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poptartmochi · 1 year

Note

13, 18, and 25 for year end asks!

13. How was your birthday this year?

Ohh man, truly I don't remember my birthday at all.. ^^; I looked through my gallery and Snapchat, and all I have is one photo of the mannequin at work after some kid pulled its arm out of the socket, making it look like Slenderman 😆 my birthday is during school season at work, so I was busy!

18. A memorable meal this year?

the Airport Qdoba... it will haunt me forever <3 </3 When I went to visit my sister, one of my layovers was in Atlanta and I was sooooo certain the airport there had a Cinnabon. I had work before I flew out and i'm notoriously bad at Not Eating when I'm working, so I think I'd only had like. half a bagel from my manager when I went to the airport? but I was convinced I would be fine Because I Was Going to Feast At the Cinnabon in the Atlanta Airport <3

I WAS SO WRONG LMAOOOO. Atlanta does not. in fact. have a Cinnabon inside its airport (although i think at one point it Did?? there's a cinnabon facebook with its location inside one of the terminals.. but iirc it hadn't posted in a Long Time), which I realized after traveling between terminals like a chicken with its head cut off.. my denial was real, I must have spent at least 45 minutes trying to find it.. T o T

Once I caved and admitted defeat, I ran into a huge issue because most airport restaurants actually close at like. 8 or 9!! So I was suddenly faced not only with Defeat but like bone deep hunger, I remember this vividly! iirc I found a buffalo wild wings or something similar that was seating people, but there was a line in front of me so I put my name on their waitlist and plopped down at a gate for like 30 minutes.. and then they closed... and i was like Oh. FUCK!

So, with time quickly dwindling before my plane arrived, I started Fucking Walking like a crazed dog, true majimacore, trying to find a Restaurant, any restaurant 😭😭 I was so hungry at this point.. the promise of food from buffalo wild wings had kept me going but that was gone now! T_T so I hopped on the tram between concourses one final time because everything in my concourse was Now Closed, in the hopes that something would be open in another terminal..

when I got off the tram and started walking in the new terminal, I encountered a Chick Fil A and i really was about to break my boycott because i STILL remember how good their food smelled, it was like a remy the rat Moment.. but the line was so long and I was running out of time to get back to my terminal in time for my plane, so I hurried along in the hopes anywhere else was open.. luckily for me, this terminal had a proper food court and !!! qdoba!!

I wanted to sit and eat it in that terminal because I was Truly Starving at this point (i found my liveblog of it and. funny story. the day before i posted abt how i hadn't eaten all day 😳😳 so i was on like hour 38 of Hunger), but time was getting iffy now and I was worried I'd be late so I went back to my gate and, funnily enough I had a Fair Bit of Time Until My Plane Came.. it's the time hunger dilation ykwim T_T. anyhow I scarfed that Qdoba down in like 3 minutes flat and felt sick because I ate it so fast lol 🙈🙈

imo qdoba is okay, and it was still true in this situation, but ouugh I will NEVER forget it because. that is a height of drama, despair, and desperation I have not experienced in Some Time.. to top the entire thing off, I learned that Cinnabon was in Charlotte's airport.. i will never make the mistake of thinking it's in Atlanta again lol!

25. Did you create any characters (in games, art, or writing) this year? Describe one

This gave me a miniature crisis because it made me confront the fact that 2022 was not, in fact, 2021... everything I've attributed to 2022 happened in 2021 and this was actually somewhat unsettling to realize.. idk WHAT i got up to this year lol!! 🤪🤪😳🆘🆘🆘

upon reflection, I didn't actually make many new characters this year! It was a lot of refining Gioia and fleshing out the supporting characters for her narrative better.... you know who WAS created this year... miss gioier... (around valentines day, apparently! which is so funny because if her narrative isn't 39% Love Loses than idk What it is lol!)

i already wrote paragraphs about the Cinnabon-Qdboba incident and that was small bananas SO. Miss Gioier is going into scp containment beneath the readmore because we all know it's about to get long and rambly <3

Edit: I finally finished writing the readmore... yeah it's super fucking long <3 If you don't want to read it all, here's a SparkNotes of her character: longtime friend of Vergil + a spy for the Order's underground movement against the demons. Gets abducted and basically turned into a metaphysical demon mole, which inadvertently leads to the murders of the Order's members. Her guilt over this leads to her becoming Vergil's lackey after the events of the game, in which many memory-erasing hijinks ensue. Eventually she and the metaphysical demon break free of Vergil's clutches and help Dante and Kat to oppose him. Her metaphysical demon mole powers accidentally grant her the ability to warp reality, which is a big facet of both her boss battles.

ahh the girlie that was Never Meant to Be.. when I first replayed the reboot, I was pretty far down the Gioia hole already but I disliked the reboot so much that I Swore i would never make a reboot edition of her.. and for like two months I held true to that promise! but then i made the mistake of listening to poppy and looking at this exact photo:

and something spawned in my mind that i have YET to be rid of </3

i always call her Gioier to differentiate her from the original timeline, but I recently Officially Named her Magdalena, so that's what she'll be called henceforth! <3 I won't delve too far into her development because truthfully I don't remember most of it and also it is a rollercoaster of abandoned ideas and retcons lol!

So! for context. The DMC Reboot is set in a city called Limbo that's basically a surveillance state ran by demons masquerading around as humans (important time to mention that the final boss pretends to be a guy named Kyle.. i'm still unwell over this 🤓). Most people are unaware of this due to a variety of reasons, but there is a n underground cell of people working to overthrow the state- they're called the Order! This group is lead by a guy named Vergil, who is actually dun dun dun, the child of a demon and an angel and thus the only thing strong enough to defeat the aforementioned Kyle, who we'll henceforth refer to by his serious name Mundus... anyhow there's rituals to reaching the core of Mundus or something like that- in any case, he can't do it alone and needs the help (read: power) of his long lost twin brother Dante to do so. Dante is in and out of the system and altogether a mystery girl, so Vergil uses the help of a human psychic named Kat to track him down and bring him into the Order's fold. The plot follows their adventures in basically kicking the legs out from under the powers that be and toppling the system, yay!! But in doing so, they kind of shatter the barrier between the human and demon worlds... yay?... boo?.... And plot twist, Vergil doesn't even care for humanity Like That, he just wants to be the one in control of everything! tragic 😞

so where does Magdalena fit into all of this? well. She was one of the first members of the Order, and she's been spying on the demons for them all this time. On the surface, she's a musician/DJ/singer/?? that regularly performs at the nightclub owned by Mundus' right hand woman, Lilith. I have yet to figure out the extent of how she gets her information, sometimes it's just her eavesdropping + observing the crowd between sets and sometimes it's her engaging in Britney Spears Break the Ice-style mania... In any case, Magdalena is nestled deep in lion's den, but it's this risky position that allows her to feed a lot of crucial information back to the Order.

Before the events of the game, the Order is focused on finding Dante so that Vergil can proceed with his plans of overthrowing Mundus, and this is something of particular importance to Magdalena as well. When Magdalena was young, her parents were (gasp) murdered for running an undercover radio network criticizing the demons and she was sent to an orphanage. This orphanage is incidentally the same on Dante ended up at once the demons found him after his father's betrayal of Mundus, and they struck up a really tight friendship... Originally it was because Dante stuck up for her, but considering the positions they were in when they met, maybe it was the other way around! :O In any case, the situation is very fucked up because everyone at the orphanage is tied to dissidence and, were it not for their usefulness, should be dead. Anyhow, Magdalena doesn't spend a ton of time there before her much older brother, coincidentally aided by Vergil's adoptive parents, was able to find her and assume guardianship of her. The fact that she abandoned Dante there is something that lingered heavily over her 12-year old mind after returning to the 'normal' world, and became a heavier thought still once she encountered Vergil at one of his parents' / her brother's events and went 😨😨😨😨😱, because who the fuck is this dude who looks just like the bestie she abandoned to fend for himself in hell!! wtf!!!

iirc, the game pushes the idea that A Long Time Ago, Kat was the one who helped Vergil recover his memories of his childhood + learn of his true nature, but the comic directly contradicts this? In the comic, Vergil already has a solid grasp of his abilities and knows Way More about limbo/ hell? than Kat does. Normally, I disregard stuff presented in side material that doesn't fit what I'm working with, BUT.. This contradiction paired with the twist at the end of the comic is unsettling enough that I decided to roll with it.

So! After so many instances where Magdalena and Vergil are forced to be in the same space because their adults have a close work relationship, Vergil finally confronts her about why she always looks so horrified at the sight of him, and so begins an incredibly long and ill-fated friendship... Magdalena explains herself and Vergil doesn't believe it, but then he begins questioning his memories and The Disillusionment Begins. Magdalena shares what she knows of demons with Vergil, and over the years the two secretly begin to build up the Order.

Unrelated to her 💃🏻💃🏻 with Vergil, she also builds up a musical identity as the years go on. At the beginning, this was because she was too scared and hurt to talk about what happened to her after her parents' death, and it was easier to convey herself through sound. As she became older and felt safer in her situation, she still used it to comment on things she couldn't speak about literally; this and her banger production skills 🤪 drew a lot of people to her, which she eventually used to guide people towards the Order. In time, her popularity caught the attention of Lilith, who invited her to perform at the Devil's Dalliance partially because her music was so captivating and partially because Lilith remembered who she was and wanted to keep tabs on her. In a DMC3 Vergil-esque delusion of grandeur, Magdalena thought she had one up on the demons and dove into the deep! Beyond being able to spy on the demons from her new position, I think Magdalena's role here is also beneficial to the Order because it gets them a lot of ins that they wouldn't have access to normally- I like to imagine the festival (?) at the beginning of the comic is like this. In any case, this drives her away from Vergil- partially by necessity and partially because Magdalena is just a very dedicated individual lol. This also brings us back around to the comic- she's not there to crowd Kat because she's doing her own things in service of the Order.

Anyways! Circling back around to the hunt for Dante! fuck the vergil's downfall dlc, THIS is Magdalena's downfall man 😭😭😭 between the very old guilt about abandoning dante + the newfound knowledge that he is a key part of achieving Magdalena's core goal of overthrowing the demons' rule over humanity, Magdalena is Incredibly devoted to finding Dante. By the end of the comic, the Order has stepped back from finding Dante because he's basically gone off the radar after breaking out of a prison- it'd be easier for the demons to guide the Order to him, iirc. At some point before the start of the game, Dante starts frequenting the Devil's Dalliance- enough for the girls that work there to be decently familiar with him. One of them mentions him around Magdalena, and she basically gets the metal gear ❗ above her head lol. They start talking about him, and Magdalena's ready to run on home and have a MOM HOLY FUCK moment, BUT.... either the girl snitches to Lilith or Lilith happens to overhear their conversation (she is a demon and the nightclub Is her domain after all...), but. to say the least, Magdalena does Not Run On Home 💘😨

instead... she's yagga'd and brought to. Honestly Probably Some Room in the Club, but does Magdalena know this? no ❤ anyhow, she comes to and is interrogated about Dante. This is pretty brutal because Lilith circles back on her childhood friendship with Dante, trying to get Magdalena to reveal that they've somehow been in contact and Conspiring Together all this time. Magdalena has five seconds of terror about this before she realizes Lilith Doesn't Know About the Order and starts playing 5D chess not just for her life, but for the Order's too. Magdalena, steel-willed as ever, manages to keep the facade up but after all the interrogation and torture, Lilith isn't convinced that Magdalena and Dante aren't connected somehow. If Lilith was wrong about this, it would mean that most of her interactions + her entire business relationship with Magdalena would have been a huge waste of time... Speaking of huge wastes of time, Magdalena is still in the chair and Lilith is still no closer to figuring out why she was asking about Dante. If she isn't going to get the bottom of this, she might as well ensure that something fruitful comes of the interrogation, so she does something unorthodox...

In the game, there's a class of demons that look like normal humans called spotters/lookers- I always forget this and imo they are swagless names SO. I will be referring to them as seekers because that's essentially what they do anyways :O But, so the seekers. You never encounter one in actual gameplay, only cutscenes, and their only purpose is to drag Dante into Limbo and into a fighting sequence. When they spot Dante, this black liquid called Malice starts pouring out of their eyes and mouth, and then he's ferried into the other world. They are incredibly weak, capable of being handled by a single knife to the head- the one that's taken out this way makes no attempt to dodge the knife, either. My take on this is that the Seekers are just vessels for Malice that use human corpses as conduits. I think the Malice preserves the corpse so that the Seeker can blend in with regular society (the last one we see is at the club lol!) until it finds its target. The most important thing is the Malice, which serves as an anchor point for Limbo to overtake the waking world once it's out of the Seeker...

For me, there is no soul beneath the Seeker's influence. The way they move is so sluggish and they don't seem super aware of their surroundings beyond their target's presence. That, their robotic pursuit of their target, and the fact that we encounter plenty of disembodied souls throughout the game brought me to that conclusion. So! The unorthodox thing that Lilith does is turn Magdalena into a Seeker, but retain her soul. This way, Magdalena can go about her business as usual, none the wiser that she's a walking time bomb. She can keep searching for Dante, and when she does, he'll be dragged off into Limbo as easy pickings for the demons. Plus, in the meantime, Lilith gets to keep the DJ that draws people to her club like moths to a flame. It's an easy win-win for her.

So the seekerization begins.. dun dun dun. I don't really have a solid idea for what this actually means, but it involves something like in Death Stranding where the BTs drag Sam through the tar and into the Seam.. I like to think there is a psychological battle here too, while Magdalena's fighting for her life, but after everything Lilith's put her through, she loses 😞🤘🏻 Magdalena drowns in the Malice, and as she does so the Seeker overtakes her body, corroding the insides to make room for the tar. At the end, Lilith puts her soul back into her body and wipes her memories of the interrogation. Now she's like Danny Phantom!

When Magdalena later comes to, it's to the girls at the club worriedly checking on her because she "fell asleep at the booth!", or something of that nature. They urge her to go home- she's been working too much and tonight was a split stage so the other act could take over or something. Magdalena feels super hazy, on account of dying and being shoved back into her own corpse, so she obliges and goes to change out into her civvies. She misses some key things as she does so- the numbness, the light handprints around her limbs...

I forget how long there is between the seekerization and the kickoff of the game, but it can't be super long because Dante's presence at the club is already known to Lilith when she interrogates Magdalena. In any case, she's able to go for a little while without realizing something has happened to her, and the Order is safe in the meantime because the Malice can only alert the demons to her location if she sees Dante.

The passage of time between her transformation and the beginning of the game is a Trial for Magdalena- anytime Dante's name is brought up, mainly at the Order, pressure from the Malice builds up in anticipation of seeing him and bridging the waking world and Limbo. Magdalena writes this off as anxiety about crossing the threshold from the Order's present to their future, and carries on as best as she can until the morning the game begins... The discovery of Dante and the tipping of Limbo has the Malice in a silly goofy state that finally sets the alarms off in Magdalena's mind, so she sets out to find Kat because Kat, with all her psychic powers, is probably the only person who could figure out what's happening to her. The television broadcasts of the pier getting fucked up because of Dante stoke the Malice further, and by the time she reaches the Order, she's on the brink of like.. sensory overload? For lack of word?

All I've really got for the next bit is that she runs into Vergil, because Vergil needs to remember in the future that something was Off about her here. The interaction is inconsequential- I think Vergil is excited that Kat has retrieved Dante, and Magdalena is just *TV STATIC* 👁👁🤘🏻 *TV STATIC*. They watch Kat and Dante pull up to the Order together on the cameras, and then Vergil leaves to go greet them while Magdalena stays behind? And then she sees Dante on the cameras and it's game over for her as the Seeker overtakes her consciousness because finally, finally it's time to drag Dante into Limbo!!! Except. Dante is no longer on the camera she's watching, and also they aren't even in the same room together.... he has unknowingly checkmated the Seeker lol

I have no idea what happens to Magdalena after this moment, but she's taken off the board for the literal rest of the game. <3 😅 I feel like a logical conclusion would be that she's fighting for her life through Limbo, which is incredibly alien to her because She Is Not a Demon.. it removes her from the picture until the end of the game, when the seal between Limbo and the waking world is broken, but I truly don't know what I want to happen 😫 In any case, the little ping she created when she saw Dante on the camera proves to be consequential, as it provides the location of the Order to the demons, which is precisely how they're able to storm it later in the game.

As I said, Magdalena only comes back to herself after the game is finished. The world around her is in ruins, and she is! horrified by this! The Seeker, which she's now aware of, has also been corrupted because of the nature of the world- the metaphysical gap it was meant to bridge no longer exists in a stable state, so it in and of itself is like a glitched entity now. Once again, Magdalena decides to go to the Order in the hopes of finding Kat. When she reaches the Order, she finds it in ruins, with the bodies of her old friends and comrades piled up from the raid earlier. This sight proves to be too much for her, and her brain jumps 15 steps and concludes that she and her earlier episode with Dante and the Malice are to blame for the state of things around her. She is to blame for the collapse of the Order and the death of her friends.

As she's having a proper menty b over this, two things happen. Since she doesn't have a proper body, she starts crying Malice instead of tears- the Malice interacts with the environment and tries to warp into Limbo, but this isn't a really a thing that can happen anymore. Weird metaphysical effects occur, which Magdalena misses because she is deep in her breakdown... but that's okay, because Vergil (who is in the area for. Reasons?) notices! :] 😨😨😨😬

now mind you, this is the Vergil that's gone through the whole game and ALSO his evil girl DLC. So, when he sees his best friend who'd been assumed dead crying over the corpses of everyone they'd created their underground movement with, what he really sees is the odd ways reality warps around her. He sees an opportunity! 😈😰 so begins Magdalena's downfall pt. 2!

In an evil nod to the way Vergil grounds Gioia during a moment of extreme grief in the main universe, Vergil draws her back to reality here. Magdalena is overwhelmed with relief to see that at least Vergil has survived the Everything, but the sight of him also twists the knife in her heart because she was the one who caused him all this loss. Her guilt is subtly tangible, thanks to the Malice, so Vergil puts it to work and begins The Manipulations. He paints a false picture of what happened in the aftermath of Magdalena's blackout, one that makes her think Kat and Dante died so she doesn't go off looking for them and risk being swayed away from him. Her powers could be useful to him.

Magdalena has no reason to question anything Vergil says, so she believes him blindly. In my head there's a lot of gravity to this for her- if she helps him, she can atone for the death of the Order. I think she's also able to rationalize What He Does in a post-DLC setting with the same logic he tried to levy against Kat and Dante- this is for humanity's own good! Her own fuckening supports this logic- if someone is ruling over the demons, it prevents more amalgamations like her from being created.

I don't really know what Vergil's motivations would be in a theoretical DmC2, nor what the conflict would be. For me, it would pick up very shortly after the finale of the first game and deal with the fallout of Vergil and Dante's actions, namely the shattering of the veil between Limbo and the waking world. I like to imagine that the world would take on some Death Stranding-esque characteristics!

Magdalena would fill in as Vergil's right hand man, since Kat is now lost to him. Beyond the whole savior and sinner thing they have going on, Vergil also helps Magdalena develop a symbiosis with the Seeker and harness its mutated powers. I think Magdalena reads more into it because she is seeing him through... highly saturated rose-tinted glasses lol! But this is solely for Vergil's own benefit, and he doesn't hesitate to dispose of her once she becomes more trouble than she's worth.

But how does she do that! 😯 So at some point it is not only natural but Fair that, after both catastrophically failed attempts, Magdalena finally runs into Kat. This is a crazygirl reunion, because Magdalena thought Kat was dead! She grieved her! And Kat thought Magdalena had died a long time ago, during the raid! so it's a very spiderman meme moment, but then Dante shows up and things go awry because the Seeker has yet to overcome its initial programming. idk what happens after this, but when she comes across Vergil again, she excitedly tells him he was wrong about Kat and Dante dying, unaware of The Fallout... Vergil wipes her memories of Kat altogether, and with a portion of Magdalena's psyche gone, the Seeker takes over more of her consciousness. The symbiosis deepens!

This second iteration of Magdalena is Golden for some time, until she runs into Kat again and comes back to him with a myriad of questions. He overwrites her one more time, so that all that's left of her is her devotion to him? Consequently, the Seeker takes over more of the mindscape, but the Seeker is automatically loyal to Vergil's power so it might as well be the same thing. Some Final Line is Crossed, maybe the Seeker falls short of his expectations or has a Cringefail Henchman Moment that gives Dante a leg up over them or something, and as stated above, Vergil decides it's outlived its usefulness to him. He goes to town on it with the Yamato and leaves it for dead, which probably would have been fine for him If the seeker was not some weird fucked up mutation with properties tied directly to reality 😔

This is a turning point for the Seeker, because... you KICK MIETTE? YOU SLICE ITS BODY LIKE THE HAM!! Magdalena's body is a conduit for the Seeker, and without it, the Seeker probably cannot exist. It begins to warp reality to meld her back together, fighting tooth and nail against the brink of both their deaths. As it does this, it mulls over Things and realizes the symbiosis between them was not just physical and mental, but emotional too! It's been through all sorts of madness with Magdalena, and it is afraid to go on without her. Even in their final iteration together, where things were more Seeker than Magdalena, it was Magdalena's power of will that put the fuel in the Seeker's tank. The Seeker is a simplistic demon, one that was never meant to have its own will. It is afraid of trying to survive this alien world without Magdalena guiding it. Thus, its driving motivation is to keep them alive and bring Magdalena back from the brink.

Dante coincidentally strolls in to the place where the Seeker is trying to reconnect everything- I like to imagine this is a very eerie moment of gameplay, trudging through pools of Malice with fragments of Magdalena's memories playing, sometimes looping, overhead as the Seeker pores through her mind and tries to restore it from Vergil's influence. Once it realizes Dante is literally tromping through its efforts, it becomes hostile and a fun boss fight begins, one that leans heavily into the "your environment Actively Hates You" angle from the first game. Lots of tricky platforming/maneuvering- the Seeker blames Dante for it and Magdalena's entire situation (I like to imagine it has some very Choice things to say to him during the fight lol!), and his presence is exacerbating things again. In trying to protect Magdalena from him, the Seeker defines its own purpose and finally breaks out from its programming! Dante concedes the fight when he understands what is happening, and decides to help the Seeker because hey, Magdalena was once his friend a long time ago. In a similar way to her obsession with finding him because she'd abandoned him long ago, Dante is dedicated to helping Magdalena because he and Kat didn't try to wrench her away from Vergil, despite all the red flags around her situation.

Strengthened by its newfound purpose, the Seeker is able to mend their body back into one functional piece. It and Dante are like 👁👁❗❗❗ because Magdalena should come to, now that her body's reassembled, right! Right?....... right? Wrong! 😭 Magdalena had already been greatly diminished by the memory wipes, but Vergil's final betrayal of her was the straw that broke the camel's back. It ran counter to the truths she'd understood, to the world he'd painted for her. The Seeker and Dante are stumped by this, so Dante takes them back to his and Kat's hideout.

I think Kat is. unnerved. lol. Here is the corpse of her good friend, and it talks in her friend's voice! but now it is explaining how she is functionally six feet under. and the corpse is afraid of living life without her. the corpse does not know how to coax magdalena back to the surface. and again, the corpse speaks in magdalena's voice. Also, the corpse is a demon that until three hours ago swore obsessive fealty to Vergil. hm. Kat and Dante have an aside about the situation and the viability of trying to save Magdalena from mental limbo, but Kat folds for similar reasons to Dante. She and Magdalena had been friends for....... a while? And Magdalena had been one of the first and friendliest faces she'd met after joining the Order.. so long ago. She didn't want to leave Magdalena on her own again- the first time she'd done that, Magdalena had disappeared for weeks on end and Kat hadn't even considered it because of Everything going on. The second time, she'd let Magdalena go back to Vergil, and then Magdalena didn't remember her when they met again afterwards. Kat wouldn't forego her a third time, lest Magdalena be lost to her completely. Plus... something was off. There was an itch in Kat's mind, one that she hoped retrieving Magdalena would scratch.

So begins Kat's adventures through Magdalena's psyche! I have no idea how this would fit in to the pacing of a game, because the narrative has been. a little too focused on Magdalena for my liking. But there's many starts and stops here, many attempts that the Seeker aborts because it feels like pouring salt on a wound. Eventually Kat is able to dive deep enough into the metaphysical space between Magdalena and the Seeker to find her, but Magdalena does not take well to Kat's intrusion. She doesn't remember Kat. This was unsettling enough when Kat first ran into it, but now that the interaction is drawn out, it's even worse. Kat tries to explain who she is, how she and Magdalena were friends, but Magdalena isn't having it. Magdalena simply doesn't remember Kat, and the way Kat explains their connections through Vergil doesn't align with what she knows to be true- after all, Vergil hadn't fiddled with her memories of their friendship. Magdalena ejects Kat, berating her for spouting lies to try and earn her trust.

When Kat comes to... girl she is CONFUSED LOL!!! There's still the issue of Nagdalena not remembering her, but now?? she's calling her a liar?? girl what.. girl how.. Kat consults with Dante about this, but Dante knows even less about the situation than her- he only knew Magdalena from before she met Vergil, and Kat after she met Vergil. Anything between these events are a mystery to him! 😭 Kat talks about it with the Seeker one singular time, when it informs her that it came into Magdalena's psyche after Kat was an established part of the Order... BUT... What it did know is that Magdalena felt threatened by Kat, that she was nervous Vergil was going to replace her with Kat so quickly. Kat goes wha huh??? at the "quickly" and stews over this. Quickly??? Maybe Magdalena and Vergil had created the Order years ago, but Kat had been around Vergil for some time, too! It wasn't a friendship that had happened overnight.

Kat is stumped by this, and the more she thinks about it, the less sense it makes unless Magdalena was just possessive of him, but that doesn't align with things either. SO, methinks in between missions or what have you (how does DmC2 play?.. your honor I have no fucking idea lol. Maybe like 5 but with an interact-able home base.. as if Nero had been able to walk through his van and do little things here and there between levels ykwim?), Kat dives back in and tries to make sense of it all with Magdalena.

This is a significant development between the two of them, even though I think it's happening in the background for Dante? Anyhow, the stars finally align for them to realize that Kat has rewritten memories TOO- there Is a spiderman pikachu meme moment here lol. So then I think Magdalena starts coming back into her own body again, because this revelation has re-dawned on her the fact that Vergil is. a bit of a cunt lol 😭, and now she's invested in figuring out the blanks in Kat's memory. The two and the Seeker go back and forth, helping each other parse out the things Vergil had erased... Dante is probably involved in this to some degree, because he is no stranger to this? But idk. Eventually, Kat remembers the vortex explosion, which.. keep a pin in this, it will come in handy later harharhar. With the full truth of their relationships with Vergil and each other out in the air, die girlies are like 😐😐 god damn we were played like fiddles huh!!

This next part is far less fleshed out than the previous stuff, which is obvi very loosely laid out as well. But! At some point, the girlies recreate the vortex moment but it's a lot more potent because reality and Limbo shift in and out of each other like fluids now. This throws Vergil off his villainous plans, and gives the group a leg up over him in ??? The Struggle??? . At a later point, Magdalena reaches full symbiosis with the Seeker and the two have a boss fight against Vergil where they take out all their grievances against him. This is ultimately a distraction so Dante and Kat can do ?? things ??, but I like to imagine there's a Sonic Adventure 2 kind of thing where you can play through the game as Vergil, and then the boss fight is against Maggie + the Seeker. In either case, it is a difficult and gritty vengeance battle.... It's kind of like the DM3 Vergil-Dante fight, their philosophies cannot coexist and so they MUST battle. Also it's a quasi-breakup fight lol.

No idea what happens in the end.. I've also skipped over Isaac's role in the story (he's supposed to be crucial to bringing Magdalena back into her own), as well as the Seeker's greater importance to Maggie. and THEIR relationship bc there's a Whole Thing going on there...... anyways I have a whole lot of reading and research to do before I'd ever be comfortable fully tackling this.. Characters like Magdalena, who deal with possession, require more care because I don't want them to come off as caricatures of DID. The setting also calls for more imaginative work than I am currently capable of putting in! So Magdalena and her universe are currently things for me to just gnaw on and continually return to as I learn and read more hehe. :] Hopefully one day I'll be able to give it and the reboot the treatment they deserve lol!

#long post #thank you for the ask Sky!! :D i am.. so sorry it took me so long to answer! i think i could have finished it by the end of last year but #alas i decided to leave my laptop at home when i went on vacay </3 #also... ghdhghjdhga #the prompt: write an introduction to an oc you made this year!#me: writes a whole dissertation instead #jkjk this is much shorter than a dissertation but... in retrospect i wrote too much! a true crash course to maggie and her entire universe #; u ; alas.. it is all written out now >:]#the only tragedy is that maggie's character introduction was finished before gioia's... she eclipses her maker once again lol!#sriracha.txt #sriracha ask game #💃🏻

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pinktinselmonstrosity · 1 year

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asking u abt the library of alexandria joining the war on procrastination on the side of procrastination

hehe thank you i just got back from a walk and i was looking for another way to procrastinate

TL;DR: everything you think you know about the library of Alexandria is wrong. The two main ideas about the library in popular culture are that it was an unparalleled depository of knowledge and that this knowledge was destroyed by a fire started by Julius Caesar in 48 BC; however neither of these ideas are substantially supported by literary or material evidence and are most likely completely false.

(putting the rest under the cut)

Let's address these myths one by one. The easiest to debunk is that of the Caesarian destruction. The earliest account of the destruction of the library by Caesar is in Plutarch's Life of Caesar, written in the 2nd century AD. Earlier accounts of the Battle of Alexandria, including that written by Caesar himself, do not mention the destruction of the library, only that ships in the harbour were burned. The account given by the generally anti-Caesar Lucan in Pharsalia would surely have mentioned the destruction of the library, but only describes the burning of ships and grain stores by the harbour. There are also numerous accounts from after 48 BC attesting to Alexandria as a centre of knowledge; for example, in 80 AD the emperor Domitian sent scholars to Alexandria to replace manuscripts which had been destroyed in a fire in Rome, and Tertullian attested in the 2nd century AD that the books collected by Ptolemy I were still on display in the city in his own time. Clearly there was still a substantial library in Alexandria after 48 BC, and therefore it cannot have been destroyed so dramatically by Caesar.

Archaeological evidence only attests to a serious fire in the city in the late 3rd century AD, which is incidentally when Ammianus Marcellinus claimed the library had been destroyed by the emperor Aurelian. Other accounts claim that the library was destroyed in religious protests in 391, or even as late as the 7th century AD by Muslim invaders. It is far more likely, however, that the library was never 'destroyed' in one fell swoop, but rather fell into decline due to imperial neglect. One scholar has even estimated that if the original scrolls collected by Ptolemy I in the fourth century BC were never copied onto new papyrus (and there are no accounts of this practice, despite a rich corpus of Alexandrine scholarship) they would have decayed irreparably by 48 BC anyway; the climate in Alexandria is unsuitable for the preservation of papyrus, and alternatives were difficult and expensive to produce. While it is likely they acquired new copies of these texts, the idea of one great library surviving from its foundation by Ptolemy I in the fourth century to its destruction in 48 BC is unfounded.

Secondly, the idea that the library of Alexandria contained unparalleled amounts of knowledge is equally difficult to verify. Ancient and medieval estimates of the library's contents range from 40,000 to 700,000 books. These books would have been stored in scrolls, which could contain around 10,000 words each. Based on the number of extant Greek texts and those which don't survive but are attested to, it has been estimated that the maximum number of scrolls contained in the library was....... 10,000 scrolls (that's scrolls, not books - the number of books would be lower). Additionally, any structure which could store as many books as the sources attest to would surely leave some archaeological mark, but as of yet none has been found, even with recent advances in marine archaeology.

The idea of the 'dark ages' has often been pointed to as proof of the significance of the contents of the library of Alexandria; however, modern scholarship contests that such a decline in knowledge ever took place, and even if the library had been destroyed in 48 BC libraries persisted in Rome, Athens, Pergamon, and Constantinople for centuries after 48 BC which would have preserved the same knowledge. The scholarship techniques developed in Alexandria (such as the creation of definitive editions of earlier texts, the standardization of grammar, the writing of commentaries and the invention of glossaries) which were arguably the library's most significant contributions also persisted despite whatever happened to the library.

"But Pinkie!" I hear you cry, "how can historians have got it so wrong?" The truth is, the myth of the library is a powerful one, and it's easy to fall prey to. Many scholars ignore contradictions between the texts they use as evidence, or even blame medieval transcription errors or mistranslations for accounts they disagree with. Although it's true that in ancient history (or indeed, history more generally) there is never one authoritative source that you can trust to tell you the whole truth, the degree of nuance with which scholars usually approach ancient sources is often forgotten in studies of the library. Personally, while I find these misinterpretations annoying when I come across them on my dash, I can understand that they're not actively harmful; the idea of the 'destruction of the library of Alexandria' has taken on a life of its own outside the bounds of historical fact which is significant in its own right. I still won't reblog those posts though :)

For more on this see Bagnall (2002) 'Alexandria: Library of Dreams' and Hatzimichali (2013) 'Ashes to ashes? The library of Alexandria after 48 BC'

#i spent sooooooo long writing this instead of my dissertation thank you damian <3 #i wrote an essay on this once can you tell lmao #🧃

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athousandbyeol · 2 years

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Chapters: 2/3 Fandom: รักโคตรร้ายสุดท้ายโคตรรัก | KinnPorsche: The Series (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Pete Phongsakorn Saengtham/Vegas Kornwit Theerapanyakun Characters: Pete Phongsakorn Saengtham, Vegas Kornwit Theerapanyakun, Macau Theerapanyakun Additional Tags: Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Sadism, Masochism, Denial of Feelings, Feelings Realization, Falling In Love, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Hurt, Blood, Violence, Lowercase, Introspection, Melancholy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Series: Part 2 of for vegaspete Summary:

pete speaks the language of tenderness. but vegas talks about love in torture and pain.

#chapter 2 is up!#uwu #i still don't know why i wrote this story in the first place...#but yeah #instead of doing my dissertation. i wrote this instead #lol #vegaspete #vegaspete fanfic #vegas theerapanyakul #pete phongsakorn #petevegas #kinnporsche #na writes #for vegaspete

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stardstgf · 3 months

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been looking at old character studies of old characters that I wrote and I miss. real ones remember kaeira🫡 been thinking abt her a lot today.

#when I was 13 I came up with her and she has grown with me over the last 8 years #she is my Roman Empire lol #and it’s just funny because. I have taken very real steps towards my dream of being published this year with a whole set of different #characters and diffefent stories #and I’m writing my creative writing dissertation on someone else entirely #but I think abt her a lot and how much I loved the first characters I ever wrote about when I was fucking miserable at 15 yk #come a long way since then but kaeira u will always be famous 🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡#maybe one day I will rework heart of night #finish writing it #and just publish that instead xxxx #heart of night tag

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maimingkillingiii · 7 months

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i am going to start biting why do all the people who have things to say about saw iii not know shit about saw iii like hello?????

#maybe it's because we are all just out here writing essays based on the saw wiki instead of watching the movies i don't know.#i also wrote an essay about saw iii using the saw wiki instead of watching the movie but i used scholarly sources #(by that i mean posts that my sawtuals wrote about it but honestly you guys are out here writing saw dissertations so y'all are scholars)#AND i got an A on that paper because the professor didn't give a SHIT about the accuracy of my understanding of the saw lore #just as long as i could apply the curriculum to it #because i will admit i probably made some egregious errors and definitely could've gone more in-depth but it was already six pages long #sawposting

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awsugar · 5 months

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no its crazy that dan confirmed his relationship with phil in his coming out video and people still question it or leave it up to interpretation that they may have broken up since then and they're really just friends because they have never jointly addressed it in present tense. he speaks about them forming their "romantic" (direct quote) relationship in past tense because the ENTIRE video is past tense. the whole thing. he came out, he addressed it, and they don't talk about it in any real way or address it directly because they are the smartest couple of all time and they want to maintain their privacy, they literally wrote the BOOK on letting us into their dynamic and their life (enough to make enough people obsessed with them as a duo that they sold out more than one world tour) while also being extremely private and safeguarding the things that actually mean something to them. and btw when i say people being obsessed with them as a duo we all know i mean obsessed with them as a couple, or at the time obsessed with theorizing and mapping out their history as A COUPLE not just a COUPLE OF JOKESTERS. anyway if you think that dan and phil are exes who then built a house together after 10 years of living together you're delusional luv<3 to the point of homophobia. its clear as day, he said it, and they never addressed it in a serious way again bc they want you to leave them alone.....leave dan and phil alone!!!! i actually think they are living their best lives and no one could do it like them ever again in history unless they were taking a page out of the dan and phil book period!!! apologies i thought i was out and then they brought dapg back and i was helpless to the way it pulled me right back in like the ocean under the moon (a la grammy award winning 1999 hit smooth by santana featuring rob thomas of matchbox twenty) also i stopped taking my vyvanse for months because it had no effect and now i think i need a lower dose and also so sorry to be a phannie on main but statistically it WILL happen again!!! dissertations should actually be written and i would love to discuss cause its actually crazy and im not talking about you 2014 phannies im talking about you 2017->coming out phannies because we know.....it may not be the golden age everyone talks about when they watched dan and phil but it WAS the golden age and i think one day it will be written about extensively in sociology texts....perhaps by me even though i have a never-once-used IT degree and instead run a restaurant...yay.

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fitzs-trained-monkey · 2 years

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The Result of Naps

Word Count: 4,000 (Short ik)

Warnings: Absolutely none. Just fluff.

Summary: RAFO, my darlings ;) || Elijah x reader || Here lies my Masterlist ||

A/N: I wrote for Elijah? BY CHOICE??? Wow, must be the end of the world. It just sort of happened. It's not bad tho. If y'all like this, I have a draft for a part two in my google docs. Just sayin'. Now sit back and enjoy the show!

😴 STORY BEGINS BELOW 😴

Your shift passed as it always did. Slowly and in silence. Being employed by the town as the Mystic Fall's Archive Historian had sounded like a dream come true, right up until you realized that you were really just a glorified librarian. The town archives were located towards the back of the Mystic Falls public library and it was too expensive to pay a separate caretaker when you were there to do practically the same thing.

Don't get it wrong, you loved books - history and knowledge were precious to you - but as much as you enjoyed spending each day in a large building full of literature, you weren't sure how much longer you could last spending day after day alone watching such treasures do nothing but collect dust. No one came to the library anymore - most just preferred studying from home. The library's book selection was rather outdated and no one aside from you would willingly read the town's milling or tax records. So you spent your days alone. Sitting in silence. Watching books collect dust.

That was precisely how you'd fallen into the nasty habit of taking naps on the job. It was hard not to. The library building didn't exactly have the best air conditioning in the world and it was always so deserted that you could regularly fit in a two or three hour nap with no consequences.

So naturally, when someone tapped you on your shoulder in the middle of one of those naps, you nearly jumped out of your skin.

"HOLY TOLEDO!" You shouted, stirring to life. The book resting on your chest tumbled off, but a hand shot out and caught it before it hit the floor. You looked up slowly to see who had disturbed your slumber and were surprised to find yourself looking at the face of a gorgeous young man dressed in what appeared to be a very expensive suit. He stared down at you with an inquisitive look. You smiled sheepishly. "Uh, hiiiiiiii... What can I do for you?"

"My apologies for disturbing your rest, Miss," He said, clearly just a little bit amused and trying not to show it. You bit your lip and sat up, blinking and stretching your neck out a little. You had to fight the urge to rub your eyes.

"No, no it's fine," You assured him, waving your hand. "I'm really sorry about that. It's just... nobody ever comes in here, ya know? Just the occasional founder or whatever, but that's just once in a blue moon and high schoolers only visit when they're absolutely desperate... and I'm rambling, aren't I?" You let go of a nervous chuckle and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

"It's not a trouble," He said.

"Anyway... Let's start over, shall we?" You stood, smoothing the wrinkles from your shirt and straightening your nametag. Then you offered him your hand. "I'm Y/N, Mystic Falls Public Archive Historian and glorified librarian."

The man took your hand and, instead of shaking, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a chaste kiss to your knuckles. "I am Elijah," He introduced. He provided you no other information but you were a little too distracted by his charming behavior to dwell on that.

"Okay," You breathed, blushing. "Well, what can I help you with? I've read just about everything in this place at least twice, so I'm sure I can help you find whatever it is you're looking for."

A small smile found its way to Elijah's lips and he looked you over as if trying to determine something.

"Well, you see, I'm writing my dissertation on the history of small towns in north-western Virginia-" He began.

"That sounds fatally boring," You interrupted. He didn't even have to speak to point out everything you had just said about your job, his expression did the talking for him and you realized you had no argument. "Continue."

"As luck would have it, this town possesses the largest collection of antique documents in the area. I was simply hoping you would point me in the direction of the town's archives," He said.

"Oh, finally!" You exclaimed, clapping your hands. "It's been a hot minute since anyone aside from the Mayor or the Sheriff has asked to see those. Right this way, Elijah." He frowned.

"There's no need to accompany me Miss. Y/N," Elijah politely claimed. "If you simply point the way, I'm confident I'll be able to manage the rest. I would hate to impose on your... personal time."

You snorted. "Personal time? Is there something you'd like to say about my work ethic, Mr. Elijah?"

"Nothing at all," He chuckled pleasantly. "And just Elijah will do fine."

You nodded, raising a brow. "Will it now?"

He smiled. "Of course. If we are to consider ourselves friends, that is."

"Friends?" You questioned, blinking in surprise. "I haven't been at this job too long, but I have to say I'm surprised. Just for future reference, do all writers befriend random small town librarians, or is that just you?"

"I'd like to think it's just me," Elijah replied, shrugging just slightly. He was very reserved, you noticed. "Especially if said individual is as beautiful as you and circumstances dictate I'll be visiting them quite often."

You smirked, nodding. "Visiting often for research, I'm sure. Nothing else."

"Naturally," He hummed, pleased you caught his meaning.

You laughed, ducking your head to hide the blush that colored your cheeks. There was something about that smile... "Well, in that case, Y/N will do just fine."

"Excellent, I'll keep that in mind." His eyes scanned your face and you swallowed thickly under the intensity of it. You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

"Anyway," You continued. "While I'm sure you're more than qualified to navigate a library the size of a broom closet, you would find yourself faced with a locked door and as I happen to be the keeper of that door's sole key, it is imperative that I accompany you to your destination."

"Valid point." He nodded and extended his arm to you - very old-fashioned like. "In that case, lead the way."

"It would be my genuine pleasure." You smiled and hooked your arm through his, starting towards the back. Within a matter of moments, the two of you had crossed the length of the library and you guided him to a non-descript door with a plaque that read Employees Only. The door was locked, of course, just as you had told Elijah it would be, thus you removed the lanyard which held your keyring from around your neck and fitted the lock with its proper key. Turning the handle, you pulled the door open and waved him through; however, to your surprise, Elijah took the door from you and motioned for you to continue first. You grinned and shook your head but took the invitation anyway, making sure to kick a doorstop next to the frame to keep it from closing all the way just in case someone asked for you while you were assisting Elijah.

"I can hold a door, you know," You teased as Elijah joined you once again. A short hallway stretched off in front of you. The door to your left opened into the library's Digital Resource Housing Accommodation - which was honestly just a fancy way of saying Computer Room but the town's council insisted on the pretentious name. (Of course, the library kept two computers out in its main area for public use, but those had a habit of getting stolen by desperate high schoolers.) Whereas the four doors to your right led to a series of small rooms for anyone in need of a quieter space for private tutors or counseling. At the end of the hall, there was another door on the left. You headed towards that one.

"I am aware." He nodded, smiling. "I happen to be a devout feminist."

"Then you of all people should know that chivalry is dead," You pointed out.

"Perhaps," He acknowledged. "Although I see no reason it shouldn't be brought back."

You scoffed. "Yeah, no. I don't think men need yet another reason to delude themselves into thinking a woman needs them for anything," You said.

"You are absolutely right," The man agreed, laughing just a little bit.

"Yes, I am." Reaching the door, you switched out your keys and unlocked that one too. Elijah reached past you and pulled it open, holding it for you. Raising a brow, you turned to face him pointedly. "What was that about me being right?"

"You are." He offered you another one of those small yet knee weakening smiles and you crossed your arms in an attempt to ground the butterflies it set off. "However, chivalry is not about doing things for a woman out of the misguided fantasy that she cannot do them for herself. Rather, it is about treating a woman with the proper respect, dignity, and kindness a lady deserves to be shown." He watched you kick another doorstop into place before leaning against the door frame to look up at him.

"Yeah, I've never met another man who buys that."

Elijah shrugged easily. "Well, anyone who believes otherwise is simply an unfortunate waste product of a primitive society."

You nodded and smirked. "Oh, I like you." Pushing yourself off the door frame, you took a left and began climbing the old and only slightly rickety stairwell. Elijah followed you in but his footsteps stalled on the landing. You turned back to see him glancing to the right, towards the staircase that descended into the basement, wearing an expression of slight confusion. "What?"

"Not to question your expertise, but typical archives I've visited in the past have been located on the lowest floors - in underground vaults and such," He explained. "Is that not the case here?"

You tried to be courteous, but there was a reason you had tried to avoid customer service work your whole life. You threw your head back and laughed, clutching your side.

Elijah tilted his head. "Did I say something wrong?"

You shook your head, still giggling. "No! No, you're fine." You wiped your eyes and took a deep breath. "Sorry, it's just-" You took one look at his face and burst out laughing again.

"What did I say?" He demanded, fighting a chuckle of his own.

"Okay, okay!" You pushed your hair out of your face and schooled your expression, calming yourself. "First of all, this ain't the Smithsonian, Elijah."

"Oh, absolutely not," He agreed, shaking his head. "For one thing, the staff in this establishment is deplorable."

"File a complaint with my manager." You shrugged. "Oh, wait... That's right, I am my manager."

Elijah huffed a laugh and began climbing the stairs. "That sounds rather tedious, but please continue.."

You grinned. Finally, someone who appreciated your sense of humor. "Second, this is Virginia. The ground floor is where we put the stuff we can afford to lose, and anything we put in the basement is destined for annihilation." He shot you a questioning look and you elaborated. "This place flooded twice last year."

"oh, I'm sorry to hear that," He said, frowning.

"Don't be - you're not the one who had to clean it up." You smirked, elbowing him playfully. You weren't sure why. After all, you barely knew this man, but despite his expensive attire and reserved demeanor, something about him just put you at ease. So you were grateful that he didn't seem to mind, going so far as to laugh along with you.

At the top of the stairs there stood yet another door, though this one was much newer and more sturdy than the rest. Once you turned the key, its digital lock required you to swipe your card and input a four digit code. "No peeking," You said teasingly, not really caring if he took you seriously.

He did look away, although not without comment. "I'm fairly confident I could kick this door down if I was truly committed."

"Mmm... I wouldn't be too sure about that." You pushed the door open and held it this time, gesturing behind you. "Go ahead and take a look-see."

Elijah raised a brow but walked in and glanced at the back of the door. "Steel reinforcement," He noted, duly impressed. "That's quite a lot of security for a small-town archive."

You snorted. "You say that as if there's some sort of conspiracy to be had here."

"Isn't there?"

You paused for a moment, then shrugged, flipping on the lights. "Take that up with the founder's council, my friend," You supplied.

The dim lights of the archive room flickered to life, revealing row after row of floor to ceiling filing cabinets that spanned to the back wall. There were no windows. The only other furniture in the room was a large wooden desk, complete with several yellow lamps and a magnifying glass. Old school all the way.

Elijah blinked and turned to you. "The Founder's Council?" He inquired.

You rolled your eyes and shook your head, leaning against the wall next to the light switch. "It's kinda like some super secret club the founding families have where they get together to share their holier-than-thou gossip and Pinterest recipes," You said with a long sigh. "They like to think nobody on the outside knows about it, but if their ancestors didn't want anyone to find out, then they shouldn't have written about it so much. Fast forward a hundred and fifty some-odd years and with the descendents of those families too lazy to go through their actual mountains of inherited documents, guess who got to read all about those little pow-wows -" You clicked your tongue, jabbing a thumb towards yourself. "- this gal, that's who.

"Do you think there's something this Council could be hiding?" He wondered.

"Oh, I think there's plenty of things they think they're hiding," You scoffed. "But as for any actual conspiracies? I think not... aside from maybe a scandal or two."

"I see." He nodded.

"It's honestly sad to see how self-important some people are," You grumbled.

"Agreed," Elijah hummed, looking as annoyed as he probably could. "Especially since they're not even the actual founders of this town."

"Right?!"

"Because it was the Vikings who actually first settled in this area almost one thousand years ago," The two of you said in unison. You paused and glanced at him. Elijah grinned

"I'm impressed," He remarked, seeming to evaluate you a second time. You shrugged.

"History is kinda my life," You admitted, a little bit sheepishly. "That being said, what might you be looking for?"

He waved a hand dismissively. "I'd hate to bother you with my research, it's bound to be dull. Besides, I'm sure you must be quite eager to get back to your, ah... study of the unconscious mind." His lips twitched upward in just the suggestion of a smirk. You huffed, placing a hand to your chest in foux offense.

"Ah, I see how it is," You laughed. "Fall asleep on the job one time and you're branded for life."

He raised a brow playfully. "Are you positive it was just the one time?"

"I don't feel obliged to disclose that information," You hummed.

Elijah chuckled. "I see."

"Regardless, it's against government policy to allow civilians to handle fragile historic documents without supervision of an archive historian," You informed, shrugging.

"I can assure you, I've handled such documents many times before," Elijah insisted.

You blinked and let the smirk drop from your face. "True as that may be, you said earlier that this research is for your dissertation - i.e. you haven't yet graduated and/or obtained your degree. Thus I am still required by law to watch you like a hawk." You tilted your head and flashed him a tight smile. "Sorry, bud." Your tone was as much a warning as it was an informative statement.

Elijah opened his mouth to say something but quickly thought better of it. "Point taken," He conceded, nodding though it was a little stiff.

"It's not that I mean to be a stickler but, uh..." You hissed. "Wait, no, yeah I am absolutely a stickler."

"I disagree, you take your duties of historical preservation seriously - I admire that. Please note that I am in no way attempting to undermine you," Elijah promised, moving to sit at the desk. "I simply do not wish to make a burden of myself."

You huffed a laugh. "You're not a burden, Elijah. I'm genuinely glad you're here, giving me a chance to do my actual job for once. I didn't go to college for six years only to end up reading children's books to second graders every Friday afternoon."

"This isn't the carrier you would have chosen?" He asked, frowning slightly.

"Oh heck no." You shook your head, laughing softly. "With my degree I could be working at the Smithsonian."

"And would you like that?"

"It's only been my dream since I was a kid," You said, smiling wryly. "I love research - it's like a treasure hunt or a puzzle, except you have no clue what anything looks like. You just have to piece it together however you see best until the picture reveals itself."

"That's a beautiful way to look at it." Elijah smiled. "In that case, perhaps you could begin by helping me find every map, census, or property survey of areas in this town where unusual amounts of human remains have been found."

How he managed to say that with a completely straight face, you would never know.

You blinked. "Well that got dark really fast."

He gave you a small hapless shrug. "It's not the most pleasant subject for study, I am aware."

"Not the weirdest I've heard, actually," You admitted. Shaking away your surprise and hesitation, you began making your way through the isles in search of relevant cabinets. "Can I ask what this is for or should I mind my own business?"

Eijah got up to search on his own but continued talking to you as he did. "While I was in Salem researching the witch trials, I heard stories of a group of supposed witches who migrated to North-Western Virginia in order to escape persecution. All accounts led me to determine Mystic Falls as their chosen destination and, according to the stories, these women lived in the area peacefully until it was settled by this town's so-called-founders at which time they were burned at the stake for witchcraft." He poked his head around the cabinet to look at you. "I would like to find out exactly where they were murdered," He said.

Oh... well if that was the case then he had you looking for the wrong documents.

You grinned and shoved the cabinet you were rifling through shut. "You know, that's actually pretty cool," You voiced, turning to face him. Elijah raised a brow.

"Is it?" He wondered. "Most would consider my research rather morbid."

"Well it is that," You acknowledged with a slight chuckle. You beckoned for him to follow as you switched isles. "But it's also really awesome. I mean, it's almost kinda like detective work, right?"

"How do you figure?" He asked, moving with you as you perused the cabinet labels. You knew what you were looking for, you just had to find the bloody thing.

"Well, obviously the people responsible for the killings of these innocent women are long dead. The perpetrators can't be punished; yet, you're still trying to validate these deaths and make sure that these women are documented. I guess that's kind of like finding the victims of the Zodiac Killer or something - you may not be able to seek justice for their deaths but at least you can make sure they're acknowledged." You glanced up only to find Elijah staring at you with an odd expression on his face. His stare was intense and piercing, you felt yourself blushing under the intensity of it. You shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. "Or maybe I just have no clue what I'm talking about... Anyway, this is what we're looking for," You muttered, nudging a rather large drawer with your foot.

"This right here?" He pointed, seeming to snap out of whatever thoughts he'd been lost in.

"Yep." You pushed your hair back. "You're gonna have to help me though." Elijah's brows pulled together and you just sighed. "There's a really, really heavy trunk in here."

"Oh, I see." He bent down, gripping the handle and you followed suit. "On three?"

"Or we could just yank really hard?" You suggested.

He grinned, smiling wryly. "That could work."

"Okay, go!"

Together you pulled on the drawer with as much strength as you could muster, slowly dragging it out. The old metal tracks squealed as they slid against one another, and the cabinet groaned with the weight of its contents. Inside the drawer was an old leather trunk, battered and worn, bearing more locks on it than any sane man would ever find reasonable. In, fancy, bold handwriting, the lid bore the inscription: FORBES. The sheriff and her daughter had donated the truck to the Historical Society about a year ago and you had spent months going through everything they had managed to stuff in there.

"I'm convinced little Caroline Forbes is a wizard," You declared, huffing as you rummaged through the stacks of old papers in search of one specific little book. "Cuz there is no way one person can fit that much stuff into one trunk without some use of magic."

Elijah seemed baffled as well, though he wasn't nearly as winded as you were. That fact probably had something to do with the extraordinarily fine biceps he was hiding under that expensive suit, which you had not failed to notice.

"What exactly is all of this?" He asked, carefully fingering a stack of what appeared to be bird sketches.

"This is hardly the tip of the iceberg," You answered, unable to stop the grin spreading across your face. "All the founding families hoard area history like it's gold; this is only what they've deemed unimportant enough to their little counsel for me to see." Finally, you found what you'd been searching for. You drew the little leather-bound book from under a stack of accounting papers and held it high in the air. "Ah ha!"

"Is that a journal?" Elijah asked with no small note of skepticism.

"Not just any journal, my good friend," You declared. "This is quite possibly the most interesting journal in all of Mystic Falls. May I present to you, the journal of Mr. Alexander Forbes."

"And why should I be interested in such a diary?" He wondered.

You raised a brow at him. "Did you honestly think a bunch of pompous, well-to-do, small towns folk would document that time they brutally murdered a group of innocent women becasue they wanted their land?" You deadpanned. He blinked, clearly stunned by your blunt comment. You continued. "If you wanna find out about this town's sketchy history, the adults won't tell you anything. That's why I like kids, they tell the truth whether they realize it or not. Take little Alexander Forbes, he would have made an excellent detective had he not died at age sixteen." You wandered back to the desk at the front of the room and laid the journal down with care, pulling one of the lamps closer, you adjusted the light so it wouldn't harm the pages. "Alex here, wrote stories about the things no one talked about..." You flipped through the book until you landed on the page you'd been thinking of. The heading read: The Garden of Skulls. You grinned. "Like a mansion on the edge of town surrounded by the ghosts of dead witches, perhaps?"

You glanced up to see the grin that twisted Elijah's lips as his eyes skimmed over the yellowed journal entry. "That sounds like a lead," He murmured.

"That it does." You smirked, glancing at the man out of the corner of your eye. "You up for a scavenger hunt?"

Tagging: @yn-ymn-yln @r13mar @rootbeerfaygo @iiskittles16ii @fandomrulesall-blog @dark-night-sky-99 @railingsofsorrow @apolloroid @thatweirdoleigh @misswe03 @eat-cake @felinegrate @trikigirl271 Hey there, people of the internet! If you want on or off the tag list for this series and/or all my other works, just send me a DM to let me know! And if Tumblr won't let me tag you, I'll just send you a friendly DM reminder at your request. Thanks for reading!

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writerlyhabits · 21 days

Text

Aliit ori’shya tal'din

Pairing: Din Djarin x female reader

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary: Your second day in the covert reveals both new and familiar faces; hospitality and hostility.

Chapter 3 of the Shereshoy series | Masterlist | Ch. 2 | Ch. 4

Warnings: lots of Mando’a, mild language, soft Din, awkward Din, protective Din [he’s got a wide range, okay?], original Mandalorian characters… maybe a little bit of angst? It’s mostly worldbuilding, so I think that’s about it.

AN: A word from the author – “I’m in grad school, I take forever to write things.Soon I will start grad school again, which means I’ll write this instead of my dissertation. I’m quite fond of the Mando Legends Lore, if you haven’t noticed. I literally got Kad Ha’rangir & Arasuum tattooed on me.”

This is the third part of a sister fic for my one-shot (Courting) a friend of mine wrote based on this request, and I’m so happy she’s letting me share it with you guys! She is also sharing it on AO3, so be sure to send her your love and kudos there as well! We hope you enjoy 💛

Translations, in order of appearance:

Aliit ori’shya tal'din: Family is more than blood

Rejorhaa'i kaysh murcyur gar shupur’ika?: Are you gonna tell her to kiss your ouchies?

Cuyi ulyc, vod.: Be careful, sister.

Aliit: family

Ad(e): child/children

Kar’ta beskar: the central "diamond" of Mandalorian armor; lit. heart armor

Mirjahaal: peace of mind, "healing", general term for emotional well-being especially after a trauma or bereavement

Beroya: bounty hunter

Kurshi: tree

Sen’tra: jackpack

Buir(e): Parent/Parents

Akaanati'kar'oya: The War of Life and Death (Mandalorian myth), creation story

Verd'goten: a special trial for one to become warrior; lit. birth of warrior

So'haale: births

Urman'gedete: prayers

Eparave: feasts

Cyarir evaar'la: Courting

Alii'aliit: meeting of the clans, the closest thing mandalorians have to government or parliament; lit. "clan of clans"

Tsad: group (of people), alliance

Bes'ede: Mythosaur

Kandush : inevitable doom

Time moves differently underground.

With Odona, the hours passed quickly. As a team, you could disassemble and reconstruct nearly any ship in their small fleet, save for a few parts— which no one had yet found and delivered. The days were faster when the guardsman opted to join you in his free time, his first visit and subsequent dialogue with Odona still memorable.

To what do I owe the displeasure; Oh Mighty Protector of the Covert and Savior of Foundlings?

The pleasure of my company is for your friend, ‘Dona.

Why? Going to terrorize her again, Ik’? Ven’rejorhaa'i kaysh murcyur gar shupur’ika?

Cuyi ulyc, vod.

You had sensed there was a joke hidden within their jibes, one you were unable to decipher in their foreign tongue, but neither took the time to explain. Whilst Ikarus lacked use for the labor that required fine motor control, his presence disrupted the monotony of the many tedious and repetitive tasks you and Odona spent much of your time doing— their frequent banter kept you entertained throughout the day.

The time you had spent in the medbay was shorter— the most common injuries coming from the older adolescents early on in their training, whose resilience and constitution had yet to strengthen— as well as wrist and ankle sprains from poor fighting forms, the occasional laceration from knife safety training; and at worst, injuries from the teens and young adults earned from a vigorous sparring session.

But with Din, the mornings and evenings together never felt long enough. The hours were reminiscent of your time with him and the Child in the Crest, the warmth of your aliit protected by familiar cold walls; the stone of the cavern both analogous yet antithetic to the durasteel of your former home.

One forged of hands, and the other of time— one of the fires of a furnace, the other the fires of a planet’s mantle. Your time together before was that of contrivance, engineered— with agendas to follow and assignments to complete— your interactions affable yet somewhat artificial, a present barrier precluding your companionship from evolving into something more… More natural, more innate, more intimate. Here, your time together had been more candid, endearing— Din no longer shied away from any probing questions or physical closeness, which allowed that previous barrier to melt and slowly flow away like that of bedrock to magma, reshaping and remolding your times of leisure together to hours of unified repose.

The hours turned to days, the days turned to weeks, and the weeks turn to this moment, where seemingly no time passes at all— blanketed in the familiar darkness of your room. The unlit and chilled space, at first an unacquainted oddity, now a comfortable companion to spend the sleeping and waking hours in. The ritual remains the same— awaken with the Child, have the morning trade-off with Din, make the caf, and begin the tasks for the day— like clock work, a well-oiled droid.

This morning is almost no different, and yet, you hesitate to leave your bed, your conversation with Din the previous morning still fresh in your mind—

Din had sat aside the table, his body resting against the wall— unarmored, arms crossed, head tilted to the side, the same position as every morning. Once you handed him the Child and sat, caf in hand, he finally spoke.

“I’d like you to join me tomorrow,” he stated.

The lack of pleasantries from him was unsurprising, though a teasing ‘Good morning to you, Din’ was a tempting response. Instead, you greeted him with a grin and an unobjectionable reply—

“Alright, what are we doing?”

He hummed, pleased with your immediate acceptance.

“The adults alternate supervising the ade. Tomorrow, it’ll be our turn.”

You gestured toward the Child in his arms, in a playful retort. “Don’t we supervise this ad every day?”

The Child cooed in his arms, his ears perked tentatively at his mention. Din sighed, with a smile in voice.

“We do. It’s tradition for all of the adults to care for the ade… All have wisdom to share.”

Skeptical, you thought: ‘What would I possibly teach them?’

You observed the Child resting so comfortably on Din’s chest— his tiny hand gripped tightly into Din’s clothes, right where his armor’s kar’ta beskar normally sat. It was a stark contrast compared to the Child’s behavior upon your first meeting. With any loud noises and sudden movements, he would shrink inwards in his cradle— as if he could make himself any smaller. Medical scanners made him grimace, unfamiliar places and people made his ears droop— seeing others upset made him wary. And yet, he was endlessly curious. Despite his initial unease with the two new adults in his life, the Child was quick to trust you both— and with his trust, his personality came through… his affection, his laughter, his love.

From there, Din learned how to tend to someone outside of himself— what it meant to have someone that relied on him, and more colossally, someone that wanted Din, as he was. The Armorer branded him as the Child’s father, and the delighted squeal from the little one sealed the bond that Din had been trying to hide for so long. Just as the Child learned to trust Din with his welfare, so too did Din learn to trust the Child with his own mirjahaal.

Perhaps it wasn’t the lessons they taught, but rather the connection they made, and the wisdom they sought.

With this, the true question then inverted from the skeptic ‘what would I teach them’, to the sanguine ‘what will I learn?’...

“...When do we meet them?”

—

To the ade, the former beroya is nothing more than a tall kurshi fit to climb.

Somehow, Din appears endlessly patient and playful with all six of the young children. They utilize their limitless spurts of energy to continuously attack Din as a squad, bringing him to the ground— he’ll exclaim a faux wail, and collapse to his knees— and the collective giggles of the ade begin the cycle again.

Whenever a child grows tired of their battle, they come to you— wanting to be tossed into the air, or onto the nearest surface. Supposedly being gently thrown around aids in their brain development, and ‘it’s good practice for their first sen’tra flight’, Din tells you. The logic is questionable at best, but hearing their joyous squeals makes the ever-growing muscle fatigue worthwhile. Even the child of the Djarin clan is as equally amused, his own little spirit mightily lifted by the experience of being with other kids again.

During your time on Sorgan, the Child was happy to interact with the other children— but mostly, he watched them, rather than play. Perhaps he was still too shy or too wary to fully engage with so many people, but surrounded by these Foundlings now, he looks at home; like he belongs. Amidst this cohort, he’s made a new friend, Mara, the youngest of the lot. Her long and dark hair reminds you— and perhaps the Child— of Winta, Omera’s daughter. The two spent the most time together on Sorgan, and despite the little one’s inability to say, he misses her.

Mara and the Child sit away from the squad play-fighting Din, in front of the single wall of volcanic tuff— embellished with crimps and pockets, graven by many hands. You watch them, as they examine the wall, looking up and down, side to side. Your eyes travel upward to the small cavate, almost eight feet from the floor. You watch as Mara looks to the Child and nods, and begins her ascent up— using her fingers and toes to grip tightly onto the various crevices in the wall— and the Child begins to follow.

You step forward, almost instinctively, wanting to call out to them to stop, wanting to reach out to the children to prevent a fall—

Then, from nowhere, Din appears at your side, extending his hand to stop you. “Don’t,” he says softly, “Let them try.”

You look at him puzzled, and he continues. “If you distract them now, they might fall…” he pauses, and turns his head to watch them, “...but if you allow them to focus, they can succeed. Watch…”

The pair silently step closer, closing the distance between themselves and the wall, watching the two ade slowly make their way up to the cavate. Mara climbs inside first, and lays on her belly, reaching out to the Child to help him trek the final span of the wall. Once inside, the Child turns around, to face the entire room below him. He squeals a little clamor of excitement, proud of his triumph, before looking down to his buire.

“Good job, kid,” Din says. “Come on down, it’s time to go.”

The Child looks at you both doe-eyed, his ears drooping, as he peers over the ledge. He looks back to Mara, and back down over the ledge, contemplating his next move.

You lean slightly towards Din, speaking in a hushed tone. “I don’t think he knows how to get back down.”

“He can do it,” Din says confidently.

You challenge him, “He looks scared.”

Din insists, “Then he’ll do it scared.”

He steps forward once more, his body almost pressed against the wall, reaching one hand up. “Come on kid, climb down.”

The child’s ears droop even lower, letting out a quiet whimper, a little anxious look on his face. He looks back up to Mara, who gives him an encouraging “You can do it,” before he finally begins his descent towards you and Din.

Carefully, his little clawed feet grip into the same pockets he used to climb up, and his hands hold onto the ledge. He looks down at his buire with a slightly quivering lip, then back up to his hands. Slowly, he presses on, his movements deliberate and cautious, gravity tugging at his little limbs with relentless persuasion, clammy clawed-hands threatening to slip free from the cold stone. His disgruntled babbling fading with each tentative step, footfalls growing more steady with every downward stride.

His little foot finally reached something soft— the hand of his buir, waiting for his arrival. With an excited squeal, he looks to Din, holding out his clawed fingers for Din to grasp. Din takes the Child into his arms.

“Good job… I knew you could do it.” Din whispers to him.

With his ad in hand, Din looks back to the cavate, where Mara sits silently. “You too, Mara, come down,” he says.

Mara, unlike the little one, is less graceful, only climbing down two feet of wall before leaping off. You instinctively reach your arms out to catch her, but are a few seconds too late, as she lands confidently on her feet, smiling up at you. She giggles, asking the Child “Wasn’t that fun!” and the little one cooing affectionately with a bright smile.

“They need to rest.” Din says, before leading Mara and the Child back with the other ade. You follow him in toe, and aid him while he attempts to settle the children in preparation for them to sleep.

The chamber is bathed in the soft, warm light of the cressets along the walls. The ade sit and lay in a circle on the floor, looking up at the two adults expectedly, waiting for you both to join them. Din gently places the Child in Mara’s lap, seating himself amongst them.

The ade demanded a story before they would agree to their midday nap, and with only one long sigh, Din relented. As you sit beside him, the tale of Akaanati'kar'oya begins.

—

In ages past, when cosmic realms were naught,

Two gods emerged, each with a purpose sought.

Kad Ha'rangir, embodiment of change,

A dance of growth, His essence did arrange.

Arasuum, the god of slow decay,

In stillness thrived, where life would fade away.

Eternal foes, in battle they engaged,

Ideals clashed, the cosmic script was paged.

Kad Ha'rangir, with eyes of vibrant light,

Envisioned galaxies in endless flight.

His very step, a ripple through the void,

Transforming all, where life and change enjoyed.

Arasuum, with eyes as deep as night,

Desired a realm where stasis held its might.

Decay His touch, a silent, withering breath,

A universe in stillness, touched by death.

In ceaseless clash, their cosmic struggle roared,

A dance of gods, where destinies were stored.

Stoic truths emerged from this grand design,

A tale of action, life's breath so divine.

"For action is the breath that life bestows,

A vital force, as mighty river flows.

Inaction, slow demise, a creeping shade,

A silent death in stillness' dark cascade."

Through galaxies and time, the story spread,

Of Kad Ha'rangir, where change was bred.

Arasuum's touch, a cautionary tale,

A realm in stillness, where all things frail.

So heed the moral, in verses spun,

That action is life, beneath the sun.

For inaction's grasp, a silent breath,

A slow demise, an encroaching death.

—

The ade rest together in a haphazard heap of limbs on various bedcovers and furs draped across the floor. Exhausted from their Beroya Battles and abseil adventures, they finally sleep, leaving the two adults to quietly watch over them together. In the chamber’s silent embrace, the air hangs heavy and chilled— a symphony of stillness envelops the room, broken by the muted shuffle of shifting bodies, and the hushed breaths of the ade. The only audible rhythm is that of the pulsating cadence of your own heartbeat and the rush of blood moving inside your head.

Your eyes scan over the ade, finding a sense of calmness watching their steady breaths, in… out.

In… out.

Your gaze once again falls onto the Child, cuddled against Mara, also breathing steadily. In the gentle cradle of his friend’s arms, he looks peaceful. Had he ever slept this soundly on the Crest?... Who held him every night before us? Who will take care of him after us?

In the softest whisper, to not disturb the ade, you lean closer to Din, telling him the obvious— “He’s happy here.”

“...Yes,” Din replies, just as quietly.

“Was this your experience, too? After the Mandalorians saved you?”

“No.”

His visor is trained on the little one’s sleeping face—the same face of a child who was once trapped in the suffocating darkness of a sealed cradle—a cage, a cage whose opening only revealed another prison, in the form of two bounty hunters hovering over him like… a B2 Battle Droid, with a blaster pointed in a child’s face. A child rescued from death at the last possible moment by a shiny warden, offering an adiaphorous detainment.

“It was… a time of war. I was trained to fight in it. I hope… that they never have to.” Din says, his gaze scanning over the ade once more.

“I thought all Mandalorians were warriors.”

He, too, believed the same notion for many years. Training from the day he was rescued to the day he became an adult, after his verd'goten, life became a perpetual streak of jobs. Commission, retrieval, payment. Commission, retrieval, payment… Until a strange, golden, aureate armorsmith joined his tribe, bringing tales of the “Great Forge of Mandalore,” and the songs of the artificers that echoed through the speos as they worked. He remembers the first time he kneeled in front of her small, austere forge, in a dark room beneath a busy market above, listening as she spoke of the ethos, the rites, the latria, the true way of the Mandalore.

“No. Everyone is trained to survive. But… we used to live, too.”

“...Until Mandalore was taken.”

“Yes.”

So'haale, urman'gedete, eparave, cyarir evaar'la, alii'aliit… A cultus he could only dream of, but never truly have. Spoken knowledge fades into whispers, slipping through his fingers like sand as the voices of the ancestors grow ever fainter. Each decampment a dissolution of tsad res publica, each step forward a battle against oblivion.

“I’m sorry.” You lean over, resting your head on his pauldron. “...Maybe there’ll come a time when we’ll live in the light, on a planet that welcomes us.”

Din knows that within every Mandalorian is a patchwork of unfamiliar faces and ever-changing landscapes, their solace and safety as elusive as a bes'ede itself—and yet they endlessly repugn the kandush they have faced time and time again, guided by the conviction that within the uncertainty of the cosmos lay the promise of a sanctuary forged from the resilience of their spirit.

He tilts his head, resting it atop yours. “There will.”

Ali'nare vencuyanir yaim. This is the Way.

Thanks for reading!! If you’d like to be notified when I post a new fic, be sure to follow @writerlyhabits-library + turn on post notifications! 💛

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#din djarin #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #mando'a #original mandalorian character #shereshoy #shereshoy series #not my writing #i have permission to post this

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napakmahal · 29 days

Note

HIII, PHONOLOGY HERE !!! in all truth i dont blame u, i was really tired from uni when i wrote that, lmao.

okey so, like misunderstabding in the way he hasnt told hiro and aunt cass and reader thibks its bc tadashi thinks they wont last or is ashamed of her when in reality is just that he is very nervous and never finds the perfect ocassion

Normal Girl pt. 1

Hey pookie! This took forever but I realized midway through I needed to split it into three parts. Thanks for the request this was fun to make.

You wish you could lay here forever. It was raining and your puffy sheets were cold which would have bothered you if not for the warm body you were resting on top of. Tadashi had been under a great amount of stress. He wanted his doctor title and was the youngest candidate going for it. In order to do that he needed a dissertation of roughly 100-450 pages to defend in front of an academic jury. The paper was done, thank goodness. But he still needed to defend it and even then they could deny him his phD. If he’d spent his week trying to prepare for his defense he’d drive himself insane. So instead, he spent all his time with you. Watching movies, sleeping in, staying up, doing mundane tasks and trying to relax as much as possible before his defense. You’ve never had to refill your anti-stress tea collection and melatonin gummies in one week before.

But the defense was tomorrow and he desperately needed to calm himself. So he went through his presentation twice and then zipped it away in a separate backpack. You pressed your ear to his chest and listened to his breathing and muffled heartbeat. The patterning of the rain on the window going through one ear and the opening and closing of your boyfriend's valves pumping blood through his body in the other.

“I never want to get up.” You admitted.

Tadashi responded sleepily, “I know.” With his eyes shut. Gosh his eyelashes were so long.

“What time is your hearing tomorrow?” You brought your hand up to his face and started caressing it. All the prep work he was doing to defend his thesis had resulted in a lack of care for personal upkeep. He’d started growing stubble (which you found very attractive) but eventually had you help him shave it off to look presentable for his defense. (Something you were clearly upset about)

“10 a.m, I have to be there like two hours early though.”

You just hummed in response and continued to lay in his bare chest in silence. You’d gotten to the point where you could just be together like that without it being inherently sexual. On your nightstand, your phone buzzes and vibrates through the wood. When you checked, it was your mom. She sent you a photo of a four leaf clover she found in her garden with the text: Look what I found!

You knew she was wishing Tadashi good luck. Once while visiting her he’d let it slip that he wanted to be Dr. Hamada , and your mom actually squealed. She’d known him as long as you two had been together and she’d rather make sure he was fed before you were. She was proud of him.

“Look what my mom sent.” You smiled, pointing the phone towards your boyfriend's face.

Tadashi opened his eyes and instantly smiled. He took the phone from your hands and sent your mom a voice recording thanking her for all her support (and free Printer ink).

“She loves you so much,” you smiled and kissed his lips. “She really is my mother.”

Tadashi cupped her hands around your head and smiled at you. “Yes she is, pretty girl.”

You stayed that way while Tadashi whispered sweet nothings into your ears as the sky started to get darker and he had to leave. Aunt Cass was insistent that he spend that last night before his defense hearing back at home so she could make him sweet potato for good luck. He leaned over your bed and slipped his shirt back over his head and pulled his pants over his boxers.

You got up out of bed and slipped an oversized shirt over yourself and walked him out the door.

“Good luck, baby, I love you, my smart boy.” You buried your face in his neck with a hug.

Tadashi dug his face into your head and kissed the tops of it. “Thank you, darling . I love you too.”

“I’ll come pick you up tomorrow and take you out, wherever you want.” You promised.

Tadashi shrugged into the hug. “They may not approve my defense, you know?”

“If they don’t they’re morons but that still doesn’t matter. Because you worked so hard and deserve so much, right?”

Tadashi’s unrelenting and slightly irritating humbleness drove you truly mad sometimes. He had the work ethic of a mule and a brain like Berkeley. Everyone knew it but if you pointed it out he’d just say “oh, thank you but I’m not all that”. Not even in a pick me way. And you were determined to get his confidence up.

He just nodded, dropping his head into your shoulder while you combed your fingers through his dark hair.

“Right?” You repeat.

“Right.” He confirmed.

You gave him one last forehead kiss and sent him off the drive home. After he left you went to your kitchen and started cleaning what little appliances you had after not leaving your room with your boyfriend for nearly a week. Once the kitchen was clean you needed to shower and change your clothes. Showering with another person is not exactly the epitome of cleanliness, not that you’ve only been showering with Tadashi for the past week….. When you headed back to your room dripping wet you kicked something laying on the floor.

It’s Tadashi’s backpack. With his defense inside.

———————————————————————

Tadashi is very clean. He doesn’t like messy anything, his room remains clean and his schedule is so organized to the point it was more of a battle plan than a timeline. So this was not only out of character but IMPOSSIBLE.

Hiro was watching in horror as Tadashi wrecked the entire car and dumped every item of clothing in his overnight bag out onto the floor.

“What is happening?” Hiro asked, completely baffled.

Tadashi diddnt respond and continued to mutter under his breath “where the fuck is it?”

It wasn’t until Aunt Cass walked out back to the absolute wreck with a small bowl of sweet potatoes and matcha on a tray that he looked up from the wreckage.

“Auntie, have you seen my defense?!” Tadashi's voice dripped with desperation.

Before Aunt Cass could even answer Hiro practically screamed, “YOU LOST YOUR FUCKING DEFENSE?!”

“Hiro! Language!” Aunt Cass slapped him in the back of the head. “But seriously, Tadashi! What happened to it?”

Tadashi squeezed onto his hair so tightly it looked like he might rip a chunk of it out. “I don’t know! I had it ,I know I did!”

Silence between the three until Hiro perked up. “Wait, you have a copy of it on my computer. Just reprint it. I think the print room at the lab closes at 10, if you rush you can make it.”

Tadashi didn’t need to be told twice. He ran upstairs, sent the document of his defense to the schools Printer email, and texted Wasabi to ask him to stand at the printer so the techs didn’t shut down the printers for the night. And he was off, speeding over the speed limit (by two miles per hour) and headed to the school.

Unknowing to him you were making your way to his house to drop off his defense. You could have just called him to come get it but he didn’t need any additional stress including driving.

You’d only been to Tadashi’s house once and it was when there was nobody home. You just needed to use the bathroom and his house was closest. But you knew about his little brother and his aunt and about how he lost his parents when he was young. How could you forget? The way he talked about them made you cry harder than him.

When you pulled up to the front of the cafè the lights were mostly off except those coming from the kitchen. You swung the backpack over your shoulder and headed towards the door. A small bell above the door jingled and prompted a woman to walk out with a tray of dirty coffee cups on them.

“Oh, I’m sorry we’re closed.” She apologized.

You waved your hand and held up the backpack. “Oh no, I’m not here to order anything. I just have Tadashi’s defense.”

Hiro poked his head out the curtain after hearing the word “defense” to see you standing at the entrance with his brothers backpack.

“Oh! Okay, Hiro tell Tadashi that he can turn around.” She told him.

You handed your boyfriends aunt the backpack when she asked, “I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Y/n,” You smiled.

But the smile completely faded when Tadashi’s aunt turned around to look at his brother with a “have you ever met her before” look. Hiro shook his head before calling his brother telling him to turn around.

You added with uncertainty, “I’m…Tadashi’s girlfriend.”

Hiro pulled the phone away from his ear and perked up. “Tadashi has a girlfriend?”

The entire cafè went silent. They didn’t know? You’d never met them before but they didn’t even recognize your name? Who the hell did they think Tadashi was spending his entire week with? Who did they think he FaceTimed in his room at midnight pretty much every day? Either Tadashi’s family had the memory of a goldfish or….your boyfriend lied. Not just about you but your existence as a whole. The girl he said he loved.

You just nodded and let that sink in. You could see the collective “oh shit” look in your boyfriends family’s faces as they tried to salvage it by saying things like “you know your name does sound familiar” but it didn’t matter. Nothing anyone who wasn’t your boyfriend explaining himself was going to change how you felt.

Around that time an engine pulled up the front of the cafè and switched off. Tadashi had turned around and came back home. When he opened the door it was like the aroma of awkward bitch slapped his psyche across the face.

“Hey, hunny.” He whispered and brushed his thumb against your skin. “Thank you so much, you’re a lifesaver. I love you.”

You didn’t respond. Only wished everyone a good night and left. Hiro looked at his brother with a look the read “what the fuck?” And Aunt Cass looked at her nephew with a look of “what did you do?”

Fun fact about Tadashi: he can take a hint and read social cues. So he ran outside in the cold and chased octet you right as you were about to get into your car.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong?” He grabbed your wrist.

You looked at him with daggers in your eyes. “They don’t know who I am?”

Tadashi looked like he was going to puke. And you were having none of it.

“My mother invited you to her graduation, and you went to my cousins wedding. And your family does know who I am!” Now you were yelling. Tadashi’s neighbors were getting dinner and a show.

When he didn’t respond you forced yourself to ask the question that had been lingering in your head. “ Are you…are you like—ashamed of me?”

“No! Never!” Tadashi shouted back at you.

“Then how come they don’t know who I am!” You shouted.

Tadashi rubbed his temples. “I have mentioned you before, back when we were still just talking. But it’s not something we do! It’s just not! Every once in a blue moon they’ll check up on my romantic life but that’s it. Hiro liked a boy for five months before I even knew his name! When my aunt goes on dates she doesn’t tell us their names. It’s just not us! That’s all!”

It made sense. You know it did. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Tadashi grabbed onto your face and pressed kisses all over it. “I love you, I swear I do. Nothing you do will ever make me ashamed of you. You mean the world to me, please believe me.”

You grabbed his hand and gently removed it from your face as you started kissing his hand and his wrist. Your kisses trailed up his arm and onto his face until you gave him one last forehead kiss.

“Good luck, tomorrow.” And you hopped back in your car and drove off. Leaving tadashi standing there in the streetlight surrounded by urban darkness. And with every tire rotation away from him, Tadashi’s heart broke a little more until it eventually snapped when he could no longer see your car.

#baymax #big hero 6 #big hero six #tadashi hamada #disney #fanfic #hiro hamada #bh6 x reader #tadashi hamada x reader #napakmahal #writing #x reader

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listen-to-the-inner-walrus · 10 months

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can you explain why you dont believe the titanic switch conspiracy theory? didnt they find a propeller with "olympic" written on it amongst the wreckage?

i feel like the phrase "you just activated my trap card" applies here but i have also never watched yu-gi-oh so dont fully know the correct use of that. anyway whats the text limit on a tumblr post because i think i might hit it with this response.

before we begin (if you wanna join me on this fucking journey), ill just drop some useful sources on the topic:

olympic & titanic - an analysis of the robin gardiner conspiracy theory dissertation by mark chirnside in july 2006

titanic or olympic: which ship sank? by steve hall and bruce beveridge

olympic & titanic: the truth behind the conspiracy by steve hall and bruce beveridge

with that shipkeeping housekeeping out of the way, lets jump into it after the cut

so hands up, how many people knew that this theory originated in a book from 1995?

yeah, its a pretty modern theory considering titanic sank in 1912. the theory originated in the riddle of the titanic by robin gardiner and dan van der dat.

and the theory argues that the ships were switched and titanic (actually olympic) was deliberately sank as part of an insurance scam. now they didnt do this at all for shits and giggles. instead, the theory posits that the navy enquiry that followed the 1911 collision between hms hawke and olympic was biased which meant white star line couldnt recover the costs of repair from lloyds (the insurance company), and therefore, they wrote olmpic off as too damaged to be repaired, lied about the amount of damage, switched the ships and sank olympic disguised as titanic to recover some costs.

far-fetched? oh definitely and it gets worse, but ill leave that til later in this gargantuan response because its really fucking funny.

(seriously, i recommend you read til the end or just skip to the part where i start talking about the sinking itself because fam, gardiners theory gets wild )

according to van der dat, who is a dutch journalist and naval history writer with an incredibly dutch name, gardiner had wrote the manuscript after researching the titanic for however many years and sent it to his literary agent. this agent had previously worked with van der dat and so sent it to him to double-check the information by going back to the original sources. he then rewrote the book with line-by-line consultation with gardiner.

and would you like to hear a quote from van der dat regarding the theory? i think you would:

"the publishers were disillusioned when the theory did not stand up"

he also, in correspondence with titanic author and researcher paul lee, called it "bilge" which is a fun ship joke alongside calling the theory bullshit.

anyway, the publishers went ahead with the book anyway because fuck integrity, i guess... thats kinda harsh considering this first book (oh yeah, theres more) was praised for stellar research and for being balanced, and the final chapter of the book literally acknowledges that the wreck has titanics shipyard number (401) on it, hence disproving the theory.

in 1997, it was published in the us under the name the titanic conspiracy - cover-ups and mysteries of the worlds most famous sea disaster, and it sold like sliced bread in 1928 because 1997 was titanic fever, baby!

unsurprisingly, gardiner's following books (titanic: the ship that never sank? in 1998; the history of the white star line in 2001; the great titanic conspiracy in 2010) were a lot less well-received and were not co-authored by van der dat.

"but wait, kai!" you might shout if youre up to date with issues of the times from 1914, "what about raymond asquith's comments? he was junior counsel for the board of trade at the sinking inquiry!"

and i would say, what about it? the letter asquith wrote to the times was a sarcastic letter in response to a prior stance taken by the paper.

yes, he said "the architect, the owner, and the captain to repair their desperate fortunes by sinking the ship and sharing the insurance money" but said letter also included the phrase "manipulating dummy icebergs".

if were taking sarcastic or satirical responses outside of their original contexts as serious quotes, then i guess i need to cancel my dropout subscription since the company holds the opinion that oj simpson is innocent.

and while were here, that single deathbed confession from james fenton is not evidence of anything. his name is not on any crew lists or survivor lists, and not a single payment was ever claimed by a crewman called james fenton. he was not on board the titanic and his claims hold no weight.

now, my go-to explanation as to why i dont believe the switch theory is that their insurance scam would have lost them money and they would know that it would have lost them money.

see, it cost white star (which was a subsidiary of the international mercantile marine) £1.5million/$7.5million to build titanic and they insured it by lloyds (you can check their records on their website) for £1million/$5million.

you dont have to be good at maths to see a problem here.

they didnt just not insure the rest; it was self-insured by imm's insurance fund, but that still means theyd have lost £500,000/$2.5million on the sunken ship.

this whole insurance thing was established by uh the united states senate inquiry report:

"the vessel fully equipped, cost £1,500,000 sterling, or about $7,500,000. at the time of the accident the vessel carried insurance of £1,000,000 sterling or about $5,000,000, the remaining risk being carried by the company's insurance fund."

oh and the £1,000,009 insurance was announced in the daily mirror on 16th april 1912

and the insurance scam seemingly thought up by someones whose first and only introduction to maths was golf isnt the only way white star would have lost money on this.

after the sinking, olympic was temporarily pulled from service to increase safety measures like adding more lifeboats. obviously, a logical move made by a company with a brand new, safer ship on their hands who were desperate for any money they can make.

white star also halted construction of britannic, titanics other sister ship, in order to alter the design and make it safer. this costs quite a bit of money and is, again, an odd choice for a company apparently desperate for money.

and hey, question for you guys: if you were alive in 1913 and needed to cross the atlantic, would you

a) choose the near identical sister ship of that ship that sank last year and was the deadliest sinking of a ship at that time

b) choose any other option such as the lusitania or the mauretania or the ss france or the ss imperator

personally id take my chances with option a, idk about you

yeah so the point im making here is that the sinking of the titanic was what the kids say

a marketing disaster

it was the loss of the newest flagship on its maiden fucking voyage and it had been touted as "practically unsinkable". maybe just maybe people wouldnt feel that comfortable getting on a white star line ship after that.

i dont have any figures for you because reading through a detailed account of white stars history just is not on my to-do list, but that doesnt even matter. what matters is that its clearly a massive risk and who the fuck is taking that risk?

as titanic author, senan molony states:

"one doesnt need to compare designs and count portholes - a moments serious consideration of the reputational risk involved - individually and collectively - is all that is required to end any entertainment of the notion"

anyway, you guys wanna compare designs and count portholes? yeah? okay, here we go!

may i present a non-exhaustive list of differences between the ships:

olympics wheelhouse was curved; titanics was flat

titanic was 4 inches longer

the porthole arrangements on shelter deck c were different

on b deck, olympic had a 1st class promenade; titanic had 2 private verandahs and suites (put a pin in this by the way, it comes back in the best of ways)

titanic had additional cabins on promenade deck a

olympics promenade was open all the way along; on titanic, the forward half of the 1st class promenade on a-deck was enclosed with retractable glass screens

on titanic, the forward bridge wings aft docking bridge on the stern extended over the ships side by a couple of feet; this would not be true for olympic until the 1912/13 refit

the officers deck house was pushed out more on titanic

the iron gates of the elevators were different between the ships and this is evident in the wreck itself

their propellers had different pitches and hence not interchangeable (pitch is a theoretical concept which is like the distance a propeller would move if it turned once through something solid, yeah i dont know either)

the wireless cabin had an outside window on olympic, but not titanic

further, it was placed on the port side of the officers deck house on olympic but amidship on titanic

they had different air vent arrangements around the funnels

white star line cut the ships names into the shell-plating at the bow and stern, four feet high and a ½ inch deep

now, please, close your eyes, take a deep breath and consider how much money it would cost to switch just the list above. now compare all of that to the -£500,000/$2.5million youre losing in the insurance scam.

truly, a spend less on candles situation.

and while we're here, shall we quickly talk about how much hush money white star would be paying to silence everyone about this since its apparently an illegal insurance scam.

not to make another non-exhaustive list but heres just who i can think of that youd have to silence:

the 15,000 workers employed directly by the shipyard

the 20,000+ workers in support services or sub contractors

any permanent or casual staff at the belfast dock and harbour comission

all of the officers and crew who came directly from olympic onto titanic such as the captain or stewardess violet jessop (puppet history fans rise up) who interestingly remarked on how improved titanic was compared to olympic

any staff at white star, imm and harland & wolff (where she was built) who would be in the know such as designers

passengers who had previously sailed on olympic who then sailed on titanic

just like anyone in belfast who walked past while the ships were docked together

olympics wreckers: thomas wards & sons who kept huge loose-leaf ledgers for each ships. the one for olympic was 72 pages long and funnily enough olympics yard number and builders I'd frequently appear in it, as seen below

bob ballard who was the one who found titanic. hes known as a very honest man and didnt even claim salvage rights on titanic because he assumed everyone else would also recognise it was a gravesite. he also said "i think it is the titanic at the bottom of the ocean"

every other explorer or researcher like james fucking cameron or us navy consultant and titanic wreck explorer, parks stephenson

its been estimated likely over 60,000 people were involved in just the building of titanic. this was ⅕ of belfasts population and ⅓ of the working population. heres a photo of them leaving olympic at the end of the day

now maybe im just a fool, but that looks like a lot of people you need to silence, and unless white star were blackmailing them or idk fucking killing them i guess, thats a lot of hush money just in the photo above.

i mean, theres also the claim, from noted liar james fenton, that the surviving crew were forced to sign the official secrets act of 1911, but that act was about espionage that benefits the enemy military so im not sure how this is relevant to the switch, and also, again, the guy was never on the ship.

are you perhaps starting to get the picture as to why i dont believe the conspiracy theory because im still going.

okay so as established, if the ships were switched, there would have clearly been a lot of work that would need to be done to switch the ships.

and i only mentioned some of the structural differences, i didnt get into the aesthetic differences like the floor tiles and carpeting being different colours, or how the lounge furniture in each ship having the ship name on them.

mind you, this is what titanic looked like (in the foreground) when olympic was first docked next to her:

this was taken around october 11. olympic docked next to titanic on october 7th for repairs after that whole catastrophic collision.

now how much time do you think it was before olympic sailed away? mind you, titanic has already been launched at this point and just needs to be fitted-out, and that normally takes around 4 to 6 months?

oh, what was that? 44 days? why, kid, youre going somewhere. it was 44 days exactly!

now, i dont think i need to get into the fact that the dock only had 1 crane (which you needed to install and uninstall funnels and machinery) that physically couldnt reach olympic unless she was moved or how olympic was painted white for her launch and then painted black and that the white paint would get exposed in rough weather so the same would have to be applied to titanic so it would look convincingly like olympic.

i mean, you have that information now, but im hoping just by the words "44 days", you might get how off the wall insane it is to suggest white star was able to switch the ships so well no one noticed for decades in 44 fucking days.

"wait kai, youre forgetting that they were docked together again!" you shout, "after olympic threw a propeller, they were docked together from march 1st to march 7th 1912"

and i dont know dude, im pretty sure white star cant warp space time so i really dont know what eight extra days is gonna do.

i hate to strawman but man, the late robin gardiner would have won a gold medal in scarecrow hide and seek.

lets also take a quick detour into the idea that olympics repairs were so expensive.

without getting into gardiners claims about the damage because theres no evidence of it and as mark chirnside states "there are no credible sources indicating that the damage to olympic was worse than reported at the time - and indeed ample sworn expert testimony to the contrary", lets just quickly go over some financial stuff.

during the case, it was unofficially estimated that the damage didnt exceed $125,000. imm, by including lost passenger receipts, wanted to claim for as high as $750,000, but they lost that case.

during the year 1911, imms surplus profit was $822,062. so weve got:

750,000 > 822,062

now as we might remember from key stage 1 maths, the bigger number eats the smaller number, aka, their surplus profit covered the costs of repair.

aka, no ill-advised insurance scam needed.

"thousands of people in belfast would have seen the switch operation - and yet there is not one word in the papers of reporters or photographers rushing out to find out what was happening."

-dr paul lee

so this is the section where i ask how did no one fucking notice?

no one on titanic, who had previously sailed on olympic, ever said anything about the switch other than one guy who was literally not on the ship at any point.

no one who has ever explored the wreck or done research on it has definitively stated it was olympic. rather, they have definitively stated otherwise.

for example, what remains of the base on the wheelhouse shows it to be straight and not curved, and as you might remember: titanics wheelhouse was heterosexual straight and olympics was curved.

(id be impressed if you did remember)

also, as parks stephenson has stated:

"weve got actual high def images of this wreck. ive seen with my own eyes. weve identified the name titanic on the port bow"

its difficult to make out but its there; the name is on the fucking ship.

also, as you might remember, titanics b-deck was different to olympics. the 2 suites there were nicknamed the "millionaire suites" and jim cameron has used rovs to go inside of them.

funnily enough, robin gardiner has gone on the record saying that these suites didnt exist so make of that what you will.

and further, no one noticed anything about olympic even though she sailed for 24 more years. theres no written record of anything, theres nothing in the board of trade reports, theres no photographic proof and theres not even fucking hearsay.

she served as a damn troopship in ww1, youd figure someone would figure it out as all of her fittings were ripped out.

but no, theres nothing.

as i mentioned above, olympic was scrapped in 1935, but some of her fittings were auctioned off and still exist today. and these have the number 400 on them because that was her shipyard number. titanics was 401 and the wreck reflects this also:

the wooden parts are from olympic; the other has been salvaged from titanics wreck.

theres even the famous myth that olympic or olympus as one person told me is written on the propeller at the bottom of the ocean. its not, but you can see the number 401 written on it:

and while were disproving myths about the name olympic being on the titanic, the story about olympic being engraved on titanics lifeboats is also false:

theres no written testimony, no sketches and no photographs of this.

white star didnt engrave names onto lifeboats, the names were on metal plates that were screwed on

do you really think they did all of this work but just didnt fucking swap the lifeboats? if theyre this stupid, how did it take until 1995 for someone to figure it out?

we can also discuss the stupid olympic room thing while were here. see theres a maritime superstition that changing the name on a ship is bad luck and obviously, if youre swapping the ships, youre changing the names.

so to... get around this? cheat luck? outsmart superstition? i dont fucking know, to take a detour to avoid this, white star named a room "the olympic room."

i cannot find any evidence at all that this room ever existed. its not in the design plans or the blueprints, and no passenger or crew has ever said it existed, so im pretty sure the room just didnt exist.

and even if it did exist, titanic was in the olympic class of ships. thats what olympic, titanic and britannic were. its not weird to have an olympic room on an olympic class ship. i mean it is weird in this case since the room didnt exist, but you get my point.

and heres some quickfire myths and falsehoods

the myth about the 14 vs 16 bow portholes is also a false. yes, titanic had 14 portholes on launch but an extra 2 were added before her maiden voyage so yes, the ship photographed departing southampton with 16 bow portholes is the titanic, and do you really think it would take 83 years to figure this out if it was this easy?

similarly, titanic did have evenly spaced b-deck windows on launch, but then the extra verandahs and suites were added so the window configuration was altered, so that photograph is off the titanic.

the idea that titanic had a 2 degree list to port like the olympic before her is evidence of the switch theory is, to borrow a word from dan van der dat, bilge. plenty of ships at the time and now have minor lists. the one on titanic was only recorded by 2 passengers and we know that the list was related to coal consumption. it means nothing.

jp morgan (owner of imm) did not cancel last minute. as mark baber points out on encyclopedia titanica, it was announced in the new york times that hed be in venice on april 23. at that time, transatlantic voyages took at least 5 days so it would at least be a 10 day round trip and likely not give him time to get to venice for the opening of a store of whatever it was.

also, j bruce ismays wife and kids also didnt cancel last minute. theyd already decided to go on holiday to wales rather than sail on titanic.

addendum to that point: if ismay knew it was going to be sank deliberately and so warned his wife, why would he get on board himself? further, why would harland and wolff designer thomas andrews (who did not survive by the way) get on board?

and we're finally at my favourite part of this entire mess: the sinking itself.

see, a deliberate sinking doesnt really make sense for titanic because the conditions under which she sank has led to the descriptor "freak sinking."

these are: a new moon meaning less light, unusually calm ocean that disallowed lookouts to watch for foam as waves hit any icebergs, ice having drifted further south than normal for that time of year, and a sideways glancing blow that breached more watertight compartments than the ship could handle and stay afloat.

and idk dude, is there not an easier way? like maybe some light arson. just call it an accidental fire that got out of control and led to the ship being a write-off, this isnt difficult.

but you see gardiner has an answer to this, and i am laughing as im typing this, he claims that:

titanic didnt hit an iceberg, it hit an imm rescue ship.

thats right, this guy fully says titanic didnt hit an iceberg. apparently it hit another ship and NO ONE FUCKING NOTICED

i mean we have testimony from survivors but fuck them i guess.

he claims that as titanic was apparently a "steel double-hulled vessel" so an iceberg simply couldnt inflict so much damage.

yeah titanic wasnt double-hulled. she had a double bottom, but it was only after titanic that shipbuilders were like ah maybe full double hulls arent an unnecessary expense after all.

theres also the issue of uh no evidence of this rescue ship ever existing? at all? i dont know where it came from, i dont know where it went, and who fucking knows, maybe it was called the rms cotton eyed joe.

yeah so weve got a theory riddled with problems and im just gonna introduce some more problems with this theory as gardiner has also alleged that:

the original plan was to open the seacocks and slowly flood the ship, but this was interrupted by titanic hitting another ship

1) titanic didnt have seacocks? and 2) was the rest of it a coincidence then? i think its meant to be a coincidence.

i believe his theory is alleging that the crew on titanic would open the seacocks that didnt exist to flood the ship slowly, and that the imm rescue ship that also didnt exist was in the area in advance to help evacuate passengers, alongside other ships such as the ss californian.

this is that ship that was like 10 miles away or something and didnt respond to titanics distress signals. according to gardiner, they were expecting a rendezvous with titanic according to the "original plan", but never received it.

instead, they saw the rockets of the fabled imm rescue ship and helped them instead.

this is fucking stupid.

i cant be charitable here, its a fucking stupid theory. i mean, that imm ship did not exist, and also californian is a ridiculous choice for a rescue ship. her capacity was 47 passengers and 55 crew; there were more than 2200 people on board titanic.

to counteract this argument, gardiner alleges carpathia was also in on the scheme as a rescue ship. she, at least, had capacity for the passengers, but theres also several problems with this too.

for one, it was fucking 50 miles away and famously arrived several hours after the sinking even though the captain had her running at top speed to get there.

for two, carpathia was owned by cunard, white stars rival. was their rival line in on the insurance scam??? how much money did they have to pay cunard for this????? why? just why?

do you understand why i dont believe it? please tell me you understand. i need you to understand. i need you to tell me that you understand that the guy who created this conspiracy claimed titanic didnt hit an iceberg.

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shannankle · 6 months

Text

Shadow the Series and Hamlet

Okay so after finishing the first half of Shadow there’s so much to unpack. So instead of doing the research I should be doing for my dissertation, let’s dig into some connections between literature and BL once again!

This won’t be a fully formed meta, and I’ll probably have to make a whole other post once the whole series is out. But I wanted to start thinking about how the show is dialoguing with and speaking to similar themes as Hamlet within a queer framework.

I thought I’d work my way through some different interpretations of Hamlet and connect back to Shadow. To be clear, I’m working with scholarship on Hamlet rather than any personal interpretation of Hamlet itself (which I unfortunately haven’t read or watched in many a years).

A quick summary

Hamlet and Shadow via Freud's Oedipal Complex

Hamlet and Shadow via Lee Edelman's work on queerness, the death drive, and queer time

Hamlet and Shadow via self-recognition and resistant readings

A few other directions

Hamlet and the Oedipal Complex

Back in 1897, Freud wrote about Hamlet in a letter to a friend noting that “falling in love with the mother and jealousy of the father…[was] a universal event of early childhood.” So Hamlet was one of the texts that Freud was thinking about when he came up with the Oedipal complex as a concept.

You may be asking, as I often do, who gives a fuck what Freud thought? Well over time, Freudian interpretations of the play highly influenced how it was performed and the ways that themes about subjectivity and sexuality were portrayed.

The 1948 and 1990 film adaptations in particular put stress on a sexually charged dynamic between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude. The later film has Hamlet lying on top of and wrestling with his mother before they kiss. More recent adaptations tend to move away from this, but, overall, it’s been extremely influential in terms of how the play has been interpreted and adapted.

So how does this come up in Shadow?

Dan’s role as Hamlet is closely framed around his relationship with his father who he beats up in the dream world right before his death. We’re introduced to Dan’s dad during his audition for Hamlet. Perhaps in the most obvious parallel, Dan recites Hamlet’s lines as he goes to find his father’s ghost. And of course, this is when Dan’s dad appears as a ghost as well.

Yet, Dan’s narrative with his father seems to buck the expected relationship between father and son. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles between a desire to fulfill his filial duty and avenge his father and the increasing violence and tragedy this brings. But Dan? In the face of abuse, he chooses to defiantly reject his father and filial piety, accepting and even wishing for his death. In many ways, Dan’s dad is more analogous to Claudius, the usurper and man trying to kill Hamlet. Through his abuse he loses the right to be Dan’s father.

A shallow oedipal reading of Hamlet, frames Claudius as the father Hamlet is trying to kill, but ignores that this dynamic is born from Claudius’ cruelty. By acknowledging abuse, power, and violence Shadow perhaps takes an interesting step away from a pure Freudian reading. Because ultimately Dan doesn’t want to be his father! In fact, as he speaks with him and beats him up, we can see the way Dan is shaken, not by the act of harming or killing his father, but by the idea of becoming him. His father makes clear that “becoming him” is aligned with ideas about what it means to be a man, to be “the father” within a straight patriarchal society. And in a beautiful moment of clarity and defiance as they discuss what love looks like, Dan clarifies that his mom left his father not him.

Okay so he "kills" his dad, what about his mom?

To be honest, when I was wrapping up my watch of the episodes, my head went towards the oedipal theory as a crack theory. What if the ghost is his mom, that’d be pretty effed up lol...But now that I’ve seen that the connection isn’t just one I made, it doesn’t seem as far fetched. The scenes between Hamlet and Gertrude in the 1990s film certainly could be an influence on the shadow getting sexual if they went that route. But to be honest I don’t really think they’ll go this way. Or at least I hope not. They’re already doing more nuanced things with the oedipal dynamic. Plus I think there’s more going on if we turn to queerer interpretations anyway.

The Death Drive, Queering Freud, and Queer Time

In Freud’s work, he talked about two opposing forces. The first was the death drive (later termed Thanatos by later psychoanalysts). This was a drive toward destruction that stood opposite to eros or life-producing drives such as sex, survival, and reproduction.

Now, in 2004, queer theorist Lee Edelman would come in and queer the heck out of these concepts. I’ll be over simplifying Edelman’s points a lot here, but hopefully the core will remain.

Edelman would point out that the life-drive was often weaponized rhetorically, politically, and socially as a way to reproduce cultural norms. Edelman often writes about "the Child"--that is the mythical idea of a child that we should be building society and the future for. Think of how often the “think of the children” rhetoric gets used in anti-queer politics, for example. In fact, Edelman points to oedipal readings of Hamlet as one way that dominant straight society has attempted to manage a narrative where reproduction and futurity are foreclosed. Oedipal readings of Hamlet, then, could be seen as an attempt to suppress the death drive, to put it out of sight where it can’t cause disruption or anxiety.

Of course, Edelman also notes that the death drive is inherently tied to and projected onto queerness and queer people–onto “those abjected as non-reproductive, anti-social, opposed to viability, and so as threats to the Child who assures and embodies collective survival”. And so, Edelman argues that queer people should embrace the death drive and queer time–that is non-futurity and non-linear, non-productive time.

So how might these ideas be showing up in Shadow so far?

I might think of even more later, but here’s a short list:

1. All three of our main characters are abjected. Nai is gay, Trin is gay and mentally ill, and Dan is potentially both. I think we could argue that the connection all three of them have to death also quite literally marks them as abjected. And perhaps we could consider how the supernatural elements thematically and symbolically connect to their alterity and the way this is in conflict with social norms. In fact, I’d argue that, unlike Nai and Trin who are explicitly stated to be queer and/or mentally ill, Dan’s alterity is playing out through this more allegorical channel so far.

2. Literal death as a central focus.

3. Haunting as a limbo between past and present. This liminality feels very queer here.

4. The idea of vengeful ghosts makes the death drive perpetually present in a way that haunts futurity. Interestingly Edelman describes the death drive as a “negativity that haunts the social order” and which is “projected onto those who occupy the position of the queer.” Haunting has very queer thematic possibilities.

5. Think of the ghost story told in the market in episode seven. The homophobia on display clearly ties queerness to death in a way that speaks to straight norms and anxieties.

6. Dan is told by the monk that what is happening has to do with overlapping time frames: past, present, and future

7. Dan often loses his sense of what is real or a dream, but he also has moments where he loses his sense of time and temporality. Notice how when the art statue fell and he saw his classmates dead we jump back to before he even spoke with Nai. It’s not just losing time but jumping back and forth.

8. Sexy times with a shadow monster are certainly non-(re)productive

9. We learn that Trin has been trying to change things, disrupt the social norms, but he is shut down and told the school needs to hold onto tradition. While we often think of tradition as referring to the past, it is very much about continuing and reproducing this into the future. School director: "But think of the future Children who won’t get to experience the epic highs and lows of high school hazing”

10. There seems to be a tension at play between Brother Anurak who is trying to get Dan to just stop believing in the shadow (not sure if that's his actual motive but still) and Dan who is slowly starting to embrace the shadow (literally and figuratively). Perhaps this could be read as embracing the death drive and queerness.

Hamlet, Self-Recognition, and Resistant Reading

Another theme that has often been explored by folks interested in Hamlet is that of self-recognition. The play focuses so very much on Hamlet struggling with his sense of self. And this speaks well to contemporary western ideas of the individual. One scholar, Marjorie Garbor, has noted that “the experience of Hamlet is almost always that of recognition.” While another, John Gouws remarks that Hamlet and Shakespeare’s sonnets both “seem capable of functioning like Rorschach inkblots, by making us reveal (increasingly) more about ourselves the more we try saying something about them.”

It’s interesting to me then that Hamlet and Rorschach tests are both used in Shadow, but they don’t seem to say all that much about Dan. The blot is simply a tool to test if Dan is still seeing the shadow. It isn’t used to psychoanalyze him further. And when Cha-aim asks Dan to compare himself to Hamlet he hilariously just says both their dads are dead. Of course we know that Hamlet’s dad and Dan’s aren’t exactly analogous either. Dan rejects this sort of self-identification. Or perhaps, the play rejects him? At the very least we know that he can’t perform the type of filial love that Hamlet has for his own father.

But perhaps this rejection has queer implications as well. There’s a really lovely article from the perspective of a queer South African director, Thys Heydenrych. He talks about reading and staging Hamlet through a queer and decolonial lens. In his piece he quotes Hanna Kubowitz who discusses queer readers' relationship with texts. She notes that “[b]eing heterosexual has several benefits…One can enter into most cultural narratives…on the basis of simple and satisfying identification.” This of course made me think of the moment when Cha-aim asks Dan to identify with Hamlet.

Whether we read this as an active refusal on Dan’s part or as the play being inhospitable to Dan’s identification, Cha-aim is asking Dan to express and perform identity here. Perhaps this could be read as her asking Dan to narratively self-identify with straight culture and values. It makes sense in the context of her having feelings for him and ties well into the scene where she tries to pick his costume. While Dan isn’t yet identifying as queer, he seems to be dis-identifying from straightness just as he dis-identifies from his father’s version of manhood.

Still, motifs of self-recognition or the struggle to understand oneself seem to abound. The use of mirrors in episodes 6 and 7 speak to this theme well with the blurring of self and other, while also tying into both horror motifs and the Greek mythology being referenced (Orpheus and Eurydice, narcissus perhaps). Is the shadow a part of him?

What I’ll be curious to see is how the show chooses to engage with this theme. Will Hamlet continue to serve as a narrative that is inhospitable to identification or will it be queered. There’s a tradition of scholarship that thinks about resistant reading. This is when a reader engages with a text that wasn’t designed with them in mind, but finds potential despite this. Certainly Shakespeare’s work and Hamlet in particular have been interpreted as queer at times, and Hamlet is definitely open to these readings.

When it comes to Shadow, however, I’m interested in what one scholar, Lois Tyson, has asked about resistant reading: “How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer presence?” This idea of a hidden queer presence speaks well to the idea of haunting. I’m really interested to see how the use of Hamlet as a narrative might speak to the idea of queerness as hidden presence and whether this continues to play out in the second half.

A few other connections that I want to wait to think on more:

-Madness seems to be a shared theme but I want to see how Shadow handles this as a whole before commenting, but you can check out my post on queer and crip time in The Eighth Sense if you're interested in that element at all

-Power and oppression. Heydenrych’s article mentions a 2010 production that focuses on Denmark’s repressive political system and themes of surveillance, control, and abuse of power. These seem like themes working their way into Shadow but I’d want to be more familiar with the topic in Hamlet

-Suicide. There are versions of Hamlet that heighten this theme further with Gertrude and Ophelia in particular being framed as making attempts.

-Play within a play and the blurring of fiction and reality

-Decolonial and religious elements

Sources:

Heydenrych, Thys. “‘To tell our Storie’: Reflections on a Queer Adaptation of Hamlet in Twenty-first Century South Africa” Shakespeare in Southern Africa vol 30, 2017. pp. 43-55

Edelman, Lee. “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint” Shakespeare Quarterly, 62.2, 2011. pp. 148-169.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive. Duke University Press, 2004.

Note: Most other sources were mentioned in the Heydenrych piece

#shadow the series #my meta #hamlet #shadow the series meta #meta #my posts #thai bl #queer series #bl series

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