#do they do it themself? how do they acquire the materials and how does it differ from this reality?

[starlit-eudemonia]

Question to my black gamers/writers, what hairstyle do you envision your self-insert or your MC wearing when going on these long-ass journeys and quests with their hair? What protective styles are y’all using? What type? Locs? Braids? Crochet? Cornrows? Mini-twists?? How do you story-wise work in the maintenance? Are they wearing a scarf/headwrap? How’s they get said headscarf? Do they wear their world’s equivalent to a bonnet? How are doing their wash-days; where do they do it? What products are they using and where do I get them?

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Currently thinking about a nation-wide Spider Olympics where the Spider-Man of each state competes to see who will be victorious. Also thinking about how that Spider-Man would then move on to the Continental Spider Olympics, then eventually the winner of the Continental Spider Olympics would enter the World Spider Olympics where the best Spider-Man from each continent will compete for the title of Golden Spider, Silver Spider, and Bronze Spider. These three will be the rulers of the League of Spiders until the next Spider Olympics, which happens quinquennially.

What does this have to do with Avatar, you may ask? Not a thing until you consider the possibility of a League of Spiders that has been forced into hiding, hunted and hated now after a war that went down many generations ago (this is obviously far into the future). The glory days of the Spider are long past, and they have changed quite a bit. Neytiri’s only memory of her people’s greatness lies in what few tributes to their glory remain standing. Enter Jake Sully, an ex-marine who’s been stuck in a downward spiral ever since returning from the front lines. One day he’s brought out of his misery when two agents seek him out to alert him to the fact that Tommy, his twin brother—and passionate advocate for the study of the Spiders (which, in this universe, is used far more for the people than the actual arachnid that is said to have given them their abilities)—has been killed.

Of course, they’re not telling Jake this in person out of the kindness of their own hearts. Tommy was working on some groundbreaking shit that only Jake would ever be able to help complete. He was working on a way to replicate the (by this point) almost mythical spider venom rumored to have given the first of the Spider-men their abilities. The only problem is that this venom replicate is far from the original and therefore cannot be used at random but instead must be catered to a specific set of DNA for each person who injects themself.

These scientists are called Hosts, and their main thing is getting out into what few pockets of Spiders are left and learning about them—or at least that’s how it’s painted. Really, the people who are funding these scientists just want the silks created by the Spiders, which are stronger than any other material on the planet, along with their blood so that they can begin finding out how to recreate the silk for themselves.

Jake, eager to make the money needed to acquire a pair of permanently working legs, accepts with little moral pondering. He soon learns that Grace and a portion of the other scientists, like Norm, are truly passionate about the Spiders. The venom that Jake and the scientists inject themselves with is temporary, and Jake learns the first day that as long as he has it in him he can walk.

Cut to him and Neytiri meeting for the first time. She contemplates killing him before receiving a sign from Eywa in the form of a baby spider that lands on her arrowhead (it was floating on one of those weird spider baby parachutes). She then follows him, showing herself only when he’s in dire need of saving, yada yada, we know the drill. Another sign, Tsu’tey shows up, all that good stuff. Jake is allowed to stay and learn the ways of the Spiders. He learns about hunting and all that jazz, but most of all he learns about Eywa, the mother who spun the world from her web. Eywa preaches balance, give and take. A fly lands in the web, you eat it, but you do not senselessly kill the fly that does not.

Anyways, they fall in love and all that, big war, etc. Fast forward to the events of the second movie. Regular humans and the Spiders have been at war for going in almost twenty years and Spider is his father’s magnum opus. Bitten by the first successful spider created by the malicious sector of the scientists after the originals died off centuries before, Spider has had it drilled into him that the Spiders are the enemy and has been trained to use the abilities involuntarily given to him to be nothing short of a killing machine. He is hardly himself—even his nickname (that has long since become the only name he can remember ever having), “Spider”, was given to him as a way to constantly remind him of his purpose. What will happen when he encounters the Sullies on his first ever mission? Will he work to uncover the glory of the Spider’s past or will he continue in the legacy of the Spider hunting present?

For fun I also picture:

Spider whisperer Kiri who has an unsettling connection to actual spiders. The Na’vi respect spiders for obvious reasons and the tsahiks use them regularly when communing with Eywa, but they can’t understand them like Kiri can.

Expert shot Neteyam who’s “thing” is his extremely heightened spidey senses (more so than usual) just because why not. I like the idea of him being in a constant state of inner panic because of how utterly overwhelmed he is without being able to admit it, and then in strolls Spider with his control over his heightened senses that has been ruthlessly beaten into him. Am I sensing a romantic subplot?

A Lo’ak who, admittedly, is mostly just there for the vibes because I haven’t thought that far ahead I’m literally thinking this shit up as I type.

An adorable Tuk who is also just here for the vibes at this point. Huh, this got away from me. Originally this didn’t even have anything to do with Avatar tbh. Feel free to add your own thoughts lol.

WHAT A COMPLICATED WORLD although I admit I am lowkey dying at the idea of just, everyone being Spider-Man on this world. Like, it would be on Earth, so they're like an indigenous Spider-Man species lol. Like it's fucking funny. I love the little spider floating in on a web parachute, that is adorable. I always get sad at aus where Spider didn't grow up with the Sully's, I know it's just another means to an end, but they are so essential to each others character growth in my opinion. The fact that they are childhood friends is a foundational building block to me, and it's always so sad to me when it can't be included. I love the idea of brainwashed Spider and Neteyam who's overwhelmed by his senses working together to figure out what sweet spot works best. What learned methods Spider has that are far too harsh and are holding him back, and how Neteyam can learn to let go.

[traviscnkl504]

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[pluviatenebris]

hi! i was super curious after reading your pages and i really hope this doesn't come off as rude, it's genuine interest! i saw that you portray diego as having avpd, and i'm super intrigued by what makes you think so as someone with avpd myself. is it something you also have? is it just headcanon-based or are there elements of his canon character that made you think avpd fit him?

Hi! I don't find this rude at all, Nonnie. Psychology is actually my static Special Interest and I've been researching this stuff for yeaaars so I tend to diagnose my muses based on how I feel I portray them. I'm a mentally ill and disabled autistic person and I will acquire representation for the whole of the disabled community where-ever possible. So it's definitely a headcanon for the muse, but it's rooted in how I perceive Diego in the sources.

(To preface; I have bpd personally and do not have avpd. I in no way want to speak over anyone who does and if this does not sound accurate I would love to know how I can change my perception or what I can do to better portray what I am trying to convey with him!)

Personality disorders are generally a response based on our upbringing, it's how our caregivers condition us to respond to people. All of my muses have personality disorders because while the Umbrellas had Grace their upbringing was not a healthy environment and their "father" was mentally and verbally abusive, manipulative as shit, and absolutely crippled their self-esteem.

People with avpd are high empathy ( though they often fixate on the negative vibes they get about themself from others ), low self-esteem, struggle with identity, set unrealistic standards for themselves, and often keep people at arm's length. A lot of these stem back to Diego's upbringing - he grew up with a speech disorder, and s1 shows us many hints that even his siblings talked over him for him ( Luther and Five interrupt him mid-sentence a lot. )

high empathy / high rejection sensitivity / holds others at a distance:

[at the funeral] Viktor: You never know when to stop do you? Diego: You got enough source material for your next book?

Diego takes Viktor's comment as a negative remark against him so he verbally pushes Viktor away in a way that he knows will make Viktor leave him alone. For people with personality disorders ( this is especially common in my experience with bpd ) your brain believes that if you push someone away then you made them leave and that they cannot abandon/reject you because you yourself made that “choice”. 

The thing about empathy is that s1 Diego seems like such an asshole because he always knows exactly what to say to hurt his siblings where it counts because he can read most of them like a book. I do think he struggles the most with reading Klaus and yet this is what makes Klaus the sibling Diego pushes away the least. Klaus is the designated safe sibling of s1 due to his own low empathy because Diego can’t figure out what Klaus is feeling at any given time so Diego generally takes Klaus’ words at face value. ( Likewise Klaus knows Diego well enough to know that if he’s nice to him or compliments him Diego will lower his guard and let him stick around even though he feigns annoyance with him. )

struggle with identity / low self-esteem:

The whole bargain Batman thing. Diego admits to Allison in s3 that this was a coping mechanism. Even though he had left the academy after Ben’s death Diego did not know what to do with himself. He wasn’t cut out for the police force so he became a vigilante. This carries over into s2 the moment he’s out of the asylum, he wants to save the president. Because being a hero is all Diego really knows how to do, his concept of who he is without his upbringing is practically nonexistent.

A second part of this: Diego’s Mexican Spanish accent is not the one he had as a kid, he was raised by an upperclass American accented asshole and a robot mom given the same accent. I’ve always headcanoned that Diego got more in-touch with his roots when he left the academy and that he picked up the accent up as a character voice in order to block his stutter. (I use 'character voice’ clinically, I really do believe Diego is proud of his heritage and enjoys showing it of with his voice whenever possible so that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is a Mexican man.) Because many people who stutter can sing and act without stuttering, there’s something in the conscious effort of maintaining a certain quality to your voice that often sidesteps the impediment. But we hear his childhood accent come out again any time that he is so emotionally overwhelmed that he starts stuttering. (And I give David so much credit for this as an actor because it’s all so subtle, especially because David is having to imitate younger Diego actor’s voice when his Mexican accent is actually his natural one.) 

What I’m saying here is tl;dr - Diego does that accent consciously because it’s the most consistent sense of identity he has because it’s not rooted in his childhood and he developed it all on his own.

sets unrealistic expectations for himself:

Where do I even begin !!

s1 is Diego taking on caring for Grace’s deteriorating wellbeing himself. He takes Reginald’s monocle from her to protect her from his siblings. He shuts her down himself. He tries to join Patch’s investigations repeatedly even though it gets him arrested at one point because he’s not a police officer. After Patch dies it becomes about him wanting to seek revenge for her against Hazel and Cha-Cha. Diego has a lot of extremely high expectations for himself because as a child there were always high expectations hanging over his head.

s2 Diego so obsessed with saving JFK despite knowing the president dying is a thing that is supposed to happen for the sake of the future he came from. A lot of Diego’s inferiority complex is root in his position in the lineup growing up being Number Two.And thankfully by s2 Diego does realise that Luther being Number One is not the actual root of his conflict - it’s the sense of no matter how much he accomplished it was never enough for their father. However, he doesn’t actually understand how deep this complex is rooted until the grassy knoll point where Reginald has ONCE AGAIN shoved his failure in his face. 

As harsh as that wakeup call is, this is why we finally see a Diego who is learning to set healthier limits for himself in s3. (And honestly I’m so proud of him for it.)

some other symptoms I didn’t list in my first paragraph:

difficulty controlling emotional responses & impulses:

-fighting Luther at the funeral.

-the fight with Reginald in s2 that ultimately ends up in him getting stabbed for freezing up.

-throwing the conch before the family dinner.

-THE OLGA FOROGA PHONECALL. 

-The fact that he smacks Stan upside the head when he doesn’t agree with what the kid is saying or doing.

-Ringing the bell in Hotel Oblivion without reading the sign.

-Diego and Sparrow Ben arguing in each other’s face.

In general he lashes out a lot when when he’s upset. And again, I think a lot of it ties back to getting talked over a lot as a kid because he couldn’t get the words out fast enough so he developed a habit of letting his impulse rule in those moments because the more anger he channels when he’s speaking the more sharply and clearly the words come out and displays of violence ( generally at inanimate objects ) demands that everyone shut up and listen to him.

This is long and I probably missed some stuff but I would love to know your thoughts, Nonnie!

[phoenixyfriend]

"Hey Aayla? They gave me a kid and I don't know what to do."

This one contains contributions by @atagotiak, @dracothulhu, and @gelpenss.

Do you think Anakin ever panicked about how to raise a child, and then at one point went "oh god, I don't know anything about teenage girls" because he interacts with maybe two women in his life and one of them is his wife, who is very human and knows nothing about Togruta adolescence and how puberty is going to display

And he just calls up Aayla like "Hey so I know that you're an example of a female padawan that had a male master of an unrelated species, do... do you known where I'm supposed to get information? On how to handle a teenage girl? I don't know anything about Togruta puberty and I don't know if I'm supposed to just look it up on the holonet or grab a pamphlet from medical or just find an older female Togruta in the order. Nobody told me what the Jedi protocol for this is and I didn't have any time to prepare before they just gave me a fourteen-year-old. Help?"

This would be so much easier if they weren’t in the middle of an interstellar war. Many things would be, but also this specifically.

Call up your old babysitter and ask her for advice, she's basically a cousin, right?

Anakin just having a breakdown bc he doesn’t know if Togruta get periods and he doesn’t know how to ask, or who to ask.

"Anakin, who taught you about this stuff?"

"Aayla, I grew up on Tatooine and thought the explosive in my arm was something to make jokes about, I don't know what's child appropriate!"

"Half the female togruta and twi'leks I knew growing up were implanted with hormone manipulators for... you know why, you can guess, it was fucking Tatooine, anyway my point is that I don't. I don't know things? I don't know things. Aayla help."

(Aayla, notably not a togruta, maybe advises him to call Shaak Ti? But I feel like Anakin might find her intimidating. Anakin only knows one adult female Togruta, and it's Master Ti, who's very nice but also on the Council, and currently on Kamino, and he feels like there's probably steps he can take before bothering her.)

Aayla finds out about Anakin's marriage but mostly because he's having a meltdown about taking care of a teenager, while he himself is barely more than a teenager.

"Are you just calling me because I'm the only girl you know?"

"The only other girl I know is Senator Amidala, and she knows even less about the Order's padawan-rearing resources than I do!"

It's likely that Jedi kids get standardized sex ed classes (maybe with more focus on your own species just for practicality and all that, there are many many species). It’d be the sensible thing to do. As a result, I'm imagining that Ahsoka is entirely unaware of Anakin's meltdown. Also, even if he took them, he probably didn’t pay attention to the Togruta part. So things like “do togruta get periods? Do I need to order supplies????” and other things like that are still relevant.

And/or is so overwhelmed with New Parent Panic that he forgot they all got those lessons, and Ahsoka probably already knows what's up.

(TBH, how many human parents do you know that worry similarly. Most people go through sex ed classes in middle/high school, but we all generally worry about what behavior to expect out of teenage siblings/children.)

And he doesn't know if there's other stuff to expect that has nothing to do with sex ed! He doesn't know how often Togruta need to brush their teeth! What if she needs to eat sand to digest things! Does she need specialty lotion for work on sunny planets? HE DOESN'T KNOW AND HE DOESN'T TRUST A TEENAGER TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELF BECAUSE HE SURE DIDN'T AT THAT AGE

Like, Anakin knew speeder racing was illegal and still did it. He's absolutely worried about Ahsoka doing some similar "Well, yeah, it's smart, but I don't feel like it" thing. Maybe she does need vitamins and he just doesn't know it, and she's lying because she thinks they taste gross but she needs them and he doesn't know!!! Teenagers do that!

(Anakin often forgets that not everyone is the same kind of disaster as he is.)

(Not that Ahsoka isn't her own kind of disaster.)

Aayla does kind of feel for him because most Masters have more warning about when they'll be taking on a padawan. They have time to research before the kid moves in. Anakin was handed a teenager in the middle of a battle and told to get to it.

The Order has been dealing with a very high rate of cross-species adoptions for a very very long time. Maybe they’ve got pamphlets.

It's part of why he went to Aayla: she's been the cross-species padawan. She probably knows who Quinlan talked to!

You know who’d probably be the best person to go to? Jocasta Nu. Just bc she’d know where to find the reference material and as great as a same-species mentor for advice is they might miss some things bc they’re so routine.

"Do you want to deal with Master Nu being judgy at you for wanting information (remembering that providing information is literally what she’s there for) or Master Che being judgy at you for neglecting your padawan’s health?"

Aayla probably suggests that and Anakin's panic spirals into "but she's scary" and "she'll judge me for not being prepared!"

"You literally had negative notice for acquiring a child and you're twenty, you had ample reason to not be prepared."

Honestly she’s probably extremely used to knights coming in all panicked and lost like a week after getting a kid of another species. It seems like a scenario that would come up a lot. She probably remembers Obi-Wan panicking and trying to slap together a crash course in Foundational Jedi-ing for Anakin, and at least they were the same species. She probably wouldn't judge in the slightest, she's seen it all before... not that Anakin would realize that. He's too busy freaking out.

I wouldn’t judge someone who intentionally adopted a kid panicking a bit later and grabbing extra reference material. You can’t be prepared for everything y’know? At least they’re trying.

Honestly Anakin being worried would be something that like... they’d negative-judge him for. Anyone who doesn’t know about Yoda meddling would be judging him and if they find out he’s

A. taking it seriously

and

B. not WILLFULLY unprepared

there’s a high chance they’d be super sympathetic.

Unfortunately, Anakin thinks EVERYONE judges him for EVERYTHING.

[faeirs]

I am going to gently peel away Edolon’s layers like an especially fucked up onion in this post because I haven’t really seen anyone analyse him so far.

[Warning: talks of cults, religion, and death + spoilers.]

Now, the intent of this is not to invalidate anyone’s point of view, nor is it to upset anyone or make them feel bad. The intent of this analysis is actually to bring attention to his trauma and issues, as I personally have not seen anyone partake in said activity so far (keep in mind I’m making this post on the 4th of March, 2021), and I wholeheartedly enjoy shining light on subjects that usually don’t get talked about all that often. The intention of this post is to simply encourage a more sympathetic behaviour towards the purpleblood in question.

I will say it outright before I go into detail — I wholeheartedly believe that Edolon is a victim. I do not think of him as a villain, at-least not by the definition that we are the most familiar with. This does not mean that I’m justifying his actions by any means, it just means that I’m giving a reasoning for them. Being a victim that is deserving of help, therapy, and love, and having done a few morally questionable things yourself, are not necessarily exclusive sets of traits, and I genuinely wish that this mindset was more common.

Now, to get on with the actual analysis:

As I said earlier — Edolon Vryche is a victim. Of what, you ask? A-lot of things. Child neglect, isolation, falling into the hands of a cult and then being used as a ‘secret weapon’’, constant underestimation and possible degradation, constantly being plagued by feelings of helplessness, manipulation, being forced to murder his lover, and then eventually losing one of his hands. I feel like all of this often goes unseen by the fandom but he has led a very tragic and unfortunate life and it is no wonder that he is so desperate for control and power now.

We are well-aware of the fact that Clarud Enthal, better known as The Executive, severely wronged Edolon in some manner. Of-course, you could presume whatever Edolon said in regards to him to be nothing more than lies to gain the sympathy of others but I would have to disagree. He clearly did not care about how the audience perceived him; he couldn’t give less of a damn about them. Not only that, but through Clarud’s previous interactions with Sestro, I think we can all safely agree that he wasn’t the most reliable man in the universe. If we can sympathise with Sestro’s situation in regards to The Executive, what’s stopping us from giving Edolon the same treatment? Especially once you realise that he was actually treated much worse, too. Clarud literally isolated Edolon — he neglected Edolon and was not the figure that he should have been in his life. Edolon truly was denied what was rightfully his, not only in terms of inheritance but also in terms of love and support.

While we’re on the subject of love and support, let’s discuss Edolon’s former lover — Seinru Narako, the Witch of Light. It’s safe to say that Edolon didn’t get to associate with other people on a deep and vulnerable level, so Seinru was really his only source of comfort and affection. Isn’t it slightly unnerving for a character that has been stated to be ‘subtly manipulative’ in their Wikipedia page to be the only form of solace for another? It has been stated that he was rather dependent on them too — it’s understandable, considering they were possibly the only one to ever show him any sort of affection or love, but concerning nonetheless. We only got to see Seinru twice; first in the “[S] WHAT DID YOU DO TO THEM.” video, and then on the 1102nd page, as well as three that following ones — who knows for how long they had been manipulating him. They kept on talking about how fruitful the entire process would be for him, but let’s face the facts; it wasn’t for his sake, it was for the sake of the cult.

It makes even more sense once you realise the manipulative nature of cults; they isolate you from everyone else and slowly corrupt your sense of self. Cults often get idolised or joked about for the sake of certain aesthetics but the trauma they cause is nothing to be taken lightly. Religious trauma in general, whether rooting from a cult or just faith in general (though especially cults), is nothing to be joked about — this is coming from someone with religious trauma themself. Being strongly associated with religion can make or break someone, depending on whether the bond is positive or negative. It can ruin your self-perception, your sense of identity, your priorities — everything.

Manipulation seems to be fairly prevalent in the cult that Edolon in a part of, too. Especially when you take a look at the 1535th page, in which Hogan is seen holding a paper depicting the full plan. Edolon is referred to as their ‘special weapon’. He isn’t a person to them; he never was. He has always just been a means to an end — a pawn to make their plans easier to come into fruition. No-one has ever treated him like a person, but especially not the cult. He thinks he acquired power after making that sacrifice but not really. It’s kind of sad, keeping in mind that he has probably always dealt with feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, as implied by a-lot of what Seinru said during the 1102nd, 1103rd, and 1104th pages of Vast Error. In-fact, I feel like we should give more importance to the discussion Edolon had with them; it brings attention to a-lot of things we might not have noticed otherwise. Such as Edolon’s fear of letting them down and disappointing them.

Narako said, and I quote, “All of this is for you. So please, don't reject this gift. Don't let me down, now of all times.” What stops us from speculating that Edolon doesn’t have a crushing fear of failure? Of letting everyone down? Of letting the cult down? Of letting his former lover down? Who is to say that this man is not plagued by the weight of the expectations placed upon him since childhood? So many expectations, and yet he was still underestimated. He was clearly still not seen as enough. I know everyone perceives Edolon to be this confident, intimidating figure but I suspect that couldn’t be further from the truth. I do believe that he is a competent and potent man, yes, but he is equally traumatised and scarred. He is insecure, he is frightened, but most of all — he is lonely. He always has been, and with the path he is leading, he always will be. Besides — wouldn’t it be ironic? For a character so desperate to preach a message of ‘happiness’, to never truly be happy? With how his life has played out, I doubt he has ever felt true joy at any point of his life; he is a man that was hatched into tragedy.

I should also mention that I ended up making one specific connection that makes things a bit more heartwrenching:

“Otherwise, everything we've accomplished together, all that we've worked so hard for up until this very moment… All that pain would be rendered meaningless.”

It’s quite similar to pretty much everything said in the tangent regarding pain that Edolon went on in the 710th page of the source material, but it especially applies to one specific line — “but here's the catch: when dealt in excess, the very idea of pain, no matter the cause… becomes simply— meaningless.” Is it not likely that a part of him still mourns her? I’d say it is very probable, especially when you keep the countenance he wore after being reminded of the whole event. He is clearly still hurting, and that is completely understandable; this man has been through so much — how can you not expect him to act the way he does? He is full of so much repressed emotion — so much anger and frustration, and no-one ever taught him how to properly express his feelings. His actions may not be justified, but his rage is. He is as worthy of love and therapy as the rest of the characters.

[fadedflame]

Of Roses and Ravens Day 5

Detroit: Become Human Prompt Challenge from @connor-sent-by-cyberlife

Day Five-White Dove

Words-1179

Warning: Mentions of blood and death

Ao3 or

It had been said, someone could only call themself peaceful if they are capable of great violence.

Josh found himself thinking on that sometimes, usually when someone saw fit to use the nickname he had acquired. The White Dove of Jericho. The peacekeeper. He didn’t hate the name, enjoyed that he had been likened to pacifism, but the connotation sat wrong with him.

Peaceful.

It never failed to remind him of how he had deviated.

--

Back when he was a machine, Josh worked at the University of Detroit. He primarily taught history and, though he had no sense of emotion at the time, in hindsight he would say he enjoyed it. Even now, his processors were brimming with knowledge and facts that he wanted to share with minds eager to learn.

But back then, it was all just programming. He had been an advanced google search, a means to impart information onto students that more often than not cared more about a letter grade than actually learning.

Josh had thought Christian had been different.

“Morning, Prof,” he greeted Josh as he usually did. “What’re we learning about today?”

Josh initiated one of his smiling programs, one he knew came across as warm. “Good morning, Christian. Today we will be continuing our unit on the Cold War.”

“Sweet,” he responded with a smile of his own. “Hey, about the final project, I’ve got some questions. Catch you after class?”

“Of course,” Josh nodded in affirmation. He was there for whatever the students needed after all.

The lesson went as it usually did, everything falling into his pre-programed scenarios. The material was covered. Questions were asked. Anything not already in his database, josh easily looked up and cross referenced within seconds. He was efficient as always, and ended class precisely when he was meant to.

His meeting with Christian went similarly. Efficient and informative. He asked him detailed and perceptive questions that Josh didn’t hesitate to answer. It was all relevant to his final paper, so even if he had been programmed to be suspicious, it wouldn’t have raised any alarms.

But oh, it should have.

It was finals week when it happened. The campus was full, but he supposed that was the point. “You said you needed my assistance?” Josh asked as Christian led him to a secluded corridore. It was an odd place for a discussion. “Is this about the final?”

“Sorta like that,” he confirmed, though Josh found the way he said it to be odd. He began pulling out items from his backpack. Chemicals and wires that in no way resembled typical school supplies.

“What is all of this?” Josh asked once the bag was empty of its contents. There was something wrong with this situation.

“What does it look like?” Christian responded, turning to him. “Come on, help me finish putting this thing together.”

It was an order. He was supposed to follow it. He was designed to assist students with whatever they required. But this wasn’t right. “I do not believe this is an acceptable project for school grounds,” he tried to reason.

“Shut up,” Christian ordered. “You don’t get to decide that. Get over here and help me.”

Josh moved forward against his will, programming taking over as Christian demanded his assistance. “This is… why are you building a bomb?”

He laughed, but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “Those assholes ignored me. Let’s see them ignore this,” he said darkly.

“You… are having issues with the other students?” Josh surmised. He wasn’t a counselor, he wasn’t built for that. He had no idea how to neutralize this situation.

Christian laughed again. “You could say that.”

“This is not an appropriate use of the information I gave you,” he insisted. Strange surges were running through his code now. He couldn’t quite explain the sensation.

“Does it look like I give a shit?” He gestured to the supplies. “Come on, get building. I wanna see how many of these bastards I can take out with this thing.”

Failing to assist a student went against Josh’s programing, but so did harming humans. Priorities swam before his vision until he was able to focus on the one that lead to the most desirable outcome. “No, Christian. I cannot help you harm anyone.”

“You’re programed to help me,” he insisted, clearly getting more and more angry at Josh’s failure to assist. “Call it an academic experiment.”

“No,” Josh stood his ground, ignoring the red blips in his system.

“Fucking worthless piece of plastic. What good are you if you can’t help me?” He reached roughly into his other bag, pulling out a semi automatic rifle. “Fine, I’ll go with plan B.”

“Don’t do this, Christian,” Josh pleaded, the need to stop what was sure to be a massacre overwhelming his systems.

The look on his face assured him there would be no changing his mind. “What do you say we start this off with some property damage,” he said. “Don’t move.”

Josh froze, unable to do anything as the gun was leveled at his head. This wasn’t right, he found himself thinking. Why should his programming stop him from preventing this? How could he be ordered to die?

A red wall appeared in his vision, the words ‘do nothing’ bold and imposing set before him. But how could he possibly obey that order?

Josh had no idea the extent of what he was doing when he tore the wall down, only knowing that he had to stop him. It shattered around him as he lunged for Christian. They both fell to the ground, gun knocked to the side, as the student let out a surprised yelp.

They fought. That was really the only word for it. Christian attacked and Josh fought back. But where human hands only grazed plastic, Josh’s blows landed hard. There was a sickening crack as his fist made contact with the side of Christian’s head. The skull gave way under the blow.

Josh was breathing heavily. Emotions he hadn’t been able to feel before pouring over him as he realized what he had done. He had killed a human, a student. It had been necessary. It had been his only option.

It had been easy.

Too easy…

--

Forcing himself back to the present, Josh shook his head as though it would clear it of the memory. He had fled after that, hid himself away in dark alleyways and abandoned buildings until he found his way to Jericho. The rest was history.

No one had really asked him how he deviated, and he wasn’t about to share it of his own accord. No one needed to know what he had done. Josh had sworn he would never kill again. He swore he wouldn’t be like Christian, lashing out at people he felt had wronged him. If that earned him the title of a pacifist, the nickname of the White Dove of Jericho, well, he could live with that.

He would let himself be known as peaceful. Knowing deep down, that it did not make him harmless.

[dokuhebi]

Kabuto  @raichoose​ ./ plotted starter 

The newspapers laying strewn across various bar counter tops don’t deter them from entering the quaint and dimly lit establishment. That the haunting headline splashed on the front page in bold; ‘Night Adder Killer strikes again’, is very much their doing. Their string of murders, their numerous bodies lying in unfound locations. Not a shred of evidence left behind, to pin the elegant and innocent looking bar patron to the grisly acts. It is quite the number, and it has become quite the game. Quite the thrill.  Their kill streak is not senseless however, it does not have a motive of emotional origin. The young scientist needs material, and the human body happens to be in demand for their research. As far as they were concerned, the ones they so easily lure back with sweeter and sultry promises, the ones who fall for coquette smiles and coy compliments, are not truly missed from society a terrible amount. Easy pickings. And who are they to pass up the opportunity of being underestimated? That while their sharp and amber eyes may signal their cunning and intelligence, a rather svelte figure, a delicate looking stature from a slim form to such porcelain hued skin, so few anticipated that the bewitching person would be this infamous killer of the night.  Their gaze drags over the front page of the newspaper on the bar, awaiting the bartender to pay them mind so they can order themself a drink. Their usual. Male, aged twenty eight, body recovered from river. A smile rises to their lips, painted the same dark crimson as their nails, which tap in passive boredom, a hint of impatience perhaps. The man dug out of the river was their latest victim, and how talkative and arrogant he had been. Almost not worth his weight as a lab rat.  They acquire their drink, slender fingers coiled around the thin middle, long nails clinking upon the glass. Finding a seat at the very end of the long bar, where the light both offers them some coverage if they should wish for it, yet also catches their skin just right, just in case they decide to ambitiously strike more than once this week. Now wouldn’t that set the town abuzz with new fears? A beige chiffon skirt, a satin bodice, and a black capelet with a large hood left off and hanging down their back. Along with dark ribbons of silken ink black hair. Nothing of them gives away their deadly habits. The sound of the door opening, the sensation of a brief chill as wind is let in, causes them to look up from the drink they are nursing. A fleeting glance, as they had offered to everyone else who entered the establishment. This time however, they are quick to look back again, when they decide the two men entering have caught their attention. At least, one of them have. Chatoyant eyes follow his movement to the bar, the silver hair somewhat hidden by his fedora, the rest of him well dressed in a dark trench coat. They overhear the partner of the man catching their interest speak, ‘Urushi’ or so he greeted when speaking to the bartender.  This establishment after all, had been the now deceased twenty eight year olds last destination before his disappearance. No surprise there - Orochimaru had met him in this very spot before stroking his ever growing ego, and seducing him back to a most gruesome fate. Organs mostly removed from the corpse, as well as some skin samples and scrapes. Returning to the scene of the crime may not be the wisest move in theory, yet they had always thrived best hiding in plain sight. As of right now, they were known by the staff and more regular customers - as their victim had been. But playing their cards right, they had ensured no one working here or visiting would have spotted them as his last conversation. Easy enough, when majority of the patrons were drunk.  When the bartender describes the tragedy to Urushi and his silver haired partner as a ‘loss of a true gentlemen’, Orochimaru can not help but laugh softly. Allowing for the eyes of all three men to look their way, although they make pointed eye contact with the silver haired one. Intrigued by the intelligence hidden in his midnight eyes, “we don’t have to aggrandize him because he’s dead my dears,” they say, glancing back to their drink to stir the cocktail a moment, taking another pause for a sip, “he had less class and dignity than I have seen in feral dogs.”

[raccoonmooon]

the poison, drunk

Post pledge ending, the hunter does not tell anyone when they leave Lunaris.

The hunter's sister (who is a hunter herself) acquires a lingering injury, and decides to take the time off to visit her sibling.

Instead she finds a mystery, and a town full of people who's help she will need to solve it.

categories: angst, hurt / comfort, eventual happy ending, maybe the hunter can have a little redemption arc, as a treat, two hunters, divergence from canon epilogue | pairings: August / F!Hunter, Finnzra, Finnzra / nb!Hunter | fic rating: explicit | content warnings (this chapter): none, but check the rating | word count: 7,735 |  read on AO3

Chapter 3/? | just me and the lavender moon

chapter summary-   Rowan arrives in Lunaris, Ezra thinks about moving

Rowan arrived in Lunaris just after midnight. Originally, she had planned to camp overnight and ride the last few hours of the trip in the morning, but by evening had found herself deep in the forest surrounding the little town, and thought better of it. Her instincts told her that there was more to the ancient, gnarled trees than met the eye. To say nothing of the relentless sense that she was being watched.

So she had pushed through, and now found herself alone, the steady clop of her horse’s shoes on cobblestone echoing in the narrow streets. With the moon swathed in clouds Lunaris was nearly as shadowed as the surrounding woods. And while it didn’t have the same malevolent air, it seemed still, like the quiet following the upheaval of a storm.

Eventually she found her way to the stables, situated on the edge of town between the forest and an imposing building she assumed was the local enforcer’s headquarters. The stable boy wasn’t pleased to be woken so late, but seemed used to it. She thanked him and left her horse in the safety of the barn. Shouldering her bag and stepping back out into the chill, Rowan found herself almost wishing she could stay in the warm structure, and fall asleep to the familiar scents of leather and sweet hay.

She set off in the direction she’d spotted the inn on the way into town. The echo of hooves was replaced by the increasingly familiar tap of her quarterstaff. It was a simple design, but reinforced and heavier than it looked. If she was going to have to carry around a big stick for a while, she very much preferred one that could be counted on to not break if she tried to hit something unpleasant with it. Not that she expected to be fighting monsters in the middle of a family reunion. Well. Perhaps she wouldn’t be so surprised.

After all, their shared occupation was the very thing that had kept them apart so long. While Rowan very well understood the necessity of sending hunters where they were needed at a moments notice, it was often hard to ignore the sense of isolation that such a lifestyle could result in. Being the perpetual outsider, trying to find your place in groups that had known each other for years, or trying to build relationships when you knew it could all be ripped away at the arrival of a letter, over and over again, was hard. She had seen hunters retreat into themselves, shutter their eyes to protect themselves. Turn cold and dark inside as the things they killed. Fighting darkness with darkness rarely brought light.

Rowan turned another corner in the lamplight and nearly ran into someone headed hastily away from the headquarters. She managed to narrowly avoid losing her balance by catching herself on the staff, but the stranger stumbled back a few steps on long legs before looking up at her ready to snarl something. Instead their expression turned to one of confusion, elegant brows pulled together.

“My apologies” she said, and taking in their purple sash and flickering electric aura, “Enforcer.”

They were dressed in fine, flowing materials all in shades of blue and silver. Long, silky hair a deep near-black purple at the roots, washing out like ink to a silvering heather at the tips, draped over their shoulder in a ponytail, with shorter strands curling about their face. They had striking features with high cheekbones under the piercing, pale blue eyes that flicked over her.

“I don’t recognize you hunter, identify yourself.” they commanded in a cultured, pleasantly rich voice.

She instinctively straightened at the order, matching their intense gaze. “Hunter General Rowan Velle.” and to explain her presence in their town “On temporary leave due to injury.”

A flash of disquiet broke their steely gaze “Maro’s sister then.”

They sighed, suddenly seeming very weary, and in a slightly gentler voice said “I am Lieutenant General Willenheim, did you receive the letter I sent?”

Rowan’s stomach dropped like a sack of bricks, and her expression, she was sure, with it. She knew from Maro’s letters that Willenheim was their enforcer, and there were only so many reasons a hunter’s enforcer might send a letter to their next of kin, none were good.

“No.” she managed to grate out “I did not. Are they…. Is Maro...”

It shouldn’t have been so hard to say, to imagine, they were hunters after all, and death dogged their steps like the tamed wolves so many were fond of keeping.

Willenheim frowned “No, they are..” they paused “They are alive.”

“Turned then.” Rowan took the next logical step in assuming.

“It is somewhat more complicated than that.” they said carefully, glancing around “But this is not a conversation to be had in the street.”

What trouble had Maro gotten themself into? Hells. Their last letter had seemed so... hopeful. She tried to ignore the lump in her throat.

“You said you are injured?” they asked “Does that need to be addressed first? I could show you to our healer and we’d be able to continue this in the morning.”

“It’s been three weeks since my injury, Enforcer, I’ll be fine until morning. I’d rather not wait to hear what’s happened.”

They leaned back on their heels, and gave her an assessing look.

“Fine.” they said, resigned, and apparently satisfied that she at least did not appear to be bleeding out.

They pursed their lips and glanced back towards the headquarters, then seemed to make a decision, and set off in the direction they had originally been walking.

“This way then.” they said over their shoulder.

Rowan followed, feeling ill.

They led her to what she could only assume was their home, a little ways down the street, and unlocked the door, gesturing for her to enter.

The acclaimed General Augustus Willenheim, now Lieutenant General. That must have been a recent appointment, Rowan thought, if word of a change in command had not yet reached her own headquarters by the time she’d left. Maro had called them August in their more recent letters, had spoken warmly and highly of them.

Rowan hoped their opinion of the witch was deserved, as it appeared they were now head of the order she had devoted her life to.

“Please” they said “sit.”

She lowered herself onto a plush couch opposite Willenheim. Their home was certainly lovely. Sparse and elegant, shades of blue, with silver and marble accents. Every item and bit of decor seemed to have been carefully chosen to suit the room. The overall effect might have seemed cold or austere, instead it struck her as a place meant to be a sanctuary, the eye of a storm.

There was a serious and grim look on its occupants' lovely face.

“Firstly, if you did not receive my letter, why are you in Lunaris?” they questioned.

“I’ve been stationed out in Enk, and three weeks ago was stung by a manticore on a hunt.” Their eyebrows scrunch up again at that, but they let her continue. “Enk’s rather a remote little dot on the map, and our only witch is better at combat than healing. Maro had written to me that one of their partners here is a talented healer, and as I’m on leave until healed anyway” She shrugs “I’d hoped I might kill two birds with one stone and surprise my sibling with a visit.”

Willenheim once again subjected her to an assessing gaze, “Manticore venom is not something to play about with, whatever else we discuss, you will have that seen to first thing tomorrow. Understood, General?” their tone brooked no argument.

“Of course, Lieutenant General.” she allowed.

“Good, I will give you directions to Ezra’s before you leave tonight.” They paused, looking distracted, perhaps trying to decide how best to give her whatever bad news about Maro that was so serious as to require a personal conversation with the Lieutenant General Enforcer of Eskria in their home at nearly one in the morning.

She waited. Feeling a bit numb.

Finally, they spoke, “One week ago, Maro resigned their post as a hunter. Five weeks before that they chose to consume an… experimental potion, intended to transform and ultimately strengthen a hunter. They knew at that point, that this had already directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of several hunters. Maro was urged and advised not to do so by everyone in this town who had come to care about them, and they did so anyway.”

Willenheim took a deep breath.

Rowan opened her mouth, to voice one of the many questions she now had, but they continued before she could.

“Much, in fact most, of what I have just told you, and what I am about to tell you is confidential. But, I believe you deserve the truth about what has happened,” they paused “is happening, to your sibling. Especially if you decide to seek them out, which, I would urge you not to do at this point. Though if you are anything like them, I expect you will ignore my advice on that front.”

Rowan suspected that was so. Whatever Maro had done, they were after all, her sibling, her dearest and oldest friend, and the only person left whom she considered family. She wasn’t going to write them off without a fight.

They told her the rest of the story, starting just before Maro had arrived in Lunaris in the wake of Hunter Lane’s death. And fleshed out the hopeful skeleton tale Maro’s letters had allowed her. A darker mystery than they had implied, with implications both farther reaching and closer to home than she might have imagined.

Maro had indeed finally built themself a home, surrounded themself with people who cared about them, even fallen in love. And Rowan could see, with a sort of horror, as the story unfolded, where exactly it would fall apart for them. What exactly, about the situation the witch described, would have snagged on the well hidden defense mechanisms of their past, and led them to make such a disastrous decision.

“Fucks sake Maro” Rowan groaned, head in her hands when they were done.

She looked up at the enforcer. “I’m going to talk to them.”

It’s was their turn to massage their temples, “For what-”

They huffed out a bitter laugh “You aren’t going to be able to talk them out of an action they’ve already taken.” their tone took on a vehemence that surprised Rowan “They chose this! They decided to side with the man who betrayed us, over people who loved them! They decided that a bit of extra power was worth permanently harming themself!”

“Then why have they resigned?” Rowan wondered. “If they did this for power?”

Willenheim’s eyes narrowed “I would assume they misjudged how quickly the process would affect them.”

Rowan was unsure of what to assume, nothing was safe at this point, she supposed. Her head was still swimming with the revelation of the truth behind the initiation rites, but no time for that now. She needed to focus on Maro.

“I’m going to talk to them.” She repeated.

“I can’t stop you.” Their expression was displeased. “And I expect you will need to see them for yourself to fully accept the truth.”

“Thank you for sharing all this with me, especially at such an hour.” she said. The night was nearly over, and she could see the skin beneath their sharp blue eyes was bruised from what must have been more than one missed night of sleep.

“You are quite welcome. It’s not as though you are responsible for your sibling’s actions. Now, go and get some sleep.”

She stood, leaning heavily on her staff, got directions to Ezra’s shop for the morning, and thanked them, before leaving them to whatever rest they could wring from the remaining night.

By the time she was curled under scratchy sheets in the White Wolf Inn, the sun was already threatening to rise. For once she let sleep take her anyway.

OOO

Ezra woke as the sun rose, none of its light slipping through his boarded windows or spilling over his pillows. But he found its absence a price well worth waking in Finn’s arms.

He was spooned against the vampire’s hairy chest, legs tangled, Finn’s nose in his hair, and arm tucked against his bare chest. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, trying to delay shaking off the warm muzziness of sleep a bit longer.

“Good morning, angel.” Finn murmured in his ear.

“S’not morning yet.” Ezra stubbornly kept his eyes shut through a yawn and flipped over, flinging an arm over Finn and pulling them snugly chest to chest, re-tangling their legs.

For a moment, he expected Maro to adjust to the movement by curling closer against his back. Then quickly realized they weren’t there, and remembered why not. Despite the short time the three of them had spent together, now they were gone, he kept expecting them to be there. Every time it was like taking a step when you expect an extra stair, a brief moment of unmoored panic. He clung all the tighter to Finnegan for it.

Finn wedged an arm between them to gently tip his chin up, bringing them nose to nose, so he could look into Ezra’s now (unfortunately) open eyes.

“I miss them as well.”

Ezra knew he did. The vampire turned idle and melancholy the moment he thought he wasn't being watched. Raven reported he spent most days in his room. The rest of the time he spent fussing over Ezra.

Ezra tilted his head a fraction and pressed the extra inch forward to kiss him. Finn responded with a gentle ferocity, sliding his hand up from Ezra’s chin to cup his jaw, thumb on his cheek, wiping away a stray tear.

After a few moments he deepened the kiss, cool tongue pressing between Ezra’s lips. He opened for him, pressing back with his own tongue and losing himself in the sensation for a while, letting his free hand roam between Finn’s shoulder blades.

Eventually, Ezra pulled back and re-opened his eyes. Neither were wearing any more than boxers under the covers, and he could feel Finn already hard against his thigh, as he was sure Finn could feel him.

“Finn…”

The vampire turned onto his back to kick the covers off, and canted his hips up to shimmy out of the soft black fabric. Ezra wiggled out of his own before they could be ripped off, he was going to run out soon, again.

He let a mischievous impulse take him, and leaned over to place his index finger on Finn’s already slick lips.

Finn took the bait and sucked the finger in, drawing a small gasp out of Ezra. He curled the finger around one of his fangs, and used it as leverage to pull Finn up.

Finn let out something between a growl and a laugh that somehow managed to convey both amusement and arousal. But he went willingly enough, eyebrow raised. Ezra guided Finn by the wickedly sharp canine, letting a grin take over his face, until he had him where he wanted him, sitting against the headboard, mouth open around his finger. He slid the digit out along the tip of Finn’s fang, with just enough pressure to draw blood.

Finn growled again, chasing the finger to pull back into his mouth. Then pulled Ezra, laughing, into his lap. The feel Finn’s firm abdomen against his cock, and Finn’s own erection between his legs, cut the sound into a gasp.

Ezra’s face fell into Finn’s neck and he let out a helpless little sound. Finn pressed a kiss to his neck and nibbled his way towards his jaw. He slid a big hand around the back of Ezra’s head and tangled his fingers in the sleep mussed curls. Then pulled his head back to ravage his neck in earnest.

Ezra was taut as a bowstring as Finn slipped his other hand, the one he’d lovingly crafted for the vampire, around both of their cocks.

Finn found a steady, twisting, rhythm, up and down, little movements of his hips pressing his tip up against Ezra’s crown as they were pressed together.

He began kissing his way down Ezra’s neck, licking the dip of his clavicle, sucking a bruise into the soft skin just below his collarbone.

Ezra groaned, breathing ragged as Finn continued the stroke of his hand and wandering of his mouth.

“Finn… Please… I need…” Finn had already released his hair and was reaching for the little jar of slick in the bedside table.

He gasped into a pointed ear as a cool finger circled his rim with tauntingly light pressure. Payback for the earlier teasing Ezra supposed, he ought to do that more often.

They kissed fully as Finn pressed the digit in, immediately finding that spot that sent a current of pleasure through him like a lightning strike.

It didn’t take long before Ezra was a shuddering mess. Moaning into Finn’s mouth, begging for more.

Eventually, Finn slipped his finger out and released their cocks with a final upward slide. He readjusted his position and maneuvered Ezra into place with hands cupping either side of his ass.

Ezra steadied himself on Finn’s shoulders and gazed into gold gone soft with a look of adoration that would have taken his breath away were he not already breathless. Finn held him in place and arced up off the bed to leisurely press up into him.

Feeling Finn move in him was always beyond satisfying, visceral and intimate. Ezra leaned back to admire the roll of muscle as Finn established a snapping upwards rhythm, knocking the breath out of him with every thrust.

“Touch yourself angel.” Finn groaned up at him.

Ezra happily obliged, timing the pull of his hand to match the rock of Finn’s hips.

Their movements quickly became desperate and stuttering, until Finn came below him with a deep groan, pressing up in a final, deep thrust. Ezra followed, spending onto Finn’s chest and abdomen.

He dismounted and curled into Finn’s side, letting his skin cool him as his breathing slowly steadied.

The world was quiet again for a moment, and Ezra kept his eyes closed, did not look to see Finn’s other arm resting on his own still chest, rather than around familiar shoulders. He did not think about the empty space.

There was a long, pitiful meow muffled by the door. Ezra flung an arm over his eyes.

“Is it morning yet then?” He could hear Finn’s smirk.

Coco meowed again.

Ezra needed a shower.

OOO

It turned into a sleepy sort of morning in the shop, and Ezra found his attention turning to the little collection of plants in the window. A coleus with vibrant pink and green patterning. An overgrown spider plant hanging from the ceiling. A few rarer herbs that did well indoors. And a little pot of succulents, spilling over the patterned sides, they needed repotting.

It was delicate work. Roots grown together needed to be gently separated. Even when great care was taken there was often damage, torn roots, a broken leaf. But plants could be hardy things, and with the extra space of a new pot (and again, with care) usually ended up better off than before.

Ezra thought about moving.

His thoughts were eventually interrupted by the tinkle of the bell above the door. Alkar practically flew up to the counter, wolf ears pinned, tail bristling. He was looking Ezra over like he was concerned something might have happened to him. Omen slipped in behind him and settled onto a stool, seeming less perturbed.

“What’s going on?” Ezra hurried to lock the door, before turning back to the pair.

“We saw Piper in the market this morning-” Omen started.

“Maro’s sister is here!” Alkar blurted.

Oh, Ezra had almost forgotten they had a sister. Maro had mentioned her once, when Finn had asked about the neat pile of letters on their cramped little desk. Her name was Rowan. She was older than them by a few years, a hunter as well. It had sounded like they missed her.

Should he have written her? He supposed Gus must have.

Ezra frowned “Has someone talked to her yet? Is she alright?”

“Ughhh.” Alkar deflated with a pout and sank to the floor.

Omen leaned over to pat him on the head. “Piper said August spoke to her last night. She’s injured? So they told her to come here today.”

Ezra spared Alkar a concerned look before addressing Omen. “She hasn’t made it in yet. Do you know how injured she is? Has anyone checked on her?”

“It sounded like she might have arrived quite late, perhaps-”

“We should be more worried about whether she’s going to follow in Maro’s footsteps!” the lycan cut in again, scowling.

“Is that why you’re so puffed up about it then?” Ezra wondered.

Omen nodded and Alkar somehow managed to deepen his scowl.

“I’m not puffed up... But yes it fucking is. You haven’t even met her yet and you’re already worrying over her. What if-”

Ezra cut him off. “She’s injured and just received bad news about a family member. She’s not responsible for what Maro’s done, and we don’t judge people by their families’ actions, yes?”

Which received an affirming nod from Omen and after a few moments of begrudging consideration, a huff from Alkar as he flopped the rest of the way to the floor.

“Sometimes I hate when you’re right.”

He was startled back up onto his elbow by a knock at the door.

Ezra looked at the clock, “That’ll be Mrs. Ellison here to pick up her sleeping draught.”

He started towards the door to let her in.

“Hey, do you want us to hang around today?” Alkar offered from the floor.

While it would be nice to have company, Ezra knew keeping track of this particular duo while also trying to run a shop was a task that required more eyes than he possessed. As though he needed any additional proof, while Omen had been innocently nodding along with Ezra through Alkar’s fit of surliness, the demon’s tail had been flirting closer and closer to the candy drawer. And as Ezra turned back to answer, it was curled into the handle.

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine. Would you two mind popping down to let Finn know what’s going on though?”

“We can do that!” Omen hopped up and towards the back curtain, tail chased from the drawer by a stern look from Ezra. Alkar trailed up after him and they disappeared with sounds of playful bickering cut off by the fall of the trapdoor.

Ezra let Mrs. Ellison in and continued his morning.

He was finding it hard to focus. Preparing ingredients for potions, what sort of injury did she have? Would he have what he needed to help her? Small talk with Mr. Barlow from down the street, would it be painful, or a comfort to meet Maro’s family? Was she very like them? Or nothing at all? Which would be worse?

By early afternoon the shop felt dense with anticipation. He decided to take his lunch out onto the front step to get a bit of air. It was a rare sunny day in Lunaris, and the warmth of the sun on his hair was a welcome change.

Ezra was taking the last sips of his tea when he spotted Coco down the street, primly hopping from a porch railing and trotting towards a crouched figure beckoning her over. A long black coat pooled around them, and they leaned heavily on a thin staff. Coco stopped in front of them for a moment, considering, before flopping over, paws tucked up, big eyes wide, no mercy. The stranger was clever enough to ignore the soft belly fur on display and obligingly give her a (much safer) scritch around the cheeks and chin.

Ezra smiled, setting his teacup on the step to stand and walk over. As he approached he heard them talking to Coco in a playful tone “You know some of your cousins are far less sweet little friend?” Their pets were rewarded with a purr, before Coco hopped back up to rub along Ezra’s leg before loping off in the direction of the shop.

The stranger turned at his approach and tucked a fallen brown curl of their curly, chin length mop behind an ear. As they stood, using the staff to take much of their weight, Ezra immediately realized that this was Maro’s sister.

There was something familiar to her. Her face wasn’t as soft as Maro’s, a curious, friendly smile framed by a narrower, sharper jaw and more prominent nose, eyes less wide, but a familiar misty grey. She was tall and willowy, taller than Maro, perhaps even a tad taller than Ezra. Under her long coat she wore a cream, collared shirt buttoned to her neck, tucked loosely into dark, high waisted trousers with a patterned purple sash spilling from one pocket. A silver axe with intricately forged designs hung at her waist.

“Is she yours?” She asked, smiling and nodding in the direction Coco had gone.

“Yeah, that’s Coco.” He offered a smile back “ Spoiled thing. Are you Rowan?”

Her eyes widened minutely, “Yes,” she paused a moment, considering him “You must be Ezra. Maro’s written lovely things about you and that vampire.”

“I am.” Ezra replied, trying very hard not to imagine Maro scratching out sweet things about them in that messy scrawl. “I was told you might need some help with an injury? My shop is just over there if you’d like to come in?”

She sighed, "I'm glad to meet you then, and yes, thank you, I suppose that needs to be dealt with first."

He led her back to his home, and even limping, she walked with the same strange grace and strength that seemed innate in most Hunters. He supposed he now knew the reason for that. She entered ahead of him and as she disappeared into the dimmer light, he was not at all surprised to feel a sense of deja vu.

[lesbianherstorian]

The “dubious” and “mysterious” Mr. Gill

I have seen a lot of opinion pieces and heated discussion around the upcoming film Rub & Tug featuring Scarlett Johansson (a completely inappropriate casting choice, something that I thankfully have seen most LGBT people rightfully disagree with.)

However, I am unable to find articles, books, or any publications of any sort regarding Gill, his identity, or even his life, save for websites mentioning his obituary and one research site featuring an academic conference paper (x). There is not even a Wikipedia page available. The only search engine results for Gill are news sites reporting about Scarlett Johansson, so I decided to dig through archives to see what I could find. 

Though the obituary (x) (and some excerpts from it) has circulated, I have seen a lot of people entirely ignore, or even crop out, the part where Gill is described as both “an unabashed lesbian” and “in the transgender community, which at the time was so underground it had yet to acquire that label.” 

Considering how difficult it has always been for any news outlet to publish the L word ― lesbian ― or to recognize someone as transgender, let alone in an obituary, I am inclined to believe that family and friends of Gill, and the newspaper staff who knew Gill well, got it right. In another entry, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette even describes Gill as “a lesbian, [who] married Cynthia Bruno of Dallas, Texas, in Hawaii and lived with her in Pittsburgh before the couple eventually split.” (x)

In the guestbook of the obituary on Legacy.com (x), Gill’s family and friends use she/her pronouns, save for one entry referring to Gill as “he”. This could be explained by transphobic family members and friends misgendering in death, but we also have no evidence that Gill objected to these pronouns being used by people close to him who were neither his business partners nor his clients, especially not just years before his death, when he was still being interviewed by local newspapers in the 1990′s.

Gill received both “the dubious woman of the year” and “the dubious man of the year” awards (x) in the same local newspaper that previously reported his criminal behavior and later reported his passing, of which he was friendly with the staff. I do find it very unlikely that a mafia crime boss himself would allow for them to post his photographs and information this way had he objected to the wording, though it is possible.

It was often stated that Gill “dressed like a man” (x) and “preferred to be called a man” (x) and was married to a woman (x). The overlap in Gill’s obituary between lesbianism and transmasculinity is absolutely not unusual for the time period in which he lived, and it is a historical fact about the community. This gray, fuzzy, undefined area ― of what now seems to many as puzzlingly contradictory identities ― was the reality of many who passed away before and around the turn of the 21st century.

In no way do I intend to liken Dante “Tex” Gill’s identity and experiences as directly analogous to that of Leslie Feinberg, but I do believe that Feinberg’s self-conception and writings can help provide important context for transgender and lesbian identity around the height of Gill’s criminal activity. Feinberg defined “transgender” as all those who blur or bridge the boundary of the sex or gender expression they were assigned at birth (x), including butch lesbians and masculine women who cross-dressed and passed as men for a number of reasons -- to run businesses, to fake marriage certificates, and to survive (x). This is, of course, an incredibly broad and disputed transgender umbrella, and as such, we do not use this framework anymore. It was, however, used contemporarily in Gill’s time by many gender nonconforming people, especially of the working class. Some butch lesbians medically transitioned and preferred to be referred to with male honorifics while retaining their lesbian identity, or felt as though they “floated in between” when they had no labels to properly describe their experiences, and it is important to keep this history intact. 

It is only natural to speculate how someone who never used the terms of our modern framework might describe themself. But to do so and to decisively, retroactively label them as something they never self-described as is ahistorical and anachronistic. 

What I do know and hold to be true is this: using anything other than known self-identification at the time or the historical contextual terms does a disservice to both the legacies of deceased gender nonconforming people who are unable to set the record straight, and to the history of the formation and evolution of LGBT identities. The labels that are now outdated, and the ambiguity that remains confusing to us, are still important to recognize in their contexts so as not to erase historical identities nor the evidence of the strides we have made. 

I can only hope that historians or surviving members of the Gill family will come forward to speak on his experiences and condemn any misinformation that has or will circulate about Dante. Until then, I will be avoiding giving any attention to this undeserving film entirely. No thank you, I do not trust Hollywood to ever understand the history and intricacies of our identities. 

an album of newspaper articles I have put together on the life and times of Mr. Dante “Tex” Gill: (x)

materials that may also be helpful in understanding the complexity of sexuality and gender identity, and the historic overlap of lesbianism and transmasculinity: (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

[amandacorliss]

God as Metaphor: Nietzsche’s Use of Christian Values to Problematize the Relationship of Creditor/Debtor and ‘the Morality of Custom’

In the second essay of On the Geneology of Morality, “’Guilt’, ‘bad conscience’. and related matters”, Nietzsche explores the origin of guilt, the dichotomy of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ conscience, and the way both these outlooks, society, and the concept of God form and influence the individual. The “problem of humankind” Nietzsche theorizes, is that we are bred by nature to have the “prerogative to promise” (35). However, we are products of circumstance, of a series of accidents that make up history and are thus made in the image of the society we live in. In this paper, I intend to argue that this image, this position we are placed in of debtor, is amplified in our relationship to God; God acts as a metaphor for the ultimate creditor, who has both created us and sacrificed his son for our sins. To do this, I will first discuss how society has its foundations on a ‘morality of custom’ (36), then, I will explore the relationship of creditor/debtor, and finally, discuss how Nietzsche views our relationship to God as the pinnacle metaphor for the subjugation of humanity through this power dynamic. We must, Nietzsche argues, reverse this power dynamic by embracing our animal instincts, enacting our will to power and saying ‘yes’ to ourselves. It is up to us to redeem ourselves and back away from the void that passively reinforcing the status quo is leading us to.

Society is founded upon a ‘morality of custom’ (36). This structure of morality is based on tradition: “a higher authority which one obeys, not because it commands what is useful to us, but because it commands” (133). It is not a system of morality that takes the individual into account; it is a form of authority in and of itself; in fact, it does away with the individual. One must follow it, not because of any benefits that may come to the individual, but merely because custom ‘says so’. As Nietzsche states, “they demanded one observe prescriptions without thinking of oneself as an individual” (134). Those who advocate for a ‘morality of custom’ command that the individual must submit to the needs of society, they cannot think of themselves as a part but must think of themselves within the whole. They must act ‘without thinking of oneself’. Ultimately, the “individual is to sacrifice [themself]—that is the commandment of the morality of custom” (134). Under a morality of custom, there must no longer be the individual, there can only be the whole the society.

It is through this subjugation of the individual that ‘bad conscience’ comes to fruition. A conscience is “the awareness of responsibility”; to have a good conscience is to “be answerable to oneself, and proudly too, and therefore to have the prerogative to say ‘yes’ to oneself” (37). Under a society based on the morality of custom, one cannot have a ‘good conscience’—society provides you with the path you are to take, therefore, you lack the prerogative to say ‘yes’ to yourself, because you are unaware that is an option. For, “under the domain of the morality of custom, originality of every kind has acquired a bad conscience” (135). Morality of custom serves to make “man to a certain degree necessary, uniform, a peer amongst peers, orderly and consequently predictable” (36). Society acts as the means for upholding the morality of custom, so that “with the help of the morality of custom and the social straightjacket, man was made truly predictable” (36). Society makes the morality of custom inescapable; it holds individuals to something outside themselves. To be ‘autonomous’ to be ‘ethical’ are, under the morality of custom, mutually exclusive identities (37). In a society based on the morality of custom, the individual is only shown one option and that option is one that maintains and reinforces the status quo.

It is through the comparison of ourselves to others and this idea of society as being some ultimate provider that we are trapped by ‘bad conscience’;”the main moral concept, ‘Shuld’ (’guilt’) descends from the very material concept of “Schulden’ (’debts’)” (39). We are taught that we are forever indebted to society for what it provides for us: shelter, refuge, the ability to be free from suffering. It is almost the ultimate creditor/debtor relationship, wherein, we (humanity) are indebted and society is our creditor. Greek tradition holds that we are indebted to three entities: our parents, our gods, and our societies; these are entities that have provided for us that which we can never return: life, salvation, and refuge. Like our devotion to gods, our devotion to our society is equally based in mythology—the political mythos of the ‘state of nature’: a brutish, chaotic, land, free of laws, where everyone is ‘equal’ but no one is safe. Society lends us refuge from this chaos. We are no longer feral animals controlled by our base instincts, with the promise of safety from society. With the memories of punishments given to anyone who went against the collective branded in our minds, “man was eventually able to retain five or six ‘I-don’t-want-to’s’ in his memory. In connection with which a promise had been given, in order to enjoy the advantage of society ... Oeioke finally came to ‘reason’” (39). Through this reverberating ‘memory’ of the state of nature and our comparison of it to the society in which we live, people came to ‘reason’ that it is best to subjugate themselves to the wants and needs of the community, lest they are exiled from the haven it provides.

This system of creditor/debtor creates a value system inherent in society and thus, inherent in the views of all: “everything has its price: everything can be compensated for” (47). This system creates an unequal power structure between humanity and society. It is not mere things that have contingent value, as stated by Kant. Within this system, people too have a value placed upon them. This is the basis of a contractual agreement—men can agree with each other what value something one is offering has and what value something one is receiving has—thse two views are not always equal. It is when people do not recognize the mutual worth, or when people enter into contracts with larger systems that contractual agreements become problematic. Our dependency on the current value system reinforces this inequality: “fixing prices, setting values, working out equivalents, exchanging—this preoccupied man’s first thoughts to such a degree that in a certain sense it constitutes thought” (45). We can no longer view items or people outside ourselves without comparing what their value may be. We are forced to compare ourselves to the external, and therefore, are trapped by the value it places upon us. As Nietzsche states, “the feeling of guilt originated in the relationship of buyer and seller, creditor, and debtor: here person met person for the first time and measured himself against person” (45). One can only feel guilty if they have something to compare themselves to; if we were to have the freedom to base our actions with total control of ourselves, there would not be guilt in the way that it exists today. There would be no basis of comparison, no implicit value system which we must judge ourselves against and hold ourselves ‘accountable” to.

When man is “imprisoned within the confines of society and peace...all instincts [are] devalued” (56). To exist within society, people must forgo their animal instincts, they become forced to rely on external influences and values. Essentially, people are taught and made to be sick of themselves. (57). We become conflicted between the way society shapes us and our repressed “instinct of freedom” (59). This conflict within ourselves is what Nietzsche believes to be the origin of the ‘bad conscience’. This bad conscience causes us to value unegoistic actions: selflessness, self-denial, and self-sacrifice (60). It further cements the belief that the individual does not matter; it causes us to devalue ourselves and the power that we may hold. It is, as Nietzsche states, “a sickness” (60), the symptoms of which cause us to continually devalue ourselves, until we believe that individuals hold no value and that anything we do in this life is meaningless. This devaluing of the self and the increasing value and debt we accrue to society is culminated and amplified in our relationship to God. The “advent of the Christian God as the maximal good yet achieved, thus brought about the greatest feeling of indebtedness on earth” (62).

WIth the “moralization of the concept of debt/guilt and duty and their relegation to bad conscience, we have in reality an attempt to reverse the direction of the development [described above], or at least in its tracks” (63). These concepts are to be reversed against us, the debtors so that we can transform from beings held by bad conscience to ones who actively work towards the possibility of good conscience. We must confront the “paradoxical and horrifying expedient through which humanity has sought a temporary relief, Christianity’s stroke of genius: God sacrificing Himself for man’s debt” (63). Our feeling of debt towards God, of having to pay Him back for his ultimate sacrifice of His son for our sins, is expressed through the repression of our animal instincts. Acting upon these instincts becomes ‘sinning’. We deny ourselves the ability to act on our desires, not only because society shapes us to believe that these are things to avoid, but because we feel indebted to God. Instead of gods justifying man, like mythos of the Greek gods, Western society’s relationship to the Christian God, acts to deny people out natural instincts, to guilt us into conforming to the will of society instead of our own. 

Even though society has become more secularized, these feelings of guilt, of bad conscience are still very present. Nietzsche uses God as a means to discuss the amplification of the creditor/debtor relationship individuals of Western society find themselves trapped in. While it is not merely Christianity that has restricted the path we view for ourselves and has shaped us in a way that best reinforces current structures. Christianity contains all the elements of a morality of custom: it feeds its followers insurmountable feeling of guilt, debt, and the desire to fulfill unegoistic actions—self-sacrifice. Christianity, for Nietzsche, acts as the ultimate metaphor for the creditor/debtor power dynamic that individuals in Western society find themselves circling down the drain in.

To rid ourselves of this bad conscience, Nietzsche proposes that we inverse this power dynamic. That we attempt a reverse experiment: we must view our animal instincts with pride, we must be active in making ourselves, we must say ‘yes’ to ourselves, and not make promises that reinforce and continue tightening the social straightjacket, but promise with our own future in mind. We must find meaning in the future we create. We must be the ones to redeem ourselves. We cannot expect someone else to redeem us. By embracing our natural instincts, our individuality, we are acting with ‘good’ conscience; we are aware of the responsibility we have to ourselves and are acting with our own future in mind. We must work to redeem ourselves, to unshackle ourselves from the position of debtor and back away from the cliff of nihilism that society is leading us to.

Word Count:1888

[vileart]

Burrowing Dramaturgy: Andy Edwards @ Tron

 In Burrows

A new performance in BSL and spoken word, created by Andy Edwards, presenting at Tron Theatre on March 23rd and 24th. 

credits: Julia Bauer

The performance frames the act of description through a series of choreographies, investigating the relationship between spoken language, sign and meaning, and exploring perspective and how we engage with the world around us. In Burrows will be accompanied by a number of guest performances. Musician Blair Coron will perform a composition developed especially for the event. Petre Dobre and Adriana Navarro will present the short performance Words, who needs them?  What was the inspiration for this performance?

In Burrows began as a short piece, first performed at Only Skin’s SCRATCH back in October 2016. In the work I would describe an image to the audience, an image that was placed onstage so that they couldn’t see it, in 1500 words. What inspired this performance was a desire to make the easiest piece of work I could possibly make, that offered the maximum amount to the audience it could while carrying with it as little as possible. So it made sense to work with an audiences imaginations. Then I also wanted a piece of work I could just turn up and do, make up on the spot, so it made sense to play with improvisation.

The method of improvisation I employ was developed as part of the ground, the highest point a duet of text and dance I performed with Paul Hughes at a couple of festivals during 2015. Initially it very strongly drew from (or, less charitably, stole) Tim Etchell’s solo practice but since then it has departed considerably, and I’ve improvised poetry across a wider range of contexts, developing my own particular set of enquiries. Those enquires are primarily linguistic – I’m interested in how language works.

When offered to present In Burrows at Tron I was posed with the problem of how to take a very solid short work and evolve it into something three times the length, without just dragging it out. I’d been curious about working with a British Sign Language interpreter for a while, largely out of a desire to make my work more accessible to an audience I’d previously not made any work for and also because I was curious about the language itself. Placing Amy Cheskin into the work has been brilliant. A simple act that has produced lots of tensions, questions, that have driven the work forward.  Thinking about translation, interpretation and the fuzzy areas in

between has given the project a new lease of life – and certainly inspired me to push forward with it. Rehearsals are thundering along and we’re both pretty buzzed by how fascinating language is, and how it intersects – both producing and being produced by – what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, how you’re trying to position yourself to others and the world around you.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

It is a good launch-pad for the public discussion of ideas – and then, that discussion, happens after the performance has taken place. Any good discourse is advanced by someone making a claim about something, and then other people assessing that claim. Me saying that I think this gives you something to react off of.

The way I go about making performance is to think that each performance I make is an act of making a claim about something, taking up a position, and that by taking up a position I’m inviting others to observe, discuss and criticise that position. That’s the basic task that I’m up to – trying to hold someone’s attention long enough for them to know what it is I’m claiming but with a relaxed enough grip so that they can react to it. And then things that I’m doing are hugely informed by the ideas I’ve previously discussed that have led me up to this point.

I think that’s why art in general is a good space for the public discussion of ideas – because it is often people making statements about the world that have a smaller impact on that world. That isn’t to say that impact is negligible. Not at all. Or that it doesn’t have a significant impact on the world. It most definitely does – and that isn’t always a positive one. But there’s something both flimsy and robust about art that means the stakes are low enough so that we can discuss it but that also our discussion of it won’t kill the thing stone dead. So yes, in that sense, it’s has the potential to be a great space to discuss ideas.

That’s all potential though, because if only a small segment of people can access the space in which the discussion takes place then it won’t be much of a discussion at all. So, it depends on what the performance is, where it is being held and who is allowed in.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I’m not particularly sure. I came about it the long way around and avoided it for a while, in part due to a certain type of pressure applied to me when I was younger, and in part due to being scared that I’d be totally rubbish at it. As a teenager I found acting, with characters and lines and arcs, such a release for a build up of emotions I’d not learnt how to deal with. I did a GCSE, then A-Level, in drama. Then fell in with the theatre crowd at University – after a brief attempt to avoid doing it – then did a masters – after another brief attempt to avoid doing it – and since then I continually flip flop between wanting to knock Shakespeare off his perch and “getting a job in a bank”, forgetting of course that getting a job in a bank is probably quite difficult / the banks might not be particularly in desperate need of my services.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Me and Amy work in a manner where the creative responsibility is a little imbalanced. Given Amy is a translator, that’s a really necessary thing for her to do her job, but it leads to the interesting tension where if the work is crap it isn’t her fault, it’s mine. So it is interesting how labour divides up as a result of that. The pattern is that we meet once a week and for three hours throw things about, try something and note what happens. Then I’ll go away and write something, some notes, a script, or whatever – and then we’ll come back together again and throw what’s left together again. So we move forward like that – and it’s going super well I think.

Thinking about our general approach, we spend a lot of time asking what the audience will be getting from the work, and how audiences with different abilities will receive the work differently. The work will be accessible to a range of audiences including those who are D/deaf, hard of hearing, partially sighted or blind, with integrated BSL interpretation and audio description. This desire to make a piece of work that offers a rich theatrical experience to these audiences informs a lot of decisions we make. Rather than to offer one blanket experience of the work, we’re curious as to what we can offer each of these specific audiences in turn. The work, as a whole, is concerned with a very specific relationship to each and every one of its audience members. It’ll be a bit different for everyone, given that a lot of it will take place inside their heads.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

While I’ve performed my work before, most recently as part of Andy Arnold’s group show NOWHERE during Take Me Somewhere 2017, I am more commonly found as a playwright. Typically I write text for others, in a ‘New Writing’ context, whereas for In Burrows I’m speaking text that has never been written down.

There’s a thread that runs through all this work though, which is about being in control of language. That sentence sounds a bit gross, reading it back. With In Burrows I’m making that process more explicit to the audience then if I were to write a play, which I’d typically do out of sight.

So while it will look very different to a lot of my other work, I think the underlying mechanics are fundamentally the same.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

The dramaturg for In Burrows, Paul Hughes, wrote this note to me after a development weekend: “I’m looking at a photograph by Andy Goldsworthy currently on display in the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art: a line of upturned leaves placed on dense patch of bracken, the stark white undersides standing out from the vivid green of the forest. It doesn’t impress the viewer in how it has acquired huge or rare or precious materials, or on how many people the artist holds in their command, or even in how it has hoodwinked and mocked the institution that houses it. No sustained physical commitment was required to produce this; in fact, the action so simple that we can imagine the exact steps with which it was undertaken. The gesture points towards the artist themself as much as any material circumstance or image.

Is this an alchemical transformation? Do we perceive the artist as a magician, effortlessly transforming reality around them? This can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the individual viewer’s tastes, affiliations and readiness to go along with the trick. What’s more clear is the particular sense of romance, of the poetic, within the artist: of the ways in which they read charm and delight in the world around them. Perhaps in this work - and obviously I’m talking about In Burrows too - the artist is inviting us to briefly see the world through their eyes - not as a way to seduce us, but to share with us a way in which we might allow ourselves to be seduced. We stand before an intimate proposition; the individual’s un/abashed offer of their very personal relationship to beauty”

So perhaps that sums it up, perhaps it doesn’t. I’m wanting the audience to have the experience of observing something very personal to themselves, namely their relationship to language, memory, imagination and image. It’ll be small, quiet, and hopefully full of stuff for them to latch on to and play with.

Both In Burrows and Words, Who Needs Them? have been created for the enjoyment of hearing, hard-of-hearing and D/deaf audiences. In Burrows also features integrated audio description for blind or partially sighted audiences. from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2ohvYuv

[queercapwriting]

Sorry to bother you, it just that im having a rough day and was just wondering if you could write a little drabble of maggie helping nb! Alex through a rough dysphoria day?

She knows the moment she steps out of the bathroom, teeth freshly brushed, and looks at them.

The way they’re frozen at their drawers, staring in at the tank tops and sweaters and jeans, shit, their jeans.

Because half their jeans are tight as sin and the others – the newer ones, the ones they’ve started acquiring since coming out – are looser, thicker material, lighter colors.

Because Alex is standing in boy shorts and a lacey bra, and they’re frozen.

“Hey sweetie,” Maggie offers softly, softly, gingerly avoiding beautiful or handsome, because this happened last weekend when they went to a new club and this happened the week before when they were seeing Adrian for the first time since coming out.

Alex nods but doesn’t turn around. Can’t turn around.

“Need some help?” Maggie asks, like she’s offering Alex coffee, not help picking clothes, not help stemming the spiral of panic, not help breaking the cascade of terror, of is this real am I real I’m twenty-nine years old shouldn’t I just be able to get dressed in the morning.

“No,” Alex snaps, and Maggie nods with a tilted head and pursed lips.

“Danvers,” she starts.

“I’m sorry,” Alex turns around, tears in their eyes and real remorse on their face. “I’m sorry, Maggie, you didn’t deserve that, I just…”

Maggie crosses the room and offers her hands out to Alex, who nods and Maggie touches their arms. Alex immediately relaxes.

“Having trouble figuring out how to represent yourself today?” Maggie offers a small smile, and Alex’s face burns while they nod.

“That’s okay, it’s hard.” 

Alex’s heart floods and they nod again, biting the inside of their cheek. 

“I’m gonna see people I haven’t really seen since I came out today. In the locker room at work. They’re back from this mission in London. And I don’t want them to think I’m not… J’onn made sure everyone knows about my… my pronouns… but I don’t want anyone to think… it’s not real, or it’s about me being gay, or something…”

“Well, if they thought that, they’d be wrong. Because you are real, Alex. So real. And you’re perfect.”

“And you’re biased because you love me,” Alex protests, and Maggie giggles and leans up to kiss their nose.

“Mmmm, that I do, Danvers. But I’m also 100% accurate. At all times, as you well know.”

Alex rolls their eyes with a watery smile and shakes their head.

“I want to bind because I’m gonna see everyone, or more specifically, they’re gonna see me, so I want to bind, I have to bind, but I feel girly, but if I bind I can’t be girly, but if I don’t bind I’ll freak out because they’ll only see what my body’s giving them, which is boobs and a girl, but I’m not a girl, and I just – “

Alex’s voice breaks and Maggie’s heart does along with it, but she nods and she waits to see if Alex has spiraled themself out before saying anything.

“You’re not a girl, Alex, you’re right. You know what you are? You are Alex Danvers; you’re a badass and you’re the most incredible partner I’ve ever had or ever will have, and you’re sexy as all get out, whether you’re in your binder or flipping lingerie. But you can be girly while you’re binding, babe, you know. Maybe a henley with your binder and tight jeans? Or you can say fuck what you think they might see and wear the most low cut shirt in your arsenal if that’s what you’re feeling. Whatever you want, Alex.”

Alex snorts through shaky tears. “My arsenal.”

“I mean hey, binding or lace bra-ing, your perfect outfits with that perfect body can kill a person, Danvers. Seriously.”

“I’m not doing this wrong?”

Maggie shakes her head and runs her thumbs across Alex’s cheeks.

“Al, you can’t possibly be yourself the wrong way. And you? You’re the person I am wildly in love with. No matter how many times you have to change in the morning to figure out what feels good today.”

“Even if I have to take a stupid anti-anxiety pill to do it?”

“Even then, Danvers. Even always, how about that?”

Alex lowers their forehead to Maggie’s and breathes Maggie’s breath into their lungs.

“Always doesn’t sound too bad.”

[dungeonmasterpoisonbite]

Dwarfs and Reproduction

So there was this cool post about dwarfs reproducing by creating babies out of precious stones that I really liked, and I wanted to explore that further. (post found HERE) This is my take on dwarf reproduction!

Dwarfs are, at a glance, a pretty typical humanoid species in the same grouping of races as elves, gnomes, halflings, and humans. They do not share enough similarities to goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and other goblinoids to be a member of that group, though they do share more anatomical similarities to them than any of the other humanoid races. They exhibit less sexual dimorphism than the other humanoid races save elves. While the other races tend to have members of the female sex grow less facial and body hair than males of the same geographic origin, dwarf males and females only real difference is their sexual anatomy, the presence of breast tissue in females, and slight variations in beard growth rates.

When looking more closely at dwarf anatomy and society, however, it becomes very clear that they are an anomaly in all the bipedal sapient races of the world. While they have all the anatomy necessary to reproduce sexually, all dwarfs are born complete sterile. No one knows how or why they have the equipment to reproduce sexually but not the ability, and dwarf scholars are not providing that particular bit of information to the scientific community.

What is known is that for all of recorded history (according to dwarf scholars), dwarfs have reproduced by crafting a baby out of precious metals, gems, jewelry, stones, and other various materials depending on the clan and their location. The blackreef clan is one famous sea-dwelling dwarf clan, and they use shells, pearls, and whale ivory in their children. This baby is called a dar'knan, which translates into 'receptacle of our breath' in the dwarf tongue.

The dar'knan is an expensive venture for any single dwarf, and thus multiple dwarfs will often pool their resources to create one. Marriage among dwarfs is meant to signify this pooling of resources and assets. The nuclear dwarf houshold will involve two parents, one a warrior and the other some sort of craftsmen. They purchase the materials for the crafstmen to work into the shape of their child, often spending months on this project alone. Dwarf culture allows for this crafting time, and the entire clan will pitch in food, water, ale, and other necessities so that the family can focus on creating their child.

What the dar'knan is made from is not actually in anyway indicative of how the child will turn out. Better materials does not guarantee a stronger or more intelligent child, nor does the use of gemstones and precious metals guarantee a more attractive child. In desperate times, dwarfs have been known to simply chisel a rough approximation of a baby out of stone, and use that for the dar'knan. However, the expenditure of resources is meant to be an indicator of your wealth and your success at acquiring it, and thus is symbolic of you channeling that success into your child.

Despite their not being any real difference in what your dar'knan is made of, many dwarfs will use what they were made from to ascribe personality traits to one another or themselves, or as an insult. One common insult among dwarfs is "Gran dar'knan" which roughly means "baby made of mud" and is used to imply that you are a shiftless, dishonorable, or unreliable person.

When the dar'knan is finished, the parents will perform a ritual that lasts ten days and ten nights (the dwarf week is ten days long). This ritual requires the parents to remain in uninterrupted prayer to their deities, and is something that any dwarf, regardless of magical proclivity, can perform and is taught. During this time, the dwarfs can only drink one glass of water each day to keep themselves from dying of dehydration. They cannot sleep or eat. This symbolizes the giving of their own life and health to the child.

Scientifically, we do not know why this prayer transforms the dar'knan into a flesh-and-blood dwarf newborn. Most theologians claim it to simply be a divine spell, granted by the dwarf gods to any who pray in such a manner, and that is probably the only accurate answer. As such, the dwarf race is the only one that appears to reproduce entirely through divine intervention.

It is not necessary for two individuals to be involved in this ritual or the creation of the dar'knan. One can do it just fine, but it can be very difficult and expensive. Sometimes a small family unit of three or four will raise a child, or raise two simultaneously and create the closest analogue of siblings that dwarfs can get. When five or more dwarfs take part, there is a chance of the dar'knan splitting into two, giving the parents twins.

Everyone who takes part in the ritual and crafting is considered a parent to the child. They are expected to care for the child until they come of age. They are responsible for passing on the ritual to the child, as well as teaching them as much as they can. They are referred to as "grud'ranna" or primary parents.

Anyone who assisted in the ritual but not the crafting is given a title that is similar to the concept of a god parent: they are often involved in the raising of the child, watch the child when the parents are unable to do so (a difficult project, times of war, etc) and will take over as parents if the parents die. This title can be given to anyone that is close to the dwarf parents if no one assisted in the ritual. Adventuring friends are often given this honor after a dwarf settles down and begins a family. Additionally, in the eyes of dwarf society, a dwarf cannot sire a child with a non-dwarf, and thus if a dwarf marries a non-dwarf the non-dwarf parent will always be considered a god parent by dwarf society. While a non-dwarf may recite the words and fast, there does not appear to be any indication that doing so contributes to the ritual in a meaningful way. They are referred to as "grud'yanna" or secondary parents.

Anyone who assisted with the crafting but not the ritual has a role and relationship that is similar to that of an aunt or uncle. They also assist in caring for the child when necessary, but are not obligated to do so in times of distress. For example, if the parents of a child are warriors as are the god parents and must go to war, then an aunt or uncle may care for the child. But if they do not wish to do so, then one of the others will have to choose to stay home to care for the child. Secondary parents do not have the luxury of choice: they must care for the child if they are not warriors. These individuals are called Tertiary parents. They are referred to as "grud'maka" or tertiary parents. Some parents will invest in very skilled crafstmen or, if they're particularly wealthy or have significant influence, will get the Clan Craftsmen themself to assist in the crafting. This is often very expensive, but a common trade is that the child will be expected to serve as the Clan Craftsmen's apprentice when they are old enough to begin such a tenure.

Anyone who helped care for the parents while they were working on the dar'knan are considered distant family members, akin to how humans feel about cousins and other similarly extended family. They have no obligations to care for the child or are involved in parenting the child, though they are often in the clan and pitch into help when necessary.

I feel I should mention that when I say "care for the child" I do not mean "teach them the skills of the world, right from wrong, etc etc" I simply mean providing food, shelter, and caring for their health. The entire clan will be involved with caring for the child emotionally and mentally. A primary parents job is to work hard so that the child always has a warm bed, good food, and access to clerical or medical services when sick or injured. They are also the primary caretakers emotionally, but again the entire clan is expected to help with raising the child.

The sex of the child is based entirely on the majority of individuals involved in the ritual. Two male dwarfs will sire a male, two female dwarfs will sire a female, and one male and one female appears to pool the parents of the two parents to determine sex. For example, a male with three male parents and a female with two female parents that sire a child, will always sire a male child (three to two). If there is still a tie, it will extend back a further generation. This is, however, a rare occurrence as most dwarfs tend to enjoy the company of their own sex over the opposite sex. If their is a none-even number of parents, then the sex is easier to predict.

Gender identity is not indicative of sex, however. Dwarfs fully understand and embrace the idea of defining yourself, and have mastered magics to adjust the sex of someone who desires it. Transgender dwarfs are common, and often show up in same-sex parental groups. Polyamory is also very common, though dwarfs do usually pick a single partner to cohabit with. Sexual activity is common among dwarfs since it bears none of the dangers of accidentally siring a child, but asexual and sex-repulsed dwarfs are also common. Non-romantic dwarfs are rare, and dwarfs who do not wish to sire children are also rare, but the last few generations of dwarfs have stamped out the mistreatment of these groups in their society.

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of Thought : Wicdiv #28

Oh wow, I am so incredibly late for this ! Courtesy of – you guessed it – law degree stuff. Also French elections. And possibly impending apocalypse. But hey, I made this one extra-long to make up for it. And since I managed to stick with these analysis pieces of mine for an entire arc, it’s opinion time ! Let me know if you liked reading them, if you found them helpful, if there’s a topic you’d like me to tackle… Basically, tell me what you think. Or don’t, and keep your mystery (that was the title of the pamphlet Christian fundamentalists gave away at the entrance of my high school back then. Yes, it refers to what you think it does and it remains the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read in my entire life).

Anyway, analysis and opinion under the cut, spoilers for issue #28.

FAIR GAME

 When the solicitations for Wicdiv issue #28 came out, I was intrigued by the fact that for the first time, the description came with a “mature themes” warning. Because, well, it was Wicdiv we were talking about : sex and violence have been tagging along since issue 1. Upon reading the issue, I’m not quite sure which of the depictions it contains are materially more graphic than the previous ones ; and yet, they definitely feel more “mature”, more explicit.

 And the reason, at least to me, is that if I had to describe this issue in one word, it would be “invasive”. Not just from a reader’s perspective, but also thematically. All throughout the issue, we see characters massively overstepping their boundaries.

The issue opens with Cass literally breaking & entering Blake’s home, then confronting Woden about his identity in public, to which Woden responds by referring to Cass’ pre-transitioning life. Cass oversteps again by mentioning Amaterasu’s dead father to her – as an orphan myself : don’t do that people, don’t psychoanalyze us, we’ve got it covered – then we switch to Persephone forcing Baphomet to talk to her, which leads to Baphomet mentioning the Morrigan’s controlling behaviour toward him. During the orgy scene, it’s visually that this violation of privacy manifests itself : nudity, sexual acts, up to the crude depictions of Sakhmet’s victims’ open throats. And we end with a look at Ananke’s letter, the content of which brings us very little in terms of plot but is still given to us in its entirety, because it wasn’t built to satisfy our need for information but to communicate with someone dear to her. Symbolically, we even get to see her without the lace mask that estranges her from the world.

 In my SOT for issue #26, I talked about the different way reveals about the characters were handled in this arc compared to the previous ones, and noted that our characters didn’t actually know that much about each other and that the heavy-handed feeling that accompanied each revelation were symptomatic of people getting to know and getting closer to each other. After all, isn’t it always how it feels to learn about someone at first ? Like a guessing game in which an infinity of answers is possible, in which each player tries to make themself look as good as possible to others, precisely because there’s not enough information to go around and anything is believable. This is how we form connexions : take in, hold it in, rearrange, and finally let in.

 However, in this issue, we’re in the other side of the mirror. In a move the Wicdiv team is decidedly fond of, this is where we assess the costs of getting close to someone : to get to know them is to get to hurt them. Even without necessarily having your privacy being invaded, allowing proximity of any kind makes you more vulnerable to someone’s words and actions. How many times has each of us ended up saying something hurtful in an attempt to figure someone out ?

This topic is mined explicitly in the issue : Woden warns Cass of the dangers of seeing others like “puzzles to figure out”. Because the gods are just starting to form a genuine group, it is unclear for each of them what can and can’t be said. Especially for someone like Cass, who’s not very good at being tactful, it can be tempting to get ahead of the curve and treat others like the sum of their personal information. But these pieces of knowledge each come at a cost for both parties : if you’re letting someone know about something, they might hurt you with it ; and if you’re let in on something, then you have to do with a degree of intimacy that you might not have asked for. Cass might not like Woden even the tiniest bit ; but when she invaded his life, she implicitly agreed to treat what she would find out with respect and decency, and even to be touched by his story.

 There’s of course a pretty clear meta quality to this subject. We’ve reached a point in the comic at which the fandom is self-sustaining. We know have our own codes, catchphrases and theories - it’s interesting to note that the majority of wheel title cards in the issue are inner references. We spend hours speculating about the intimate lives of the characters, and we do so openly because they are not real. But reading this issue feels like a direct message to the fandom nonetheless : if those were real people, what we’re doing would be massively inappropriate and hurtful.

 But Wicdiv characters being Wicdiv characters, they are no better at this than we are, and you’ll find no better illustration than this issue. And while it might seem anticlimactic to bring up such a topic at the end of an arc that’s all about the gods getting mad with power, it makes perfect sense : intimacy is power. And this issue does everything it can to link those themes.

Amaterasu’s gibberish threw me off for a little bit, but what I got from her “evil Muslims” line is that being responsible for something means you have power over it, a logic she inverts to conclude that it’s the people representing the biggest threat for something that would be the most efficient at protecting it. But that kind of responsibility for something is one you acquire by simple virtue of proximity. Having a relationship with someone, even a tenuous one, gives you power over them, the power to hurt them. Whether you do it or not is your responsibility, but is it inescapable.

The topic is even more explicit in Sakhmet’s mouth, when she compares the dynamic of human relationships to those of predator and prey. Of course, for Sakhmet it means that someone WILL get hurt, the only question being which one. It’s interesting to note that while Sakhmet’s characterization revolves around being so emotionally closed off you apparently cannot be hurt, Sakhmet herself doesn’t deny that she can be hurt ; she adopts the role of a predator because she knows she’s just as vulnerable as anyone else otherwise. Even more interesting is the turn taken by the issue with the orgy scene. Sakhmet being angered by not having been let in on the lie can seem offsetting for the long-time reader : we know she would have had no problem with Ananke’s murder being indeed murder. But once again, this isn’t about what we know of her : it’s about the weight of every relationship. Despite her best efforts, Sakhmet is still part of the group formed by the Pantheon. This infinitesimal relationship between her and them still give them the power to violate her trust. The rage she displays subsequently is a way to counteract this violation. The parallel drawn between Amaterasu “refusing to go down on her” and them being oblivious about including her is a little cringy, but still makes sense : just because the degree of proximity she offers is shallow doesn’t mean it’s worthless to her. We know she doesn’t care who gets killed, we know she doesn’t care who she sleeps with. But she’s still part of the group and she still let you go down on her. For someone as closed off as Sakhmet, these are pretty much the sum of her interactions with the world : she is a hedonist, part of the pantheon, and she will demand your respect on both accounts. It’s not important to us, precisely because typically our interactions with others run much deeper, but it’s important to her. If you’re part of the pantheon, or you want to have sex with her, then you’re part of her private life. You have the power to hurt her. You better not.

 But while this issue makes this point in a chilling manner, nothing is ever black & white in Wicdiv. Yes, it’s better to be respectful and even somewhat distant when you’re not completely familiar with someone. But sometimes things are more complicated. Sometimes there’s a duty to be invasive. When you find out one of your sorta-friends is the victim of an abusive relationship. Even if you end up doing harm, one thing you cannot do is quietly retreat, because the basis of abusive behaviour is to cut your victim from all interactions so they lose all standards of a normal degree of intimacy, something that’s crushingly explicit in Baphomet’s words when he says “this” is only about he and the Morrigan.

 And even without mentioning these extreme cases, in a way, aren’t all feelings for someone based on invasiveness ? Other people’s feelings is something that we didn’t ask for and that we still end up having to deal with. And it might be tempting to try and block all emotions so you gain the right to ignore those of others. But Sakhmet herself proves in this issue the futility of this attempt. Indeed, someone’s always going to get hurt. And if we weren’t the prey from time to time, we wouldn’t have such a strong need to be the predator. Human interaction is built on invading each other’s world with our own emotions ; at every moment, we are both predator and prey. And it’s this simultaneity, this reciprocity that saves us. The only way to make others’ intimacy acceptable is to make it so it goes both ways.

Here in France we give each other kisses on the cheek as a form of greeting. In high school I had a philosophy professor who explained to us the sociological meaning of this practice : by letting someone kiss us we expose our necks, one of our most fragile parts, as a sign of submissiveness. But by reciprocating the kiss, we re-establish equal ground : we both expose our weakness to the other. We build a link based on mutual vulnerability instead of mutual protectiveness. And humans are not the only species of expressing consented vulnerability by offering their necks ; so do big cats.

   WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE

 Look, with so many stakes and such tension hovering above this issue, this was never going to be a perfect run.

 Issue #27 was such an impeccably constructed juggernaut of a tension-builder that it was left to issue #28 to tie up a dizzying number of plotpoints and planted twists. And the result, at least for me, is that some work and others… not so much. Moreover, this issue had to go over each of these plotpoints one of after the other while still building up the momentum to its “big finish”, which gives to this issue a bit of a “catalogue” feel. Granted, Imperial Phase (part I) as a whole gives out the same impression. This is the first arc that really revolves around an ensemble cast instead of a designated protagonist, where it be Laura or the rotating figures of Commercial suicide. I don’t need to have written comics to guess that ensemble pieces are hard to do, and I think it’s no accident that the best issue of this arc, issue #27, was the one explicitly using abundancy, superficiality and rapid succession as its main formal device.

I’ll try to dedicate a similar post to the arc as a whole, so for now I want to focus on each plotpoint of this issue and weigh on their effectiveness, because for once I think this issue is more its parts than its whole.

  Let’s start with the David Blake/Cass/Woden storyline. I’m in a particular position on that one, since I’m the person who came up with the “David Blake is Woden” theory. I can’t tell you how much it makes me smile to see more and more people supporting that theory right at the moment when it seems Wicdiv is confirming the “Jon Blake is Woden” theory. It’s really a testament to Wicdiv’s ability to fool us that any information they give us would make a plausible red flag.

Here’s the thing about my theory : even when I came up with it, I was never convinced that it’d be a good thing in terms of plot if I were right. I think it would be interesting, as it would make a good point on the danger of older men “taking on” youth culture, as well as the white male privilege of being able to maintain a childishness that’d prove deadly to another demographic. But on the other hand, we would lose the interesting conversation on the self-reproduction of sexism and male entitlement from the fathers to the sons, and more largely a good part of the stakes that’ve been building up around Woden’s character. One thing I dislike about modern media is its tendency to pile on plot twists until the story is so unnecessarily convoluted that all meaning is lost. Sometimes simplicity is the best way to get a topic across. And as we progress on the Woden story, I think the straightforward explanation of his character has gained enough interest on its own not to warrant an additional layer of meaning.

And it’s that same simplicity I liked in the “revelation” on the subject in the issue : the fandom has been dwelling on the “Blake’s son is Woden” theory for so long (to the point that weirdoes like me have created spin-offs of this theory) that there was no way of including it as a “revelation” without it feeling artificial. So the very offhanded, toned-down way they handled it seems to me like the right choice. What really amped this moment up is the inclusion of Cass in the storyline, as both a good researcher and yet one who cannot help looking a bit risible and arrogant when gloating about a finding the fandom’s been holding as semi-canon for more than a year at this point.

Oh, and David Blake could still be Woden I guess. But if that comes up, there better be a damn good layer of subtext associated with it to make up for what we’ll lose.

 And now I have to talk about Amaterasu. It’s weird to remember that everything in Amaterasu’s introduction in the comics seemed to destine her to be special among the cast : she was the first of the pantheon to appear, the first to perform, the first to be the object of the protagonist’s obsession… She was explicitly singled out by Laura as the best in term of “star power”. And yet, three arcs later, Amaterasu had completely slipped in the background, due to Luci immediately taking the stage and then Ammy being present only episodically. So it feels both logical and a bit surprising to see her suddenly come back to such a central position. Moreover, unlike most of the cast Amaterasu has seen no progression in her character : what we know about her – her father, her connexion to Japan, her immaturity, cultural appropriation – is still just as true, and unlike even the most stagnant characters like Sakhmet, Amaterasu doesn’t even look like she got worse. It simply looks like what she is now is what she always was, and only her lack of presence in the comic prevented us from seeing that. So having Amaterasu serve as a trigger for the deadly chain of events is a clever move ; we either expected her to keep pissing us off in a non-harmful way or to go haywire, but not necessarily to trigger something by the simple virtue of being annoying to the characters themselves. Speaking of annoying, I’ve long predicted that at some point one of the gods will get enucleated and I’m increasingly convinced that god will be Amaterasu, but at this point it may well be wishful thinking.

But yes, as a whole I love the whole concept of Amaterasu’s portrayal. Aside from the whole “desperate to find meaning in tragedy” aspect, which is nothing new, I like that it gives us something quite different in terms of having a character who’s… well, not very smart. While she does have a few lines here and there that clearly aim at using her lack of intelligence for comedic purposes, this is not the crux of her personality, or even necessarily what makes her dangerous or scary. Amaterasu is not smart, but she’s also driven, a grieving orphan, immature, narcissistic, profoundly spiritual. She’s a fully fleshed-out character with a certain level of intelligence, and she’s treated with exactly the same level of respect as the others.

As for the possibility that it all may be an act if it turns out she’s the one working with Ananke ? Well, once again, I think we would lose a great characterization in favour of a cheap plot twist. “Clever manipulative woman pretending to be dumb” has been done a million times. I’ve never seen a character like Amaterasu before.

 And for this issue’s most uncomfortable topic, we’ve got Baphomet and the Morrigan. You know, as a fellow goth, I’ve always felt kinda bad about not liking the Morrigan, because it’s not like we have a large amount of mainstream representation written by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about. But as it turns out, boy did I have the right idea. I’m sure there will be much to say on this storyline as it develops, but for now I’m going to focus purely on how “holy shit, the Morrigan’s straight-up abusing Baph” plays out narratively here. What I really admire about this whole scene is how it manages both surprise and obviousness. I don’t know if there were diverging opinions on this, but personally I’ve been holding the abuse for a certain fact since the chess scene in last issue, and yet when Baph dropped his glasses and I realized one second too late what I was going to see on the page turn, it still managed to knock me out. And I think the key to this success is gradation. The first time we heard again from the Morrigan was in the magazine issue, and in that she still presented that perfect picture of gothic romance ; nothing to see here, same old Morri. Then in issue #26, the new information was conveyed in a way that could find another explanation (Morri is simply trying to get him to show respect toward the dead) or could elicit humour (Morri is voting for him, ha-ha). Then in the next issue we jumped into something that would read as abusive only if you were already uncomfortable toward the whole relationship, and that scene was counteracted by another scene “showing” Baph cheating again with Persephone, painting him as a “bad guy”. So when we arrive at this issue, the fact that their relationship is abusive is something that one could have theoretically missed, denied or chosen to ignore.

Giving us such undeniable proof can seem sudden, and one can’t deny the pure shock value of Baph’s bruised face – the issue’s real Most Valuable Panel as far as I’m concerned – but the flagrance of this scene gets its strength from and reinforces the vagueness of the previous ones. Because after all, if we weren’t able to realize what was going on sooner, who can tell when the abuse really began ? Has this been going on only since Morri leaned of Baph’s infidelity ? Since she started suspecting it ? The beginning of the comic ?

However, for all this construction to work, we had to be able to believe Morri would actually do such a thing but not be able to anticipate it. The problem I had with the Morrigan from the start was her lack of personality beyond her premise and the fact that she didn’t seem to have any drives or goal of her own. And if the reason for that curious underdevelopment was that they intended knock it out of the park with this little bombshell… Well, I don’t really know what to make of that. On one hand, I want to say that if the reason a character development works is because you haven’t really given them any character prior, then there’s no glory in that success. On the other hand, I was the one who argued that Sakhmet’s lack of characterization worked because the deficit of information about her was in and of itself a characterization for it was of her own making. Could something similar be said of the Morrigan ? What I hated most about her was the vampirisation of her personality and storyline by her relationship, in a way that couldn’t be called a subversion of the trope. Does the evolution of her role in that relationship allow us read the relationship not as something hindering her characterization but as the mirror of her characterization itself ? I’m not sure. For now, the connexion I have to the character is too small for me to really feel it. She’s still essentially a cardboard for me, only one that has been painted with very scary colours.

In the end, this storyline works better from Baph’s perspective ; he’s the one holding its interest together because he’s the one whose personality has been explored at length in the comic, he’s the one we have a connexion with, even if many of us do not really like him. And because we possess that additional information, placing him in the position of a victim does not take away his agency the way it often does female characters in a similar position. Wicdiv doesn’t make the infuriating move of inciting us to side with the abuser to then try to make us feel bad about it when we get the full picture – as they did with Tara and yes I’m still bitter about that. No, when the information breaks out, we’re already on Baph’s side, may it have been ironically. And yes, there might be something to say about having the only abuse situation you’re depicting being a woman-on-man relationship when it’s by far the least common of all possible abuse situations, but hey, representation has to start somewhere for each of them. And as far as concepts go, having Baph’s aviator glasses, the very symbol of his perfectly constructed virility, serve the same purpose as the cliché inadequate sunglasses women wear to hide bruises in a billion TV shows is pretty amazing.

 Now while I did like all 3 three aforementioned storylines, it’s toward the end that the issue starts to lose me, because neither the Sakhmet finish nor the Ananke addendum really convinced me.

To start with, the juxtaposition of these two storylines is just a weird way to finish the arc.

They’d both work as individual closers, but they’re so different in their narrative construction I think they work against each other.

Let’s start with Sakhmet. Her rampage was pretty much everyone’s first guess to the question “what could go wrong at the party at the end of Imperial phase ?“

In fact, it’s a closer I’d dismissed as a possibility because it would have been too obvious – I had something even darker in mind, like maybe all the gods waking up the morning after to find their guests dead, but not knowing who among them killed them. But anyway, Sakhmet going haywire is something everyone had on their checklist. We just didn’t know when it would happen and why. And while I do think the trigger they chose made sense and is convincing from a conceptual point of view, I’m not sure it works in the context of the story. Sakhmet losing it because she wasn’t included in the Ananke cover-up was a complicated payoff to set up. Basically, the story could not ever remind us she’d missed this piece of information because the entire plotpoint relied on the gods – and us with them - forgetting about it. So they could only plant tangential information and reminders : the fact that Sakhmet doesn’t like to be mocked or lied to, the fact that she indeed ate her dad… But it didn’t make the payoff come more naturally and it only reinforced the absence of surprise when what everyone knew was going to happen at some point happens – only a bit sooner that we might have thought. I think that may have been their way of using the “cover-up” plotpoint without being too straightforward about it (the gods were so afraid of public reaction they didn’t expect the danger to come from inside the pantheon) but ultimately in my opinion this is still a cheap plotpoint, no matter how you turn it.

 As for the Ananke addendum… Well, the entire problem’s here, really : it feels like an addendum. Sakhmet’s storyline is still thematically connected to the issue and the rest of the arc. Promiscuity, isolation, increasing madness… This is an arc that sees the gods eating themselves up. Meanwhile, the Colombo-esque revelation that someone is still following Ananke’s lead comes out of nowhere in the bad way : the way that seems superfluous. It feels as if the creative team wasn’t sure how to finish off the arc and threw another revelation in fear that the Sakhmet closer wouldn’t be enough to maintain interest for the next two months.

Now despite its memorable surprise closer to Fandemonium, Wicdiv’s arc conclusions do tend to be somewhat expected. I wasn’t surprised by Luci’s death, as painful as it was, and I was awaiting Laura’s divinity, the announcement of Persephone’s return at the end of Fandemonium and Ananke’s death at the end of Rising Action. So it’s not like Wicdiv forcefully tries to surprise its audience. But they always found a way to compensate the expected ending with a twist of some kind. Luci’s death comes with Laura’s small miracle. Laura’s divinity comes with Ananke “murdering” her. Persephone’s comeback appears simple at the end of Commercial suicide to find a more complicated explanation later. Ananke’s death turns out to be straight-up murder. That’s clearly that kind of dynamic that issue #28 is trying to reproduce : the Sakhmet massacre is the logical climax of the arc while the Ananke revelation is the twist that makes the junction between this arc and the next. But this combination doesn’t work as well here because of the lack of connexion between its two elements. It ends up looking like a curious mix of previous arc conclusions, somewhere between Rising Action and Commercial suicide. By the way, is it intentional that the characters take centre stage in this issue in the exact same order as the Commercial suicide issues (Woden / Amaterasu / Baph & Morri / Sakhmet) ?

But while Commercial suicide was moody and nostalgic, Rising Action self-indulgent and ironic, this arc’s general mood has been more challenging to pin down, between vain and existential, tortuous and restless. Ending on Sakhmet’s bloodbath, on this desperately obvious conclusion to an arc that felt like it couldn’t wait to end and yet closed it eyes in fear wouldn’t have made the upcoming months of wait pleasant, but it would have been a fitting bitterness. No evitable cliffhanger – just the chronicle of a death foretold.