that we never get to see any of Geralt's time (or Yennefer's) with the Wild Hunt, even in flashback or dream sequence. This is material that directly sets up the relationship between the main hero and the main villain, and the most we ever hear about it is a few vague allusions to it being like a strange nightmare. Really? That's it? What was it like? Was Geralt in a trance, unable to control his own actions – was he brainwashed into believing he belonged there, or was he merely unable to escape? What atrocities might Eredin have forced him to commit? Did he visit other worlds? Was he paraded among the Aen Elle as a captive? There is no way this isn’t a part of the story worth talking about!

We never see the moment Ciri rescues Geralt from the Wild Hunt. We never see how Avallac’h convinces her to trust him, we never see the moment he was cursed, or any of her efforts to save him – all these big, story-defining moments are left off-screen, to be vaguely recounted to you later in dialogue. Then there's the entire political situation in Nilfgaard – you hear about it second-hand, and it's all resolved off screen. And the list goes on. Yet you and Ciri still have time to run around Novigrad so she can thank a bunch of throwaway characters you've never even heard of before, nor will again. The priorities on display here are baffling.

The Witcher 3 was such a wildly successful game that it’s obvious these sorts of issues didn’t seriously hold it back, and it’s such a big game that I could have sat down and written just as many words focusing only on the parts that do work without much difficulty. It boasts stunning visuals, addictive gameplay and some truly wonderful characters, and so many parts of the story work brilliantly in isolation that it’s strange to come out of it feeling that it ultimately adds up to so much less than the sum of its parts.

I’m glad TW3 exists – if it hadn’t been such a runaway success I doubt I’d ever have discovered Sapkowski’s universe at all, but for myself, TW3 will probably always be remembered as a somewhat-overlong introduction to the really good stuff, in the expansions and the original novels it came from. I looked up the novels after finishing TW3 in large part because I’d been left with so many unanswered questions – and I’m glad I did, but I’m honestly surprised more people weren’t turned off by TW3′s scattershot approach to its own narrative. You’re allowed to change and rework in moving to a new medium, but I can’t imagine it would’ve hurt games’ success to tell a complete story in the process.

[crossdressingdeath]

I can’t believe so many people missed the point of WWX and JC going their separate ways. It’s not just saying they don’t like it, they just think the author tricked them as if MXTX didn’t consistently show WWX getting more and more tired of JC’s attitude as the novel went on.

Guanyin Temple JC finally takes things too far with the things he said and WWX needs to tell him enough while hiding behind LWJ. Even JC himself realized how unfair he was being when he says even now he expected WWX to comfort him. JC himself realized how stupid he was being and it’s why he finally let WWX go and never told him about distracting the Wen’s. JC, even on a small level, realized he just guilts WWX and forces him to stay.

The kindest thing JC ever did for WWX at the end of the novel was letting WWX go without any comments and finally accepting they have their own lives to live. Which is huge considering the day before he literally kept preventing WWX from leaving the ancestor hall just to insult him and try forcing a fight out of him and even pushed WWX to minor Qi Deviation at the same time.

Can they reconcile one day? Maybe. But by the end of the novel and as we see post canon, it won’t happen for a long time and no one is forcing the issue of them not being in each others lives right now. Not even Jin Ling cares. Just because people don’t like it doesn’t mean it came out of no where and it’s ignoring the only step JC has taken to do something right by WWX.

Yeah. There’s an increasingly strong sense throughout the present day arc that WWX is just getting more and more done with JC’s shit every time they see each other; you can really feel how the time away from JC and with someone who treats him kindly and with genuine love and affection is showing him that JC doesn’t treat him well and that he does deserve better than JC gives him. And of course there’s other things, like the difference between LWJ’s treatment of the juniors under his authority and JC’s treatment of JL. It’s like... one of the most obvious markers of how much WWX has changed and come into his own since his childhood is that while he never approved of JC’s dickishness the things he found amusing and cute and maybe a little unpleasant at worst as a kid growing up in Lotus Pier he finds deeply annoying at best as a grown man facing his childhood playmate who hasn’t grown at all from those days. Which makes sense for multiple reasons; it’s WWX growing and realizing he doesn’t have to put up with JC’s shit, and it’s also a grown man seeing his childhood friend behaving exactly how he did when they were children and realizing in the way a child wouldn’t how pointless and cruel and childish that behaviour is and always was.

The lack of reconciliation is I think a mark of how different they’ve become. They were always different, but WWX has grown as a person. JC hasn’t. Take the scene where WWX says, almost fondly, “You haven’t changed a bit”; he’s not happy with JC’s behaviour, but this is the brother he remembers and he’s glad to see him. Then JC whirls around, says “I’ll show you who hasn’t changed”, and sics WWX’s worst fear on him for no reason. This isn’t all that far into the present day arc and WWX has yet to grow that much, but you can see even then how WWX is changing and growing and JC hasn’t and isn’t. And when WWX takes JC’s lack of change as a minor disappointment perhaps but also almost a relief the same way NHS’s apparent lack of change is JC flips out, turns around and accuses the man who was dead of not changing while he was dead and then attacks him. And of course that builds with every interaction they have, and every flashback shows us more evidence that these two are incompatible as people and that reconciliation would actually be a bad thing. Particularly for WWX, but they could never make each other happy. They’re just... too different and want mutually exclusive things from each other and from life. If you look at all the scenes with WWX and JC, really look at them without using the lens of “Aw Yunmeng bros so great”, you see two children raised together and told to be close from a young age who take opposite lessons from their experience and opposite paths in life and in the end can’t go back to that childhood. Even as early as the Xuanwu arc you can see it starting; WWX wants to step in and help, he sees it as their duty. JC actively stops him and would’ve forced WWX to be a bystander to MM’s brutal murder-by-monster if JZX and LWJ hadn’t stepped in. Nothing really comes of it at the time (except for JC’s temper tantrum later), but it’s a clear sign of the coming split in their beliefs with the Wen remnants; the split that turns out to be irreconcilable. 

There’s also things like the comparison to the Twin Jades with the “Twin Heroes” (or “Twin Prides” if you prefer, I have no idea which is a more accurate translation if in fact either of them are more correct) thing. The “Twin Jades” moniker is something the people gave to LXC and LWJ, because their relationship was so clearly as close as twins. And they’re beautiful and charming (...well, LXC is) and their public image is one of them being incredibly close brothers. The Twin Heroes moniker is something WWX invokes, using the example of another set of brothers who are known for being close. It’s not something that’s actually used, it’s something WWX makes up to bring JC down from his temper tantrum and that never really comes up again until JC uses it to guilt him later. Really think about that scene. WWX creates parallels to other, more loving and more successful (for lack of a better term) brothers, rather than focus on how loving he and JC are. “If Gusu has its Twin Jades, Yunmeng will have its Twin Heroes”, “we’ll be just like our fathers”... I don’t know, maybe it’s just me? But it feels kind of like WWX is... grasping at straws a bit. He says he’ll be loyal, but it feels less like a “we’re brothers and we love each other” and more like “look, we’ll be like these people who love each other!”

So... yeah, MXTX actually spends a lot of time on foreshadowing that Yunmeng bros are not a relationship that will survive the test of time. The biggest surprise in the Guanyin temple where they finally officially go their separate ways (I say officially because let’s face it, the two of them pretty much went their separate ways the day JC declared WWX a traitor to all the sects for not being down with genocide) is that JC does realize that he’s being incredibly unfair to WWX and lets him go without trying to guilt him over JC’s sacrifice, and even that was a good and satisfying point for his story to end on. This was a natural and well set up place for that relationship to end up, and like... people can dislike it all they want, but saying MXTX somehow “tricked” them or fucked up the story just because she disliked JC (which I’ve always found to be a generally stupid argument to level at authors anyway because as an (aspiring) author let me tell you if I hate a character enough to sabotage my own story to fuck them over I rewrite or remove the character) is an embarrassingly lazy analysis of the novel (and even calling it an analysis is a stretch but I can’t think of a better word off the top of my head) at best and at worst is an insult to MXTX and the novel she worked so hard to create.

[heli0s-writes]

“let me walk you home.”

for @that-damn-girl​, with Bucky. It got longer than expected-- and a little bit steamier than expected. 1.7k words. Smitten, pining, shy Bucky.

[28 WAYS Masterlist // Prompts]

When Bucky finally returns to Wakanda, it seems like nothing has changed. 

Five years of oblivion, one year of grieving, and he finally pulls himself together enough to visit the country that made him whole.

The fields are lush. The city, animated. The people, kind. The royal family is expecting him, still full of easy care for this broken boy. T’Challa sends his best to accommodate The White Wolf even though Bucky had refused to be treated with so much attention.

In response, and with some cheek, the king assures him his new accommodations are even more luxurious than before and Bucky thinks it must be Shuri’s doing.

No, Bucky smiles to himself, nothing has changed. It makes him feel steady and safe again, like both his feet are on solid ground and not slipping off another train.

Until he disembarks and steps down from the ramp where the sun catches in his eye a little, makes him blink out the afterimage of its bright glare. When he’s finally able to see the figure at the edge of the landing pad, the Earth rocks with a tremendous lurch.

You stand comfortably at the end of the ramp, fingers linked in a loose weave, eyebrow quirked at him.

Six years but you’re just as he remembers. Lopsided mouth a little lifted at one corner, forever affixed in a state of watchful amusement. Your deep amethyst gown is free-flowing and beautifully patterned, arabesque lines curving against the arch of your thighs when you turn from the jet. It dips low in the back, and he can see the glisten of shea rubbed over the grooves of your skin.

“Sergeant Barnes,” you greet over your shoulder, “Welcome back to Wakanda. Let me walk you home.”

Undoubtedly Shuri’s doing.

-

The Golden City is resplendent. Against the backdrop of sky-spiraling towers and illuminated technology, you are a singular beauty to behold. Bucky feels cracked open in all the ways he used to be: unstitched, untethered, barely holding on in a light breeze.

“Remember this, Sergeant?” You ask, leading him forward, pointing down a pathway, “Didn’t the children corner you once?”  

“Yes,” he remembers.

“And the mandazi cart? Didn’t you prefer the cinnamon sugar topping best?”

“Yes,” Bucky replies quietly, “Just a little. Not too sweet.”

“I remember you didn’t like anything too sweet.”

And the shudder that follows sends his blood straight to his head.

Bucky’s knees feel like they could give out as he coughs with a stammer, shoving his hands in his pockets, staring at his shoes scuffed up with dirt. Anything to distract himself from the memory of a mid-morning bruise growing on his collar and the subsequent teasing from Shuri.

A bite. A scratch. The way your face looked with the hot white streak of sun falling in your open mouth. Bodies still encased in free-flowing cotton, but it was enough to sear his entire being. That pretty, perfect, picture of you on his thigh.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He coughs again.

  You keep on coolly, stepping side to side and avoiding the crowd with ease as if your comment didn’t mean a thing. As if it didn’t trip him up almost physically through the street.

“Have any plans while you’re here?” You ask innocently, stopping at a booth of flowers and browsing through orchids. Daisies and irises peer back at you, beckoning your touch. Bucky reaches into his pocket, buys a violet that matches your dress with the intention of – he doesn’t know, tucking it behind your ear? Six years later and he still doesn’t know what to do with you.

But, of course, it’s been six years for you, and only one for him.

His stomach drops at the thought of a separation only oblivion can create between two people so damn close to a beginning. An irreconcilable distance of time that will never align and how could he be so naïve to think nothing has changed?

“No,” he replies a little dumbly as your hand jingles with change. “No plans. Just…” A melancholy look at the way you turn from him.

“Missed it?”

“Yeah.”

 The stroll continues. One violet in his hand, two Calla Lillies in yours. You turn them round and round, pressing your nose to the spathes, letting their soft points flick over your lips. He feels forgotten altogether until he hears your tepid voice, shaded with the slightest of sorrows.

“They’re a symbol of rebirth and resurrection. I thought it was fitting; you do look reborn, after all.”

Bucky runs his hand instinctively through his hair—cut short now, and he’s still trying to get used to it. His throat constricts. He suddenly aches all over.

“Thank you,” he says finally, after a long while. “For, uh, walking me.”

“We’re not there yet.”

“I just meant—”

“I’m teasing, Sergeant.”

Up the iron stairs you ascend, looking back at him every few steps with a grin. At the door, you pause, both hands coming together to grasp onto the waxy stalks of the flowers, turning them again. “Hope my teasing didn’t offend you?”

“No,” Bucky replies, watching the way you unlock the door deftly, reaching inside to turn the light on for him. “… I remember you liked to tease.”

The smack of the blooms against his chest is abrupt and it takes him by surprise when you laugh sharply.

“Oh! Is that right? What else do you remember?”

He stutters, a little eager, a little hesitant. “I remember—” a thick swallow and you trace the motion of his throat with gentle eyes, walking backwards, hanging your hopes on the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. Bucky presses his lips together.

“I remember us.”

“Yeah?” You take the violet and cross into the kitchen, grabbing a tall glass from the counter and placing the flowers inside, going quiet. “Remember us doing what?”

He’s no good at this— this game. This cat and mouse tension of your provocation. The heady atmosphere of growing closer together but somehow drifting further apart. Every question is a challenge, a play for something from him—an admission? An apology? A funeral?

You call him Sergeant. You hardly look at him. But then you stand, hip jutting, palms flat on the counter, chin on your shoulder and just the sweet shock of your profile is enough to cut him clean through.

“Lots of things.” Bucky steps on the eggshells because he might as well crush them now. 

Reaches the small of your back with his hand, palming the straight column of your exposed spine and counts all the goosebumps that break across your skin. Flesh on flesh, his lips on your shoulder and then neck. He remembers this. Remembers the way you sigh and lean into him. Remembers the heat. Remembers his heart, stitched back together by your loving fingers.

His right hand slips through the open space of your dress. All five warm fingers splay out, gripping your side and curling over your lower ribs. And god, he’s trembling head to toe, feet so unbalanced now he might fall completely.

Your head leans back onto his shoulder, weight of it holding him down, “You’re shaking.”

With a slow turn, you face him, fingertip trailing up his neck and along the curve of his throat to his chin. Tilting him up to the ceiling, you press a blazing kiss onto his neck, “Am I making it better or worse?”

He doesn’t mean to do it—or maybe he does, but the speed of it surprises even Bucky when he lifts you by the thighs and places you on the sink counter. He cuts off your sharp gasp and turns it into an exhilarated moan, presses your chest to his with frantic hands, nudges your legs open to nestle himself in between.

And hell, the way you feel in his arms—delicate but full of fight, softly pulsing with the strength he’s always admired about you—it feels safe. Steady. The kind of stable that’s always been taken from him too soon.

It’s been six years—or one—or whatever, and his entire being is vibrating with the magnitude of a catastrophic earthquake, but Bucky can’t be bothered to care about any of that now. Your mouth is open, tongue sweeping over his, teeth playfully nipping at his bottom lip, and it dashes away all his good sense.

When he breaks away, he’s overly aware of his erratic heartbeat and swollen mouth. Kissed tender, and it takes what’s left of his breath to see that you match him just as well. You lean forward again, and he meets you for another two, three, five kisses. He loses count after a few more, eager and fumbling and dizzy as he peppers them over your cheek, down to your collar.

“Don’t even think about it,” you warn, hand tugging him away by his hair, “Bite me and I’ll kick you out.”

Bucky pauses and snaps upright, confused at the statement and the way your eyes sparkle with amusement. Knowingly, you nod to the space behind him, “I live here, Bucky.”

“What?” He mutters. It takes him a minute, but he finally looks around and notices the simple decorations. The well-cared for plants, the soft blanket over the couch, the mug of coffee with a stirring spoon stuck inside. The small plate of—his heart skips a beat—half-eaten mandazi with cinnamon sugar on top.

“Oh, god.”

Bucky presses the heel of his palm to his eyes, doesn’t know if he might laugh or sob. Maybe both.

Still in the hold of his one hand, you twist halfway, moving the glass further in case either one of you might knock it over. The spathes of the lilies turn idly to look at him, draped over the tufts of violet petals. Two stalks in perfect symmetry. Symbols of resurrection for both him and you.

Smoothing the shorn chestnut strands gone a little awry from your grip, your eyes search his face, memorizing his lines. All things of his old and new.

“Welcome back to Wakanda, Sergeant.” Your mischievous mouth finds his again, holding him steady with familiar sweetness, “I missed you.”

-

perm tags: @whothehellisbucky @serpentbaby @badassbaker @alagalaska @cake-writes @crist1216 @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan @infinity-saga @jamesbarnesthighs @pinknerdpanda @xoxabs88xox​ @imsoft-barnes​ @momc95​ @typicalangel​ @wretchedgoddess​ @readeity​ @iwannasail​ @ya-lyublu-tebya​ @geeksareunique​ @wildefire​ @satanxklaus​ @jhangelface0523​ @wkemeup​ @ixcantxdecidexwhosxmyxfave​

[franniebanana]

CQL Rewatch - Episode 10

Confession time: I don’t like Xue Yang. I appreciate him for all his villain-y villain-ness, but I don’t like the character. I find him kind of annoying in this series, because they just have him so over-the-top nasty all the time. He’s like a caricature of a person. Granted, I haven’t watched the Yi City arc, because, as I think I said before, I read it and once was enough. So the other thing that kind of bothers me here is that we have two villains vying for screen time: Xue Yang and Wen Chao (Wen Chao obviously gets more)—and I guess it’s a bit much. Like, it’s not enough that Wen Chao is on their heels, trying to get the Yin Iron from them, so we need to add this scene where they watch someone else fight Xue Yang. That’s another thing that’s kind of goofy. Why put Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji in this scene at all when they barely do anything? Wei Wuxian uses Binding/Bonding to stop Xue Yang from getting away, but that’s the only real contribution.

See? This is what they do for the first ten minutes of the episode. This could have been told to them or shown in a flashback easily. Easily. There’s other things we see in flashbacks that are arguably more important than this capturing of Xue Yang and introduction to Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. With a lot of things, I’m like, if it was good enough in the book, then it’s good enough in CQL. At a certain point, I have to wonder if they just felt like they needed a fight scene in every episode. Director/writers were like, we gave you that scene with the chicken, now let’s get back to the action scenes! This is my personal preference, but I don’t mind being told some things, versus being shown everything. Like, it’s okay to hide some things from the audience so that they payoff is better at the time its revealed. (I will be forever bitter about how the headband meaning was revealed right away—that was such a great moment in the book, and I feel like CQL robbed the audience of that).

I feel like this is the only part in the whole series where they hint at anyone being gay, and it comes in the form of Xue Yang accusing Wei Ying of touching him inappropriately (basically, I’m not going back to check the subtitles). It would have been funny for Wei Ying to kind of play along with that, but censorship (rip)—I do like his line about how no one can best him in being cheeky, though.

I’ve never been happier to see Nie Huaisang, because that means we’re finally moving on to something else. Woohoo! Let’s go to Qinghe!

I like here how the distinction is made between people who are in clans and people who aren’t. I also like the set-up of how WangXian is similar to Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan: we cultivate together because we have similar goals and ethics, and that they are respected doing that.

And it’s interesting how Jiang Cheng says how it’s an honor to meet those two, but when Wei Wuxian says that he and Lan Wangji went on a night hunt for the same reasons, Jiang Cheng scorns them. He implies such a thing is enough to not let him back into Lotus Cove. I guess he doesn’t extend that same courtesy to Wei Wuxian, which is not surprising. I really like Jiang Cheng as a character, but he struggles with having good relationships. His interpersonal skills aren’t great. I mean, just look at him at the end—irreconcilable damage has been done to his relationship with Wei Wuxian. Can they be civil to each other? Of course! Do I think they’re really ever going to be friends and brothers again? I sincerely doubt it. And this isn’t all Jiang Cheng’s fault or anything; I think it’s mutual, and both of them parted on good terms, but the understanding is that they may never cross paths again. Honestly, that’s what I like about Jiang Cheng—I like that he’s complicated and is stubborn and his pride is important to him; I like that he’s jealous and will hold a grudge forever—that’s what makes him interesting to me. And I love the theme that choices were made, and you can’t go back to how things were. I love that this series/book shows that blood isn’t thicker than water, that sometimes it isn’t enough just to be family—that there are things that can destroy those kinds of bonds, but that that isn’t the end. You can start over—and if anyone gets to start over, it’s certainly Wei Wuxian. Went off on a tangent there, sorry.

I like how much they act like friends here. It’s just so relaxed, so intimate. Just the two of them, because all the others have walked away, including Jiang Cheng. If I didn’t know the story, I’d be wondering why it seemed like Wei Wuxian is closer to Lan Wangji than Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng scoffs at him, while Lan Wangji embraces Wei Wuxian’s words, and he’s only known him six months or so. It’s quite telling. I’m glad I’m rewatching this, because there are so many moments I’ve forgotten about that are really nice (I’ve watched the special edition cut about twice, and a lot is cut out, as you know).

Another moment I forgot about: Wei Wuxian standing up for Xue Yang. Not, of course, because he thinks he’s a good man, but because he doesn’t think they should execute a man when they don’t have all the facts. I like the contrast between his way of thinking and Nie Mingjue’s, who is quick to anger, stressed out, and ready to take everything out on Xue Yang. It’s understandable that he wants to just end Xue Yang, considering the threats from the Wen Clan, plus word on the street is that Xue Yang murdered an entire clan, albeit a small one. Nie Mingjue is worried about his own clan, not to mention the Gusu Lan Clan, who he specifically asks about when greeting Lan Wangji. He feels the impending threat from the Wen Clan and he’s not about to take it lying down.

And then you have Wei Wuxian defending a man who in his eyes is innocent until proven guilty. Like I said earlier, I think they all know Xue Yang murdered all those people, but I do like the fact that Wei Wuxian tries to push Nie Mingjue into making a more reasonable choice: waiting until they have all the facts. It’s a nice foreshadowing of what’s to come with Wei Wuxian himself, where most people aren’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Look at that smile! aldslkf

Okay, so first Lan Wangji hears something on his roof, so he grabs Bichen and prepares for a fight. Then he hears Wei Wuxian mumbling drunkenly about how the tiles are rougher in Qinghe than in Gusu, and that little smile forms on his lips. It’s so quick—blink and you’ll miss it. His expression is so soft, so warm, so gentle. Think about this—six months ago, he would have leapt on that roof to go fight Wei Wuxian, and now his reaction is this honeyed smile, reserved at this point only for Wei Wuxian. I mean, have you seen him smile for anyone else? Okay, fine—he smiled at the rabbits too. So the great Lan Wangji only smiles for bunnies and Wei Wuxian.

And I think he really regrets leaving like this. They’ve built up this relationship—this rapport—with one another, and Lan Wangji ends up leaving in the night, basically without a word. Wei Wuxian is too drunk to even know he’s there (if I’m not mistaken, Wei Wuxian calls for him, thinking that’s he’s still inside). Lan Wangji doesn’t know what’s ahead—everything is uncertain: the Wen Clan has ordered all major clans to send one inner disciple to be indoctrinated immediately, there is the issue of the Yin Iron (and Lan Wangji still has a piece of it), not to mention people like Xue Yang who might be roaming around causing trouble on the Wens’ behalf. Lan Wangji is certainly fearful for his home and his people, worried about the Yin Iron going to the wrong hands, likely worried about Wei Wuxian just in general, and regretting leaving him high and dry. This is such a sad moment, and maybe it’s just me feeling that way. It always leaves me with a lump in my throat. I also think it mirrors a later scene where Lan Wangji is on the roof and Wei Wuxian is leaving.

Also that fucking wangxian.mp3 playing in the background for this whole part—of course I’m going to get emotional!

Perfect response: Wasn’t me!

I mean, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy, though. The captain was such an asshole, and I don’t blame Jin Guangyao one bit for what he did. That man emotionally and verbally abused him I’m sure on a daily basis. Not saying that murder is the answer to your problems, but in this made-up fantasy world that is CQL/MDZS, that guy fucking deserved it.

I also like how even though Nie Mingjue is super pissed and upset by what Jin Guangyao did, he still catches him when he gets run through, and he’s absolutely torn up about banishing him. It’s pretty powerful when it cuts back to him in his idk throne room (whatever you’d call that, I know it’s not a throne room, whatever) and everything is smashed up. Like, this man is enraged. The last thing he wanted to do was banish Jin Guangyao, but he had to. He couldn’t keep a man like that around. Jin Guangyao, by murdering the captain, had lost Nie Mingjue’s trust. Not to mention, who let Xue Yang out? Was it Jin Guangyao? Nie Mingjue doesn’t know; in his mind, Jin Guangyao could have been responsible for that too.

So, I actually really don’t like this. Wen Chao has already spilled the beans on the “evil Gusu Lan Clan” earlier, implying that they did, in fact, stand up to the Wens, and now he says outright that they sent forces to Gusu to burn the place to the ground. I hate that they tell us this! It’s so much better in the book when you don’t know what’s going on until Wei Wuxian finds out at the indoctrination! This is one of the most annoying things about Untamed—they spoil all the big secrets right away. In the book, the big secrets hit so much better when they’re finally revealed. It’s honestly a great feeling that the payoff is so good. Watching Untamed, I was just like, what?! Don’t tell them yet! Like the headband?! Argh!! Yes, we got that one good scene, but I would have traded that for what happens in the book (of course, the whole being tied up with the headband probably wouldn’t have made it into the tv series…). [NB: I laughed when I was reading over this again and saw that I’d already brought up the headband. Sore spot lol.]

But also, does Wei Wuxian not look worried enough here or is it just me? I feel like he should be more concerned. Even though he has the utmost confidence in Lan Wangji’s skill, he’s just one young man up against a huge force from the Wen Clan.

Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |

[just-like-playing-tag]

not to connect The Oh Hellos and TPN again but Soap (one of their newer songs) reminds me of Emma, particularly her relationship with Norman and the demons

Wow can we like... Collectively agree to invest The Oh Hellos of the title of official tpn soundtrack 😂😂

I loved the song!!!!!! It talks about how to make soap!!! Fun story, when I was attending high school we once made soap at our science lab. For it to be completed, we needed to have it sitting till the next day. But boom! Quarantine started right the day after, and I never got to know what the finished product would have looked like. It's been more than a year since then, and sometimes I still will wonder if our class soap is still sitting under our school science lab window, waiting for us to come back.

But I digressed, back to the beautiful song!!! Since the very first lines...

I’ve heard

Since I was younger

They're polar opposites

With a molecular rift you can’t fix

I really love how The Oh Hellos often have those lyrics that are reminiscent of childhood, it fits tpn's vibes so much. And I think it's very nice how it addresses to a chemical process you might study at school, something the GF children have definitely studied as well!! It's just very fitting.

And when it says!!!!!!:

But I swear with all your burnt bridges

You can leech what’s caustic and find

A rudimentary lye

Some kinda miraculous bind

So nice!!!! Makes me think of Emma finding (and founding) a point of contact between humans and demons, something that can indeed be considered a miracle, coming after centuries of humans and demons considering themselves different and irreconcilable species. Also how such reconciliation happens after having burnt bridges... You know, just like how, in a way, the whole story starts from the children "burning their bridge" by escaping from GF with no chance to come back to their old life.

Oh no, I think I’m not quite ready

To let you circle the drain

All the things we’ve broken

Can be puzzled together again

All your sums and your pieces

Are enough to clean up

All the messes you’ve made

MMMH this part reminds me a lot of no memories!Emma and it's making me have feelings. I guess she is indeed trying to put the pieces together... Besides, am I bad for considering what she's made a mess? I'm still angry at her for accepting the deal lol.

I got a tender side

I’ll need a harder shell to survive

Would you look at that!!! This is 100% pure, fresh-sqieezed, organic Emma at her core! Probably Norman and Ray as well. I think everything Emma has experienced after escaping from GF... That definitely made her grow a thick skin 😔😔

I know maybe you’re not quite ready

To loosen your hold

On a safety blanket

You’ve been keeping around your shoulders

But your sums and your pieces

Are enough to make you whole

You gotta let go

Awww this reminds me of the children needing the courage to leave GF. So cute.

It’s gonna hurt like hell

But we’re going to be well

I’ll give you my best shot

Yeah just. The tpn motto.

A beautiful song, thank you for recommending!!!

[the-mandalorian-clone-lover]

Ok y’all, I have gathered enough nerve or something and here it is :D

This is kind of the description and then I’ll put the reference photos and the first part under the read more thingy.

Roman is a mob boss and is played by Ewan McGregor (he’s 100% a hopeless romantic and wants someone to cherish, when he finds that person he will literally do anything to keep them, not afraid of much), Erica (She wants to be loved despite her Asexuality, she is afraid it’s impossible, and she isn’t willing to do much to make it happen because she’s convinced it’s impossible) is his girlfriend. Butcher is basically Kronk from the Emperor’s new groove (because he’s enormous and adorable and I love him).

Second part here

Ok so top is Butcher, he’s probably 6′5 in my mind or more? Probably has tattoos, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. Second is Roman (who is Ewan obvs but this is about the age I picture him). Third is Erica, I picture her between 26&28 and Roman 30 or 32, so there is an age gap but it isn’t more than 4-6 years. She’s 5′11 and Roman is 5′10, that’s a surprise tool that will help us later, and yeah I think that’s about it.  Story below :)

Oh– Warnings?: Talking about coming out, Erica yells a sentence or two but she’s frustrated, silly self-indulgence? Excessive tooth-rotting fluff

*************************

(The song he sings is Your Song from Moulin Rouge)

Roman’s been deep in thought in the back of the car the entire ride and Butch has finally had enough.

“Somethin’ going on boss?”

Roman sighs, “Erica texted that she wanted to talk to me instead of doing dinner tonight.” He pauses before evidently deciding to give Butch the whole story, looking at his feet as he does so. “I asked her at dinner two days ago if she wanted to be official and now, I’m wondering if it was too soon. Did I scare her off?” Roman’s eyes come back to Butch’s as he asks and for a moment he’s at a loss, thankfully Roman continues before he has to answer. “I know I tend to..” his eyes go to the window, eyes searching it as if it holds the right words “..do things a little old fashioned. Commit to each other, take care of each other, do people, not do that anymore?” He asks the question desperately and Butch ponders a moment before responding.

“Maybe not out there, but if anyone would want a little old fashioned, I think it’d be Ms. Erica.” They’ve been dating a month or so now, strictly dinner and walking in the park type dates, she had come to the pent house once, but only so Roman could give her a one month anniversary present; a necklace (it had been simple but elegant, Butch had helped pick it out).

Roman’s eyes make their way back to him, “What do you mean?”

Butch pauses, tilting his head and looking down before answering “She’s got an old soul, and she’s not the kind of woman you could get away with not treating her right.”

Roman had nodded his assent before opening his mouth but the stop of the car cuts him off.

Butch waits till they’re both out of the car before speaking again. “Do you want me to follow you up?”

It’s a matter of protocol, some days Butch sweeps the penthouse before Roman goes in, just to be sure, but at this moment Roman is pretty sure there could be snakes in his house and it wouldn’t be worse than the thought of Erica leaving him. Its early to be so attached, he knows this, but she’s so lovely and wonderful and one-of-a-kind that he hates to see her go so soon, when there’s so much he hasn’t gotten to say to her. He braces himself inwardly though, putting on a brave face for Butch.

“No, I’ll be alright, I’ll let you know if we decide to go for dinner after all.” He tries to smile but knows Butch sees right through it. Butch pulls him in by the shoulders for a hug before holding him at arms-length.

“Don’t go getting all mopey before she’s even talked to ya, maybe she’s already made dinner and that’s why.”

“It’s much too early for that, I hope she doesn’t think she has to—”

Butch is turning him and shoving him towards the door.

“Go on lover boy, face your music and don’t be a wimp!”

Roman drags himself up the stairs, feeling like a glutton for punishment at this moment, straightening himself up before opening the door. He almost regrets forgetting to knock before remembering this is his house and choosing instead to call out.

“Erica? Darling? I’m a little early, didn’t want to startle you.”

She appears in the entryway that leads to the living room, looking a little nervous herself.

“I-“ She takes a deep breath, eyes never leaving him “Thank you for having them let me in, what I wanted to talk to you about is a more personal matter.”

Well. That certainly didn’t sound like a precursor to a break-up.

“Of course” Roman responds, trying to sound as at-ease as possible. “Can I get you anything?” His eyes sweep her figure and upon realizing she’s abandoned her shoes he begins to toe off his own, leaving them next to hers in the doorway.

She’s shaking her head when he looks up. “No, thank you, I brought some cookies I made, they’re in here.” With that she turns back to the sitting room and begins to walk away. He hurries after her but tries to allow her space still. He takes the moment to look at her. She’d looked ill at ease in the foyer, a large OD green sweatshirt (that had probably seen better days) that said ‘Property of Middle Earth’ in worn white letters nearly swallowing her, hair down and falling in her face, she’d pushed it behind her ears twice as they walked. She’s wearing the black jeans she says are her favorites, everything seems to point to her dressing for comfort. She pushes the sweatshirt sleeves up to her elbows before sweeping the container off the coffee table and holding it out to him.

“I remember you said you liked macadamia nut, it’s my first time making them though.”

He nods, taking the box, also taking care to brush his fingers against hers as well as he can without raising suspicion. He takes off the lid, taking a deep breath before looking up to her in awe, “These smell amazing!” He smiles before looking down again, grabbing one to hold it out to her. “Share?”

She smiles thinly, shaking her head again, (Roman doesn’t think he’s ever seen her shake her head this much) before answering “No, I’m alright. Not very hungry anyway.”

Erica knows its not a convincing answer but what can she say? She’s been dreading this conversation ever since she started having feelings for Roman and when he had asked her to think about being officially together, she’d known she couldn’t put it off any longer. She looks at the floor again, remembering that she’s wearing her favorite sweatshirt and that if anyone from Middle Earth were here they’d be encouraging her (maybe not Sauron but he wasn’t really the encouraging type) and probably giving her an awkward thumbs up from behind Roman’s couch. She smiles at the comforting thought and looks back up at him. No matter what his response was, she’d handle it. She’d come this far. She sits down (albeit a little rigidly) on the couch behind her, and Roman follows her lead, sitting in the chair diagonal from the coffee table.

She takes another deep breath, this is it. “I’m just going to come right out and say it—”

“Do you want to break up?”

Roman’s on the edge of his chair, gripping the container and looking at her with, fear? Dread? She isn’t sure but it isn’t a positive emotion that’s etched into his face. He’s not the only one.

“No,” she says it carefully, deliberately, before continuing past what she knows is the point of no return. “But you might”.

It feels like a bomb went off. Roman actually leans back in the chair before blinking rapidly, attempting to process. “Did–“ he supposes ‘cheating’ might be too strong a word if they’re actually not even together but he isn’t sure what else they would split over.

“It isn’t something I did. It’s something I am.” Erica is resisting the urge to cry now, it doesn’t matter how many times she talks about it, it doesn’t seem to get easier when you care what the other person responds with. She’s looking at the floor when she hears shuffling and feels the couch dip next to her. She looks over to find Roman seated on the far end, reaching slowly to hover a hand above her shoulder.

“Whatever it is, we’ll work through it. It’s not as if anything is irreconcilable.” He pauses and Erica really is bracing now, nearly wanting to get up and run from the room in preparation for the inevitable.

“Unless you’re actually an orc. Or you like eating hummus. I have to draw the line somewhere.”

He says it as if it were obvious and she smiles, shaking her head before breathing out shakily. “It’s, well, its neither of those things.” She says, finally looking him in the eye, reaching up to guide his hand down to her shoulder. If nothing else, she’ll enjoy these last few minutes of comfort he offers before it’s all over.

“I’m asexual.”

Its out. And while it does take a weight off her chest, she isn’t sure it’s gone for good.

Roman blinks, tilting his head, “Tell me what that means?”

It’s a request. Not a demand, he didn’t fill the air with his assumptions, he just asked. That’s a new one.

“Well, it um,” Erica takes another deep breath, reaching out to grab his other hand in both of hers and fastening her eyes to them before spitting out the rest in a rush, “It means I don’t experience sexual attraction.”

He’d already started stroking the fingers he could reach when she took his hand hostage and he doesn’t stop when she finishes. She doesn’t move though, she’s waiting for it to sink in. Either he’ll tell her to get out, tell her that that isn’t a thing, or that he can fix her. She’s already got a plan for all three.

“Ok.” He says it as if she’d just told him it was cloudy outside. “How do you want me to respond?”

She brings her eyes back to his slowly, mouth agape. She can’t even be bothered to close it either, somehow, he’s managed to say the one thing she never expected.

“How do I want you to respond?”

“Well, I know that I don’t know exactly what you need or want to hear, so I’m asking.” He says it all so gently, as if he were trying to comfort her, as if he could sense how hard it was to say this, could he? “I want to support you” he says with conviction, “Sometimes you might have to tell me how.”

His gentle tone never fades, if anything it only sounds more genuine as he continues, moving his hand to hover next to her cheek. She leans into it, sniffing softly and closing her eyes against the tears. It’s hardly the time to cry now. Gathering herself she opens her eyes.

“You need to understand sex is something I might not ever be able to give you.” As sweet as he is, she won’t let him commit to something if he doesn’t even understand what it means. “I’ve, had,–“ now her eyes are back in her lap, withdrawing her hands from his, “experiences, but, I didn’t like them. And since I don’t have the desire anyway, it’s possible I’ll be like this forever.” She’s painting it bleakly but what else is there to say? She’s never been supported by any partner or friend and she isn’t sure she’d even know how to handle it if she was. Part of her does want to break up with Roman now, end it all before he can, give herself control of the situation before it gets any more uncomfortable.

“Why do you say it as if you were broken?”

Shock. That’s what she’s feeling, bringing her eyes up to look at Roman as if he’d grown two heads. Opening and closing her mouth twice before finally blurting out

“Isn’t that what you think?” She’s standing now, words falling out of her mouth in a rush of fear and anger, “Isn’t that what everyone thinks?! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say? That I can’t be anything other than a robot if I don’t want” she gestures fiercely “that!? As if I wasn’t a whole person without it?” Roman is standing now but she can’t stop “As if there was no way two people could be together without doing it??” Her voice has somehow been getting louder all through her rant and everything’s getting blurry as the tears start “As if I were making the whole thing up?” He’s closer now, and she stumbles back, yelling a final, “AS IF I WASN’T A REAL PERSON BECAUSE OF IT??” before she collapses into his arms. She’s sobbing in earnest now, gripping onto him as tightly as she can. This has never happened. Every other time she’s always handled the rejection, the teasing, the downright harassment before calmly leaving and never coming back but, somehow, it’s Roman being kind to her that finally causes her to break. All the frustration, hurt and confusion finally pouring out in her tears. He’s just stroking her back with one hand, the other cradling her head against his shoulder. Between the sobs she can hear his voice, but he doesn’t seem to be saying much other than ‘its alright’ and telling her to let it out, saying that he’s here and he’s not leaving. It helps.

When the sobs subside to hiccups she wraps her arms a little tighter around him and takes a breath before sniffing.

“Can I have a tissue?” She says it as softly as she can, she doesn’t really want him to leave but she’s starting to worry for whoever does the wash. He seems to pick up on her reluctance to separate, instead taking the arm from her back to reach behind and down for the box on the coffee table. He fumbles in the awkward position for a moment, causing them both to huff in good humor before standing straight and holding it up by her face. She takes it.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those things to you.”

She mumbles it without ever moving, choosing to reach over his shoulder to wipe her face, if he’s willing to keep holding her, she isn’t going to make him stop.

He goes back to petting her hair softly, answering in the same tone, careful to keep his voice low. “Don’t apologize. If someone said those horrible things to me, I’d be upset too.”

She sighs quietly. He must not understand still.

“But everyone thinks they’re true. That’s the problem.” She says it matter-of-factly, her arms loosening a bit to rest on his shoulder blades before he suddenly grips her tighter.

“Not everyone.”

It’s a small thing, and it shouldn’t mean anything to her, but it does. It means the whole world.

They stand there holding each other for heaven only knows how long, Erica not wanting to leave the comforting embrace that Roman is offering, and Roman content to hold her as long as she needs.

More time passes before she hears him humming, well she feels it first but then she hears the soft notes next to her ear and feels him shifting back and forth slowly. Swaying them both. Then he’s singing to her. Quietly, barely above a whisper but his voice is like honey.

“My gift is my song, and this one’s for you” he nuzzles his cheek on the side of her head before going on, still whispering gently to her and swaying softly “and you can tell everybody, this is your song. It may be quite simple but, now that it’s done. I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words,” he gets a little louder then, more confident, “How wonderful life is, now you’re in the world.”

“Elton John?” She asks, voice still a little wobbly, only slightly teasing.

“No, well, yes, but I was thinking of Moulin Rouge.”

She frowns, slowing their swaying slightly, “I thought Elton John wrote that?”

She hears a small ‘ah’ followed by “Moulin Rouge is a film, have you not seen it?”

She shakes her head against his, muttering a ‘huh uh’

“Hmm, well, then let me finish serenading you and then we can watch it, how does that sound?”

She pulls away then, wanting to look him in the face even if she doesn’t necessarily want him to see hers. “You want to stay? With me?”

He nods, brushing his thumbs across where they’ve come to rest on her waist. “I’ll admit I don’t understand it all yet but I can learn. And if you promise to never start liking hummus then we seem to have an agreement.” He finishes with a smile and somehow Erica finds herself smiling with him. Somehow, she has hope again.

“I think I can promise that.” She says, taking another shaky breath in before muttering ‘eskimo kiss’ and leaning forward to brush her nose against his, he bumps their foreheads together and then they’re both giggling. He hasn’t ever kissed her lips yet but it’s moments like this that make her certain he’ll wait till she starts it.

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[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 10

An Asha’man contemplates personhood and Perrin finally has a meeting.

Chapter 10: After the Taint

Back to Perrin, who’s talking with Elyas and Grady and walking through camp and still not meeting Galad. His last chapter seemed like the last few moments before such a meeting, but I guess we’re drawing this out a bit more?

Ah, a fallen statue with a sword. Well, now I know generally where we are in the timeline, at least. That’s the statue Rand mentioned to Nynaeve (when he told her to dream on my behalf, Nynaeve; and yes, that still hurts).

Perrin’s second-guessing all his life choices—okay, in fairness, mostly just his recent strategic choices—and Elyas, voice of reason, is making the very good point that you can’t actually anticipate every eventuality. Or, as Lan might say, “You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that.”

Lan may not be there, but I’m glad Perrin has both Elyas and Tam with him. Both of them are good… not just grounding influences but I guess… steadying ones. They’re people who have gone through quite a lot of Life Experience, not all of it pleasant, and have emerged from it with a clear sense of who they are, and how they fit into the world around them. And Perrin needs people like that with him now; Rand needs people who help remind him he’s human, Mat needs his Greek chorus, and Perrin needs… people who have found that kind of balance within themselves, to show him it’s possible. Elyas, who has found his balance between man and wolf. Tam, the farmer and soldier, and neither of those lessening the other. In a way, I think they’re both not unlike the sort of person Perrin himself might be when he’s older.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is, it’s good for Perrin to have some role models.

Ugh, apparently the Two Rivers people are still judging Perrin for that time they think he slept with Berelain. Don’t slutshame the wolfboy, people; for all you know he has an open marriage!

…Okay anyone who’s met Faile could likely guess that’s not the case. But they should know better than to trust so much to rumour, especially when they know Perrin. Unfortunately, though, people are people. Also, you know, Wheel Of Absolutely No Communication and all that. Sigh.

Perrin wants to sneak into the Whitecloaks’ camp for a rescue mission, and Grady just wants to go Dumai’s Wells on their asses. Not…sure either of those is exactly a great solution here, boys. Have you considered talking? Oh, wait, no, forgot what series I’m reading.

He hated the idea of letting the Asha’man loose with impunity. The scent of burned flesh in the air, the earth ripped apart and broken. The scents of Dumai’s Wells. However, he couldn’t afford another distraction like Malden. If there were no other choice, he’d give the order.

And now he knows how Rand felt, when he did give that order.

Still, this could be taken as a small moment of growth for Perrin, to acknowledge—hating the idea but not letting it drag him fully into a crisis of self-hatred—that he could do this, will do this if he has to. That this is an option available to him, and that if it is necessary, he’ll do it. And being able to do that not in the moment (the way he sort of did with the Shaido prisoners, for example), and not in that desperate single-minded focus on finding Faile, but as a simple evaluation of the options available to him, in anticipation of what might be needed for this next task.

Still, for all their sakes, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Not yet, though. There are no coincidences with ta’veren. The wolves, the Whitecloaks. Things he had been outrunning for some time were returning to hunt him.

Wow that sounds almost like self-awareness! And lack of denial! Again, to Perrin’s credit, he’s been alright at that for a little while now, but it’s still a big enough achievement that I’ll celebrate it whenever it happens with these boys.

But yes, Perrin. It’s the endgame of an epic fantasy series; there are no coincidences here.

The Whitecloaks had haunted him since his early days out of the Two Rivers. Dealing with them had never been simple.

It felt like the time had come. Time to make an end to his troubles with them, one way or another.

That, basically. Coming full circle and getting closure to an arc and all that fun stuff.

Which is another reason why this shouldn’t end in violence, perhaps. Because that’s what started all of this: Perrin fought the Whitecloaks, and killed two of them (and then several more, with Gaul, for old times’ sake), and had to Deal With That, both in his own mind acknowledging himself as a killer and with the consequences of it. And at every stage of this he’s been in conflict with the Whitecloaks. Fighting them directly, or at odds with them in the Two Rivers.

(They make such a good point of conflict for him too, especially when you set the Tuatha’an on the other side, because together they kind of represent an extreme version of some of the sides of Perrin’s own conflict within himself. The Tuatha’an as an extreme version of his wish for peace and his fear of the violence he carries within himself; the Whitecloaks as an extreme version of a determination to do the right thing.)

But now the Whitecloaks are being set up for a kind of redemption via Galad, and Perrin’s arc is drawing to a close for the endgame, and so it would fit both sides for this long-running conflict, which challenges the fundamentals of who they are, to come to a close not in violence but in alliance. To recognise in each other something to be admired rather than only something to be feared or hated. To see points of similarity rather than just irreconcilable difference. Because to do so would also, I think, mean accepting some of those things in themselves, so that they can all move forwards.

And on the subject of alliance where once was enmity, the Asha’man and Aes Sedai with Perrin have figured out linking. Well, Neald has, and Grady seems keen to get on board. Cooperation! Overcoming millennia-long barriers! Being stronger together!

“Light! It’s wonderful. We should have done this months ago.”

Or centuries, but it’s all relative, right?

I do love, though, that at almost every turn, once this kind of cooperation happens, it’s seen by those involved as something positive, treated with this kind of joyous amazement. Like Nynaeve’s first time as part of a circle, or this, or affirmations of friendship, or those moments when characters finally decide to be open or honest with one another. It’s almost always rewarded; it takes a hell of a lot of work and time and pain to get there, but once they do, it’s something good.

“I was wondering if I might…” [Grady] seemed hesitant. “Well, if I might have leave to slip over to the Black Tower for an afternoon, to see my family.”

Oh. Oh man. Okay I think I see where this is going. (The importance of having family, to keep him grounded, as Rand recognised so long ago when he first started gathering men who could channel, before he all but lost sight of his own anchors. And the taint is gone now so it’s safe, or at least safer…).

Also, please let Grady or someone go to the Black Tower because I need a Black Tower interlude. It has been far too long and there have been far too few in the first place. What is happening there. I need to know. Because of reasons.

Damn it Perrin let him go see his family! I mean okay fair, there’s a clear threat ahead and a possible threat behind so tactically yeah, not a great time. And he does agree to let Grady go at some point soon.

“You never worried about this before, Grady,” Perrin said. “Has something changed?”

“Everything,” Grady said softly. Perrin got a whiff of his scent. Hopeful. “It changed a few weeks back. But of course you don’t know. Nobody knows. Fager and I weren’t certain at first, and we weren’t sure if we should tell anyone for fear of sounding delusional.”

“Know what?”

“My Lord, the taint. It’s gone.”

And with it, the certain death sentence they’ve all been living under. It does change everything: once, they were weapons, because that was all they could hope to be in their brief time of power before madness. Once, all they could do in the end was die for this cause. Now, there’s a chance they can live for it. Can let themselves be more than weapons again, can hope for something more.

In its own way it’s yet another version of Rand’s realisation on Dragonmount, for all that this comes earlier chronologically (and for all that we’ve seen it happen already for some of the characters who were closer to the cleansing). This idea that there might be more to the future than death, more to give than a last stand and despair, more to be than a weapon.

The timing of this does seem kind of weird, given that the cleansing was several books ago now, and the explanation that they were waiting to be sure… eh, I suppose no one ever tells anyone anything in this series so it doesn’t strain suspension of disbelief too far. I suppose it just feels weird because everything about Perrin’s chapters up until now has felt like a building up of tension before his inevitable meeting with Galad, and this feels like a kind of random digression.

Not an unimportant one—this is lovely, and fits well in terms of where we are in the overall story in the sense of realisation of hope once thought lost—but just… somewhat oddly placed.

“Seems the sort of thing Rand might have been about,” Perrin said.

Which might just be the most chill reaction to hearing about the cleansing of saidin we’ve seen from anyone. Oh, a miracle? The removal of a three-thousand-year-old evil that has gradually destroyed so much of society and thrown the world out of balance? Yeah, that sounds like something Rand would do, cool, fair enough.

It probably helps that Perrin himself can’t channel, so all of this would feel a bit more… abstract, maybe? Which might make it easier to accept than it would be for someone to whom this is an integral part of their lives. Still, it makes me laugh.

“When I joined the Lord Dragon, I knew what would happen to me. A few more years and I’d be gone. Might as well spend them fighting. The Lord Dragon told me I was a soldier, and a soldier can’t leave his duty. So I haven’t asked to go back before now. You needed me.”

“That’s changed?”

“My Lord, the taint is gone. I’m not going to go mad. That means… well, I’ve always had a reason to fight. But now I’ve got a reason to live, too.”

This, exactly. The difference between having something to die for and having something to live for; dying for a cause and living for one. It’s adjacent to Rand’s own why do you fight question and realisation, but it’s also the realisation that there is something more than death ahead.

There’s a kind of honour, certainly, in knowing he’s going to die and deciding to at least make that death worth something—give that brief time before madness to some kind of cause, use this power that damns him to serve some goal. But now that’s not the only choice. Now he can decide to fight, still, but also to live, and to hope for something else; to be a soldier, yes, but not merely a weapon.

It’s one of those shifts in perspective that from one angle looks so slight but that actually means everything, that changes everything.

And again, while the specific timing in this chapter is a little weird, it otherwise is such a fitting realisation; sure, it’s technically before Dragonmount, but narratively it’s during this time when this kind of shifting perspective is spreading across the world from its epicentre: the mountain where hope first seemed to die and now at last has been restored. This realisation that there’s more than just a dark inevitability to the future; that instead there are choices and things to live for and possibilities and second chances.

(There’s one rather prominent character who still has yet to come to his own version of this realisation, but he’s riding towards it now, unless I am very much mistaken).

That was what Perrin had sensed in the Asha’man all along, the reason they held themselves apart, often seeming so sombre. Everyone else fought for life. The Asha’man… they’d fought to die.

That’s how Rand feels, Perrin thought.

Indeed. And almost surprisingly perceptive of Perrin; for a while in the middle he sort of… didn’t quite allow himself to see Rand’s despair and sadness. But he’s absolutely right, in this.

And he touches on another key part of this change, in that thought of the Asha’man holding themselves apart. Not quite letting themselves be part of the world in the same way as others, not allowing themselves connections and friendships and anchors; turning themselves to weapons (or, in Rand’s case, to steel, to cuendillar). Which then leads to a kind of apathy or despair, to no longer having anything to live for, because they allow themselves nothing, because they don’t allow themselves to be people. But now they can, and so Grady is reaching back out to those things that mattered, back when he was a person and not a weapon (like the veins of gold). Drawing on them once more to pull himself back, to let himself be himself again.

I suppose in a way this ties into where Perrin is in his own story as well, now that he has found Faile and come out of the other side of that single-minded despair in which nothing else mattered. Because he, too, is finding his footing again after that. Finding some kind of purpose. It’s not like-for-like, but it all ties together.

Grady laughed. It felt odd, but good, to hear that from the man.

Laughter and tears.

Oh, are we actually going to get the meeting with Galad now?

“There is a stranger riding along the road towards camp. He flies a flag of peace, but he wears the clothing of these Children of the Light.”

FINALLY.

Oh good Tam is here. Tam is a good person to have around when everything’s likely to go to shit.

Ah it’s Dain Bornhald rather than Galad. That’s… not exactly ideal. He and Perrin didn’t precisely part on the best of terms. Or meet on the best of terms. Or ever interact on anything but the worst of terms, really.

Anyway Bornhald opens by calling Perrin a criminal so we’re off to a great start.

“It is you. The Light has delivered you to us.”

“Unless it has also delivered you an army three or four times the size of the one you have now,” Perrin called, “then I doubt very much that it will matter.”

I’m always here for Perrin’s backtalk, of course, but I’m pretty sure an outright threat isn’t going to help this situation any. Then again, it was more or less a lost cause as soon as Bornhald showed up, given I don’t think anything but a severe concussion and possibly amnesia is going to change his opinion of Perrin, so.

Perrin’s attempting something vaguely resembling diplomacy, in that he’s basically saying ‘why don’t we just ignore each other until we’re out of sight’, but Bornhald’s not so keen on that option. Unsurprisingly.

“But I will leave that for the Lord Captain Commander to explain. He wishes to see you for himself.”

YES. FINALLY.

Though Perrin’s not so keen on walking into what could very likely be a trap, and Tam’s thinking much the same thing… but hey, he’s ta’veren; what could possibly go wrong? When has knowing they’re walking into a trap ever gone anything but perfectly well for any of these characters? (Don’t answer that).

“Burn me, Tam. I have to at least try before attacking them.”

That’s… a fair point, at least given Perrin’s own sense of honour and morality. It’s part of his ongoing conflict with the Whitecloaks as well, really: at none of their encounters has he actually wanted to kill them, or to attack first. He’s not out hunting them, and while he does sort of bear a grudge against them now, it wasn’t always that way. It’s just that there’s quite a lot of bad blood there, and even in the early days things went south quickly, and so it inevitably ended in bloodshed.

The six of them broke away from camp, and blessedly, Faile didn’t seem to have heard what was happening. Perrin would bring her if there was a longer parley or discussion, but he intended this trip to be quick, and he needed to be able to move without worrying about her.

Kind of a shame, given that she could be an asset in a discussion or negotiation. But at least he knows that well enough to be thinking of bringing her along if there’s going to be extended talking, I suppose. Would Galad know her? Maybe not on sight, but I’d imagine he might know her name, and certainly would know her father’s… that could help. Or not; who knows.

HI GALAD.

The tall man had fine features and short, dark hair. Most women would probably call him handsome. He smelled… better than the other Whitecloaks.

This description is just trying way too hard to emphasise the ‘no homo’ that it pretty much runs screaming in the other direction, and I’m laughing.

“Goldeneyes,” the man said. “So it is true.”

“You’re the Lord Captain Commander?” Perrin asked.

“I am.”

Oh, of course we’re doing this without Perrin ever getting his name. Of course. I can’t quite decide if that strains my suspension of disbelief or not, but either way: ARGH. Then again, Perrin’s never actually met Galad and doesn’t know that Maighdin is Morgase, and barely even knows Elayne, so knowing Galad’s identity might not actually help him all that much.

“What will it take for you to release the people of mine you’re holding?”

“My men tell me they tried such an exchange once,” the Whitecloak leader said. “And that you deceived them and betrayed them.”

Well, yes, they would say that. But Galad, you of all people should know that there are probably more sides to that particular story, especially given you’re not getting it from an unbiased source.

Galad keeps listing out Perrin’s alleged crimes, some of which could be argued to be true (killing Whitecloaks); some of which are bullshit (leading Trollocs to attack his own village), but none of which he has any actual evidence for, beyond the word of his own men. Their word against Perrin’s, and it seems like Galad should also know that just because he’s the Lord Captain Commander now, and trying to drag this organisation kicking and screaming into some kind of redemption, doesn’t mean everyone in it is suddenly noble and honourable and not lying outright to him.

Or even that they’re mistaken. That, as is so often the case, there’s just more to the story. That maybe the people whose information he’s relying on didn’t know everything that was actually happening. Which is closer to the truth, really; Bornhald genuinely believes Perrin is evil, and so everything else gets filtered through that lens of confirmation bias.

“I want a more formal parley, where we can sit down and discuss. Not something improvised like this.”

“I doubt that will be needed,” the Whitecloak leader said. “I am not here to bargain. I merely wanted to see you for myself. You wish your people freed? Meet my army on the field of battle. Do this, and I will release the captives, regardless of the outcome.”

I am a little surprised Galad outright refuses Perrin’s request to sit down and talk about this like adults. Because sure, he’s seen Perrin now, but what information does that tell him? It’s a perfectly reasonable request, and nothing Perrin’s said to him has been particularly unreasonable, and again, Galad should know better than to just take as absolute truth everything he’s been told.

Then again, Bornhald told him the truth about Valda and Morgase, so maybe that’s earned him Galad’s trust? Still, it seems odd that he wouldn’t give Perrin some kind of chance—a trial, or a conversation—to defend himself, before challenging him to a battle, where so many more people could die.

I just don’t get Galad sometimes, but what else is new.

“Your force will face ours under the Light,” the Whitecloak leader said. “Those are our terms.”

So you’re just going to sentence some of your own people to death in order to determine this, rather than… talk? Sure. Okay. Trial by combat by proxy; why the hell not.

I’m still guessing it’s not actually going to come to that, somehow, though I can’t quite see how. Unless Galad sees Morgase. That’s the only thing I can think of that could potentially stop this from turning into the mess it’s currently heading for.

He could take the Whitecloak leader captive right here, with barely a thought.

Perrin was tempted. But they had come under the Whitecloak’s oath of safety. He would not break the peace.

That’s some rather weird logic, if you’re intending to then meet him on the field of battle. Capture one person, and the cost is breaking an oath of peace. Keep that oath of peace, and the cost is, very probably, the lives of some of the people following you.

I mean okay, I get it, truce flags should be honoured because otherwise Bad Things Happen, but… eh. Like with a lot of the ‘rules’ of warfare, sometimes thinking about it too hard gets a bit weird.

***

Oh we get a Galad POV now, so maybe his thinking will make more sense. Though admittedly I don’t hold out a great deal of hope for that, because again, Galad’s thought process just baffles me sometimes.

Those golden eyes were unsettling. He had discounted Byar’s insistence that this man was not merely a Darkfriend, but Shadowspawn. However, looking into those eyes, Galad was no longer certain he could dismiss those claims.

Come on, Galad, did no one ever teach you not to judge people by their appearance?

Like, on the one hand… okay, people he trusts have told him some pretty terrible thing about this guy, and he does have (apparently) unsettling eyes, and he didn’t deny any of the accusations Galad listed out. And confirmation bias, again, is a strong thing. It does make sense that he would be wary of Perrin, and expect him to be an enemy, to potentially be evil, and to see that at least his physical description matches what he was told so maybe the rest does, too.

It’s just frustrating.

“They would not have harmed me,” Galad said.

So you’ll believe he’s a monster, but also that you were safe?

To be fair, his reasoning for why he was safe does make sense, more or less, given what he knows and (mostly) what he assumes.

“If he is as you and Child Byar say, then he worries greatly about his image. He didn’t lead Trollocs against the Two Rivers directly. He pretended to defend them.” Such a man would act with subtlety. Galad had been safe.

Well, it makes sense if you partially discard Occam’s Razor and also fail to account for the possibility that he’s not as Bornhald and Child Byar say. Then again, if that’s true, then Galad was also safe, because Perrin’s not a monster or a threat.

Alright, fine, Galad, I’ll give you that one.

Those eyes… they were almost a condemnation by themselves.

Seriously, people, what is it with determining a person’s morality by their eye colour? You live in a world with literal magic! Sometimes weird shit happens!

And Aybara had reacted to the mention of the murdered Whitecloaks, stiffening. Beyond that, there was the talk his people gave of him in alliance with the Seanchan and having with him men who could channel.

Again, I can just about see where Galad’s coming from, and how he’s putting the pieces together, but I wish he’d stop for just a moment to consider that maybe there’s more to the story. But then, he’s hardly the only person in this series to come to not-entirely-accurate conclusions based on flawed or incomplete information. They’re all just working with what they have, and sometimes what they have is wrong, but… well, if I gave Lan’s a portion of wisdom quote to Perrin earlier, I suppose it’s only fair I grant Galad the same courtesy now. He doesn’t have perfect evidence that what he’s been told is right, but it paints a compelling enough picture, and he doesn’t have much evidence to the contrary, either.

Better to defeat this Aybara now, than to wait and face him at the Last Battle. As quickly as that, he made his decision. The right decision. They would fight.

Morgase, get over here; we need you.  

Previous (ToM ch 9)

[useless-slytherclaw]

Rating: Explicit Relationships: Lán Jǐngyí/Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī

 The afternoon sun filters through the window of the room Sizhui and Jingyi share, bathing the small room in soft gold. They’re old enough now that given their position in the sect, they could have requested their own rooms, but they prefer it this way.

 The sun falls across Jingyi’s bed, and he’s sprawled out in what is neither a proper sitting nor lying position, lingering in the sun rather like a cat, and holding the scroll he’s supposed to be reading in the air.  

 He looks across the room at Sizhui, who from his angle appears to be upside down.  Sizhui, unsurprisingly, is sitting in a proper Lan sitting position, with his guqin on the table in front of him, slowly working through a piece of music that Jingyi doesn’t recognize.   Something complex.

 The soft sound of the guqin filling the room is calming and familiar to Jingyi after all these years.  

 “I meant to tell you that you probably want to avoid studying in the library for a few days,” Jingyi says into the hush.

 “Mn?” Sizhui says, fingers still carefully picking out the melody.  “Why?”

 “A group of guest disciples got caught with contraband materials for the second time.  Lan-Laoshi was furious; he’s even making them do handstands this time.  They’re going to be in there forever.”

 Jingyi knows that Sizhui likes to study in the library, but he dislikes when the deep silence and calm of it is disturbed by disciples who don’t know any better.

 “Must have upset him then,” Sizhui says, voice calm.  “What contraband did they have?”

 “The usual,” Jingyi says with a dismissive wave.  “Alcohol, porn, whatever.”

 “Hmm,” Sizhui says, probably trying to figure out what had caused Lan-Laoshi to lose his temper.

 “I don’t get it,” Jingyi says.  “Every year, multiple times a year even, the same thing happens.  It’s such a stupid thing to get in trouble for.”

 “They’d probably say that running or running your mouth are stupid things to get in trouble for,” Sizhui points out.

 Jingyi makes a face at him, but he’s not looking.

 “Those two punishments don’t even compare.  Besides, I could probably finish the whole set of rules before they managed to do the first volume, handstands and all.”

 “I’ll remember that next time you are stuck in the library and ask for my help.”  He can hear the small smile in Sizhui’s voice and see the faint upturn at the corner of his mouth.

 “That’s just mean,” Jingyi complains.

 Sizhui just smiles without looking away from the music and his guqin.

 “But really,” Jingyi says, more interested now in this conversation than the readings he’d been assigned, “you don’t think it’s stupid?”

 Sizhui gives a tiny shrug and then finally glances at Jingyi.

 “Have you ever even looked at the books?” Sizhui asks.

 “Why would I? I don’t particularly want to see it, let alone risk Lan-Laoshi’s wrath over it.  It’s just drawings of random people having sex, eugh.”

 “Jingyi,” Sizhui says sounding amused, “did you just describe sex as ‘eugh’”

 “I meant the porn, but yes? I guess?”  Jingyi shrugs, but it’s rather ineffectual since he’s lying on his back.

 “Jingyi, we      have had sex,    and I’m pretty sure ‘eugh’ was not your reaction.”

 “That’s different.”

 It’s so incredibly different that the two things are almost irreconcilable.  There is so much to experience of loving Sizhui: the touch of his skin, the taste of his lips, the feeling of being at the center of his attention, the intimacy of it…  The flat art cannot contain that, and instead, it focuses on explicit details meant to evoke arousal in a way that Jingyi has never quite understood.  He doesn’t understand why exactly he’s supposed to be attracted to random people the way he is to Sizhui.  While Sizhui, for his own part, hasn’t quite grasped that Jingyi’s interest in sex more or less begins and ends with his involvement.

 “If you say so,” Sizhui says, attention back on his guqin.

 “I do.”

 Sizhui nods in acceptance, but he doesn’t respond otherwise.   Jingyi sighs and turns his attention back to the scroll in his hand, but he only gets a few lines in before something hits him, and he almost drops the book on his face.

 “Sizhui!” he says, craning his head backward to look at his partner.  “You’ve read some of the porn books you’ve confiscated haven’t you?”

 Sizhui’s hands pause over the guqin strings for only a moment, but Jingyi’s trained ear easily catches the break.

 “Sizhui!” Jingyi says tossing his readings aside and somersaulting off the bed to stand and look directly at Sizhui.  “You have! Haven’t you?”

 “Yes,” Sizhui says, and there’s a hint of a blush spreading across his cheeks.

 For a long moment, Jingyi just stares at Sizhui, processing.   Jingyi knows that there is more to Sizhui than most people see.  He knows the side of him that is bright and untamed.  The version of him with a sharp tongue and mischief in his eye; the version of him who follows Jingyi into trouble. He is learning the side of him that is passionate and burning.  The version of him that exists in Jingyi’s arms, in the touch of bare skin and the press of lips.

 So maybe this revelation shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, but he’s still Sizhui. He still follows all the rules even when there’s no one watching.  The idea of him with contraband materials is decidedly dissonant.

 Jingyi narrows his eyes at Sizhui, taking in the blush on his cheeks and the slightest hunch to his shoulders.  A second realization washes over him, and he starts across the room to Sizhui’s side before he has time to think about it.

 He’s shared a space with Sizhui long enough to know where he hides things, and he is hiding things.

 “What are you doing?” Sizhui asks, and the room goes abruptly silent as he stops playing the guqin.

 “You have some here,” Jingyi says, not bothering to look over at Sizhui.

 “I-” Sizhui says and stops, giving Jingyi all the confirmation he needs.  

 “Are you going through my things?” Sizhui asks somewhat sharply as Jingyi passes his desk.

 “Yes,” Jingyi says, glancing over his shoulder.  “Are you going to stop me?”

 “Five seconds ago you said you aren’t interested in these books!”

 Sizhui starts to get to his feet but pauses, kneeling.

 “This is different,” Jingyi says, determining that Sizhui is not going to get up and try to stop him.  

 “How?” Sizhui asks, face growing more pink.  “You said you weren’t interested in random people. I can confirm the art is of random people.”

 “I’m not interested in seeing the porn per se,” Jingyi says.  “I am interested in seeing what you are interested in.”

 Jingyi glances at Sizhui.  His face is flushed up to his ears with embarrassment, but there is no genuine distress on his face.  

 “You could have asked me!”

 “Would you have told me the truth?”

 “If you asked nicely!”

 “Well, tell me then,” Jingyi says, dropping down on Sizhui’s bed and reaching behind and under it.  He passes over several things, momentos from Sizhui’s past like the grass butterfly from Tanzhou and a much older one given to him by Senior Wen.  

 “I-” Sizhui stalls and sputters for a minute. Then he sighs,  “Oh what’s the point?”

 Triumphant, Jingyi sits up with a pair of small books held in one hand and a small jar in the other.  He glances at Sizhui, who is still at his desk but has put his hands over his face.

 “Sizhui,” Jingyi says in a singsong voice.  “Come here.”

 “No.” His voice is slightly muffled by his hands.

 “Fine,” Jingyi says and walks over to him.  He drops the books unceremoniously on the desk next to the guqin and settles onto his knees behind Sizhui.

 He wraps his arms around Sizhui’s waist and rests his chin on his shoulder.

 “I hate you,” Sizhui says, but there’s no bite.

 “No, you don’t,” Jingyi says, smiling and squeezing Sizhui tighter.  He can feel some of the tension starting to ease out of his muscles.

 “A little bit?”

 “Nope.”

 Jingyi kisses the spot behind Sizhui’s ear.  He reaches up and puts his hands over Sizhui’s gently trying to pull them away from his face.

 “Why are you so embarrassed, A-Yuan?” He says gently, “it’s just me.  There’s nothing you have to hide from me.”

 “I know,” Sizhui says, letting Jingyi pull his hands down.

 “There you are,” Jingyi says, kissing the burning skin of Sizhui’s cheek.  

 Sizhui turns his head so their lips meet, and Jingyi smiles into the kiss, lingering until Sizhui pulls away.

 “You know,” Jingyi says, “if you really don’t want me to, I won’t look.”

 “Mn, I know. It’s fine, it’s just…” he makes a vague hand gesture, and Jingyi smiles.

 “Yeah, I know,” he says, pulling Sizhui back against him.  

 While Sizhui is confident in what he wants and in his actions, he is easily flustered when forced to talk about it.  There’s no hesitation in his touches, and he doesn’t pause when they topple into bed together, but just hearing the word porn is enough to make him blush.

 Sizhui relaxes into Jingyi’s embrace, turning slightly, and Jingyi leans in to kiss him.  Sizhui’s lips part in a soft sigh, and Jingyi leans in closer, deepening the kiss, tasting the white tea that lingers on Sizhui’s lips and in his mouth.  The kiss is soft and slow, and Jingyi can feel the tension from the lingering embarrassment going out of Sizhui’s muscles.

 Jingyi tightens his arm around Sizhui’s waist, pulling him closer, and Sizhui twists, turning his shoulders more towards Jingyi.   With a smile, Jingyi pulls away.

 “How’s your neck?” he asks.

 Sizhui pouts at him, raising a hand to rub the back of his neck.  “Not exactly the most comfortable kiss ever.”

 “Well,” Jingyi says, pulling on Sizhui’s hip to turn him towards Jingyi.  “I tried to get you to come to the bed.”

 “I’m supposed to be studying,” Sizhui says, but he lets Jingyi turn him further around.  

 “So am I,” Jingyi says with a smirk.

 “That makes things worse, Jingyi, not better,” Sizhui says, but his expression is amused.

 “Shhh,” Jingyi says, leaning in and kissing him again.  For several heartbeats, Sizhui kisses him back, and then he pulls away again.

 “Really, we shouldn’t be doing this,” Sizhui says.

 Jingyi knows from experience, though, that it’s a token protest made because Sizhui feels like he has to rather than a real objection.   He recognizes the expression in Sizhui’s eyes, and it’s not even the one where he’s just waiting to be convinced, it’s the one where he’s already convinced.

 “We don’t have anywhere to be,” Jingyi says, cupping Sizhui’s hand in his face and leaning in for another kiss.  “Not today.”

 “That’s not the point,” Sizhui says, but the words turn into a sigh when Jingyi’s lips brush against his.

 “Hush, A-Yuan,” Jingyi says.

 “But-”

 Jingyi doesn’t let him finish, capturing his lips and sliding his tongue into Sizhui’s mouth.  He kisses Sizhui until his response goes from slightly surprised to eager, and then he pulls back.  Sizhui looks at him with wide faintly surprised eyes.

 “If you really would rather be studying,” Jingyi says, letting his arm fall from around Sizhui’s waist and starting to pull away.

 Sizhui makes a noise of protest, leaning into the space that Jingyi had vacated, and Jingyi grins.

 “That’s what I thought,” Jingyi says, unable to stop the smirk on his lips.  

 He gathers Sizhui in his arms again, and this time Sizhui doesn’t even pretend to protest; his hand curls around the nape of Jingyi’s neck, pulling him closer.  As they kiss, Jingyi lets his hands wander, sliding down Sizhui’s back to the curve of his ass, sliding up the line of his thigh.  Sizhui frees Jingyi’s hair from its ponytail, sinking his fingers into it.  Sizhui’s hand in his hair instinctively tightens and his breath hitches as Jingyi’s hand trails higher and higher up his thigh.  Sizhui’s already hard, and Jingyi smirks into the kiss, palming Sizhui’s cock and making him moan into the kiss.

 Without pulling away from the kiss, Sizhui moves his hand from his Jingyi’s hair to his waist, fumbling with his belt.  Jingyi’s belt is tossed aside, and Sizhui works his hands under the collar of his robes, running his hands over Jingyi’s chest and then across his back, fingers tracing the lines of the muscles.

 Jingyi twines the tail of Sizhui’s forehead ribbon around one of his fingers, feeling the thrill at being allowed that still goes through him every time he touches the silk.  He tugs it gently and then, when Sizhui doesn’t stop him, tugs it free.  Deftly, he twists it so it doesn’t fall to the ground and tucks it into Sizhui’s pocket.

 Sizhui’s lips move from his mouth to his jaw and then down the line of his neck, and Jingyi turns his attention to Sizhui’s belt and then the ties to the robes underneath.  A flash of annoyance goes through him as they impatiently work through the layers of the Gusu Lan uniform.  This is much easier when they’re already mostly undressed for the night.

 The clothes and Jingyi’s forehead ribbon do eventually fall free.  

 Jingyi pulls Sizhui into his lap, letting his hands linger on Sizhui’s narrow waist.  His thumbs trace down the lines of his obliques as Jingyi admires how well Sizhui fits into the curve of his hands.  It would be so easy to lose himself in this, in Sizhui, in the heat of his body, the silk of his skin, the taste of his lips.  It’s so easy.  But Jingyi hasn’t forgotten how this whole thing started.

 “Sizhui?” he says.

 “Mn?”

 “You still have to show me the book.”

 “Hm?” He pulls back to look at Jingyi.  There’s vague confusion on his face, and Jingyi feels a fond smile on his own.  Sizhui is so one-minded sometimes, focusing so much on the task at hand that the whole world falls away, and Jingyi has the privilege to be the center of that attention.

 Jingyi reaches out, tracing the curve of Sizhui’s bottom lip with his thumb, and watching as Sizhui’s thoughts scatter again.

 “You,” Jingyi says, gaze caught by Sizhui’s mouth, “have to show me your porn.”

 Sizhui blinks at him, and a blush darkens the faint flush high on his cheeks.

 “Now?” he asks, sounding almost petulant.

 “Mn,” Jingyi agrees.  “I want to see what you are interested in.”

 Sizhui runs his tongue over his lip, tracing out the tip of Jingyi’s thumb with it. Jingyi’s breath catches, and Sizhui smiles.

 “I think, Jingyi, you already figured out what I’m interested in.”

 “Some of it,” Jingyi agrees, letting his hand fall away from Sizhui’s face before it becomes a bigger distraction for him than it is for Sizhui.  “But I want to see it all.  Show me what you like, Sizhui.”

 Sizhui tilts his head slightly, and his eyes narrow.  

 “You aren’t going to give up on this are you?”

 “No,” Jingyi says, an unrepentant grin on his face.

 “Mn, alright,” Sizhui says.  He lets go of Jingyi slowly, hands trailing over his skin until the last possible moment of contact, and then he turns back to the table.  Jingyi scoots up behind him, settling with Sizhui in between his legs.  He wraps his arms around Sizhui’s waist, pressing his bare chest to Sizhui’s back and looking over his shoulder.

 Sizhui leans back, grinding against Jingyi’s erection, making him gasp and then moan.

 “Are you sure?” Sizhui asks.  “We could just?”

 Jingyi laughs and lets his hands fall to Sizhui’s thighs, squeezing them.

 “Show me, and then we will.”

 Somewhat impatiently, Sizhui grabs one of the two books, the one on top, and pulls it across the table towards him before flipping it open.

 He opens the first page, and Jingyi looks at the drawing with curiosity more than anything.  The art is different from the one porn book he’d seen when a group of junior disciples had been passing it around.  The art quality is better for one, but it’s also the style is different, more sensual than purely graphic.  Jingyi is relieved but not at all surprised.

 He studies the picture for a moment, but it’s nothing exciting, a woman on her knees and a man with his hands in her hair.  This particular act, Jingyi has already figured out.

 “Are there women in all of these?” he asks Sizhui idly.

 “In this one,” Sizhui says, glancing at him.  “Does it bother you?”

 “Dunno,” Jingyi says with a shrug.  This picture certainly doesn’t, but as Sizhui turns a few of the pages, Jingyi can’t help the expression of distaste on his face.  He’d never particularly had the desire to see a woman naked and this only confirms it.

 Sizhui, noticing his expression, snaps the book closed and pushes it aside.

 “Maybe this is better,” he says, grabbing the other book.  

 It is better, Jingyi finds as he studies the new picture: two men with one man's legs over the other’s shoulders.  Sizhui glances at Jingyi, gauging his reaction.  Jingyi presses his lips to Sizhui’s shoulder, not at all sure what reaction he’s supposed to be having.   It’s easy enough to imagine them like this, and that’s interesting, but the picture itself does nothing.

 As he turns the first few pages, Sizhui glances at Jingyi, but when Jingyi’s reaction doesn’t turn negative, his focus shifts back to the book. Sizhui turns the pages, and Jingyi continues to watch over his shoulder, letting his hands run idly over Sizhui’s body.  Over the muscles of his abs and chest, down his arms, up his thighs, bunching up the silk of the pants he hasn’t removed yet.  

 As Sizhui slowly flips through the book displaying men in a variety of positions, some of which look not at all comfortable, Jingyi can tell that Sizhui is affected by the art in a way that he is not.   He’s so attuned to the small changes in Sizhui’s body that it’d be hard to miss his interest.  

 Jingyi’s lingering attention is mostly trying to puzzle out what is happening and how the positions work, but Sizhui’s gaze lingers for a completely different reason.  Jingyi can feel the slight uptake in the pace of his breath and sense the way the weight of his attention shifts away from Jingyi and onto the page.  He watches the way Sizui’s cock flushes harder, straining against the silk of his pants without needing to be touched.

 Sizhui keeps his hands on the book, but it’s easy for Jingyi to imagine him touching himself and wonders if he would be if Jingyi wasn’t watching over his shoulder.

 “Sizhui,” Jingyi says, voice low, husky, as he nimbly undoes the ties to Sizhui’s pants.

 “Yes?”

 “You can touch yourself.  That’s what you’d normally do, isn’t it?”

 “I-” Sizhui’s cheeks flush with embarrassment again.  

 “Or do you want me to do it?”

 Jingyi guides one of Sizhui’s hands to his cock.  Sizhui’s breath catches as both their hands, one on top of the other, wrap around his length.  

 Lazily, Jingyi mouths over the plane of Sizhui’s shoulder as he moves their hands up and down.

 Sizhui’s breath shudders as he turns the next page of the book. Curiosity starts to give way to arousal as Jingyi’s attention turns away from the art and onto Sizhui.

 The slow turn of the pages pauses, catching Jingyi’s attention and bringing it back to the book.  The men in the picture are leaning over a desk in a position not too horribly different from their current one, and Jingyi wonders if that’s what caught Sizhui’s attention or if it’s something he generally prefers.

 “You like this one?” he asks, studying the picture.

 Sizhui’s flushed face goes even redder, and Jingyi smiles.

 In a smooth motion, he grabs Sizhui’s hip with one hand and puts the other on his back, bending Sizhui over the table in a mirror of the art.

 Sizhui squeaks in surprise, catching himself on the table with both hands and knocking his guqin askew, as he braces himself. Jingyi leans over him, not quite pressing him into the table, but pressing their bodies together.  He can feel as well as hear the way his breath hitches.

 “I think you do,” Jingyi says, trailing his hand down Sizhui’s side and down to his hip before cupping the curve of his ass.  

 “Don’t tease,” Sizhui says, but his voice is too breathy to have any bite.

 “I assure you,” Jingyi says, kissing the back of Sizhui’s neck, “I fully intend to follow through.”

 Sizhui’s next breath is shaky with desire and anticipation.   Jingyi’s fingers catch on Sizhui’s waistband, tugging his pants down around his knees and out of his way, even as he leaves a trail of love bites along the line of Sizhui’s spine, unable to resist leaving marks on the perfect, creamy canvas of Sizhui’s skin.

 He presses a last kiss, gentle this time, onto the small of Sizhui’s back before grabbing the lube from the table and leaning back. He pauses, breath catching slightly, at the sight of Sizhui like this, and lets his gaze linger, admiringly, for a moment.  Jingyi squeezes his ass, watching the way his fingers dimple the soft skin.  His eyes trace the curve of his ass and down the line of his spine, admiring the strong, supple planes of his back and the dip of his waist.  His long ponytail has spilled over one shoulder, the strands tangled and mussed from Jingyi’s hand.  

 “You are lovely,” Jingyi says, hand on Sizhui’s ass.

 “Jingy- ah” The word gives way to a small gasp as Jingyi slides a finger into him.  The motion is easy, and a flush of heat goes through Jingyi’s system as he imagines Sizhui taking his cock just as easily. Sizhui lets out a breath, knees sliding wider as he relaxes and Jingyi groans at the sight, palming his own hard cock, through the pants he hadn’t managed to take off.  He’s tempted to just take Sizhui here, bent over the table.

 Sizhui is, as ever, beautiful, but there is something      more    , something that Jingyi could never put words to, seeing Sizhui, who is usually so proper and composed, splayed over his desk with his guqin carelessly knocked aside.  Jingyi desperately wants to make love to him, to see him completely undone on Jingyi’s cock; he wants it enough that he almost forgets what prompted this whole thing.

 But he’s still curious about the porn book on the table and what Sizhui’s interests are.  Without stopping his hand, he leans over Sizhui, pressing his lips to the heated and flushed skin of his shoulders.  

 “Sizhui,” he says, voice low and rumbling in his chest.

 “Yes?” Sizhui says, and his tone is breathless.  

 “Show me what you want,” Jingyi says.

 “What?” His voice is both dazed and distracted and satisfaction curls like warmth in Jingyi’s chest.

 “The book,” Jingyi says,  “What do you want?”

 “This,” he says, “this is good.”

 “Mn,” Jingyi says, brushing his hair aside and kissing the slightly damp skin of his neck.  “I don��t think so.  I chose this.”

 “And it’s- ah- good,” Sizhui says.

 “Tell me what      you     want, Sizhui,” Jingyi says.  

 It’s always a struggle to get Sizhui to admit his wants; he’s often too accommodating.  It’s frustrating for Jingyi who wants to give him the world, would give it to him, if only he would ask for it.

 Jingyi leans further forward and nudges the book into Sizhui’s reach, still lazily fingering Sizhui with his other hand.  He runs his tongue along the shell of Sizhui’s ear, making him shiver.

 “Show me what you want Sizhui, and it’s yours.”

 Sizhui trembles for a moment, eyelids fluttering.  Jingyi kisses the crook of his neck, waiting.  Sizhui, hardly blushing this time, hurriedly flips several pages of the book to one that seems slightly dog-eared at the corner.

 Jingyi studies it for a moment.  There are two pictures; one on each page. Both with the men standing up.  

 “Is it... okay?” Sizhui asks, glancing at Jingyi and seeming uncertain.

 Jingyi smiles.

 “Your wish is my command, Sizhui.”  

 He presses another quick kiss to Sizhui’s shoulder and leans back.

 “Come on,” he says, rocking back onto his heels and reaching down to help pull Sizhui up from the table.

 Sizhui pushes himself up to his feet with a speed that gives away his eagerness. He shucks his pants the rest of the way as he gets up.

 Before Jingyi can do anything other than kick off his own pants, Sizhui presses himself close, sliding his arms around Jingyi’s neck and kissing him deeply.  Jingyi threads his fingers through Sizhui’s hair for a moment, leaning into the kiss and holding Sizhui close.  He can feel the frantic beat of Sizhui’s heart where they are pressed together and feel the excited tension in his muscles.

 Jingyi lets his hand slide through the length of Sizhui’s hair and down to his hips.  Easily, he lifts Sizhui off the ground.   Objectively speaking, Sizhui is solid; the muscles of his body are hardened from as many years of training as Jingyi’s own.  But to Jingyi, he hardly weighs anything.  Jingyi lifts him, and Sizhui wraps his legs around Jingyi’s waist.

 Jingyi breaks the kiss, taking a few panting breaths and smiling at Sizhui who looks somewhere between excited and dazed and is delightfully rumpled.

 “Shall we figure this out then?” Jingyi asks.  This is certainly trickier and more exciting than anything they’d tried before, but he’s not worried.

 “Yes,” Sizhui breathes, eyes bright.  

 Jingyi’s breath catches and he promises himself that he will figure out every single thing in that book that will make Sizhui this excited.

 “Hold on,” Jingyi says, and Sizhui nods.

 It takes a moment of rearranging, lifting Sizhui higher, pulling his knee up over Jingyi’s elbow, tilting his hips, before Jingyi can get the angle right.  Jingyi’s eyes close as he slowly thrusts into the enveloping heat of Sizhui’s body.  He goes slowly, letting Sizhui adjust, but Sizhui takes his cock so easily, so perfectly.

 “Oh, A-Yuan,” he moans as the sensation almost overwhelms him.

 Sizhui presses his face into Jingyi’s shoulder as Jingyi presses into him, a small sigh coming from his lips when he’s taken it all.

 They move slowly at first, getting used to the unusual position.  Jingyi grips Sizhui’s hips guiding him on Jingyi’s cock as he thrusts.  The velvety warmth around his cock scatters any coherent thought as Jingyi starts to lose himself in Sizhui.

 Jingyi could stay in the moment for ages, reveling in the feeling of Sizhui on his cock and listening to the small sounds from Sizhui’s lips, but it’s not long before Sizhui is begging him to move faster, to fuck him harder.  Jingyi has never been able to resist Sizhui, especially when he’s begging, so he does.  With each sharp thrust, he jerks Sizhui down onto his cock and then lifts him off again, his fingers pressing hard into the skin of Sizhui’s hips as his grip tightens.

 Jingyi can’t see Sizhui’s face where it’s pressed against his shoulder, but he can feel the already broken rhythm of his breath where it spills hot against his skin.  He can feel the way his breath catches with each thrust.  

 “More,” Sizhui pants, “more, please, I- oh, I’m yours, please, I- ah”

 Something electric and possessive flashes through Jingyi at the words, and he realizes as he pulls Sizhui down onto his cock particularly hard, making his speech fall apart entirely, that Sizhui wants to be manhandled more.  So of course, he complies.  

 Pleasure builds like slow heat under Jingyi’s skin, and the sounds Sizhui makes as he’s moved on Jingyi’s cock only adds to it.

 “You feel so good,” Jingyi pants.  “So fucking good, so perfect, like you were made to take me.”

 Sizhui moans slightly, trembling at the praise, and Jingyi keeps talking, letting the compliments fall from his lips as easy as breathing, telling Sizhui how good and beautiful and loved he is.   Sizhui shudders, his grip on Jingyi tightening painfully.

 Jingyi can feel how quickly Sizhui is falling apart, can feel the way he goes boneless with pleasure, letting Jingyi move him without almost any feedback or resistance, can hear the moans and gasps pouring from his lips.  Jingyi’s eyes are half-closed as he lets the sound of Sizhui’s pleasure wash over him, making desire like electric heat sizzle through his whole body.  

 He recognizes the way that Sizhui’s breath turns into a whine at the back of his throat, and all his muscles start to tense again.  He smiles as Sizhui once again begs him for more, harder, faster.

 “Jingyi, please,” he pants, “I’m so- ah close.  Please.”

 So Jingyi gives it to him.  His grip on Sizhui’s hips growing tight enough to bruise as he holds onto his own control.  The pace of his thrusts chases the frantic pounding of their heartbeats.  

 He feels Sizhui’s climax go through his body, feels him go taught and shuddery where their bodies are pressed together, feels him tightening around Jingyi’s cock, and hears the broken moan on his lips that has the rough shape of Jingyi’s name.

 Jingyi lets Sizhui’s pleasure and his own crash over him, letting go and finishing in the soft warmth of Sizhui’s body gone pliant with pleasure.

 Jingyi shudders, breath coming hard, as the pleasure washes over him and then away like a wave, leaving him tired, but his steps are steady as he carries Sizhui the small distance to his bed and sits down.  The bed seems much further down than he remembers, but he sits with Sizhui on his lap, still clinging to him.

 Jingyi wraps his arms around Sizhui’s waist and rests his forehead against his shoulder.  The harsh sound of their breathing is the loudest thing in the room aside from their heartbeats as they sit, holding onto one another.

 “Thank you,” Sizhui says, when his breath is calm again, “that was…”

 “Good I hope,” Jingyi says with an amused smile.  

 “Excellent,” Sizhui says.  He leans back so he can look at Jingyi’s face.  He smiles at Jingyi, warm eyes going soft.  Gently he reaches out and smooths Jingyi’s bangs away from his face before kissing his forehead where his ribbon would be, then his nose, and finally his mouth.

 “I’m glad,” Jingyi says, rather dramatically falling back against the bed, “because I’m dead now.”

 Sizhui laughs, looking down at Jingyi with soft eyes.

 “Mn, I didn’t realize you were so out of shape Jing-er.”

 Jingyi huffs indignantly.

 “Me? Out of shape.  You are heavy, A-Yuan.”

 “Heavy?” Sizhui asks in disbelief.  

 “Mn. Heavy,” Jingyi agrees.

 “Nonsense, I’m half your size.”

 “You are not!” Jingyi protests.  Sizhui is a couple of inches shorter than him, nowhere near small enough to be half his size.

 Sizhui’s smile is unrepentant for an instant, but he turns it into a pout.

 “I thought you were so strong,” he reaches down to pat Jingyi’s pecs. “All those handstands.  Turns out you are too weak for a little bit of- oh!”

 His words cut off as Jingyi grabs him and hauls him down to the bed, and then flips them over pinning him to the bed.

 “What was that?” Jingyi asks.

 Sizhui just grins at him, eyes bright, hair splayed across the bed, and absolutely lovely, and Jingyi has to kiss him, so he does again and again until the two of them collapse against the bed, laughing, happy, and content.

[dashoftime]

Star Trek Disco 1x01 “The Vulcan Hello”

“You can’t set a course without a star.”

Just before this episode debuted on CBS in September 2017, Oprah was interviewing Trump supporters. They were pleased with his performance in office so far. It was like glimpsing into an alternate reality. I wondered, “How can we co-exist in a world with people whose perspectives are so irreconcilable with ours?” Seconds later, the Klingon messiah invaded our screens and snarled in an alien language, “THEY ARE COMING.”

And it was like, oh right! Questions like this are what Star Trek is for.

Even if you don’t watch Star Trek, you’ve probably heard of Klingons. And if you do watch, you’ve gotten comfortable with Klingons: they’re our allies, our friends. But with new make-up designs and costumes, the Klingons of Star Trek: Discovery seem frightening and unfamiliar.

T’Kuvma insists that the Federation’s promise of peace conceals an insidious agenda to eradicate their traditions. Like those Trump supporters, the Klingons now pose not just a political, but an existential challenge: How do we co-exist with what we fear?

“You do understand that being afraid of everything means you learn nothing?”

It’s a big question, and Star Trek uses a TV series, rather than a film, to explore the answer. With a series of movies, you only get two hours every few years. But a TV series affords you more time: more hours and more frequency, which means more opportunities to examine the nuances of a theme or a relationship.

Discovery has a peculiar relationship with time. Before the show debuted, I was thrilled that Star Trek was returning to TV... but cautious about the time period in which it was set. The producers claimed that “10 years before Kirk” was a window where they wouldn’t violate any pre-existing continuity. But they could have simply set Discovery in the 32nd century, after Daniels’ Temporal Cold War, and defined their own mythology.

“Be careful that your assumptions are not being driven by your past.”

Star Trek exists to comment on our world, but lately it has been fixated on its own origins, commenting on itself and reliving its past. At first glance, Discovery seems to fall into the same nostalgia trap. It is simultaneously a prequel, a sequel, a spinoff, and a reboot. I think it probably can be enjoyed as its own story, but it’s constantly aware of its legacy and legends. Each episode remixes or deconstructs familiar images or concepts from previous versions of Star Trek.

The opening credits diagram recognizable parts of Trek lore: ships, phasers, encounter suits, even gestures like the Vulcan salute. As they unravel into the constituent parts (“atom by atom,” as T’Kuvma might say) and co-mingle with other shapes, we see how these big, disparate objects are united by tiny things they share in common.

“I call it a mirror, for I see myself in you.”

That’s how Discovery distinguishes itself from Enterprise and the Kelvin movies. It brings a microscope to the things we take for granted about Star Trek, it considers their purpose and their function, and proposes new ways to use them. By breaking these things down, we can discover what they really mean and how to use them. That’s semiotics in action.

Semiotics is the study of signs and what those signs mean or signify. I love this show, ‘cause Discovery uses semiotics to deconstruct Star Trek, reinterpret its meaning, and launch it beyond its origins. It discovers new content in familiar objects, relationships, and characters. The act of redesigning the Klingons’ appearance, for instance, enables us to reconsider and modernize their history, their faith, their values and their fears. And in doing that work, we discover ourselves in what seemed unfathomably alien.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

Much of the semiotic work in “The Vulcan Hello” is based on “Journey to Babel,” a classic Star Trek episode where we meet Spock’s emotionally distant father Sarek. They haven’t spoken in years, apparently because they disagreed over Spock’s illogical choice to join Starfleet Academy instead of the Vulcan Science Academy. In Discovery, we learn that Spock had a foster sister, Michael Burnham.

It may seem strange that Spock and his family never mentioned Michael Burnham before. Yet “Journey to Babel” shows us that Vulcans rarely discuss family matters, even with each other. So the question here isn’t whether Spock could possibly have a foster sister, but rather what emotional complications compelled Spock and Sarek to never mention her? And what do we learn about Sarek (and, by extension, Spock) through this never-before-seen relationship?

“This isn’t about what happened, Sarek. It’s what’s happening now.”

For a post about Discovery, I haven’t spent much time talking about its characters, plot, or aesthetic choices. Next week I plan to talk more about Burnham herself; the staggering trust between her and Captain Georgiou; their condescension toward anxious Saru; and the holocommunicator technology that seems too advanced for the period in which Discovery is set... But for now, it feels proper to define where Discovery is situated within Star Trek. 

Roddenberry envisioned a future where humankind had evolved past our flaws. In the 24th century, there will be no internal conflict and we will work together, regardless of our differences. It’s a lovely goal. But when you enshrine a goal for too long, it becomes sacrosanct. Any deviation or misstep incites the ire of its most devout believers. There must be room for error, consideration, and atonement... even if that leniency seems to threaten the values of the goal.

“Your human tongue is not the problem. It is your human heart.”

The final frontier was never outer space. The final frontier is, was, and always has been the space between people. Star Trek, at its best, exhorts us to be bold, to make mistakes, and -- most importantly -- to own those mistakes and learn from them. That’s how we achieve Roddenberry’s utopia. It’s a process, a journey... a trek, if you will.

A special presentation of Star Trek: Discovery season 1 is currently airing in the U.S. on CBS, Thursdays at 10/9. These posts go live the following Monday.

[mikauzoran]

Marichat/Adrienette: The Rejects Club: Chapter Twenty-Seven: Lost Cat

Read it on AO3: The Rejects Club: Chapter Twenty-Seven: Lost Cat

The bell signaling the start of the break rings, and Nino turns in his seat. “Would you lovely ladies be interested in joining the two of us for lunch?”

Adrien tries not to look too hopeful so as to avoid appearing visibly crushed should the girls say no.

“Thanks, Nino, but I have to talk to Alya,” Marinette declines.

“You could talk to Alya while we all get lunch together,” Nino suggests, doing his best for Adrien’s sake.

Marinette sighs with a pained smile. “I have to talk to Alya about him.” She indicates Adrien.

The boy in question’s eyebrows rise.

“Don’t look so innocent, Agreste,” Marinette teases with a wink that flips his stomach. “You know what you did.”

Adrien grins, turning so that he’s kneeling in his seat and pillowing his arms on her desk. “At this point, I’ve done so many things this past week that I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this about my shower gel?”

Marinette rolls her eyes, giving Adrien’s nose a flick.

He practically purrs at the attention.

Marinette smiles with an odd sense of satisfaction and clarifies, “I’m talking about how you and your boyfriend seem to delight in turning my world upside-down lately.”

“Oh, is he my boyfriend now?” Adrien hums. “I don’t think he’s interested in me like that.”

Nino turns to Alya and whispers, “What the hell is going on?”

“Babe, I was hoping you could tell me.” She rubs her chin in wonder as she stares at the spectacle.

“They appear to be talking to each other…fairly normally,” Nino observes as Marinette swipes halfheartedly at Adrien for something he’s said and Adrien cackles in glee.

“I like this,” Adrien trills joyfully. “It kills me that I’ve been missing out on this side of you for years. What changed?”

Marinette shrugs, averting her gaze in hopes that her blush won’t show as much at an angle.

“You broke my heart, and I fell out of love with the person I thought you were, and now I’m falling in love with someone else…even while I discover how precious the real you is.”

“You’re less intimidating now that I know what a dorky loser you are,” she replies in a deadpan instead.

“Me-ouch,” Adrien chuckles, still smiling brilliantly in adoration.

Nino winces on his friend’s behalf: Adrien is irreconcilably smitten. His crush is as obvious as Paris all lit up at night as seen from an airplane.

“Don’t start with the cat puns,” Marinette warns, a dangerous edge to her voice.

“But they’re a-mew-sing,” he pouts, blatantly ignoring her injunction.

She groans. “No. They’re pawful.”

“Would now be an inappropriate time for me to propose to you?” Adrien wonders.

Nino starts in earnest to mentally compile the list of everything he’s going to have to do to help Adrien recover from Marinette breaking his heart. It’s going to be a long and arduous process, especially if Adrien is only one week in and already making wedding plans. Nino can tell from the tone in his friend’s voice that Adrien is only half joking about the proposal.

“Minou,” Marinette sighs in pity. “I’m going to hit you.”

“I’ve decided I like that,” Adrien snickers, hoping she’ll flick his nose or tap his bell again.

“Of course you do, you dork.” Marinette can’t help but laugh through her exasperation.

Adrien gets a flick on the forehead for his trouble.

“Since when is he ‘Minou’?” Alya breaks in, unable to silently watch her two friends (who have obviously been replaced by aliens) any longer.

Marinette shrugs. “Since this morning. I mean, look at him.”

Alya raises an eyebrow.

“He looks just like Chat Noir,” Marinette explains.

Alya frowns harder. “Not really. I mean, I guess the color scheme…and the hair looks kind of like Chat Noir’s, but the bell is really the only thing that screams Chat Noir.”

Marinette shakes her head. “Trust me. He looks exactly like Chat Noir.”

Alya shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. “Girl, he really doesn’t.”

Marinette blows out a frustrated sigh. “Whatever. I need to talk to you. Let’s go. Bye, Boys.”

Marinette gathers her things and, with a quick scratch behind Adrien’s ear, she and Alya are off.

Adrien turns into a boneless puddle in her wake.

Nino lets out a guttural curse.

Adrien inclines a mildly inquisitive eyebrow but really can’t be bothered to do much else. “Problem?”

“You are my problem,” Nino groans.

“How so?” Adrien hums, the places Marinette touched still tingling.

“She’s going to pulverize you,” Nino informs. “I tell you this because I love you and I don’t want to see you a broken mess on the floor: stop. More than half the population of the planet is female. Pick a different one.”

“Don’t want to,” Adrien decides.

“Then you will suffer,” Nino warns. “I’m not sugar-coating this for you.”

“I think I like it when pretty girls unintentionally cause me to suffer,” Adrien chuckles. “I could definitely go for more nose flicks and her trash-talking me. Is it weird that I like it when she tells me what a loser I am?”

Nino groans again, removing his hat so that it doesn’t get in the way of him banging his head on the desk.

“…Thanks for trying to get the girls to have lunch with us despite it being against your better judgment to let me nurse a crush on Marinette,” Adrien chuckles, giving his best friend a playful elbow.

“You’re welcome,” Nino mutters, resigning himself to the never-ending nonsense and drama that is his life.

 Marinette performs a dramatic re-enactment of that morning’s trip to the principal’s office and its aftermath for Alya.

“Woooow,” Alya guffaws. “So you guys literally stood there hugging for, like, what? Fifteen? Twenty minutes?”

Marinette’s shoulders bunch up to her ears. “I don’t know how long we were standing there talking. It was…I don’t even know what’s happening. I thought I was getting over him, and there was Chat, and I was moving on, but now he obviously likes me—like, really obviously, really likes me—and…I may have fallen in love with him all over again?” She smiles sheepishly up at Alya.

“Oh, Girl,” Alya sighs, returning the smile with begrudging affection. “Here we go again.”

Marinette shakes her head. “It’s different this time. No more idolizing. I’m in love with a ridiculous, sweet, painfully damaged guy…two of them.”

Alya nods. “Threesome?” She waggles her eyebrows.

Marinette smacks her arm. “Stop putting images in my head.”

Alya grins impishly. “Marinette, the idea of a threesome with Chat and Adrien was already in your head. I had nothing to do with it.”

Marinette sticks out her tongue. “I’m picking Chat…probably.” She grimaces. “I don’t know. I’m all mixed up. I said I wouldn’t be making decisions about dating anyone for a month or two, but…I feel like if I do decide to date anyone, it has to be Chat.”

“Has to?” Alya hums, displeased with the wording. “Shouldn’t you be waiting two months and then making that decision? I find that, with love, there are no ‘have to’s or ‘should’s. There’s only what there is. I’m thinking we don’t have to worry and freak out so much because your heart will decide…like a Disney movie or something. If you give it time, anyway.”

Marinette takes a deep breath and then slowly lets it out. She nods. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s…let’s do that. No freaking out or getting myself worked up over things I can’t control. I’m just going to stick to the plan and be friends with the both of them and end up with whomever I end up with…right?”

“Right!” Alya cheers, giving her a big slap on the back of encouragement. “It’ll all work itself out.”

“Right,” Marinette chuckles, feeling oddly better. She tears off a little piece of bread for Tikki and surreptitiously opens up her purse to sneak it in…but then freezes when she notices she’s somehow picked up an extra kwami.

“Gack!” she screams, jumping to her feet.

Alya, accustomed to this behavior, merely raises an eyebrow. “Problem?”

“I-I-I forgot something!” Marinette shrieks, looking down in horror at Plagg. “I’m sorry. I have to go, Alya. See you in class?”

Alya laughs fondly, wondering what it could be this time. “See you, Girl.”

 “Hey, Princess,” Adrien answers Chat’s phone in what he hopes is a collected, non-panicked manner. “Sorry. I would love to talk with you, but now really isn’t the best time. Could I please call you back later? I’m dealing with a bit of a situation.”

“He’s with me,” Marinette gets out before he can hang up on her.

Adrien is silent for a moment as he processes her meaning. “Oh, thank God,” he hisses, doubling over to rest the hand not currently holding the phone on his knee. “You have no idea how freaked I’ve been.”

Marinette feels like she has some idea.

“Please tell him I’m going to kill him—No. Better yet, please tell him he’s eating nothing but cheddar for the next month.”

“Did you hear that, Plagg?” Marinette whispers down to the non-resident kwami in her purse.

“Idle threats,” Plagg snorts. “Nathalie just restocked the minifridge with Camembert, and I can easily phase through, even if he locks it.”

“Plagg, I think it’s time to go back to Chat now,” Marinette coaxes.

“Tell him to come get me,” Plagg demands through a devilish smirk.

“Plagg, he can’t without revealing his identity,” she scolds with a click of her tongue. “You know that.”

“He should have thought of that before he yelled at me,” Plagg simpers, crossing his stubby arms and turning up his nose. “He doesn’t treat me right.”

“Don’t you dare try to garner sympathy from her, Plagg,” Adrien growls over the phone. “Marinette, don’t pay any attention to him.”

“What did he yell at you for?” Marinette can’t help but bite.

“Princess,” Adrien groans.

Plagg makes big, sad kitten eyes at her. “My comic,” he mews. “He yelled at me for my comic and threatened me and threw things at me!”

“Lies,” Adrien hisses. “I haven’t even yelled at you for that yet!”

“Even though I was just expressing myself artistically.” Plagg keeps going despite Adrien’s protests. “Surely you, Princess, as a fellow artist, can understand.” Plagg makes a show of producing the biggest, most crocodile-ly of tears. “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. Besides, it was Adrien’s fault.”

“A-Adrien?” Marinette chokes.

“Plagg,” Adrien growls in warning.

“Adrien reads a lot of Japanese comics, and in one of them, Otomen, a mangaka—that’s what they call the author—made a manga out of his friends’ romance, and everyone really enjoyed it. That’s where I got the idea to make a Princess Noir comic,” Plagg explains in half-truths.

“Plagg, this is your last chance,” Adrien cautions. “Please come back.”

“No.” Plagg tosses his head petulantly.

Adrien bites his lip as he sighs heavily. “Okay. Fine. I’m sorry. We’ll talk about this later. Please come back.”

“No,” Plagg chuckles mischievously.

“…Princess? Where are you?”

“The gym class locker room. It was the only place I could think of that’d be empty for sure during lunch,” Marinette volunteers.

“Okay,” Adrien mutters. “Thanks. Stay there.”

He rings off, leaving her with an unrepentant kwami.

Tikki quickly takes care of her counterpart’s smug demeanor with a solid whap. “Plagg! I can’t believe you’re acting like this! Go back to your chosen now! What if there’s an akuma attack? What if something happens to your chosen? Marinette, Plagg is not as innocent as he’s pretending to be. I know his chosen, and Chat Noir is a good boy. They may have had a fight, but I doubt that Chat Noir acted out of line or cruelly towards Plagg. Let’s not forget that Plagg started all this when he posted that comic online—Plagg, you absolutely knew better.”

Plagg shrugs and comes out of Marinette’s purse holding a little square sticky-note about as big as himself. “Settle down, Sucrette. You’re blowing this completely out of proportion.”

“Don’t call me that.” Tikki simmers quietly in her rage, unable to believe how careless her partner is being this time.

“You love your nickname,” Plagg snickers.

“I hate you right now,” Tikki counters. “You’re shirking your responsibilities. Chat Noir relies on you, and you’re letting him down.”

“The kid is fine. I’d go back if there were any trouble,” Plagg assures. “You’re being too uptight as always, Sucrette.”

“At least one of us has to take things seriously,” Tikki pouts, grabbing a cookie from her stash and chomping into it savagely.

Marinette bites back a comment about stress eating.

“Relax,” Plagg urges, doing a little lap midair around Tikki, still in Marinette’s purse. “I just had to get away for a while. The kid’s been driving me nuts the past week with all his whining about his feelings, so I came to spend some quality time with you and to give the princess a little peace offering.”

“Oh?” Marinette hums, rejoining the conversation. “What would that be, Plagg?”

Plagg clears his throat and floats up to eye level. “To thank you for taking such good care of my kid on top of all the pastries and the delicious chocolate-covered cheese, I present you with a Plagg original sketch. I expect you to put it up in your room where people can see it.”

He holds out the sticky-note.

Marinette frowns, taking the piece of paper, but her eyes fly wide when she sees the drawing.

It’s a sketch of Adrien and Chat Noir—both shirtless.

Adrien takes up the left half of the composition with his back to the observer, offering a lovely view of his athletically slim form. He gazes over his shoulder at the viewer, a decided smolder in his eyes even as his body is angled into Chat’s, his head inclining towards Chat, his left hand resting comfortably on Chat’s hip.

Chat is on the right side of the picture, facing the viewer. He too is athletically trim (partially obscured by Adrien), but, like Adrien, his lithe musculature is obviously apparent. He’s wearing the mask and cat ears along with a leather collar with a bell, much like the one Adrien is actually wearing today. He smirks at the camera, flirtation emanating from his eyes. One leg is placed strategically between Adrien’s while his left hand is situated possessively on Adrien’s hip.

Between their bodies, their right hands are clasped, fingers intertwined. Chat’s black Miraculous creates a bit of a yin-yang effect with Adrien’s silver ring.

Everything about the sketch is suggestive while remaining entirely innocent. Still, Marinette looks in their eyes, and she finds an explicit invitation: “We were just about to play this really fun game. Why don’t you come join us?”

Marinette gulps. “T-Thank you, Plagg. This is…uh…—wow—…really…”

“Sultry,” Plagg supplies with a victorious smirk. “I know. I figured you’d like it. For your information, I mainly specialize in female nudes, but I can do male nudes too, if you ask nicely.”

Marinette lets out an involuntary squeak.

“I could draw them kissing,” Plagg volunteers with an evil sneer.

“Plagg!” Tikki reprimands. “Do not break my chosen!”

“I’m not breaking her,” Plagg snickers. “I’m helping. She’s going to be mating with them in give or take six months. They’re not going to get much done if she blows a fuse every time she sees them naked. I’m helping her get used to it so their mating sessions can be more productive.”

Marinette makes a garbled noise as she chokes on her own saliva.

“Marinette is not mating with anyone until she is married!” Tikki growls, coming out of the purse to give Plagg a shove.

“Sucrette,” Plagg sighs. “I hate to break this to you, but that’s not always the way it works nowadays. Now, your girl is driving my kitten insane. Literally insane. If they—”

“—Excuse you?!” Tikki snorts, shoving Plagg again. “Your kitten is putting my girl through the emotional wringer with his whiplash feelings. Let him go a little insane.”

“You don’t have to deal with him and his melodrama,” Plagg protests. “Switch with me for a while. I’ll take her and her parents’ bakery for a bit, and you can go live at the mansion and give my kitten relationship advice because he needs a metric ton of it, and we both know that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing when it comes to all this romance and feelings junk.”

“Clearly!” Tikki shrieks. “I think I know better than anyone how bad you are at romance!”

“Sucrette, you wound me,” Plagg pouts.

“Good!” Tikki gives Plagg one more shove for good measure. “And I’d be happy to give your kitten relationship advice, but I don’t think you’d be able to handle Marinette’s freak outs any better than you manage his ‘melodrama’, as you call it. I wouldn’t trust you to guide her in my absence.”

“Mortally wound me,” Plagg reiterates, feigning a swoon.

Tikki’s antennae go rigid. “Shh. Someone’s coming.” Tikki grabs Plagg and the sketch out of Marinette’s hand and retreats to the safety of Marinette’s purse.

The locker room door opens hesitantly, and Marinette whips her head around to see what she expects to be Chat Noir unmasked. “M-Minou?” she calls breathlessly, heart fluttering like a bee’s wing.

The door clicks shut, and Adrien freezes, cheeks turning rosy as her eyes come to rest upon him. “Um…not exactly? Not at the moment. I mean…” He chews on his lip, hand going up to run through his hair but stopping at his neck when he remembers the hair gel. “Not the Minou you were expecting. I…” He clears his throat. “Marinette, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen this way, but—”

“—Oh,” Marinette chuckles airily, brushing her bang back behind her ear. “Adrien, it’s you.” She smiles, her nerves melting.

Adrien’s heart trembles. It’s him. Yes. Yes, it’s him, and she’s smiling, and this is going so much better than he anticipated. It’s him, and she looks happy that it’s him, relieved that it’s him, accepting of the fact that it really, truly is him behind the mask. He’s going to marry this girl.

“That was smart,” Marinette continues, completely throwing him for a loop.

Adrien’s brow knits into a frown, but his mouth keeps smiling dumbly. “What was?”

“Him sending you,” Marinette answers, adopting a similar expression of a half-confused half smile. “He did send you, didn’t he? Chat sent you?” she clarifies.

There’s an internal implosion localized within Adrien’s chest as his lungs collapse in on themselves and his heart gives up and drops down to go visit his stomach and liver.

Ever the consummate actor, Adrien smiles and laughs. “Right.” He unhurriedly makes his way over to where she sits on one of the benches and stands in front of her, back to the lockers. “Chat couldn’t come himself without revealing his identity, so here I am,” he emphasizes, contemplating a fit.

Would it be completely unseemly for Adrien Agreste to break down and have an honest to goodness fit? He feels like one might be called for.

“She’s not ready,” he tells himself. “She’s not ready. She’s just not ready yet. This is fine. Stick to the plan. Be Chat when you’re Adrien and Adrien when you’re Chat, and she will eventually see you. She’ll see you…and then dump you both.”

“Plagg?” Marinette calls down into her purse, completely oblivious to Adrien’s internal struggle. “Adrien is here for you. Ready to go back to Chat?”

Plagg floats sulkily up out of the bag and goes over to give the underside of Adrien’s jaw an affectionate nuzzle. “Sorry, Kid.”

Adrien’s eyes blow wide in shock at the completely out of character gesture. “Uh…Thanks, Plagg. It’s…It’s okay,” he stammers, not sure what exactly Plagg is trying to make up to him.

Was this an attempt by Plagg to reveal Adrien’s secret identity to Marinette to get the relationship rolling? Does Plagg feel sorry for Adrien now that that scheme has failed miserably? Is Plagg just sorry for running off and nearly causing Adrien to have a full-blown panic attack? Is this for being a jerk and refusing to come back when they’d been talking over the phone?

Adrien isn’t sure what to make of it, but he has a part to play at the moment, and he can talk to Plagg about this later.

“I don’t mind coming to get you, but you should apologize to Chat Noir. He’s seriously been freaking out since he discovered you were missing,” Adrien scolds lightly, putting himself as Adrien at a bit of a remove from his annoyance as Chat Noir.

Plagg gives an apathetic shrug. “Meh. I’ve been gone since homeroom. He’s been fine.”

“What do you mean ‘meh’?” Adrien frowns as Plagg goes back to nestle on Marinette’s shoulder. “What if there had been an akuma attack? You don’t know when those are going to happen, Plagg. It’s not something you can predict. What if Chat needed you?”

Plagg shrugs again. “It wasn’t like I was far away. I would have made it back in time.”

Adrien’s fingers twitch. He crosses his arms, letting them grip his biceps as he leans back against the lockers. “What if you didn’t?”

“I would have,” Plagg assures.

“Le Marchand de Sable,” Adrien reminds accusingly.

Marinette can feel the kwami on her shoulder shudder.

“Plagg, have you ever been trapped in a tiny cage so small and restrictive you can’t move, feeling alone and powerless, unable to escape, calling for help and having no one answer?” Adrien presses, seeing Plagg flinch.

Adrien had been claustrophobic for several months after that particular akuma.

“If you want to wander off, fine, but you need to say something first,” Adrien relents marginally, almost done with the guilt trip. “Chat relies on you…please don’t let him down, okay?”

Plagg looks away and mumbles into the crook of Marinette’s neck. “Tikki said the same thing.”

Adrien cocks an eyebrow. “When did you run into Tikki?”

Marinette’s eyes go wide as she realizes that Adrien Agreste not only is familiar enough with Plagg to admonish him but also knows who Tikki is without even having to think about it.

“Between leaving Chat and arriving in Marinette’s purse,” Plagg semi-fibs. “…Tikki said she hates me.”

Adrien winces, reaching into his mother’s leather jacket pocket for a piece of Camembert inside a plastic baggie. He holds it out to the sulking kwami. “Sorry, Plagg. That’s really rough.”

Plagg is immediately at Adrien’s side, taking a massive chunk out of the cheese.

“She’ll take you back, though,” he tries to assure his friend. “Doesn’t she always? You two have been together for thousands of years now, and it’s never stuck when she’s dumped you before, right?”

Plagg hums thoughtfully through a mouthful of Camembert that he’s actually chewing.

“Maybe tomorrow we can stop by Marinette’s parents’ bakery before school, and you can pick up a couple…what is it she likes? Macarons? Madeleines?” Adrien suggests, rendering Marinette even more speechless than before.

Adrien Agreste keeps cheese to feed Plagg and knows that Tikki has a sweet tooth.

“Cookies are her favourites,” Plagg replies before chucking the remainder of the cheese into his mouth. “But she gets those a lot. Maybe macarons would be a good idea. What does the princess think?” Plagg turns to address Marinette, looping her back into the conversation.

“Uh…macarons would probably be a good idea. Um…maybe the dark chocolate merlot or the pink champagne?”

Tikki had enjoyed both of those flavors when Tom and Sabine made samples for Marinette to try.

“Um…” Marinette bites her lip. “Adrien…”

“Hm?” His eyes are immediately on her; she has his full attention.

“…You seem to know a lot about kwamis, and you and Plagg seem pretty close.” She has to stop to clear her throat. “How long have you known about Chat Noir? I got the impression before that it was a recent discovery, but… Well, I mean, I also got the impression that you two didn’t know each other, but obviously that’s not true, so…” Her bottom lip continues to suffer abuse at the hands of her teeth.

Adrien grins sheepishly. “Uh… Well…since the very beginning?”

She goes owl-eyed. “He told you? At the very beginning?”

Adrien shakes his head. “He didn’t tell me. I was the one who opened the box. Uh. The Miraculous come in little hexagonal boxes…at least Chat’s did. I was the one who opened it, so I’ve known Plagg as long as Chat.”

Marinette nods slowly.

The thoughts cross her mind: Then why aren’t you Chat Noir? Do you resent the fact that Chat was chosen and not you? That he has an escape and you don’t?

“That’s…a long time to keep a secret,” she mutters numbly as she attempts to take it all in. “Clearly you’re very trustworthy.”

Adrien pointedly looks away, trying not to let duplicity show on his face. She wouldn’t trust him if she knew the truth. Yes, he’s told her that Chat and Adrien are the same, but with her not believing him, his interactions with her as Adrien feel underhanded. And that’s not even getting into his father’s secret. Adrien does not consider himself trustworthy, and he fears both Marinette and Ladybug will lose faith in him when it all comes out…when he finally has to tell them.

“Not really. Not through any effort on my part,” Adrien mutters to the floor.

“He’s selling himself short,” Plagg snorts, flying over to nuzzle Adrien once more. “He’s affectionate and loyal, and just look at him. Aesthetically speaking, he’s a perfect human male specimen.”

“Plagg, I’m not a used car,” Adrien grumbles. “You don’t have to market me.”

“I’m trying to explain to her why she should mate with you,” Plagg hisses. “You’re too embarrassed to do yourself justice, so someone has to pick up the slack.”

“Plagg!” Adrien squeaks indignantly.

Plagg turns back to Marinette. “He has excellent genetic material and would be a loving, protective mate. You should pounce now while you have the chance before someone else snatches him up. Don’t you want to have children as beautiful as he is?”

“Plagg, you’re forgetting to tell her about the fine print: everyone in my family is physically superb but mentally ill,” Adrien snaps, keeping his gaze anywhere but on Marinette. “She wouldn’t be interested in me, so lay off. You’re just making everyone uncomfortable.”

“I don’t mind,” Marinette gently assures.

His head jerks up, and he stares at her in hopeful confusion.

“Plagg obviously cares about you, and so he wants you to find someone to love you. He gave me a similar sales pitch about Chat,” she chuckles, blushing lightly at the memory. “Apparently Plagg thinks I’m good mate material if he wants me to be the one caring for both you and Chat. It’s probably because of the bakery, honestly. I don’t mind Plagg trying to play matchmaker, so don’t worry about it.”

Adrien fidgets, wanting to ask so many questions.

Marinette speaks again before he can formulate any of them. “And…as your friend, Adrien…don’t think you’re unlovable because of your family situation or mental health. There’s more to you than that, and one day you’re going to find a girl who can see past all that and love you for what matters.”

He tries not to crumple at the implication that he has not yet found this girl, that it will not be Marinette.

“Like…how I still care for Chat,” she adds with a rosy blush that brings back the sun.

He feels like the breath has been knocked out of him. Half a minute passes before he’s able to get out an emotion-filled, “T-Thank you.”

She smiles brightly, all sunflower fields.

“See?” Plagg teases, rubbing up against Adrien’s cheek in a continuation of his unprecedented show of affection. “Aren’t you glad I said something now? She said she’d be capable of loving you, despite your perceived issues, if she weren’t already involved with Chat. Isn’t that nice?”

“Plagg,” Adrien groans as he attempts to keep his blush under control. He knows he’s failing.

“Kitten,” Plagg returns the groan, laughing as he continues to rub like a real cat.

Marinette can’t hold back a chuckle of her own. “You two are so cute together. It’s adorable how fond of you he is, Adrien.”

“Don’t be fooled,” Adrien cautions. “He’s not like this all the time. Most of the time he’s a caustic little jerk. He’s just putting on a show to shore up sympathy for the next time he needs something.”

“I can’t believe that.” Marinette shakes her head. “He obviously loves you, Adrien.”

Adrien clicks his tongue. “Yes, but this display of affection is just a ploy. Have you ever heard that pets start to resemble their masters? Well, I get my manipulative, selfish tendencies from him.”

Plagg scoffs outright. “In the words of Nino, ‘I call bull’. You inherited those tendencies from your father.”

“And you made them worse,” Adrien insists. “My father is never around. You are the one I’m constantly exposed to. My personality flaws are clearly the result of your bad influence.”

“Wow. Avoiding personal responsibility much?” Plagg chuckles, half amused.

Marinette lets herself laugh at the antics. “Like I said before, you two are adorable.”

“She thinks you’re adorable,” Plagg snickers, elbowing Adrien. “He thinks you’re adorable too, Princess.”

Plagg smirks triumphantly as both teens blush.

“Princess, show the kitten the sketch I did for you,” Plagg prompts, quietly chortling.

Marinette’s blush darkens.

Adrien grimaces. “Plagg,” he admonishes. “Have you been harassing Marinette this whole time you’ve been gone?”

“No.” Plagg phases through Marinette’s purse to grab the drawing. “I just made her a sketch.” He holds it up for inspection.

Adrien’s face goes parchment white and then sealing wax red. “Plagg. We’re going to have to talk about sexual harassment since both of us clearly struggle with the concept.”

Plagg takes the sketch back and deposits it with Tikki (who firmly intends to hang it next to Marinette’s computer monitor).

“It’s no different than the sketch of Princess I did for you,” Plagg protests before turning to grin at Marinette. “You’re lying on a chaise, à la fiery temptress.”

Now it’s Marinette’s turn to pale.

“It’s not like that! You’re wearing clothes!” Adrien assures, waving his hands frantically. “It���s nothing lewd…. Not any more lewd than the sketch he did for you, anyway.” He looks away, hoping the angle will help to dim his blush. “You’re wearing your Odile dress.”

Marinette sits up a little straighter. “You…know about my Odile dress? Chat told you?”

Adrien nods. “It’s gorgeous. You’re super talented, Marinette…. I’d love to see you wearing it.”

Marinette smiles shyly, nervously fiddling with her fingers in her lap. “I’d need an occasion to wear it first.”

“How about dinner?” he suggests before he can lose his nerve.

She blinks. “…With…you?”

“And my father and Nathalie,” he hastily adds. “My father actually told me to extend a dinner invitation to you because he’d like to meet you. Well, I mean, I know he’s met you before, and he knows he’s met you. Just… He’s impressed by your work, and he’d like to sit down and talk with you at length. If that’s okay. You don’t have to. I can appreciate that it might feel awkward to go out to dinner at an expensive restaurant with me and my family, knowing that I like you and after all the craziness between us this past week and with Chat Noir and your crush rejecting you on top of everything and—”

Marinette gets up and walks over to place delicate fingers gently over Adrien’s lips. “Stop. You’re doing the nervous rambling thing again.” She smiles, lips and eyes full of kindness.

He knows his own eyes must be full of longing. He’s waited so long for someone to love him. He’s spent the past four years burning with want and need in vain. He longs for it all to work out this time.

“Maybe,” Marinette responds after a minute or so of thought. “As you know, your father is one of my idols, and I would be ecstatic to get the chance to talk with him, but I don’t want to do this if it will get your hopes up and end up hurting you. This would not be a date. This would not be you introducing me to your parents. Would that cause problems for you?”

He absolutely knows it would. The entire time he would be fantasizing about future family dinners with the three kids and the Shiba Inu and Plagg in tow.

“Not at all,” he lies to her face, hoping his expression doesn’t give him away.

She purses her lips and studies him. With a sigh and a nod, she removes her fingers from his lips and pulls away. “Okay. Maybe in a couple weeks once things settle down a little?”

“I’ll have Nathalie check my father’s schedule and let you know.”

Marinette nods her approval. “Okay.”

It takes her a minute to realize how close they are. She essentially has Adrien Agreste backed up against the lockers. Oh, if the Marinette of two weeks ago could only see her, she would absolutely die.

Marinette smiles at the thought.

Adrien takes an audible breath. Clearly, he’s watching her intently, very aware of the space or lack thereof between them and the way she smells and the way her mouth quirks subtlety into a smile.

“Sorry,” Marinette whispers, starting to step back. “I—”

“—No. It’s…” His hand flies out to rest on her elbow, gently gripping her arm. It’s enough to keep her from fleeing but not enough to restrain her if she chooses to pull away. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m the one making everything weird. I shouldn’t have just…”

So many, many things.

“…come out and told you I liked you and everything this morning out of the blue like that. I’m sorry. The only other girl I’ve told that I liked her thought I was joking for months and then ended up turning me down, so I’m not very good at this whole…courting thing, I guess. I’m sorry that I’m making you uncomfortable,” he offers hesitantly like a kicked dog slinking back to their abuser, afraid to be hurt again.

The sheer honesty and vulnerability in Adrien’s voice cracks right through Marinette’s defences.

“Oh, Minou,” she sighs, reaching out to gently scratch behind his ear. “I’m so sorry. I know you’re serious. I’m…really flattered, and I…”

She can’t tell him she likes him too. She can’t raise his hopes. She canNOT be with this boy. Not only does she not know him well enough, she’s also got Chat to think about.

If someone had told Marinette two weeks ago that she would be turning down Adrien Agreste (for Chat Noir of all people), she would have lost it. But this week, it makes perfect sense.

“I’m sorry. I’ve decided that I’m not making any decisions about my love life for now, but I’m afraid that in two months I’m not going to be telling you that I can return your feelings, and I don’t want to string you along that whole time. I will be your friend, Adrien, but I want to be clear that this is probably only ever going to be platonic. Don’t waste too much time or energy on me, okay? I don’t want to hurt you like that other girl,” she summarizes, feeling miserable.

She just can’t be with Adrien. Chat is enough to deal with right now, and she owes it to Adrien to be honest about that.

“I have two months to spare.” Adrien shrugs with a broad grin. “If you say no then, I’ll give up, but is it okay if I keep liking you until then? I’ll try not to let my feelings get in the way of our friendship,” he barters.

Marinette sighs, letting her hand drop and stepping back. “Oh, Adrien. What would you do if I said no?”

He smiles sheepishly.

“It’s not like you can control how you feel anyway, so I guess it’s pointless me telling you what you should or shouldn’t do.” With a shake of her head, she crosses her arms and looks at him.

He’s so handsome…and sweet and talented and just in need of someone to love him like he deserves.

The thought briefly occurs to her: Could I love them both? Would that be okay? Would they mind? Is that selfish of me?

She blushes when she realizes how she’s looking at him. The blush deepens when it dawns on her that he’s noticed the way she’s looking at him too.

So much for not giving him false hope.

Adrien grins cheekily, enjoying the attention.

Marinette groans. “Okay. Yeah. I wasn’t going to say it because I didn’t want to lead you on, but I’ve always been painfully obvious like this. It’s your own fault you never noticed before because I’ve been wearing a neon sign for a long time saying that I like you. I like you,” she repeats petulantly. “I like you, but I can’t date you right now, so stop, okay?”

His grin falters and slowly morphs into a contrite smile. “Okay,” he relents. “Sorry.”

“Me too.” She reaches up and pulls her hair down from its chignon so that she can run her hands through it and pull on it in her frustration.

She turns away and begins to walk towards the door.

He watches her go, heart sinking, but then she stops and faces him once more.

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything, you know?” she quietly confesses. “I feel like I have whiplash. The only thing I’m really sure of right now is that I definitely want you and Chat in my life as friends. Adrien, can we work on figuring out how to be friends irrespective of our romantic interest in each other?”

He nods, face brightening as he goes to her side, sticking his hands in his pockets to keep from doing something stupid like trying to hold her hand as they walk together.

“I’d like to try. It’s bothered me for a while that Nino and Alya are both so close to you while it feels like I’m always on the outside. It kind of hurt that you were always so intimidated by me,” he admits, figuring that the best thing he can do is be completely honest with her.

She winces. “I’m really, really sorry about that. I…didn’t see the real you.”

“But you see me now?” he wonders.

“A little. Better than before, at least,” she mumbles, still ashamed of her four-year stretch of idol worship. “Talking to Chat has helped. Talking with you today has helped. I think we’ve talked more today than the rest of the time we’ve known each other put together.”

“That’s…sad,” he decides. “But I’m glad that we’ve finally made a breakthrough. I’m glad I don’t intimidate you anymore.”

She hangs her head and sighs. “Who would have thought that it would only take a world-shattering apocalypse and the week from hell for me to be able to speak in complete sentences with Adrien Agreste?”

“Yeah. That seems a little extreme,” Adrien agrees. “I’m sorry it had to come to that.”

“Well, I was under the impression that you were a god in human form come down to bless all mortals with the opportunity to observe your beauty.” She quickens her pace to avoid having to look at him.

He’s quiet for a minute, and when she does glance back at him, his face reveals how much her words have stunned him. “R-Really?” he chokes.

“Pretty much,” she sulks. “…I think I like you better, or at least more genuinely, now that I know you’re a complete dork, though.”

“Oh,” he chuckles nervously. “Good…. Because those are some ridiculous expectations to hold someone to. I’d only end up disappointing you…. A lot of people are disappointed by the real me.”

She stops and looks him in the eye. “Are you disappointed in yourself?”

He really has to think about it. He decides that the honest answer is, “Sometimes. There are things I want to change, but I think, in general, at my core, I’m pretty all right. I think it’s a matter of conquering my weaknesses and living up to my potential.”

Her entire face blossoms into warmth and approval and pride, and he knows he’s gotten the answer right.

He returns her smile, giving himself a mental head pat.

She claps him on the back and nods. “Yeah. I think you’re pretty all right in general too. Focus on not disappointing yourself, and screw everyone else’s opinion.”

He nods, biting his lip to keep from saying aloud something to the effect of never wanting to disappoint her as either Chat or Adrien.

[beatriceeagle]

Gonna toss off a couple of Good Place thoughts that aren’t quite formed enough for a full blog post:

I liked the idea of what The Good Place did with Simone and Chidi in the most recent episode. Simone is a character that we, the audience, fundamentally sympathize with, presenting an argument that I think the writers felt was missing from the show’s moral argument: Why should you go out of your way to help bad people?

In particular, Simone isn’t trying to answer that question. She’s introducing it. She’s problematizing the entire foundation of the The Good Place, a show about how people can become better by reaching out to each other. Simone is saying, “Well, wait. If I’ve given this guy chance after chance after chance to treat me with respect, and he’s never done so, what reasonable ethical code would require me to risk my life for him?”

And The Good Place, to its credit, doesn’t argue her down or explain her away. It recognizes her perspective as valid, if irreconcilable with its own. That’s why she and Chidi leave things the way they do: “I respect your position.” “And I respect yours.”

This is a vital piece of perspective, if you’re going to go from having four basically good-hearted fuck-ups gel as a team to trying to redeem The Face of Trump’s America. But there are two problems that keep this plot turn from really functioning effectively.

First, it’s just not set up very well. Simone’s ethical perspective has gotten exactly one episode of air time. She spent the first two episodes of the season in a solipsistic haze, then she was backgrounded almost entirely while we focused on Michael-and-Janet shenanigans, and finally we got her showdown with Brent in episode 6. But up until that point, Simone could hardly have been said to have a perspective. She was, in fact, the least developed of the experimental subjects, in the sense that I couldn’t have told you what she needed to improve upon. Simone and Chidi’s break-up, and Simone’s principled split from the group, should hit with the kind of inevitable-in-hindsight freight train oomph of—well, maybe not the season one reveal, but a baby version of that. Like getting mowed down by Thomas the Tank Engine. There should be a specific history to Simone and Brent, and Simone and Chidi, and Simone and Eleanor, that led us to this moment. This break should matter. Simone should matter.

Simone should matter. And she doesn’t, either to the emotional narrative of the show, or, if you really fundamentally dig into it, to the ethical narrative. Because Simone runs off in Brent’s Escalade, leaving Brent to his doom, and Michael and Eleanor lose their minds because oh no, oh no, we’re fucked, the humans didn’t overcome their basic selfishness to save the complete and total asshole, and nobody in the room stops to think that maybe Simone was right. I mean, Chidi says that he respects her perspective, but Chidi’s just a human. Michael and Eleanor are operating as higher beings, here. They don’t get to see the points, but they know the points exist. They know how they’re divvied out. They have some sense of what actions get them, and what don’t. But more to the point, they’re the people who designed this whole damn experiment. They’re the people who set its parameters. And the parameter they set was: People are going to make other people better.

And the thing is, I don’t think that Simone is inherently opposed to that idea. Her argument is that it’s unfair to ask her, specifically, to take on the responsibility of making Brent, specifically, better. Because why should that be Simone’s job? From Simone’s point of view, Eleanor and Michael are the authority figures, and she and Brent are either their charges or their victims or their subjects, depending on whether this is The Good Place or The Bad Place or some kind of weird experiment, but no matter what, Brent is their responsibility, not hers. Aren’t Eleanor and Michael people? Aren’t they the ones in charge here? Why aren’t they doing the work of trying to change Brent?

And of course they are, but the inherent weirdness of season four of The Good Place is that they’re trying to do so almost entirely through the medium of the other experimental subjects. There’s a weird mismatch of scope here, and it leaves Simone out to dry: She hasn’t done anything except try to protect herself, and argue, not incorrectly, that a man who has repeatedly insulted and demeaned her is not her responsibility—but the narrative requires that, in doing so, she doom humanity. It requires that she be wrong, even if Chidi says that he respects her position, because what we really need right now is a big point boost, and points come from selflessness, no matter the context.

The Good Place is a show whose societal and individual ethics are sometimes hard to disentangle. The first season is basically just about how to be a good individual person. But as the show has progressed, and its world has expanded, it’s become unavoidable that its ethical questions have become larger: What is an ethical system of punishment? How can “goodness” really be measured at scale? Is it possible to be an ethical individual when the consequences of our choices are so complicated that they are unknown to us?

Season four is addressing a fundamentally societal question—is ethical rehabilitation possible?—but it’s placing the burden of that work on the shoulders of four individuals. And by that I don’t just mean that Simone, Chidi, Brent, and John are the test subjects; I mean that they are being asked to do the work of rehabilitating each other.

But in a society, it is no one person’s responsibility to rehabilitate any other person. We do—we should—have a responsibility as a community to rehabilitate rather than take revenge, but we need systems for that, and volunteers, and procedures. Asking a random woman like Simone to live with and rehabilitate a random man like Brent isn’t just horribly unfair to Simone; it’s almost certainly going to fail.

Eleanor and Michael represent the authority, here, both within Simone’s point of view, and, to a certain extent, in reality; they set the parameters of the experiment. It was their responsibility to rehabilitate Brent, not Simone’s. These four people didn’t need to cohere as a group; they needed individuated therapy. Brent needed to be told he was in the Bad Place, and forced to accept (measured) consequences for his actions; Simone needed basically that one conversation with Chidi; Chidi needed to talk to Eleanor and/or whoever and get out of his shell; who the fuck knows what John needed, that character was barely part of the plot. Eleanor and Michael forcing everyone together was a failure both from Simone’s point of view (in that they’re not doing a good job of addressing problems within the neighborhood) and their own (in that they’re not effectively rehabilitating people).

None of which is to like, tear down Eleanor and Michael, who are very pointedly fallible, and who are trying their best to do right by all of humanity, including Simone. It’s just that as much as I appreciate the idea of Simone’s story, as much as I like that the writers of The Good Place saw the potential response to their moral argument and sought to acknowledge it, I think she represents more than an alternate perspective; she represents a real failing on the show’s part to separate “what we owe to each other” in an individual sense from “what we owe to each other” as a society.

(And this is all with the caveat that The Good Place doesn’t bring this all up and hash it all out in the next episode, of course, of course. But I suspect they won’t. Mike Schur is really all-in on altruism, and “I respect your perspective” had the ring of a thematic statement.)

[ganymedesclock]

Who do you think is more unknowable and eldritch: The Radiance or The Pale King?

With respect, I’m about to hijack this question, but you’ve activated my trap card. (I will drop a follow-up post that is actually Hollow Knight meta, though, since you are asking for that)

To be a bit less flippant about it: I have a lot of emotions about unknowable and eldritch. Overwhelmingly they tangle together with my feelings on normal.

I don’t think that these are useful terms to use the way that we often use them.

Let’s take a bit of a history walk.

The concept of the eldritch is often conflated very closely with the concept of the lovecraftian horror- established, of course, by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Lovecraft illustrated in lavish detail the idea of things that are literally unknowable- that to try and hold them in our mind, to try and make sense of them, will destroy us. And that these things will inevitably encroach, move closer into us, and we will end, we will be ended and destroyed because these things will come into our minds, into our lives, and tear them apart for the irreconcilability.

This is what a lovecraftian horror means: it is something that we cannot reconcile with ourselves in any way.

Here is the important, vital thing about Howard Phillips Lovecraft:

He was a horribly racist man.

This is vital.

Because here’s the thing that I resent about a lovecraftian horror: it is not horror. We hear about “incomprehensible eldritch beings” all the time in games and stories.

How do they act?

They are almost invariably hostile. They come after you. They’re here to destroy you.

This is not horror.

This is a reassurance.

Because we are put in the position of someone who destroys that incomprehensible being. We are definitely never put in a position where our lack of context hampers us. They are incomprehensible because they do not need to be comprehended. We don’t have to think about them. We don’t have to think about their feelings or ever try to understand because they don’t need to be understood. And, yet, we understand enough to say for sure that they are bad. They are bad, but we don’t understand how to talk to them. We don’t understand how they’re thinking. But we know they’re bad.

In this way, Lovecraft has designed a beautiful, perfect system of the world specifically for bigots. Because if you are bigoted, you are forced eventually to reconcile with the fact that your models of humanity are ignorant. That people, shockingly, remain people, no matter their background, spoken language, genetics, physiology, disability, or neurodivergence. That if I forced a white man from New York onto a deserted island with his only company being an aborigines man from Australia, without any spoken language between them and few experiences in common, unless one of them actively ended the situation with violence, they would come to understand each other, and have qualities in common.

Incomprehensible eldritch horror does not exist. It is rooted in a feigned weakness of the human mind, that was dreamed, in part, by a white bigot who was terrified of anything unlike him, and terrified especially that he would see ignorance and selfishness in the pedestal he created to elevate himself and others he thought of as worthy peers above all other kinds of human being.

Here is the reason this matters to me so much: I am not, in fact, an eldritch monster wearing skin. But we don’t have a lot of those running around. We do, however, have neurodivergent human beings. I’m one of them.

From an early age, I was told that my brain is strange. That I do not think like normal people. That my thinking is disordered. This seemed strange to me. My brain does not hurt. I am not filled with suffering. Some things are hard for me. But there are things hard for everyone.

But, I was told, many times, over and over again, my brain is not normal. I am not a normal human. I need to look at the normal humans, the real humans, and study them, and understand them, and become like them. Any time something seemed hard or frustrating it was proof I had to try harder to become a real human.

In a sense, I lived Lovecraft’s horror story. I was, from my own perspective, a lone mote of humanity cast adrift in an alien world, a world I could not understand, a world that was upsetting and strange and hurt me.

I was not, however, broken to pieces by it. Nor was I filled with hatred or repulsion for the strange creatures I saw. I observed and I came to understand. When they were happy, I wanted to be happy too. Being the only normal person was lonely. I envied the way they slipped sinuously through barriers that stalked me. I wondered if I, too, could have those features, could build approximations, could emulate them, could seem like them. Now that I have grown, I am praised by my alien peers, for how much like them I seem. That I am so good at speaking the way they expect me to speak. That I thrive in this environment.

Now, if you’re following, you may have taken pause at the fact that I call myself the normal one here. After all, I’m neurodivergent! Neurodivergent isn’t normal. Autistic people like me aren’t normal. People like you are normal!

That’s the kicker, though.

Normal is not real, and this, this is the inherent failure of cordoning off characters as incomprehensible.

Because every single character is normal. Everybody on the planet is normal.

Developmentally, psychologically, “normal” is a set of blinders we put on. Because when our early primordial ancestors walked into the same meadow they usually came to, they were beset by a maelstrom of sensory information. And they have only so much energy, so much effort to look and listen and smell and feel. They cannot see, in full excruciating detail, the same buttercup that has been there every day they have come to this meadow. They cannot ruminate deep on the color yellow, the shape of the petals, until it has hewn itself deep in their mind.

They cannot, because that patch of orange at the edge of the meadow was not there yesterday. And it is not in the same place as it was an hour ago.

Our brains recognize patterns. They do this to keep us safe and help us navigate the universe at all. In that sense, there is no holiness to normal. Normal is not ever guaranteed to be good for us. Normal is just the thing that our brain filters out, does not look very hard at unless we consciously fight that reflex. It is the background against which we contrast unknown. 

I am normal. My autism is normal. If I had been raised on some kind of colony of exclusively autistic people, and you showed me a neurotypical person, I would have laughed at them. What a silly weird bizarre person! Why are they STARING like that? Why don’t they shake or flap or rock when they’re happy? Are they afraid of emotions, so they lock ramrod straight like that? This poor soul, you know, I took them to the fabric store and they didn’t touch anything, didn’t feel all the lovely textures and patterns. Could you give this creature a bouquet? Do they know how to appreciate any of their senses? A pitiful beast! Someone teach them how to be normal!

Normal becomes a rub. It becomes a sticking point, however, because we chose to live together, and we made rules, and in these rules, we betrayed our hand, our sense of normal.

The truth is if I abandoned Howard Phillips Lovecraft on a deserted island with Cthulu, I really sincerely believe that he would get over his mind-breaking wretched horror. He would find, to his shock and revulsion, that perhaps the first time he looks upon this creature’s visage it hurts. But the tenth time, or twelfth time, or twentieth time, it is merely a face.

Normal is a structure assembled by our minds for convenience and we act as if it is a god, when in reality it is merely a tool and one we can slap off the table and send clattering to the floor as if it is a doll we no longer want to play with.

Because my entire life, I have been told that I have a monster’s brain, a disordered brain, a brain twisted in a curious shape that harms my ability to understand others.

In my life I have met and imagined countless people, countless creatures, some very wildly different from me in priorities and behavior.

I have never in my life met an incomprehensible creature. But I have met plenty of things that I thought were incomprehensible- until I spent any time with them at all.

I have followed and spoken to and heard the stories of schizophrenic people. They were, surprisingly, not monsters.

I work with babies. They are not monsters either.

I have never met an incomprehensible monster. And every time I think I may have, I have been wrong, and I have needed to try harder.

So, to me, to call something truly alien in a sense that we can’t know what’s going on in their head, I remember that “lovecraftian” carries the name of a racist, inextricably embedded in its etymology.

[linkspooky]

Synonyms or Antonyms: Dazai and Dostoevsky

From the moment they meet within Bungou Stray Dogs, Dazai and Fyodor are set up as foils. 

Foil Definition. In literature, a foil is a character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character. The objective is to highlight the traits of the other character.

That is to say from the moment they are drawn in panel together, the audience is naturally meant to compare and contrast them. Their entire first scene plays their similarities and differences up. First, Dazai dresses as Fyodor not only as a joke but to draw the eye to how similar they are, both of them dark haired skinny males with pale complexions who wear overcoats. 

Dazai explains he was able to predict where Fyodor would end up, because if he were in the same situation it was what he would do. When he says that, Fyodor shows Dazai the same smile he showed him earlier, like Dazai is looking in a mirror. 

Dazai and Dotsoevsky are able to read each other so well, knowing the other like they know themselves. Which allows both of them to continually one up the other and predict the other’s movements. However their relationship extends far beyond ‘Being the same’, or just the fact that they’re both highly skilled manipulators who are able to pull off complex plans. It’s even much more than Dazai and Fyodor are just smarter than everybody else in a way that isolates them. They are each other’s inverse in almost every way while appearing to be exactly the same. I’ll elaborate in detail beneath the cut.

1. No Longer Human

First off, while Fyodor’s character, such as being referred to as a demon and his ideology for crime and punishment draws from Dostoevsky’s novels, the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor is a direct literary reference to No Longer Human. 

The character Yozo (who Dazai is in part based off of due to his tendency towards buffoonery to use as a mask for his feelings, and his ability is directly named after the book) in the fourth Memorandum of No Longer Human discusses the antonym of crime with his ‘friend’ Horiki. Already from the way the narrator describes his friendship with Horiki you can see parallels in how Fyodor views his connection to Dazai. 

The conversation starts when Horiki refers to Yozo as a criminal. Don’t be so cheeky, I for one have never been tied up like a common criminal the way you have.” After that the conversation turns into an antonym game between the two of them. Yozo turns it into a game to distract from the serious accusation that he is actually a criminal and he got away with not only committing double suicide with a lady who amounts to a stranger to him, but he’s lived his life so far stealing money from the other women he’s been in relationship in. The “joke” of the conversation is that while it sounds deep, the two of them are just playing a game.

Any of these two words could be set up as antonyms as long as you give enough justification. It’s a joke of binary opposition and dualism. In short, you can give justification that things are opposites, or you can give justification that things are actually the same, there is no universal truth there is only differing justifications. 

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At the end of the conversation Yozo relents to this point, he tries to think of antonyms of crime but they are all synonyms. Crime, and god, Crime and repetance, Crime and confession, Crime and punishment  he finally questions whether the last is synonym or antonym but before he can finish the thought he’s interrupted. Just before then though, he believes himself having come to an understanding of the chaos of Dostoesvski’s mind. 

Hence the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor. We are meant to question, are they synonyms, persons with similar meaning, or are they antonyms absolutely incompatible ideas as irreconcilable as oil and water. Note that in the original novel Yozo does not really come to a conclusion on this thought, and in all of my thinking this over I don’t think we are meant to see them as all the way one way or the other just yet. 

Either way this conversation has already been referenced several times in Bungo Stray Dogs. “God, is the antonym of crime”. Then you have Dostoevsky who positions himself as the opposite of crime, and therefore sees it is his responsibility to become God. 

However, the antonym of God is posited by Yozo not to be crime, but rather satan. Therefore we have Dostoevsky not only taking on the role of God, but also of a demon. Despite being referred to as “Demon Fyodor” several times, Dotsoevsky actually positions himself as both at once, he is both God and his Antonym the devil, and therefore they are synonymous because they are both him. 

Horiki at one point in the conversation even references, that while talking philosophically about crime Yozo is also a criminal. What does Fyodor do, but get Dazai arrested and separated from the rest of the Detective Agency for the crimes he committed in the past, because despite which side Dazai is on in the eyes of the law he is just as much a criminal as Dostoevsky is. Even if they are on opposite sides of a conflict (antonyms) they will still be seen as the same in the eyes of society (synonyms). 

Then there’s of course the scene from the movie Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple which directly references not only this conversation with Horiki, but at the same time the novel Crime and Punishment.

Therefore in the original text Yozo may see them as antonyms, but Fyodor makes the argument they are synonyms. While he does so, both him and his shadow (his ability removed from him by the fog) are standing in juxtaposition of each other holding contrasting objects. A skull, and an apple. Apples can literally symbolize so many things, but here it’s just a symbol of binary opposites life and death. Or rather what is perceived as binary opposites. Life and death perceived as antonyms can also be seen as synonyms as Dazai explained to Chuuya. 

Death can be viewed as something opposite and entirely alien to life. That is life cannot possibly exist within death, because death by its nature kills life, or death can be viewed as a natural part of life. Therefore it is impossible to understand the value of life without contemplating it’s perceived opposite death. 

Poison and medicine can be seen as opposites, one kills and one saves, but if you overdose on medicine its easy to poison yourself with it. The more closely you examine them, the lines between supposed opposites begin to blur. 

Then you have Dostoevsky, crime and punishment are seen as opposites. Crime is unjust, and harms. Punishment is justice, the opposite of crime, it’s foil and prevention. Except, Justice can harm too, it just harms criminals. Except criminals can just be innocent people falsely accused. It’s never as black and white as it seems to be. Therefore, Dotsoevsky’s belief that they are not enemies but rather friends, it’s impossible to punish crime without thinking like a criminal. To punish crime, Dotsoevsky becomes a criminal. 

The apple, and the skull while seeming like opposite symbols can actually be the same thing, hence the title of the movie Dead Apple. 

2. Dead Apple

As the movie is canon material I also think it serves as a great introduction to the psychology of Dostoesvky’s character especially in comparison to Dazai. There are two subtextual psychological components to the movie, drawing from both Freud and Jung. 

In a brief summary of the movie itself, ability users are separated from their abilities due to a fog which causes their abilities to take form and attack them. This is really obvious Jungian shadow symbolism. Their abilities which always exist as a part of themselves and therefore a subconscious part of them are brought to the surface and they are forced to confront them. 

In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side.

Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).

For example among the three main characters of the movie each of them are confronted with a shadow version of themselves, Rashomon for Akutagawa, Demon Snow for Kyoka and Beat under the Moonlight / The Tiger for Atsushi. There are several Jungian symbols associated with this process already, for one it’s specifically a fog that allows these shadows to manifest. The fog of the mind is what allows us not to be aware of the subconscious. When abilities are stolen they manifest with crystals that appear on the forehead, which also happens to be where the brain is. Neither of the three main characters are able to win their ability back until they accept something repressed about themselves.

(Pictured literally a tiger in shadow, two Jungian symbols the beastial instincts that represent the unconscious mind, and also the shadow which obfuscates). 

Kyouka that she does not want to hate Demon Snow even though the ability is responsible for killing her parents and also making her a murderer. Atsushi is the slowest of all to regain his ability back, due to the fact that he subconsciously rejects being an ability user. We see his flashback in the movie, first he blames the Tiger for his miserable life, he sees the tiger as the opposite of himself beast rather than man, an out of control monster. Then, when he realizes the tiger also protected him during life, despite being violent, Atsushi comes to the realization that his relationship is more complex than light and shadow, complete opposites.

People tend to deny their shadows, but the shadow is not necessarily the true self or more right than conscious mind, at the same time its still a part of yourself that needs to be acknowledged. Atsushi’s ability is even named “Beast under the Moonlight”, the moon is a classic symbol associated with Jung, because it represents the unconscious mind, the time of dreams, illusion, and when shadows are the longest. 

In the climax of the movie they literally ascend a tower, directly underneath the moonlight. 

Then there is Fyodor whose ability never separates from him and attacks him during the fog, and why is this? It’s because Fyodor already knowingly, willfully embraces his own shadow. He has no reason to deny what everybody else represses, because crime and punishment are friends. 

In other words Fyodor already is his own shadow. He’s a walking Id. 

The id, ego, and super-ego are three distinct, yet interacting agents in the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

The three parts are the theoretical constructs of how the activity and interaction in our mental life is described. According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

Why are both the protagonists and antagonists assembled in trios in dead apple? It’s because both of them are representative of the trio of the psyche. Fyodor, Dazai and Tatsuhiko are deliberately grouped as a trio, because they are Id, ego, and superego. 

Id, or I desire is uncoordinated instincts similar to the shadow. Reading the movie through this lens, it paints an interesting psychological portrait of Dotsoevsky. Of the trio he’s the most straightforward with his desires, he’s the one who seems to be ‘evil’ only for the sake of indulging in it and enjoying it. 

He plays the part of laughing villain the entire movie, and yet he also makes it clear this is an act to him. Therefore, when he claims that this is all for a laugh that’s not a statement that can be taken as a direct truth. 

As the symbolic Id of the movie, as the one who embraces his shadow he also plays the role of bringing the repressed truth that Tatsuhiko hides. He’s the one who encourages Tatsuhiko to rampage at the end of the movie. 

As he gives this speech Fyodor and his shadow overlap, because Fyodor is his own shadow, a walking shadow, he deliberately indulges in the worst of himself. That is why he sees himself as a demon, that is why he acts out on his god complex. That is the methodology which he chooses to bring forth his ideals, a world without Ability Users. 

Therefore his actions in the movie make perfect sense with his established motive in the manga, to commit a purge on ability users. Dazai even asks if Tatsuhiko will be saved by an angel or a demon before Dostoevsky introduces himself as a demon. 

It’s more binary opposite symbolism and the intention is clear. Dotsoevsky views himself as soemone who becomes a demon to save others, in line with his actions in his major introduction chapter in the manga. 

Demons are also in the bible, the creatures in charge of punishing sinners. Despite the fact that they are seen as rife with sin themselves. Another contradiction, for Fyodor a demon is something he has to become in order to punish crime, therefore he walks side by side with his shadow, therefore he indulges his id. 

Then, you have the other two serving as the opposing roles of the mind. Tatsuhiko is superego. Not only is he capable of controlling others to such an extent that he can make their abilities manifest against their will, but the extreme control he has makes him an utterly joyless existence. 

The balance between the two, the ego Dazai is the only one of the three of them who seems to have found any reason to live at all. His reason being the opposite of Fyodor. [Death] and release of the yoke of sin saves the soul. In comparison to Oda’s words. People live to save themselves huh, how true...

Dazai is the only one out of the three who has any semblance of control or purpose to his own life, and it comes from following Odasaku’s words. 

Ango’s summary of the three of them at the end of the movie shows that he does not quite understand Dazai, which makes sense as to why they never quite became friends. Demon Fyodor, Dazai “Disqualified from Humanity” and Tatsuhiko (turns into some kind of weird dragon) all three of them may seem inhuman but the moment you refer to them as aliens you fall for their illusion. All three characters are still undeniably and painfully human. They want to be seen as aliens to avoid being confronted by this, that’s the game all three play. 

Here’s the thing, Dazai is the only member of the trio who is not alone and part of that is because he had a friend who just saw him as he was, a flawed human being. 

3. The Demon Fyodor

For this final part I could list all the similarities and differences between Dazai and Fyodor, but that would just be a boring list so instead let’s analyze Fyodor who is currently the more mysterious character as to his motivations, using Dazai as a reference point. 

Before anything else, I’m going to use Oda’s words on Dazai as a reference point, because Oda had the best read on him. 

"Listen. You told me that you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side who saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity. (...) Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that'd make you at least a little bit better. (...) Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because... I am your friend."

So, let’s define Dazai as a character who good nor evil means very little to, and is on the side of saving others simply by choice. He’s not motivated by lofty ideals. He’s not even a particularly moral person, willing to indulge in the unsavory sides of himself if it gets the results of ‘saving others’. 

He’s someone who can commit crimes with little foibles. Though I would not say he does not feel any guilt at all because there’s a clear difference between his mental health when he was in the mafia killing people, and when he was on the side of the Armed Detective Agency. He also has the ability to feel attachment to others, because he was clearly sad over Oda’s death. He’s not empty of all emotion, but at the same time a lot of Dazai’s life is spent in contemplation of his own emptiness. 

While Dazai moves pieces on a chess board and can see the bigger picture, I would argue that his motivations are much more personal and selfish than Fyodor, even though Fyodor is a cackling demon of a villain. Dazai is motivated by human beings and their individual stories, he leaves the Mafia not because of the hundreds of people he killed but because his one friend died. He is pushed to becoming a better mentor, because both Atsushi and Akutagawa need him to be. I’m not saying selfishness is bad, or selflessness is good the entire point of this essay is to deconstruct that simple black and white thinking. 

Let’s say simply put, Dazai is a selfish character, lacking in ideals but still motivated to save others. He contemplates life and death similiar to Fyodor, and the same way that Fyodor finds punishment for criminals in crime, Dazai tries to find a reason to live in pursuing death.

Even that, is a personal motivation. 

So then in comparison, Fyodor is impersonal and acts against his self interest. If Dazai is on a path of salvation, living to save himself, then Fyodor’s path is marked for self destruction. 

Starting with his formal introduction in chapter 42, Fyodor is introduced as a soulless man, lacking sympathy for anybody else. However, I would argue the opposite the chapter clearly shows Fyodor sympathizing with the child he spends most of the chapter talking to.

Remember the entire chapter Fyodor is playing Ace for a loop, he’s only letting Ace see him as he wants to be seen. Therefore everything he’s described as to others “Something more awful, and heinous than a villain” is the act he puts on. 

In the chapter we see a child honestly encourage and try to connect with Fyodor, only for his attempts to fall on deaf ears by the end of the chapter when Fyodor chooses to kill him as a witness. Fyodor gives the impression that he was not listening to the boy the entire time.

Yet, if Fyodor was ignoring him, if Fyodor did not feel a thing about the boy and was not sympathizing him in the least then why did he take the time to explain things and talk to him before sending him off at the end of the chapter? If Fyodor is able to kill him so easily so as to not see him as human, why does the boy feel like he is understood? 

Rather than just ignoring him and treating him like a piece on the board, I argue that Fyodor did see the boy as a person. The panel shown afterwards does not display the emotion of a remorseless slaughter. The entire panel is shown as empty. Fyodor regrets this action, killing the boy in such a way. 

At the same time he feels like he must do something he personally does not want to do. In order to punish evil he must become something even worse than evil. 

Therefore you have Dazai, living to save himself, attempting to be a better person than himself when he’s really just kind of a self obsessed person, and you have Fyodor, who lives to save not himself but the whole world and therefore he must damn himself to demonhood and become the worst version of himself. 

Dazai searches for life in death, hence why he constantly attempts suicide. In its own weird way, his suicide attempts, his getting involved with death, murder, it’s all him looking for a way to live.

Whereas Fyodor genuinely believes with all of his heart, that death is something that cures the sickness of life. Not only do we see him have the opportunity to save someone only to kill them as a witness, denying himself the possibility of redemption. We also see him manipulate a child into suicide in front of Kunikida. 

Because as he currently believes it, the world as it is will never bring salvation to those children. His act of manipulation is just a symptom of what is currently wrong with the world. After all, Dostoevsky pretty easily got this man to agree to arm his little brothers and sisters to the teeth and put them into danger. A child who exists in this world as it is cannot be saved. 

Every character who ideologically alligns with Fyodor is looking for freedom from the world, in some form. Fyodor’s style of manipulation itself is a paradox, he controls their every action even resorting to blatant mind control in some places, and therefore he frees them from the burden of making their own decisions. 

Then, if Fyodor is actually an idealist who genuinely does want a better world, and not just a laughing demon then why does he specifically target Kunakida the idealist of the detective agency? It’s because he’s an idealist, that Fyodor wants to crush him. In other words he wants to break weak and faulty ideals that cannot save the world. 

Yet, it’s also an act of self loathing. It’s not that Fyodor is necessarily evil, but rather someone who becomes evil for the sake of his ideals. The reason for that is ideals are so high and mighty he needs to become god to enforce them, he desires a world much better than this one therefore he carries the weight of the world of his shoulders. As a person, just like Kunikida, Fyodor is constantly being crushed under the weight of his own ideals. That is why he seeks to crush Kunikida, to prove that Kunikida is weak, and therefore he is strong.

If what he seeks is paradise, then it makes complete sense that he would see it necessary to become god in order to achieve that. However in the end, Fyodor is not a demon, nor god, nor alien, he’s infallibly human. He’s so completely obsessed with the bigger picture, with providing salvation to all, that he will never be allowed to moved by personal motivations. 

He sympathizes with the child who is wearing Ace’s collar, but cannot allow him to live even if he wants to. 

It’s not that he will never allow himself to be moved, it’s not in Fyodor’s own mind he cannot. If he were to cede to one personal bias then he would never be able to accomplish his goals that are so lofty that he would need to become god in order to accomplish them, therefore it’s better to become an inhuman monster rather than be tripped up by personal feelings.

Whereas Dazai is motivated towards good and saving others, almost exclusively by the fact that there are people in his life who he is personally invested in. 

It shows finally even in the difference for how they use people. Both Dazai and Fyodor rely on trickery and manipulation to move people, and sometimes it can seem like they only view others as mere pieces on a board. They have a tendency to also assume they know what is best for other people and move them without their consent. 

The difference being that at the end of the day Dazai still sees others as individuals. He always leaves the element of choice. While Dazai pushes Atsushi and Akutagawa together even though they hate each other, because he believes the two of them are what’s best for each other he always leaves Atsushi with the choice of how he wants to proceed. 

Therefore they remain individuals, therefore they are still people in his eyes. Even if Dazai always plays with his cards close to his chest, his plans fundamentally rely on trusting others, and others trusting him. Even in Dead Apple, his plan involved knowing Chuuya would use Corruption and that Chuuya would trust in him to stop him. 

So, let’s say Dazai is someone who generally needs other people to carry out his plans. This is in contrast to Fyodor who once again, takes the burden entirely on himself. 

Fyodor’s allies are more akin to slaves who worship him. 

He literally messes with their brains to free them from hardship. Which goes along with again the binary opposition, his brain is modified to feel unhappiess, therefore he is happy. Because by that black and white logic, unhappiness only exists as the opposite and antagonist to happiness. The extension to Fyodor’s extreme logic, that the absence of crime will therefore bring peace to the world. All of Fyodor’s direct subordinates are liberated in this way, if he takes on all the decision making for himself, takes on all the burden for himself, then they are freed. 

Goggol explains what are probably Fyodor’s own viewpoints via foiling, and being allies very well. That it is easier to imagine all of them as inhuman monsters who cannot possibly have a reason behind their actions. It’s more comforting, it’s freeing. 

To do what he needs to do to change the world, Fyodor must become an unfeeling villain and he does the same to his subordinates, he actually modifies them and removs them of their emotions. 

So therefore it’s a paradox, his allies and servants see themselves as completely free in their devotion to him, yet at the same time Fyodor’s manipulation is the opposite of Dazai’s. Rather than leaving it to choice and trust, he removes their ability to choose, he removes their ability to disobey him. It’s as if the only way he can think of for people to be righteous, is to remove their ability to sin in the first place. 

It’s even apparent in their joke question and answer session. Dazai tells Fyodor to just inspire his subordinates to be better people the way he does with Atsushi and Aktugawa, and it seems like the idea did not even occur to Fyodor. Fyodor tells Dazai the way to win a woman is to cut off everything else to the point where she becomes completely dependent on you. 

So, in conclusion it seems a lot of Fyodor’s mindset is a result of him purposefully taking on the burden of saving the entire world on himself, because he cannot allow himself to view others as equals. In order to continue justifying himself, he needs believe that he is the only person capable of doing these things and therefore he knows better than anyone else. 

Dazai and Fyodor are both smart enough to be aware of not only the emptiness of life, its lack of purpose, its senseless cruelty. Their reactions however are opposite, Dazai decided to live in spite of being unable to ever find meaning whereas Fyodor decided to dictate that meaning to everyone else and decide it for them, like his words are the word of god. 

Bestowing sins is the work of god. If god god does not Exist, I’ll become him. 

[errantabbot]

Gold Dust and Orthodoxy: A Teisho for Today

Gold Dust Is Valuable (The Rinzai Roku, Case #53)

“Governor Wang visited Zen Master Rinzai one day. When they happened to pass the monk’s hall, the Governor asked Master Rinzai; “Do the monks in this monastery all study the Sutras?” “No, they do not,” answered Rinzai. The Governor further queried; “Then, do they practice meditation?” The Master replied again; “No, they do not.” The Governor was confused so he asked; “If they neither study the Sutras nor practice meditation, what then do they do?” Master Rinzai said; “All of my students are training to become Buddhas.” The Governor said; “Though gold dust is precious, in the eyes it clouds the vision.” Master Rinzai remarked; “And I almost took you for a common fellow!”

I have been reflecting lately on the reality that I have a really interesting mixture of students. On one hand I have a number of folks who live relatively lay, householder style lives, a place where I find myself increasingly in recent years. And on the other hand, I have a number of folks who live fairly stringent monastic style lives, replete with the robes, haircuts, daily liturgical schedules, and high ceremonial. Because of our varied locales around the country, usually these folks mostly engage one another on social media, and in retreat once a year so. Given the nature of 2020, however, and our ongoing social distancing precautions, with the continued closure of our temples, we initiated, as Roshi Al has, a number of Zoom programs where all have been invited to practice together, usually in the examination of our traditional collections of “Zen Case Studies” (or koans), and this has been an interesting exercise.

I’ve noted that my householder students are often highly educated, with secular jobs that reflect such efforts, and too, they’re often quite concerned with an academic, rational study and practice of Buddhism. On the other hand, I’ve observed that my monastic students tend to be a bit more earthy, deeply connected with matters of the heart, and are far more interested in liturgical and embodied meditative practices. This seeming division is well known to Buddhist history, and at times it has been posited as a division between sutra study and zen study, most often as an irreconcilable divide. That said, I’m not so quick to pass off Zen as mere meditation focused practiced. Indeed, I would contend that when Bodhidharma uttered his sacred verse (you know, “a special transmission outside of the scriptures, not dependent on words and letters, directly pointing at the mind and becoming Buddha”) that he did so not with the intention of forgoing sutra study, or scholarly, rational concerns, and certainly not to facilitate a mere trade off with such interests for the sentimentality, and typically reductionist romanticization that can be associated with the meditative and liturgical practices that often find themselves broadly situated under the banner of Zen.

As most of you know, Zen is something notoriously difficult to pin down and define as something of a “Gestalt,” or phenomenon possessed seemingly of more than its constituent parts. While a simple definition might be, somewhat accurately even, “concentrated attention,” or colloquially “meditation,” that doesn’t quite do this discipline justice. No doubt, shared Buddhist history across traditions is replete with individuals who have wholeheartedly cast themselves into the furnace of meditative fervor, and who have, after considerable number of years, decades even, done little but ruminate on their rather stagnant patterns of suffering and delusion.

On the other hand, Zen orthodoxy is filled with stories and hagiographies of personalities, such as the sixth patriarch Hui Neng who have come to rather complete, and integrated awakening experiences after relatively little practice or cultivation. In fact, Hui Neng is a particularly fascinating, idealized case, as this universal Zen ancestor’s cultivation consisted of little more than cutting wood and selling his wares in a marketplace while accidentally hearing a recitation of a sutra that seemed to attune his mind to the frequency of awakening. (How’s that for a gestalt?)

However, even the most devout proponents of the doctrine of “sudden” (rather than “gradual”) awakening would rarely, if ever, recognize such a phenomenon as actually happening in the real, lived lives of contemporary practitioners whose lives are strewn with rational factuality rather than filtered ideality.

In this, if Zen is simply meditation, how can practitioners devote themselves to the discipline of silent sitting for decades upon decades and reap the harvest of neither sudden nor gradual cultivation? And further, how can luminary personalities such as Hui Neng seemingly devote no time to meditation, and stumble into the spiritual parenthood of not just myriad practitioners, but indeed, myriad schools and lineages?

In this, then, if Zen is not reducible to meditation, and if formal sitting is not required for awakening in Zen orthodoxy, why do we continue to hold the practice thereof so closely to our hearts? Indeed, Hui Neng’s story could be understood to be dismissive not only of run-of-the-mill meditation, but too of liturgy, precepts, and sutra study. Why bother with any of that, as we do?

Case fifty-three of the Rinzai Roku is a fantastic dialogue that exemplifies this dilemma. Governor Wang, holding to the classical dichotomy that posits an unquestionable divide between the sutric and meditative schools queries Master Rinzai on the training of his students, who seem to be possessed of neither this-nor-that, but rather of reality itself in the practice of Buddhahood itself. Responding then, to Master Rinzai’s cuttingly truthful characterization of the school of thought that makes up more than half of our Open Mind Zen School’s inherited dharma lineage, Governor Wang observes “gold dust is precious, but, in the eyes it clouds the vision.”

Friends, there is no doubt to me that sutric, rational, and scholastic rooted inquiry is a valuable, worth its weight in gold spiritual discipline. Too, there is no doubt that the meditative practice of sitting down, shutting up, and paying attention is a precious, worth its weight in gold spiritual discipline. That said, if we get too close, if we hold too tightly, if we allow our eyes to become organs of projection rather than perception in committing to any of this, it’s all poisonous, damaging, and blinding. Such is the potential nature of literally all orthodoxy (and likely heterodoxy, but we’ll leave that for another day).

Orthodoxy is generally defined as “conforming to what is generally or traditionally accepted as right or true; established and approved.” While the connotation of such a definition generally implies something ancient, venerable, and unchanging, it’s that unchanging notion that makes the usual implications of orthodoxy utterly incompatible with Buddhist teaching, which universally posits that literally all things are changing, transitory, in process, and ultimately insubstantial, and unreal in their immaterial nature.

Buddhist orthodoxy, therefore, must be alive and open to subtle refinement over time as generations come and go. As nothing is truly stationary, stagnant, or even comprehensive in any would-be stable position, the truest assertions are those which remain conversant with reality, and evolve not only with, but indeed for it.

At its best, rendering something as orthodox is to give it a particular status which reminds us that it (and the processes pertaining to how it came to be) is, or are, worthy of due consideration and particular attention over time. In this, orthodoxy must never become an untouchable status that renders a thing free from criticism or exempt from change. Rather, it should provide something of a shield from the flippant disregard and inconsiderate abandonment that Zen students, and certainly our rather shared post-religious, post-modern ever secularizing culture can itself frequently render.

It’s interesting to note that Buddhism was first founded by Siddhartha Gautama with his observation that existence itself is seemingly wrapped up entirely with pain and disappointment, or Dukkha. The Buddha asserted that this pain and disappointment is birthed from nowhere other than our own consciousness, and particularly, from our tendencies to incorrectly regard nature as anything other than what it is. Nature, then, the Buddha posited, is marked with impermanence (anicca), insubstantiality (anatta), and the ever-looming potential for dissatisfaction (dukkha), because human psyches seem so primed to be particularly averse to impermanence and insubstantiality.

The Buddha’s answer to this quandary, in alignment with the orthodox, sramanic suppositions of his time was to step away from it all. To increasingly renounce material nature so as to become unbounded from it, and to eventually leave it behind. This, of course, is the origin of the Zen school – contemplating the nature of existence, it’s innate problems, and stepping off the wheel in responding to the observations assumed to arise from that contemplation.

As Buddhism gained popularity and requisite adherence, it gained too critically discerning minds, each sincerely engaged with the burgeoning orthodoxy of Buddhism, but also with that of reality itself. Slowly, subtle divergences, caveats, and new directions appeared, and a multitude of schools of Buddhism became (and are becoming) established, each with their own sets of orthodox presuppositions.

As these oft metaphysical suppositions have been added, subtracted, and supplanted within these traditions, practices and eschatological suppositions have evolved accordingly. This is proactively happening too as Buddhism continues to mingle with modernity’s secular materialism, and post-modernity’s emerging trans-secular relativism.

When Siddhartha Gautama was alive and teaching, the religious milieu of the day widely supported the notion of postmortem reincarnation. Accordingly, the Buddha’s response to the perception of the impermanence, insubstantiality, and tendency toward dissatisfaction that seemingly define material reality was to separate oneself so far from it that one could become disentangled with it entirely, forgoing then reanimation on a physical plane after death, and thereby dissolving into the void in a “final enlightenment”.

In pondering the context and milieu of contemporary America, however, where notions of postmortem existence are increasingly anathema to the masses, and where dissolving into the void is to be assumed rather than to be striven for, orthodoxy has to evolve lest it abandon conversation and therefore relevance. While notions of the impermanent and insubstantial nature of reality have become nothing but more acceptable as legitimate assumptions in our day and age, the inextricability of suffering and dissatisfaction from those assumptions has become less so.

In Buddhist orthodoxy enlightenment has long been cast as multifold, as encompassing initial and final iterations. While so-called “final enlightenment” has been synonymous with dissolution into the void, initial enlightenment (or “entering the stream” as it’s sometimes called) has been understood as a related primer state, defined by its secession from suffering and dissatisfaction, while not having yet abandoned the substrate of impermanent and insubstantial material reality.

Various traditions have continuously produced and upheld various personalities said to have achieved initial awakening, and who have thereby become destined for the proposed final awakening of mahaparinirvana or voidous dissolution. Our own traditions of dharma transmission and inka shomei are certainly related to this practice.

That said, if, as modernity might postulate, one need not strive toward the inevitability that is the void, one’s relationship to the material reality that precedes that inevitability (the void and it’s appendant orthodoxy) must change. Without such change, how might we credibly define enlightenment, let alone multistage awakening, as being worth any striving, should a universal grace be afforded to all in the indiscriminate voidant dissolution of all, without regard for virtue or vice, for cultivation or ignorance?

Assuming that the enlightened persons identified within various traditions and histories as having been possessed of an experience of awakening to a reality beyond that defined by the suffering appendant to the impermanent and insubstantial reality of here-and-now are to be valued, enlightenment must be qualified as being entirely wrapped up within material existence, rather than standing in opposition to it.

As such, it is no longer acceptable to abandon life in the present, perceptible world for a potentially void hereafter, which is increasingly taken as a given rather than an uncertain goal, to be entered into through burying oneself alive in the renunciation of the world through planting one’s head in the sutras, or atop a mountain of zafus and zabutons.

Saliently, Master Rinzai said; “All of my students are training to become Buddhas.” Not sutra masters, not meditation adepts, not even disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha and his pre-modern assumptions, rather, Buddhas in and of their own accord. Full stop. This Buddhahood is attained not merely through studying the sutras, and not merely through practicing meditation. What then is this practice?

It’s fascinating to me, that Governor Wang, at once wrapped up in classical duality, suddenly finds clarity in his dialogue with Master Rinzai, seeing the “gold” in these aforementioned practices, and realizing their proper place, but that is to say not in unquestioned orthodoxy, as dust blindingly blown into the eyes.

“I almost took you for a common fellow,” Master Rinzai concludes, in an alive dialogue that has naturally come to be complied as but one case among many in a sutra-like compendium.

Where and how do we train to become Buddhas, rather than Buddhists?

It’s nearing 10:00am, central time anyway. How’s about we have a bit of conversation, of alive dialogue? The central discipline of Zen, after all, has never been sutra study or meditation, but rather dialogue with and in this very moment, not the moments of 2,500 years ago, 1000 years ago, or even 10 seconds ago. Right here, right now. What – is – this? And I don’t mean that hypothetically.

~Sunyananda