#irrevocably. deep abiding love

[limnsaber]

You and I are holding hands and skipping through a field together called "Mulder Knew in One Breath and Scully Knew in Memento Mori" btw

LITERALLY!!!! Fields of Naboo and its wildflowers… where they Knew their feelings… knew that they loved each other…

[eponymous-rose]

Please don’t reblog, thanks!

[cw: parental death, cancer, grief - nothing new or concerning about me, just working through some stuff!]

I still don’t really feel equal to reflecting on Mom’s death, to the point where I regret that I haven’t been able to offer support to the truly heartbreaking number of friends who went through the same thing in the year and a half since it happened to me.

But I was thinking today about how my dad mentioned in passing that his and Mom’s song was “My Romance”, which is an old standard. I don’t even know the origin of the song, or the context in which it was first performed, but the general gist is that the singer progresses through a list of elaborate and/or expensive things that their romance does not need: “My romance doesn’t need a castle rising in Spain/Nor a dance to a constantly surprising refrain”. In fact, the signer continues, the only thing their romance needs “is you”.

But one line in particular keeps getting stuck in my head lately, the climax of the song: “Wide awake, I can make my most fantastic dreams come true.”

Mom and Dad were realists in their relationship - it was both of their second marriages after disastrous first marriages, both were in their late thirties, and both were going in with eyes open. My mom in particular was aggressively practical - when she was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer in February of 2020, she privately told Dad that she’d read the statistics and knew that one in five husbands left their wives after that kind of diagnosis, and she didn’t want to cause him the kind of suffering sticking around would involve. She told me later that Dad very earnestly told her that it would be the greatest honor of his life to stand by her side to see this through. I don’t think any of us knew how horribly fast things would progress - in five months, she was gone - but in that time there wasn’t a day he wasn’t at her side, and she said her goodbyes to everyone the day before she died so that last morning would belong to the two of them alone. It wasn’t just a great love, it was a deep and abiding friendship underneath the passion. Respect and a joyful sense of responsibility to each other.

And I think I truly appreciate now what a terrible, wonderful honor it is to be the recipient of that kind of unconditional love. Everything that I am comes with that beautiful gift, and I can only hope to be brave enough to recognize it and continue to express it to everyone I care about.

I’d experienced a few different flavors of grief before this one - my very close grandparents, a good friend, childhood pets, a difficult aunt. But this was all-consuming, and it took me a while to work out why. We all become slightly different (or very different!) people around others in our lives - the you of the workplace isn’t the you of childhood friends, that kind of thing. And who I was with Mom was a reflection of her in so many ways, and that version of me was someone I liked very, very much, and that version of me was instantly annihilated.

So was a complex grieving process for all sorts of different things in my life - not only was I grieving my mom, I was grieving the version of myself I could only be around her. I could parcel off little pieces and bring them to light in my other relationships, but the whole was irrevocably shattered. And I was grieving the loss of a kind of innocence with regard to mortality, grappling with the realization that, in a very real way that has nothing to do with fate or destiny and everything to do with cold biology, some of us already have it written in our blood and our organs and our bones how and when we’re going to die.

I was deeply, unfathomably fortunate in that my relationship with my mom was uncomplicated, with no dark secrets, and that nothing was left unsaid in our last perfect goodbye. And also that my brother and my dad and I are just as close as before, but also capable of separating to give each other space to heal and work out who we’re going to be now that such a large piece has been torn from each of us.

So I rode out the darker moments with the help of dear friends, I supported others where I could, and I still walk every single night through dreams where it’s my family without Mom, or it’s my family with Mom, or my Mom isn’t dead but dying. And every one of those dreams, inexplicably, brings peace. When I have sleep paralysis episodes (very rarely these days!) it’s not a demon but a laughing figure in the doorway, teasing me for sleeping in.

And slowly, inexorably, I’ve started feeling good again. I can’t be who I was to her, but I can be the person she saw in the ways that really matter. She used to tell me she lived vicariously through my adventures, and I’ve had so many adventures: standing on the grass at Cape Canaveral during a space shuttle launch, watching a temple sink underwater with fireflies all around, stepping into a ballroom 300 meters under the earth where the chandeliers are made of salt crystals, moving to new city after new city after new city and reinventing myself along the way. And this new job, this absurd new job, is just going to get bigger and stranger and more and more exciting. There will be no shortage of adventures, big and small, not as something to fruitlessly, frustratingly pursue, but as giddy, wonderful side-effects of the act of living.

Wide awake, I can make my most fantastic dreams come true.

[hrtiu]

My contribution to day one of Rexsoka week. It’s a little bit of a bummer given the prompt is ‘hope,’ but I like where it ends up!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703133

Ahsoka had been in love with Rex for about a year when she told him to leave her on some desolate Outer-Rim skug hole of a planet. 

A year earlier the epiphany had been like punching a hole in a piece of flimsi—easy and weightless but completely irrevocable. He’d come back to Coruscant to speak at Dogma’s court-martial and to give his report on the Umbara debacle, and she’d been so relieved—so overjoyed—to finally see him healthy and sound that it just clicked.

She didn’t say anything, of course. Even if he reciprocated her feelings, there wasn’t really any way either of them could act on them, and she didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak. She also didn’t feel ready for those kinds of feelings, and doubted Rex was either. Rex was both a grown man and a being who had only experienced twelve years of life—all of them spent as a soldier preparing to sacrifice himself for the Republic. And as many adult situations in which she’d found herself and as much as she liked to think otherwise, curled up in the dark of her room at night Ahsoka was forced to admit to herself that she was still a child in many ways.

Thinking about it as little as possible was Ahsoka’s best defense, and she channeled all her affection for Rex into a fierce loyalty to him and all the clones of the 501st and an unshakable determination to win the war. Maybe after the war… she found herself thinking in her weaker moments. After the war what? She’d become a knight, and his legal status would be uncertain. There was no future.

Things didn’t change much after she left the Order. In theory she was no longer bound by the Code and could seek out personal relationships if she wanted to, but she couldn’t just switch off her entire way of being so easily. She also had no way of knowing if she’d ever see Rex again. She was unlikely to be allowed back into the GAR, and he wouldn’t be able to go looking for her even if he wanted to. She put her head down and tried to move forward with her life, but when her teenage mind decided to take off on flights of romantic fancy, her partner always had brown-golden eyes, stern posture, and light hair that contrasted against his dark skin.

When Ahsoka finally reunited with him for the Siege of Mandalore, she felt the stirrings of hope for the first time. Nothing about Rex was soft, but somehow the modest smile he gave her when introducing her to the 332nd was heart-breakingly tender. She’d worried somewhere in the back of her mind that Rex would have moved on, would not have carried their friendship with him like she had. But she’d returned to find the same disciplined, loyal, brave, true man she’d come to consider her dearest friend.

How quickly things change, Ahsoka thought as she watched the reddish sunlight of the dwarf sun filter through the tiny, rank room she and Rex had rented for the night. The Venator had crashed on some unnamed moon six months earlier, and they’d been on the run ever since. Ahsoka turned her head towards her fellow fugitive, asleep on his own narrow bed across the room from her, and she wondered how he always managed to coax his brain to unconsciousness no matter where he lay his head. Ahsoka hadn’t slept well in months.

In some ways she felt closer to Rex than ever. There was a heavy burden of sadness they shared between the two of them, dragging it from system to system as they tried to erase their tracks, and it tied them together like two prisoners on a chain gang. In other ways she’d never felt more distant from him, not even after she’d left the Order and didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

I did this, the familiar voice of guilt played in Ahsoka’s head. I took everything from him.

She’d replayed her escape from Order 66 over and over again in her mind, trying to understand where she’d gone wrong, what she could have done differently to save all those men. Try as she might, she didn’t see any way out without either giving herself up, which she could not accept, or letting Rex go, which she would not abide. But she must be wrong. There must have been some other way, there must have been something.

Rex stirred in his sleep, and Ahsoka watched the broad planes of his back expand and retract with each breath. It was exactly the same back as his brothers, the ones she’d let die. Did he wish that he’d died with them? Did he wish she’d left him in blissful, brainwashed ignorance? Did he… did he wish she’d just let herself go down?

The sunlight fully peaked through their window and Rex’s restless movements turned to a real awakening. He opened his eyes and greeted the day with a groan, then rolled out of bed and got dressed with typical clone efficiency. 

It was still strange to see Rex in civilian clothes—almost like that time she’d seen a holo of Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor. The faded trousers and stained tunic never seemed to fit him quite right.

“Well, it’s a new day, Commander,” Rex said, and Ahsoka winced. He still always called her that, and she hated the title more with each passing day.

“Not much different from the last few,” Ahsoka said.

“We’ve been here too long. That patrol yesterday was too close a call—we need to move on.”

Ahsoka had to agree, though it pained her to admit it. She was getting so tired of running. She nodded her head wearily.

“So? Where to?” Rex said.

Ahsoka studied Rex for a long moment, then looked within herself and realized that today she finally had the strength to say what she’d been thinking had to be said for a long while.

“You need to check out the tip we got about Wolffe,” she said evenly.

Rex’s brow furrowed and he rubbed at his eyes, as if Ahsoka’s words could be chalked up to his drowsy state. “He’s supposed to be on Kamino. We can’t go to a planet full of chipped clones.”

“I can’t,” Ahsoka said pointedly.

Rex narrowed his eyes at Ahsoka. “What are you suggesting, Commander.”

Ahsoka sat up in bed and gathered her scratchy blankets around her. “He somehow managed to get a message to us that he wants out—you can’t ignore that.”

“We can’t ignore that, I agree.”

“He’s going to be on Kamino for the foreseeable future, and if I go there I’ll only hold you back.”

“Ahsoka-”

“I’m not going to take you away from your brothers again, Rex.”

Rex’s stern brow twitched and he pursed his lips. A long, weighty moment passed between them, then Rex spoke. “I won’t abandon you.”

“It’s not abandoning if I’m asking you to go,” Ahsoka said.

A look of deep hurt flitted past Rex’s face. “You’re ordering me away?”

“No!” Ahsoka said, getting to her feet. “That’s exactly the pro-” she cut herself off and sighed, taking a moment to collect herself. “Before, on the Venator. I made the decision for you.”

“No you didn’t. I all but asked you to take the chip out.”

“Maybe, but I put you in a position where you had to choose between me and your brothers and… it really wasn’t much of a choice.”

Rex huffed in frustration and threw his hands in the air. “Look, I don’t blame you-”

“Don’t you?”

The question lingered in the air between them, and Rex looked away. “No, I don’t,” he said. His voice was firm, but Ahsoka could see the doubt in his eyes.

And that was the crux of it. This awful tragedy hung between them, and would always be there unless they could find a way past it. If Rex was always stuck with her, always following her orders and watching her back, she knew their connection would remain poisoned by guilt and unbidden resentment. He needed to forge his own path, to find his independence. Then, maybe… Maybe many years in the future…

Ahsoka walked up to Rex and put a hand on his cheek, turning his head gently to face her. “I’m done issuing commands. Stay with me if you want. But I’m going to pay for a few more nights here, and I’m going to sleep here tonight, and I hope that when I wake tomorrow morning you’ll be gone.”

Rex met her eyes for a few seconds, then his gaze fell to the floor. Ahsoka held her breath as she waited for him to come to his conclusions. He swallowed a tense knot in his throat, then nodded, all uncertainty gradually draining away. 

Pain and relief flooded Ahsoka’s heart in equal measure, and she reached for Rex’s hand, daring more physical affection than she’d ever shown before. “Let’s go out to the market,” she said, giving his fingers a squeeze. “It’s a nice day.”

Rex squeezed her hand in return before letting go, and together they left the seedy hotel for the marketplace in the center of town. 

It truly was a nice day—the first pleasant, relaxed, uncomplicated day either of them had experienced in years. They ate a breakfast of hot caf and fried nuna eggs in a tiny cafe and watched the sun gradually bathe the dusty town in reddish light. They went to the open air plaza and dug through piles of the vendors’ wares until they found a newish, non-stained shirt for Rex. Rex picked out several blumfruits from the fruit stand, insisting that Bariss had once taught him a foolproof method for picking the ripest and sweetest, and as Ahsoka ate the red fruit she had to admit it was the tastiest she’d ever had. As night fell the daytime vendors closed up shop and other folks came out, some setting up games and other minor pieces of entertainment for the modest crowd. Ahsoka won Rex a small stuffed convor with a perfect game of ring toss, and though Rex complained that using the Force was cheating, he kept the plush. They ate dinner back at the hotel, whose food was actually somewhat passable despite the rundown building, then went to bed feeling restored.

Ahsoka pulled the covers up to her chin, her bones still steeped in the unfamiliar happiness of the day. She hadn’t felt this close to Rex since the crash, hadn’t enjoyed anything with Rex since then. She knew she’d made the right decision, as much as it would hurt to wake up alone the next day.

“‘Soka?” Rex’s voice carried through the darkness across the small room.

Ahsoka turned towards him, just barely making out the familiar angles of his face through the dim light. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Ahsoka’s lips turned into a smile even as her eyes filled with tears she refused to shed. “You’d do the same for me, Rex. There’s no need for thanks.”

“All the same…”

“Yeah, I know.”

“May the Force be with you, little’un.”

“May the Force be with you, Rex.”

---

The next day Ahsoka woke and looked across the room from her to find an empty bed. The dingy bed had been made to military precision, and Rex had left no other evidence behind. The tears Ahsoka had held back the night before would no longer cooperate, and she buried her face in her hands and cried.

She gave herself permission to cry for a good long while, and after an hour her tears were spent and her heart worn thin. Her sorrow had run out of her along with her tears, and all that was left was a stubborn, insistent sort of hope. Ahsoka closed her eyes and imagined Rex going to Kamino, somehow sneaking into the base and finding Wolffe. She imagined the two of them figuring out how to remove Wolffe’s chip, then going on a crusade to free more of their brothers. She imagined Rex becoming more and more the person he was meant to be, the person his servitude to the Republic held back. And at the end of it all, that foolish, optimistic hope imagined him returning home to her.

[needtherapy]

Waiting

A little story for Suibian, because semi-sentient swords deserve happy endings too.

Read more Kristina Writes Tiny Stories

She is locked in a tower and her despair is endless.

And so she waits.

She has waited for so long.

She remembers the last time she waited, locked in a box. She had been angry first and then, as the growing darkness surrounded her, threatening to crush her golden heart, she had been afraid.

But she knew he was out there, could still feel the cord that bound them humming with bright light, and so she waited for him to say her name, to wrap familiar fingers around her smooth hilt.

And then he was gone. He was gone. There was no immediate sense of him left in the world. She panicked, a blind, questing, searching panic until the light came back, weaker and more distant, but finally growing into a strong vein of power. He was still there. Somewhere.

It took time for her to understand that something did not feel right. She knows him, has known him since the day he woke her. She knows the longings of his heart, the shape of his fears, and their connection no longer felt like memory told her it should. It felt like him and it did not feel like him. A faint purple light had begun to intertwine with her. Or was it dark and malevolent, tendrils of fury grasping at the threads of connection. She could no longer tell.

As she waited, the feeling of wrong intensified, a great and terrible fundamental shift in the world as she understood it.

She made a choice.

She would not let him or anyone use her again until she knew.

Wrapping her power around herself, she sealed her blade in her scabbard and waited.

One day the box opened and there was sunlight and warmth, and she reached for him, feeling his golden light nearby, knowing he was there. But it was not his hands that held her. And she finally understood. He was not coming back for her. He had passed his light to someone else, and she would never see him again.

She was glad of her choice, for she did not want a new master.

And yet.

She traveled with this man, this new extension of her. She learned his touch, read his heart, and was not displeased. He had a deep well of honor, an abiding loyalty, and such a powerful love that her resolve waned. She would open herself to this new wielder if he asked. Even though she would have to share him with the purple fire.

But he did not.

Then suddenly, he was there, the one she knew. And it was agony. From the first moment he touched her, she screamed, black pain searing her awareness, demons racing through her, seeking to destroy her golden heart.

She knew what sorrow was. She had felt it from him, felt it throbbing in the new wielder, and now it threatened to consume her.

She tried to push it away, push him away, and she thought he felt her because he quickly set her down and walked away.

He didn’t go far, and once she was no longer overwhelmed, she searched her golden path for understanding. It was still a burning road to the new man, her new master, but there was still something small tying her to her creator, something scarred and tentative, anchored in agony, but still there.

And so she waited.

Until the moment the thread snapped, and he was gone. This time truly and irrevocably. Only the burning path remained, and she wished for tears, wished for a voice to lament his loss. He had done more than just create her. He had given her a name, Suibian, a silly, funny, unfettered name, and it had shaped her. He had given her a purpose, to do justice and live with no regrets. He had fed her spirit for so many years, and she had nourished his, and now he was gone.

Yes, the burning path remained. But it, too, was beyond her reach.

She is locked in a tower and her despair is endless.

A light flares in her heart, and she wakes, confused. This is not the purple bridge that still sustains her spirit. It is something else, familiar and unfamiliar, and she does not understand it. She has made no new connections, forged no new core, has not even been touched in more than a decade and yet it is there, a small candle of light at the edge of her senses.

She does not hope. She can not hope.

Slowly, unbearably slowly, it moves toward her. It does not grow and sometimes, frighteningly, it flickers, nearly extinguishing. But it is coming. He is coming. For the closer it gets, the better she can see the familiar soul reflected in the light.

It is not like she imagined it. He does not fold a confident hand around her hilt and pull her from her scabbard. He does not smile down at her, sending golden light coursing through her.

Instead, it is just a whisper of his mind in a tiny paperman that greets her and asks her for help.

She agrees. Of course she agrees, and it is an excruciatingly sweet release to follow his lead and let his will flow through her.

He is still afraid of her, and she knows he is afraid of the flame in his core that neither of them recognizes. He does not take the steps, shift his body, extend his arms and pour his soul into her or let her rejuvenate him, but she feels the yearning and she thinks he will, eventually.

He does not leave her behind this time.

Although he does not use her and does not even carry her, she is useful for the first time in so long. Every time he draws her, she hopes it will be to reforge their connection.

Hope is brittle and dashed time and time again.

To her surprise, it is the burning purple light that finally reaches out to her, and reluctantly, she opens, desperate to feel a power she knows. The wielder has changed, his loving heart suffocating under a crackling layer of hurt. His motions are wild and frantic, and she does not understand, but she tries to give him what he needs. She pulls his anguish into herself, recycling it into relief. She uses his erratically flaring power to smooth down the rough edges of his anger. And bit by bit, he subsides, fracturing into grief, but to her, it feels like healing.

She rides with him for some time and learns to work with the purple flame. It is a different future than she expected, but he learns to appreciate her, smoothing oil into her wood and blade and taking her through the movements that allow her to heal him. She knows she does not have his heart--it belongs to Sandu--but she is content. If she has to, she will wait for her master, her love, to find his way back to her.

And he does. Of course he does.

She is placed in his arms, and his fingers close around her. When he draws her, he sends a small, tentative lick of flame into her. It is different. He is different. She can not stop herself from searching him, reading the new map of his life. He is softer and calmer. Where there had been a conflagration roaring in his core, there is a warm fire on a cold night. His heart has balanced between heartbreak, loyalty, and love, and she longs to be a part of him again.

She tightens her hold on his small offering of light to hear his words echo through her.

“Lan Zhan, are you sure? I...I don’t know if this will work.”

“If you did not have a golden core, Suibian would not have recognized you.”

“I don’t need a sword, Lan Zhan. I don’t need to cultivate the sword.”

“You have been forged in fire, Wei Ying. And now it is time for you to be refined. You do not have to abandon your own path. Just let your sword guide you along it.”

This time, the light that fills her is stronger, bolstered by movement, and she eagerly grasps it, drawing it through her and returning it, a double measure for what he gave. She hears his gasp, and she feels his pleasure, the joy feeding both their spirits.

Finally, finally, she does not have to wait anymore.

[sasorikigai]

✖ : for kuai modern verse .

Get a letter from my muse! || @frozenbreath || accepting

✖ : For a angsty letter.

My beloved Liang,

Occam’s Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most plausible one, which means, to put it simply, I love you. But how do I contain the multitude of all that I feel within so complex and elusive? How do I tell you, I see the stars in you; all my heartstrings unfurl from here on until my last breath will be about you. “I love you,” doesn’t do justice to the fact that I swear I was a fucking Universe unlike any other, but I found you in the throes of my maddened frenzy, of bloodcurdling wrath and vengeance. But I found you and we were always whole; as you gradually filled me with warmth that flies through my stomach. Our lips clashed and our tongues danced, as the vibration of your voice spoke literally and metaphorically into me. I have imprinted every inch of you and beyond, and yet - my fury had been toxic and warm, and rolling unbothered when it boiled to the maximum. 

I used to believe in the fact that we could change the inevitability of the abyss; for I once believed that we could continue to grow through the pruning of our faith. We keep strong, still learning to love each other better. The future may hold more battles for us, but I live with a broken heart sentenced by myself. There are dilapidated homes built with nightmares and life made out of warfares. And there is an ongoing battle in my mind; a disease slowly killing me inside. Poisonous words control my every move, reducing me to ridicule my own trauma and heartbreak and despair; for words tell me my unworth, forcing to seek violent comfort. The world around me only enables this disease, with their selfish evil beliefs. I have wrongfully believed if I had a bed to lay in, and someone to nurse my insecurities and to remind me that the world isn’t so lonesome if we share it with hearts who lay on similar pillows of madness could magically cure whatever the fuck is wrong with me. 

I cannot escape my melancholia, a deep irrevocable sadness that continue to plunge me towards the destination and the journey of death, where I am hated beyond retrieve, damaged beyond repair. For too long, had I sought the act of removing life, word by word, when every word equated to a sharpened blade that is used to pummel the life of another into non-existence. My accountability is a collective duty and responsibility I, Hanzo Hasashi, a law-abiding Commander and a vigilante must hold, such as the deceased holding the weight of my barely coherent world. Like Atlas, doomed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, and unlike Atlas, I am fragile and mortal. Every life snuffed out like a flame in a fucking glass jar is a sadness that could never be taken back.

Even as I hide in the shadows of ephemeral contentment and bliss with you, 私の心, our vivid evocation of togetherness comes with a stifling burden and remorse indebted to you - you are a bright burning galaxy and I am not the person who is worthy of your light. The fault is entirely my own, Kuai Liang, for the annihilatory pleasure and pain of simply existing seems to be too much. If you ever find me, I would like to burn in the crematorium and get the taste of hellfire myself. And please, PLEASE do not shackle my restless and disquietude being under a tomb. I would want to be a floating stardust over the city I was born in. 

Your eyes always held such strong light; for you choose to talk, and not to fight. I want you to live, Kuai Liang - I know you will even without me beseeching you to do so. You always have been the more resilient one; keeping strong, keeping patience on hand, maintaining your armor on, but it is not indestructible. You are flexible and formidable in your own right. What you have rooted into the charred depths of my black heart will never go unnoticed and unreciprocated. Perhaps if the world is kinder than I have anticipated, may we meet in the afterlife or beyond. 

さようなら、そしてあなたがあなたの心と魂に具現化する無限の優雅さと美しさを求めるために、多くの輝かしい光の仲間になりましょう。[ Farewell, and be the companion to many, a glorious light to seek infinite grace and beauty which you embody in your heart and soul. ] 

Hanzo Hasashi. 

[rockislandadultreads]

Sometime Lovers, Complicated Relationships, & Psychological Insights: a reading list

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

Jana. Brit. Daniel. Henry. They would never have been friends if they hadn't needed each other. They would never have found each other except for the art which drew them together. They would never have become family without their love for the music, for each other. Brit is the second violinist, a beautiful and quiet orphan; on the viola is Henry, a prodigy who's always had it easy; the cellist is Daniel, the oldest and an angry skeptic who sleeps around; and on first violin is Jana, their flinty, resilient leader. Together, they are the Van Ness Quartet. After the group's youthful, rocky start, they experience devastating failure and wild success, heartbreak and marriage, triumph and loss, betrayal and enduring loyalty. They are always tied to each other - by career, by the intensity of their art, by the secrets they carry, by choosing each other over and over again. Following these four unforgettable characters, Aja Gabel's debut novel gives a riveting look into the high-stakes, cutthroat world of musicians, and of lives made in concert. The story of Brit and Henry and Daniel and Jana, The Ensemble is a heart-skipping portrait of ambition, friendship, and the tenderness of youth.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

It's the early 1980s - the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

One Day by David Nicholls

15th July 1988: Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows?

My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan

Set amidst the breathtaking beauty of Oxford, this sparkling debut novel tells the unforgettable story about a determined young woman eager to make her mark in the world and the handsome man who introduces her to an incredible love that will irrevocably alter her future—perfect for fans of JoJo Moyes and Nicholas Sparks. American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was thirteen: Study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day. When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by none other than that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks for the first time that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns Jamie has a life-changing secret. Immediately, Ella is faced with a seemingly impossible decision: turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with to follow her political dreams or be there for him during a trial neither are truly prepared for. As the end of her year in Oxford rapidly approaches, Ella must decide if the dreams she’s always wanted are the same ones she’s now yearning for.

[theatticoneighth]

Watching The Queen’s Gambit; on the Remarkable Unexceptionality of Beth Harmon

‘With some people, chess is a pastime. With others, it is a compulsion, even an addiction. And every now and then, a person comes along for whom it is a birthright. Now and then, a small boy appears and dazzles us with his precocity, at what may be the world’s most difficult game. But what if that boy were a girl? A young, unsmiling girl, with brown eyes, red hair, and a dark blue dress? Into the male-dominated world of the nation’s top chess tournaments, strolls a teenage girl with bright, intense eyes, from Fairfield High School in Lexington, Kentucky. She is quiet, well-mannered, and out for blood.’

The preceding epigraph opens a fictional profile of Beth Harmon featured in the third episode of The Queen’s Gambit (2020), and is written and published after the protagonist — a teenage, rookie chess player, no less — beats a series of ranked pros to win her first of many tournaments. In the same deft manner as it depicts the character’s ascent to her global chess stardom, the piece also sets up the series’s narrative: this is evidence of a great talent, it tells us, a grandmaster in the making. As with most other stories about prodigies, this new entry into a timeworn genre is framed unexceptionally by its subject’s exceptionality.

Yet as far as tales regaled about young chess wunderkinds go, Beth Harmon’s stands out in more ways than one. That she is a girl in a male-dominated world has clearly not gone unremarked by both her diegetic and nondiegetic audiences. That her life has thus far — and despite her circumstances — been relatively uneventful, however, is what makes this show so remarkable. After all, much of our culture has undeniably primed us to expect the consequential from those whom we raise upon the pedestal of genius. As Harmon’s interviewer suggests in her conversation with Harmon for the latter’s profile, “Creativity and psychosis often go hand in hand. Or, for that matter, genius and madness.” So quickly do we attribute extraordinary accomplishments to similarly irregular origins that we presume an inexplicability of our geniuses: their idiosyncrasies are warranted, their bad behaviours are excused, and deep into their biographies we dig to excavate the enigmatic anomalies behind their gifts. Through our myths of exceptionality, we make the slightest aberrations into metonyms for brilliance.

Nonetheless, for all her sullenness, non-conformity, and her plethora of addictions, Beth Harmon seems an uncommonly normal girl. No doubt this may be a contentious view, as evinced perhaps by the chorus of viewers and reviewers alike who have already begun to brand the character a Mary Sue. Writing on the series for the LA Review of Books, for instance, Aaron Bady construes The Queen’s Gambit as “the tragedy of Bobby Fischer [made] into a feminist fantasy, a superhero story.” In the same vein, Jane Hu also laments in her astute critique of the Cold War-era drama its flagrant and saccharine wish-fulfillment tendencies. “The show gets to have it both ways,” she observes, “a beautiful heroine who leans into the edge of near self-destruction, but never entirely, because of all the male friends she makes along the way.” Sexual difference is here reconstituted as the unbridgeable chasm that divides the US from the Soviet Union, whereas the mutual friendliness shared between Harmon and her male chess opponents becomes a utopic revision of history. Should one follow Hu’s evaluation of the series as a period drama, then the retroactive ascription of a recognisably socialist collaborative ethos to Harmon and her compatriots is a contrived one indeed. 

Accordingly, both Hu and Bady conclude that the series grants us depthless emotional satisfaction at the costly expense of realism: its all-too-easy resolutions swiftly sidestep any nascent hint of overwhelming tension; its resulting calm betrays our desire for reprieve. Underlying these arguments is the fundamental assumption that the unembellished truth should also be an inconvenient one, but why must we always demand difficulty from those we deem noteworthy? Summing up the show’s conspicuous penchant for conflict-avoidance, Bady writes that: 

over and over again, the show strongly suggests — through a variety of genre and narrative cues — that something bad is about to happen. And then … it just doesn’t. An orphan is sent to a gothic orphanage and the staff … are benign. She meets a creepy, taciturn old man in the basement … and he teaches her chess and loans her money. She is adopted by a dysfunctional family and the mother … takes care of her. She goes to a chess tournament and midway through a crucial game she gets her first period and … another girl helps her, who she rebuffs, and she is fine anyway. She wins games, defeating older male players, and … they respect and welcome her, selflessly helping her. The foster father comes back and …she has the money to buy him off. She gets entangled in cold war politics and … decides not to be.

In short, everything that could go wrong … simply does not go wrong.

Time and again predicaments arise in Harmon’s narrative, but at each point, she is helped fortuitously by the people around her. In turn, the character is allowed to move through the series with the restrained unflappability of a sleepwalker, as if unaffected by the drama of her life.  Of course, this is not to say that she fails to encounter any obstacle on her way to celebrity and success — for neither her childhood trauma nor her substance-laden adolescence are exactly rosy portraits of idyll — but only that such challenges seem so easily ironed out by that they hardly register as true adversity. In other words, the show takes us repeatedly to the brink of what could become a life-altering crisis but refuses to indulge our taste for the spectacle that follows. Skipping over the Aristotelian climax, it shields us from the height of suspense, and without much struggle or effort on the viewers’ part, hands us our payoff. Consequently lacking the epochal weight of plot, little feels deserved in Harmon’s story.

In his study of eschatological fictions, The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode would associate such a predilection for catastrophes with our abiding fear of disorder. Seeing as time, as he argues, is “purely successive [and] disorganised,” we can only reach to the fictive concords of plot to make sense of our experiences. Endings in particular serve as the teleological objective towards which humanity projects our existence, so we hold paradigms of apocalypse closely to ourselves to restore significance to our lives. It probably comes as no surprise then that in a year of chaos and relentless disaster — not to mention the present era of extreme precariousness, doomscrolling, and the 24/7 news cycle, all of which have irrevocably attuned us to the dreadful expectation of “the worst thing to come” — we find ourselves eyeing Harmon’s good fortune with such scepticism. Surely, we imagine, something has to have happened to the character for her in order to justify her immense consequence. But just as children are adopted each day into loving families and chess tournaments play out regularly without much strife, so too can Harmon maintain low-grade dysfunctional relationships with her typically flawed family and friends. 

In any case, although “it seems to be a condition attaching to the exercise of thinking about the future that one should assume one's own time to stand in extraordinary relation to it,” not all orphans have to face Dickensian fates and not all geniuses have to be so tortured (Kermode). The fact remains that the vagaries of our existence are beyond perfect reason, and any attempt at thinking otherwise, while vital, may be naive. Contrary to most critics’ contentions, it is hence not The Queen’s Gambit’s subversions of form but its continued reach towards the same that holds up for viewers such a comforting promise of coherence. The show comes closest to disappointing us as a result when it eschews melodrama for the straightforward. Surprised by the ease and randomness of Harmon’s life, it is not difficult for one to wonder, four or five episodes into the show, what it is all for; one could even begin to empathise with Hu’s description of the series as mere “fodder for beauty.” 

Watching over the series now with Bady’s recap of it in mind, however, I am reminded oddly not of the prestige and historical dramas to which the series is frequently compared, but the low-stakes, slice-of-life cartoons that had peppered my childhood. Defined by the prosaicness of its settings, the genre punctuates the life’s mundanity with brief moments of marvel to accentuate the curious in the ordinary. In these shows, kindergarteners fix the troubles of adults with their hilarious playground antics, while time-traveling robot cats and toddler scientists alike are confronted with the woes of chores. Likewise, we find in The Queen’s Gambit a comparable glimpse of the quotidian framed by its protagonist’s quirks. Certainly, little about the Netflix series’ visual and narrative features would identify it as a slice-of-life serial, but there remains some merit, I believe, in watching it as such. For, if there is anything to be gained from plots wherein nothing is introduced that cannot be resolved in an episode or ten, it is not just what Bady calls the “drowsy comfort” of satisfaction — of knowing that things will be alright, or at the very least, that they will not be terrible. Rather, it is the sense that we are not yet so estranged from ourselves, and that both life and familiarity persists even in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Perhaps some might find such a tendency towards the normal questionable, yet when all the world is on fire and everyone clambers for acclaim, it is ultimately the ongoingness of everyday life for which one yearns. As Harmon’s childhood friend, Jolene, tells her when she is once again about to fall off the wagon, “You’ve been the best at what you do for so long, you don’t even know what it’s like for the rest of us.” For so long, and especially over the past year, we have catastrophized the myriad crises in which we’re living that we often overlook the minor details and habits that nonetheless sustain us. To inhabit the congruence of both the remarkable and its opposite in the singular figure of Beth Harmon is therefore to be reminded of the possibility of being outstanding without being exceptional — that is, to not make an exception of oneself despite one’s situation — and to let oneself be drawn back, however placid or insignificant it may be, into the unassuming hum of dailiness. It is in this way of living that one lives on, minute by minute, day by day, against the looming fear and anxiety that seek to suspend our plodding regular existence. It is also in this way that I will soon be turning the page on the last few months in anticipation of what is to come. 

Born and raised in the perpetually summery tropics — that is, Singapore — Rachel Tay wishes she could say her life was just like a still from Call Me By Your Name: tanned boys, peaches, and all. Unfortunately, the only resemblance that her life bears to the film comes in the form of books, albeit ones read in the comfort of air-conditioned cafés, and not the pool, for the heat is sweltering and the humidity unbearable. A fervent turtleneck-wearer and an unrepentant hot coffee-addict, she is thus the ideal self-parodying Literature student, and the complete anti-thesis to tropical life.

[cavariously]

[Trying my hand at a fan fiction.

I love to write but I have never done anything like this before, so all feedback would be extremely appreciated (Grammer, Plot, Characters etc.).

I love Tokyo Ghoul so I really hope I don't fuck this up 😅. A big thank you to anyone who reads this ❤️]

Caution: Agressive Swearing, Offensive Language, Graphic Violence.

Notes: Takes place post end of TG:re, Reapers = Marshall version of Doves.

1. Crow - 24

City lights and the rushing motions of the landscape turn the 24th ward into a blinding and blaring circus. Humans. They crawl through this city with the assurance that they will be here tomorrow. They will be here a year from now. They will be here forever. They are the only lifeform with this assurance. All other creatures in this world live with the knowledge that their making it to the next moment is a fifty fifty

It is certainly a miracle that they last, noticing absolutely nothing at all. They don't see the effects that the fumes of their veichles have on the planet that they grip so tightly to. They can't begin to recognise that they are being continually watched and targeted by devices that could wipe them from the face of said Earth in less than zero. They don't even notice the apex predictor observing them from less than a mile above.

Humans simply move from one spot to another, only stopping to cause irrevocable disaster and reduce their surroundings to less than ash, and then move on to the next target. Someone said that humans are Parasites, and although it may be naive to believe this was wholly correct, it would be complete ignorance to dismiss it entirely. Ghouls do not indulge in such ignorance. Parasite is an apt description for a human, from the perspective of a ghoul, that and food.

The figure stands tall, wind rushing rapidly through their tied up hair. They can smell the putrescence of man-kind as they go about their sweaty and arrogant business. They would laugh if it wasn't so tragic. What do humans amount to? They are greedy and bloody bags of meat that fight and hate more than any other being, yet they are allowed to multiply and just be. It could be argued that ghouls are the same as humans in this aspect, but most abide by the one meal a month agreement, even though this arrangement can be hell for some. Unlike humans, who see violence as their God given right, when ghouls fight, it is rarely for anything other than survival. Perhaps this view doesn't take all ghouls into account, but all humans gorge themselves on everything, and fight for any fucking reason they want.

Twenty years ago, a disaster was meant to end this disparity. For the first time ever, ghouls and humans fought together to save the world they shared from the monster that had been designated 'DRAGON'. The defeating of this enemy was meant to end in equality, where ghouls and humans shared the world equally. Scientific leaps had been made. Synthetic meats that ghouls could eat, so they wouldn't have to harm humans. The corpse of Dragon even lead to dramatic advancements in the medical field. Humans were now benefiting from ghoul DNA, as it allowed them to combat most illnesses and increase their lifespan somewhat. After all that ghouls had done for them, weren't humans grateful? No. Ten years, then ghouls were back to being vile creatures to be hunted, and were forced back to living in the sewers. The deaths of so many perfectly good and innocent ghouls, just so that humanity could screw them all over again. What a funny tragedy.

Another figure appeared from the shadows, stepping in line with their comrade. Neither looking at the other, they both silently watched the ferris-wheel turn round and round. A world that they saw as rightfully theirs. They were hungry for it and they would have it. No matter the cost. In fact, the more human casualties... the better.

"Are you ready to go?" the newcomer asked, never taking their attention away from everything below.

"Yeah. Any longer and I might have to eat you."

"Like you could" came the cold, arrogant response.

"Just because you got five inches on me now, doesn't mean I can't still beat your ass Da..."

"Don't fucking call me that. While we're out here you call me Kuma and I call you... Blindfold, or Eyeless. Something like that." Even though his response had been quick and sharp, neither his tone nor his concentration had wavered.

"Eyeless" they conceded.

"Fine, Eyeless it is. Just don't go shouting our real names out in public. You're enough of a liability as it is without giving our fucking identities away."

Eyeless finally turned to look at their brother. They couldn't help feeling a pang of nostalgia. He had been so small once, constantly hanging onto their shoulders and making paper birds that he place all over their home. Those memories hurt, especially when they remembered what came after. He used to smile so much and now he's a moody little shit. They'd never been like that at fourteen, they thought smugly.

"Fine. Let's go KUMA before I rip your snarky head off." With that final retort, Eyeless turned and stepped off of the roof.

Kuma watched them drop six stories, landing with grace and poise. Why were they always so aggravating? Maybe he was jealous of their natural ability, or perhaps they were just a pain in the ass to be related to. With a sigh and a wandering look to the night sky, he followed suit.

* * *

The Marshalls finished up disposing of the ghoul. Bikakus are a pain in the ass Haruto thought, but it's better than a Ukaku. Haruto loved the fact that he was an intimidating figure. The ghoul had basically shat itself as soon as it had seen his large muscular frame, and cruel bearded face. The black trench coat they wore, that often announced the end for ghouls, probably didn't hurt either. He nudged the face of the corpse with his foot. He reckoned it wouldn't even be worth removing his Kakahou to get a new quinque. Taking into account the short amount of time it had taken him and Kenji to bypass his defences and cut him through the middle, he was a B rated ghoul maximum.

"Right, time we get back" Haruto sighed.

"Mhm" Kenji agreed. He never said much.

"Did you bring the body bag? You never know, you might be able to upgrade that piece of shit you call a quinque." Haruto laughed loudly. He loved taking the piss out of Kenji, especially when he knew his only retort woukd be 'mhm'.

As expected, Kenji responded with a grumbling "Mhm", and moved towards the body.

Haruto, turned to walk away, lighting a cigarette and beginning to inhale deeply. That Kenji was going to marry his sister. What's he gonna say when the priest asks him if he takes her to be his lawfully wedded wife? Mhm. Haruto chuckled to himself. All in all Kenji was a good guy, and one hell of a Marshall. He could use that crappy Ukaku quinque pretty damn well, even if it did come from a C rated ghoul. Kenji also took Haruto's kids to the beach when he and Mrs Haruto wanted a quiet weekend. He might be an ugly fucker with next to no hair, and a face that made you want to split him down the middle, but he was clean and sometimes smelt nice. Yeah, Kenji could marry his sister if he wanted. She could do a hell of a lot worse.

A loud splatter sounded out behind Haruto. He spun on his heels, instincts flaring immediately into action. Where the fuck was Kenji? Where his partner had been attempting to fit the ghoul into the black bag, there was now the cut in half corpse of his future brother in law, fallen to the sides with a blindfolded figure standing in the middle. His entire being twitched in anticipation of this thing making a move to kill him, but all it did was leasurly bend down and scoop something up from the gore beneath. As the creature straightened up, he saw that it was simply sucking on one of Kenji's bloody fingers. To others, this might signify a psychotic animal, but to a seasoned Marshall, this was a confident and calculating killer plain and simple. A powerful one at that. Their clothes were indistinctive; clad in thin black leather and fabric, however, their mask was a completely different story. Almost the entirety of its face was covered. Its mouth had a tight black fabric wrapped over it, with a skeletal smile that would open, revealing the snaking pink tongue underneath. The huge back leather collar surrounding it could be zipped up to hide all but the eyes from the world. Not that the eyes could be seen either. A bone white blindfold shut them off from view. Foreign symbols were drawn in deep black on either side, with the a closed eye taking centre stage. Although it was just a drawing, that closed eye was unearving, as if the lack of sight heightened its ability to see, instead of impeding it.

Now this was a ghoul. Just by its sheer presence Haruto could tell this one was rated A, or more likely >S. Haruto couldn't deny to himself that he was intimidated, but he was a senior Marshall, and always backed himself in a one on one. He looked down at his fallen partner and gulped. First things first, get into this guys head. Haruto scanned the ghoul, looking for weaknesses that he could exploit verbally. If he was lucky, the reaction could lead to him obtaining an edge. He noticed that this ghoul was slight in stature, maybe five foot five all told.

"You wanna end up like this other piece of shit, you fucking dwarf."

This garnered absolutely nothing.

Haruto couldn't take it much longer. This creature continued to lapp at the guts of his dead partner, that were splattered over its fingers. It obviously didn't give a shit what it looked like to others. It reminded him of a cat, publically cleaning its fur and genitals with no concern for the world. It was fucking reveling in its feast, and it made Haruto's blood boil.

"You killed an innocent man. He was gonna have a family and you ripped him apart. You monsters have no fucking souls and you all belong in hell. That's where I'm gonna send you. I'm a fucking senior Marshall you stupid shit. You have no clue how badly you've fucked up."

Again, the ghoul made no sign of changing emotion, continuing to dip its fingers in Kenji and take its time eating. Haruto knew he needed something else to get into its head so he scanned again. 'Shit' he thought, as the ghost of a smile passed over his lips. The majority of its body was covered in black that mostly obscured its shape, however, his keen eyes saw that although its grey hair was tied up, it was probably quite long when undone. At its chest area, although it was probably bound, there was the hint of a slightly tented structure. The hardest one to spot was the hips. Despite them being covered by black leather shorts, those hips were a tad too wide to be a man's.

"Alright you sick fuck. I'M A COMMIN FOR YA!"

With one last drive to uncover more courage, Haruto raised his Kokaku quinque and lept towards the ghoul.

"I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP FOR KENJI... YOU BITCH!"

As Haruto closed the distance with extreme speed, to less than two meters, the shadow of another figure dropped from the sky, landing directly next to the first. Haruto skidded to a halt, taken aback by the new masked creature. This one was certainly taller, and its face was covered by a red, horned mask. It was only as his attention slipped completely that he realised his final mistake. For the first time, the blindfolded ghoul smiled widely, the skeletal mouth parting to reveal massive bloody teeth.

The next thing Haruto knew was that he was laying down on the ground, face to the sky. His neck was warm and dripping wet. He raised his hands to his throat as the oxygen escaped his body, feeling the deep gash that was releasing his blood. The ghouls started conversing.

"Which one you want?" the first asked the newcomer.

"I don't care. You killed 'em both so you choose" the other responded dispondantly.

"Well, you're the growing boy so you take the ghoul and the first Reaper."

"Damn, well fuck me if you ain't the best big sister" uttered the male ghoul sarcastically, as he casually walked over to Kenji and the dead ghoul. "Why you taking you're mask off you sicko? The guys not even dead yet."

"I like it when they watch me" the female ghoul giggled.

Haruto saw the shadow of something passing over his head. "Ken...Ke..ji" Haruto gasped.

Suddenly, from below him came a the same giggle. "Awww dude, I think these guys were close."

"Eyeless, eat the fucker and let's go" came the voice of the male.

"Hey buddy boy, look at me will you" said the female from his feet.

Haruto craned his neck, scared of what he might see, but thinking 'fuck it' to himself. What's did he have to be afraid of, he's already dead. When he finally focused on the face he was confused. She was chewing on a leg. His leg. When the fuck did she get her dirty hands on that? When she'd finished on his leg, licking the tips of her fingers with delight, she bent down and hovered over him. Eyeless? That's what the other one had called her, but that wasn't true at all. Now that her blindfold was off he could see the entirety of her murderous giddy face.

"You're very funny" she said. "Innocent man. Gonna have a family. Its really fucking funny."

The last thing Haruto would ever see would be a testimony to her names innacuracy. Staring at him excitedly was one grey eye, so remarkably human looking it was weird. The other eye was a pool of darkness... with a violent, blood red pupil that seemed to be trying to force its way out of its black prison. She snapped up the rest of him.

"Sicko..."

End

[keep-calm-ask-the-librarian]

Jacques Snicket prided himself on being a focussed, rule-abiding driver regardless of the situation he found himself in. But on the short drive from the townhouse to the City Station he managed to miss two red lights, drive across a pedestrian crossing without stopping and make three turns without signaling

All in all he considered himself lucky to have arrived at the City Station in one piece. He couldn’t remember ever being so distracted, but the image of Olivia’s luminous white skin kept flashing through his mind, making it impossible to concentrate on anything but his desire to drive back to the house, pluck Sunny out of her arms and declare his undying love for her.

And the morning had started out so well. Having woken up early he had decided to treat the children to chocolate chip pancakes and the surprised look on their faces had been more than worth the trouble. It was the little things that made his new life so incredibly satisfying and seeing the children enjoy a leisured breakfast, joking and laughing with each other, while the morning sun filtered through the windows was definitely one of them.

Then Olivia had wandered in, a long cardigan over yellow pajamas adorned with little books, her chestnut hair still braided and his heart had skipped a beat. Usually she looked so well put together and as much as he enjoyed the dressy blouses, pencil skirts and high heels, there was something incredibly domestic about seeing her in her sleeping attire, lured downstairs by the smell of the pancakes.

When she reached for the teapot, pouring herself a steaming mug of tea that he’d prepared earlier, enjoying the strong taste of it as much as he did, everything had simply be perfect in his world.

After breakfast he’d been cleaning the kitchen when he’d heard Sunny’s shriek.

Without hesitating he had raced upstairs, ready to tackle down whoever was trying to scare his little girl and when he’d stormed into the room, Olivia was already there, clutching Sunny tightly against her, looking equally ready to defend the toddler.

The fearsome intruder turned out to be nothing more vicious than a rather oversized bee and it had been the work of a minute to get rid of the bug.

Olivia had said something to him then, but it hadn’t registered, because he’d finally noticed what exactly she’d been wearing. And immediately his brain had short-circuited, all of the blood in his body locating southwards with such a speed that it left him feeling dizzy.

The ferocity of his reaction shocked even himself. After all, it wasn’t as if he was completely wet behind the ears. In his years as an V.F.D. spy he’d come across women who’d been in a farther state of undress than Olivia had been at that moment, but never in his life had he been so affected by a modest bathing suit.

She was utter perfection, with her tantalizing curves and endless amounts of soft, brilliantly pale skin that begged the be touched. And when she had blushed he had nearly swallowed his tongue, aching with the urge to kiss every inch of that prettily flushed skin.

He knew he must have looked like a prize idiot, gaping at her, completely enthralled, unable to move or speak, even if his life had depended on it, but he had been utterly unable to snap out of it.

Then Violet and Klaus had come in and the situation had become ten times more awkward. He still hadn’t been able to string a single coherent sentence together and the children, observant as always, had picked up on the bizarre atmosphere in the room.

Parking the cab in front of the City Station he leaned back in his seat and slammed the steering wheel with both his hands in vexation with himself. After all of his effort, after weeks of keeping himself in check and bottling up his feelings for her, one green bathing suit with dark blue polkadots had undone all of it.

He had ruined all the progress he’d made in the past couple of weeks. After a strained start he and Olivia had fallen into a comfortable pattern. It still amazed him how seamlessly they worked together where the children where concerned, Olivia’s nurturing personality making it so much easier for him to show his devotion to the children. In their house, surrounded by his family, he didn’t need to pretend and keep up a tough front all the time. That part of him that just wanted to devote his time and energy to his family, making sure they were happy and had everything they needed had been doormat for so long, but since Olivia and the children had come into his life, it had finally emerged, making him feel truly happy and fulfilled for the first time in his life.

When he’d first made the decision to keep Olivia at arm’s length he had been worried about the irrevocable damage this could do to their relationship. His flirtatious  behavior and the kiss they had shared before she’s set off for the Caligari Carnival must have let her believe that there could be a future for them. And even knowing that he was acting in the best interest of her and the children, it had still pained him to hurt her.

But as the weeks had wore on and she’d been able to interact with him calmly, even regaining some of the friendship they’d shared before he’d realized he’d been worried for nothing.

Olivia Caliban might have been attracted to him when they’d first meet, but after his sudden cold treatment of her she’d swiftly moved on like the sensible woman that she was.

It was everything he had hoped for and he should be pleased with this development and content himself with their comfortable, platonic friendship.

And he was content. He truly was.

Taking a deep breath he realized warily though that the carnal impulses induced by  mental image of her clad in nothing but that green bathing suit with the dark blue polkadots were anything but platonic. And so he climbed out of the cab and headed inside the building, towards the gym.

A vigorous, fatiguing workout was just what he needed.

On the last Saturday before school was about to start again, Jacques and Olivia surprised Klaus and Violet with a visit to Duncan and Isadora Quagmire.

They had debated whether or not it would be wise to bring the children together after all of the trauma they had endured, but in the end they had decided to simply suggest their idea to the children and let their reactions guide them.

The look of utter excitement and happiness had quickly erased all of their apprehension and early that morning Jacques drove them all into the city for a meet-up.

After their escape from the village of Fowl Devotees the Quagmires spend several weeks in the self-sustaining hot air mobile home before Hector had managed to safely deliver them to the V.F.D. headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains.

Now that their parents too had perished, the two siblings had been adopted by their aunt, a sister of their father. Veronica Quagmire had been a teacher for over thirty years and was more than happy to take in the Quagmire children.

Jacques was relieved to know that the Quagmire children too were finally safe. Quigley still hadn’t been discovered yet, which was the one matter that still troubled him excessively. Until the Quagmire triplets were reunited, Jacques know he would be able to rest and despite the fact that he was still on authorized leave, he was already discreetly making inquiries after possible leads as to the boys whereabouts.

But that was a worry for another day, today they would focus on bringing the children together.

They started at a small, cosy bakery, the children filling each other in on everything that had happened in their lives since their last encounter while getting their fill of an assortment of cakes and pastries and it was wonderful to see them relaxed and happy. The Quagmires, as it turned out had settled well into living with their aunt, even though they were still shaken by the death of their parents. Both of them loved seeing Olivia again and judging from her brilliant smile and teary eyes the feeling was entirely mutual.  

They spend the day meandering through the city and ended up visiting the Museum of Espionage where they gaped at the various displays of ingenious artifacts of observation and assassination. There were recorders in lighters, cameras in brassieres, decks of cards with hidden maps to every location imaginable and a collection of potions that made the hairs Jacques neck stand up. The children were delighted and he was amused to see Violet scribbling fervently into her notebook.

He had a sneaky suspicion a new set of inventions would soon see the light of day. There was no denying that Violet was incredibly talented and Jacquelyn had already expressed a desire in recruiting her as a new volunteer. After discussing the matter with Olivia, they had both decided it would be better to hold off for just a little while.

Violet was a born for the V.F.D., there was no doubt about that and Jacques knew in his bones that she was destined for great things, but for now he very much wanted her to have a few peaceful years, surrounded by her family.

Smiling to himself he watched Klaus read every single description on every single display, absorbing the knowledge like a sponge.

Klaus too would one day become an tremendous asset to the V.F.D. but his pursuits were very different from Violet’s. Not every volunteer was recruited at a young age and Klaus first had many years of school, university and post-grad programs to look forward to.

Their children had a future again and Jacques could accomplish just that in his life, it would be enough.

When dinnertime rolled around they talked about where to eat.

“Na sal!” Sunny proclaimed firmly.

“She means no Café Salmonella,” Klaus translated and Olivia shuddered.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” she said emphatically and Jacques snickered.

“How about The Veritable French Diner instead?” he suggested.

Twenty minutes later they were all seven of them were seated around a large family table and Jacques ordered the drinks.

“Does Larry work here as well?” Olivia asked, taking a sip of her ginger ale.

“He does occasionally,” Jacques replied, “but then again he waiters wherever intervening waiting needs to be done.”

At his words Violet’s eyes widened and she shared a look with Isadora before the two girls burst into giggles.

Jacques raised an eyebrow at them. “Something funny, girls?”

“I just remember something Duncan and Isadora told us earlier,” Violet answered and at her words, Klaus and Sunny started to grin as well, clearly in on the joke. “About something you did.”

Catching Olivia’s eyes he realized she was just as dumbfounded as he was. But judging from the children’s mirth it couldn’t be too bad. “Well, that could be quite a number of things, so color me curious.”

Violet eventually took pity on him. “It’s something Larry told Duncan and Isadora when they were staying at the V.F.D. headquarters,” she explained. “Apparently Jacques called Carmelita Spats a ‘cake sniffer’ while he was rescuing Larry.”

As if on cue the children burst into laughter again, Sunny squealing delightedly.

Despite himself, Jacques grinned before gravely replying. “I might have done just that. I found her to be an extremely unpleasant girl. And besides… she started it.”

“Really, Jacques Snicket,” Olivia admonished him. “You got into a squabble with a little girl?”

She gave him an arched look, her eyes sparkling and for a second it was as if they were back in the cab, bantering and flirting back and forward as they chased the Quagmire children and his heart squeezed tightly with regret.

Oh, to hell with it. For once he could pay her back in kind and pretend that there was nothing stopping him from trying to win her over.

“I did nothing of the sort,” he answered stately. “I merely told her that I did not care for her mistreating my friend. And then I called her  cake sniffer.”

The children cracked up again and it took some effort to keep his face straight. “It did shut her up however.”

Olivia inclined her head towards him, her face solemn. “That is no small feat, I concede.”

Then the corner of her mouth tugged, dimples appearing in both of her cheeks. “I would have loved to see her get taken down a notch.”

The children hummed heartily in agreement to that statement and then their food was served. As they all tucked in, Olivia remarked quietly: “I never realized you came to Prufrock Prep while I was there.”

Up until she said it, he hadn’t either but it didn’t take long before his mind supplied him with various different scenarios.

He would have met her at Prufrock and fallen as instantly for her as he’d done when he had almost hit her with the cab. He would have taken her, the Baudelaires and the Quagmires away from that dreary, dreadful place and none of the horrendous events of the past four months would have happened.

But it wouldn’t do to dwell on it.

Their story could have gone that way, except that it hadn’t.

On September the first school started and with that a whole new routine was put in motion.

Violet and Klaus especially were thrilled to be back in school, the latter throwing himself into his schoolwork with a zeal that slightly frightened Jacques.

After the first week he discreetly contacted the school’s counsellor, inquiring if the children were dealing with any consequences from their year of absence, but he was assured that both of them were settling in well and that their teachers were very pleased with both their behavior and performance. It was more or less exactly what he had been expecting, but it still took a weight of his shoulders to see them thriving.

On the morning that Olivia had started at her new job at Luminosity he’d seen a side of her he hadn’t previously encountered. Around the children she always seemed so sure of herself, so completely in control, but that morning she’d been a mess of nervous excitement and sick-to-her-stomach anxiety.  It baffled him that anyone as competent and clever as her could ever doubt her own capability and it had taken everything in him not to wrap her up in his arms and tell her that she was brilliant and beautiful and that she would excel at her new post.

By the time she got home that evening her apprehension had given way to utter delight at her new position, her euphoria not diminishing in the slightest in the weeks that followed and it made him realize just how under appreciated she had been at Prufrock. Olivia whole-heartedly loved her new job and the extensive research on V.F.D. matters she had done over the summer with Klaus definitely paid off as she began to implement a new filing system that combined resources that had never been connected before, greatly benefiting volunteers who were working in the field.

He himself hadn’t been cleared for active duty yet, much to his own chagrin, but he had been allowed to return to desk work and he now spend his working hours at the V.F.D. City Station, pouring over every file that mentioned the Quagmires in the hope of finding a trace of Quigley. Another perk of visiting the City Station regularly was the fact that he could use their gym facility. He discovered that in order to let his sanity and self control prevail it helped to workout regularly and he did so with gusto.

Klaus and Violet signed up for after school activities. Violet was elated to discover that there was quite an active inventors club at the school and immediately signed up. Meanwhile, Klaus joined the vocabulary olympiad team and started preparing for a tournament in November.

All in all his family was happy and at peace.

Then it became September the 30th, the one year anniversary of the fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire home and taken the lives of Bertrand and Beatrice.

For days in advance the date hung like Damocles’ sword above their heads and if small mercies were anything to be thankful for, Jacques was grateful for the fact that the 30th fell on a Sunday so that the children at least wouldn’t have to worry about school work.

That morning they visited the cemetery where Bertrand and Beatrice were buried next to each other. It was a miserable, grey, rainy day and as they walked the gravel path, the Baudelaire children close together and him and Olivia each on one side, holding umbrellas over them. Their faces were clouded with sadness and white as sheets and Jacques heart twisted painfully from just looking at them.

Upon arriving at the graves he was startled to find that a small bouquet of red roses had already been placed at the foot of Beatrice’s tombstone.

The children smiled slightly at this display of affection for their parents, pleased that someone else but themselves was remembering them.

“They had a lot of friends,” Violet commented softly. “There was this whole world of people that they knew that we had no idea about.”

“I do wonder about the roses though,” Klaus said plaintively, his analytical mind piquing up even at a moment as this. “Roses are rather traditional as mourning flowers, but the color red isn’t… it’s an indicator of passion…”

At his words the budding suspicion that had been growing inside of him solidified and Jacques could feel his heart rate pick up.

Red roses on Beatrice’s grave… that could only mean that Lemony must be close by.

Taking a deep breath he tried to get his emotions under control. Right now the children needed his support, it wouldn’t do to upset them.

The three of them knelt down at the conjuncted graves and Klaus carefully put down the bouquet of white lilies they had brought.

“Good bye father and mother,” Violet said quietly, her voice barely above a tearful whisper. “We miss you so much.”

Without making a single noise Sunny buried her face into her sisters neck and patted her hair with her tiny, stubby fingers.

“We do,” added Klaus. “So very much. But you should also know… we are going to be all right. We will be now, because we have a home again…”

Jacques risked a glance at Olivia, only to see that there were tears streaming down her face and it wasn’t until he felt wetness against his own lips that he realized he was crying too. At long last the children rose, and as if by a magnetic pull, they both gravitated towards their guardians. Jacques wrapped his arm around Violet and Sunny while Olivia pulled Klaus into an embrace.

Eventually they slowly walked back to the cab and once inside they took a moment to collect themselves.

Turning to look over the front seat of the cab, he inspected the tearful faces of the children while Olivia doled out tissues and soft caresses against cheeks.

“Alright?” he inquired gently.

“Yes… yeah…” Violet nodded. “I’m glad we went… It was good to say goodbye properly… we never really did that.”

“It was,” Klaus agreed. “But now… we just really want to go home if that’s all right.”

Almost too choked up to speak, Jacques nodded and fastened his seatbelt “Of course that’s all right… let’s go home.”

On beforehand he and Olivia had talked with the children about how they would like to spend the day and what each of them needed to get through it. The three siblings had indicated that they would like to remain as close as possible during the day and almost instinctively they holed themselves up in the library, the one single place where they had always managed to find comfort in the past year.

For a moment he had wondered if the children wouldn’t rather prefer to be alone and he shared a worried look with Olivia.

But they hadn’t as much as taken one step towards the door when the children stiffened. “Aren’t you going to stay?” Violet asked in a quiet voice.

“Of course we are,” Olivia reassured her instantly. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

They spend a quiet, gloomy day inside, each of the children barely talking, feeling clearly that every word, no matter how well-meant, would fall like a stone in the fragility of their grief.

Jacques only left the room to fetch tea and light snacks for the children and as the afternoon turned into evening the children slowly started to relax a little, the heavy oppressiveness of sadness and mourning lifting somewhat, although it wasn’t until after dinner that they started to talk again.

“I have been dreading this day so much,” Violet confessed that evening, as she sat curled up on the couch, tucked underneath a blanket, Sunny dozing in her arms.

“Me too,” Klaus complemented. “There something so final about it. It’s been a year now… All of this year I’ve been thinking… ‘but last year father and mother were still here and they did this or that…’

Now I can’t do that anymore.”

“I know,” Violet said quietly. “I feel that too, but on the other hand… I’m also hoping it will be easier from now on. There will be no more firsts… No more first birthdays without them, no more first Christmas… we’ve all made it past that.”

“I hope it will get easier, but sometimes I doubt that it ever will,” Klaus said, his voice hoarse as if every word cost him to be spoken. “Sometimes in the morning, just after I have woken up… I haven’t yet remembered that they’re gone and for a moment everything feels like it used to be before… and then I do remember…”

And Jacques himself remembered only too well. For the first few years after his own parents had died, how often had he woken up feeling the exact same way? But before he could say anything, Olivia’s tearful voice beat him to it.

“I know, honey… and it might take a while for that to go away, but it will eventually, I promise.”

Klaus smiled sadly. “It’s not as bad as it used to be… not since we started living here anyway… but I still feel terrible when it does.”  

“But when the dawn of morning comes he wakes to find once more

That what he thought were sun-kissed hills are rags upon the floor,”

Olivia quoted quietly.

Despite his grief, Klaus’ face lit up briefly in the way a literate mind does when it finds himself being understood by works of fiction. “That’s it… that’s exactly how I feel.. who wrote that?”

“It’s from a poem by Edgar Albert Guest,” Olivia replied. “I’ve always found it to be very comforting.”

For a long moment they were all quiet before Violet spoke again, her voice hesitant. “Olivia… do you still have your parents?”

Jacques watched his wife intently, seeing her startle at the unexpected question, his heart racing. He had wondered about it so often, but he had never quite dared to breech the subject himself.

Olivia took a shuddering breath, before she clenched her hands together in her lap. “I’m an orphan too… my parents passed away when I was five years old.”

There was a world of sadness in her voice, but when she looked at the children there was a look of recognition. Tilting her head she looked inquisitively before asking. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“We suspected it,” Violet answered. “It was something you said to us when we just got to Prufrock.”

“You said: ‘It’s awful, isn’t it, to have people missing from your life. It’s like a question that haunts you day and night and you’ll never know if that question will ever be answered,’” Klaus added.

Jacques shook his head with a smile, marveling at the boy’s memory.

Across from him Olivia was smiling as well, although more tearfully.

“Also,” Violet continued, “when Count Olaf made all the orphans stand up during the pep rally, you stood up as well. We’ve wondered ever since.”

“You children are far too clever,” Olivia answered, her voice rich with affection. “Very well, my parents died from carbon monoxide poisoning. During the investigation later they found a leak in the kitchen… which is where they perished… My father was meticulous about keeping windows closed, he hated draughts.”

“What happened to you after that?” Violet asked, leaning closer.

“First my aunt took me in,” Olivia told. “But she was planning a journey around the world and she couldn’t very well take me with her… she said I would only be weighing her down… so after that another couple took me in. They weren’t related to me… but they thought they wanted a child so they became my guardians. Then it turned out that I wasn’t compatible with their dog, so they send me away again…”

“That’s horrible!” Violet and Klaus exclaimed in unison, disgust written across their faces. Their cry woke Sunny who added a sleepy “Da-bla!” to the conversation.

“My sister means ‘deplorable’,” Klaus translated helpfully.

“Well, I suppose it’s not as bad as some of the guardians that were appointed to you,” Olivia replied with a shrug. “After that I was send to a school. It wasn’t terrible… for all intents an purposes I think it even was a very good school… I learned a lot there… it just wasn’t a home.”

“And you didn’t have any siblings,” Violet supplied, shuddering slightly. “You were all alone.”

For a second Jacques could see a world of hurt and pain on her face, but then she smiled again. “Well, that was then… I’m no longer alone now, am I?”

Barely daring to breath he watched as the Baudelaire children shuffled closer around her, taking her up in a circle.

“You’re not.”

Sitting there, rooted to his spot, the truth hit him with as much painful clarity as a blow with a sledgehammer would have done and he wondered how he had ever missed the signs.

It all made sense now… her determination at saving the Baudelaires and the Quagmires, her surprise at finding herself recruited by the V.F.D, her anxiety at starting a new job and fitting in, the way she glowed whenever she was around the children…

She had been looking for a family as much as the rest of them had.

For months he had had felt faintly guilty about ripping her away from her safe, secure world, even if Prufrock perhaps wasn’t the happiest place to be, but now he understood how short-sighted he had been. He had focussed all of his energy and responsibility on the children, completely ignoring the fact that Olivia needed to be loved as well.

With a pang he remembered his wedding vows, the words he had spoken so earnestly all those weeks ago, despite their unusual circumstances.

That he would love and cherish her until his dying day.

He had done none of those things. Instead of loving her he had kept her at arms length, destroying most of their beautiful friendship in the progress and instead of cherishing her and finding a new way to show her every day what a beautiful and wonderful woman she was and how much he adored her, he had treated her as if she was nothing more than a random associate.

Kit had been right all along.

He was an utter idiot.

[the-christian-walk]

REDEMPTION FROM A MERCIFUL GOD

Can I pray for you in any way?

Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:”

‘The deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’

“As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on them all.”

Romans 11:25-32

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In yesterday’s message, we found the Apostle Paul sharing three sides of God with his Roman readers.

On one hand, God is stern and unwavering in the way He despises sin. Anyone disrespecting and disobeying Him can expect to receive discipline.

On the other hand, God is merciful and forgiving. Not wanting anyone to perish in their transgressions, He makes the way for people to not only get right with Him but abide with Him forever. All one needs to do is believe in His Son Jesus who He sent as an atoning sacrifice to pay the sin penalty once and for all, for all people.

It’s this truth that reveals a third side of God, that of redemption and it’s this character trait of the Lord that we find Paul continue to discuss in our verses for today from Romans 11. Look again at what he had to say here:

“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:”

‘The deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’

“As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on them all.”  Romans 11:25-32

Many of the Jews hardened their hearts, refusing to place their faith and trust in Jesus as the long predicted Messiah. In doing so, they essentially rejected the new covenant God was forming, not just with them but the Gentiles (those who weren’t Jews).

Speaking of the Gentiles, many of them willingly and gladly accepted God’s offer of salvation through His Son, becoming Christians when at one time they seemed to live a lifetime separated from God. Again, it was God’s amazing redemption, a redemption born out of His deep mercy that opened up the opportunity of eternal life for people that once seemed beyond saving.

So what about the Jews who chose to turn their backs on God’s offer of salvation through Jesus?

Well, as we see Paul so skillfully write, they still had hope. God’s gifts and call were, and still are, irrevocable. In other words, He doesn’t withdraw the offer but always leaves the door open for anyone who decides to reverse course and accept Jesus as Savior. Redemption is always an option because we have a merciful God as our Maker and Master.

There’s always hope that a sinner might turn their lives around and emerge a far better person because they became a saved child of God, the One who is the Great Redeemer of His people. Paul knew this better than most because he was a perfect example of what redemption looks like, having moved from a murderous, Jewish Christian persecutor to the greatest Apostle Jesus ever had.

Today, our God is still as merciful and in the redemption business, ever ready to bring people out of the judgment seat of sin and into the glorious holiness of justification, righteousness, and salvation.

Thanks be to God for who He was, who He is, and who He will always be. Tomorrow we will begin a five devotion series looking at His amazing nature.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com

[absynthe--minded]

City on the edge of forever

one-word summation: overrated

the actual review: okay, I said it. I love ‘City on the Edge of Forever’. I think it’s one of the best TOS episodes. I don’t think it’s The Best, though (that honor probably goes to ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’ for comedy and ‘Balance of Terror’ or ‘Journey to Babel’ for serious drama) and I think its reputation as The Most Awesome TOS Episode is somewhat undeserved. (I also think Harlan Ellison’s perpetual salt over his script being heavily adapted for budget reasons is annoying and pointless after so many years.)

Here’s the plot, if you’re unfamiliar: an Enterprise away team discovers an omnipotent or near-omnipotent entity called the Guardian of Forever, who shows them scenes from Earth’s past. Dr. McCoy has an accident, injects himself with a drug he shouldn’t have injected himself with, and under its influence flings himself through the Guardian of Forever into late 1930s Earth. Kirk and Spock follow and discover that something McCoy did irrevocably changed the future, so while they seek him out they also try and figure out what happened so they can undo it and return to their own timeline without further incident. Eventually, they discover that Edith Keeler, a pacifist and social activist Kirk is slowly falling in love with, will become influential enough to prevent America from entering into World War II long enough for Hitler to fully conquer Europe/Britain. Kirk must let her die to save the world. He agonizes over this choice but ultimately decides that his love life is less important than the whole future of humanity and doesn’t intervene when Edith is run over in the street by a car. Our trio returns to the future, there’s some pensive thought about sacrifice and historical impact, roll credits.

There are a lot of things that are really great about this episode, but it doesn’t feel like Star Trek. (And that can either be a good or a bad thing, but when I’m rating Best Star Trek Episodes I kind of want an episode to feel like Star Trek.) The reveal that Edith has to die to save the future comes relatively late, with not a lot of time spent on the moral dilemma of knowingly allowing someone to die when you know their death will bring about a net positive. And the focus of that dilemma is entirely regarding Kirk’s personal feelings for her instead of asking the kind of big questions Star Trek was even then becoming famous for - it’s about If Kirk’s Girlfriend Is Worth Saving, not about the deep and serious questions surrounding action and inaction in dangerous situations. This could have been a really fascinating examination of responsibility in the face of greater knowledge, but instead it’s a love story. And sometimes a love story is all you need, but in this case I’m way more interested in the bigger picture, especially since I don’t buy the Kirk/Keeler romance. (And they don’t actually do a very good job of selling that romance, either - we see Kirk being somewhat captivated with Edith, yes, but his interest in her seems to stem from an admiration of her work and her values and her ambitions for humanity, not necessarily the kind of deep and abiding world-shattering love that would make you seriously doubt if your own future deserves to exist. It’s not impossible to craft a believable pairing in a standard TV show runtime - ‘Rejoined’ did it thirty years later with a similar one-off character, after all - but it does take more effort than is exhibited here.)

final thoughts: “He got his head caught in a mechanical rice picker.”

[tgwltw]

Just me, only me.

I really do love writing about Dick. Hopefully this is alright! Sorry for taking months to get this prompt written. Thank you for your compliment although at this point, I’m not even sure if I still deserve it but thank you, nonetheless! Hope you enjoy reading this. 

p/s: to my dear faithful followers, I would really love to hear from you, guys! How have you guys been doing? I feel like I have a lot of stories to catch up on and a lot of requests to go through too but I am working on them so no worries on that.

to my new followers, hi, guys! thank you for following.

Tonight, you are supposed to be having fun with your boyfriend.

Tonight, you are also supposed to be a better person – a better you.

Tonight, you are not supposed to react visibly upon seeing him.

Tonight, your heart is not supposed to lurch painfully and race at the sight of him in his wonderful, clean-cut, suit.

These were the rules you told yourself to abide tonight.

But tonight, within the span of fifteen minutes, you have broken all the rules and you did the one thing you are really good at and that is to put on a convincing fake smile and try to go about the night as if nothing is wrong.

You would have been able to do this successfully if you are not approached by Dick when you walked out of the bathroom. You probably should have seen this coming; in fact, this has been a long time coming. You abruptly stop walking but you know that even if you try to go back into the toilet, Dick probably saw you already.

Dick nods his head at you, face void of any smile and you return his greeting with a curt nod. “We need to talk.” He tells you and you could not help but shiver at the sound of his voice. Before you can even reject his offer, Dick stalks off and having known him since he was a kid, you know it would be very futile to try and outrun him so you follow him, admiring how well he looks from behind. (A man in suit has always been your weakness but Dick in a suit, it is a whole different story).

You almost crashed into Dick’s back when he stopped suddenly. He turns to look at you and motion for you to take a seat at one of the ottomans. He must be familiar with the venue to know about this place – it is not that far away from where the dinner is going on and it is not too out in the public for the talk you know is bound to happen.

Just as you made yourself comfortable, Dick turns to really look at you. There is this unreadable emotion in his eyes as he stares at you. It almost makes you feel uncomfortable. “Why did you start avoiding me, Y/N?” He asks and you didn’t even have to strain to hear the hurt in his voice.

You immediately look away from him. “Where do I start?” You mumble to yourself. It has been a few months since you last talked to him or even entertained any of his texts and calls. Even if Dick is a really great detective, unfortunately for him, you are better at hiding and you have the tendency of not being found when you do not want people to find you.

Dick crosses his arms as he takes in the sight of you. “How about from the start?” He grunts. Seeing you again tonight after those few months of not having you around really did a number on him – he missed talking to you about menial things, he missed hanging out at your place and binge-eating whatever pizza the both of you decided to order those nights; in short, Dick really missed you a lot. Seeing you tonight brought back a lot of emotions that Dick was not prepared for and one that stood out the most was the jealousy that burned within his chest, clawing at his heart when you introduced your boyfriend to everyone. “Or you can tell me the truth too, either works.”

His quick search told him nothing is amiss with your boyfriend; an elementary school teacher, clean record, rather filial – something he never thought you would settle with and it irks him. It makes him a little bit annoyed too which is why he had decided to corner you when he saw you made a move to head to the bathroom.

“The truth?” You hum in response as you ponder your next sort of actions. Telling him the truth would be akin to opening the Pandora box and that is something you do not know if you are ready to deal with but at the same time, trying to skirt around the problem will also not help you too.

“Y/N…” Dick calls out your name with the softest tone that has ever left his mouth and this causes you to look at him. Dick runs his hand through his hair, ruffling it a bit before sitting on the ottoman beside yours, his body facing you. “Can you at least please tell me what is wrong?” He gulps the lump that appeared in his throat and wrings his wrists.

You sigh. “It actually has nothing to do with you – “

“Bullshit!” Dick hisses. “You know that’s not true.” Dick cannot help but feel slightly offended at the generic excuse you have given him.

You shake your head. “No, I am being serious, Dick.” You look at him briefly before looking up at the beautiful, intricate designs on the ceiling. “It’s really mostly about me. Less of you but more of a me kind of thing.”

Dick shakes his head. He almost forgets how you like to speak in such a roundabout way. “Would you care to elaborate more on that?” He prompts.

“Dick, I just couldn’t stand being your friend anymore – not because I hate you,” You quickly add when from the corner of your eyes, you see him flinching visibly. “It was… mostly because I had been in love with you ever since we were little kids and I figured it was time for me to move on and that was what I did.”

Several things flew over his head and dread wash over him. “Had been – does that mean you are no longer in love with me?” The words that left his mouth left quite a bitter taste. The frown on Dick’s face deepens.

You shrug your shoulders. “I have a boyfriend, Dick.”

Dick shakes his head. “You didn’t answer my question, Y/N. Does that mean you are no longer in love with me?” He asks you as he reaches for your hand. You stare at him when he loosely grabs onto your wrist, gently caressing it with his thumb. “Please, Y/N, I need to know.”

You definitely did not like the hope that began to boil right under your nose and it takes you a few minutes to answer Dick’s question. “It’s because I still am in love with you that I know I need to stay away, Dick.” You try to pull your wrist away from him but Dick tightens his grip on you and moves over to sit beside you. “Dick, please,” You don’t even know what you are begging him for.

“No,” Dick shakes his head before leaning forward to press his forehead against yours. Your cheeks flushes furiously and your breath hitches as he stares at you. “If I let you go; I am going to lose you forever.” He whispers and you can see the rampant emotions in his eyes and your heart thuds wildly against your chest. “Those few months without you were hell – it’s still hell, Y/N.”

You try to look away from Dick but he grabs onto your chin so that you are looking at him still. “Dick, please, I,” You try to formulate a sentence in your mind. Being this close to Dick is doing a lot of things to you – you had even managed to kid to yourself about finally being able to move on from Dick. “I have a boyfriend.” You tell him weakly as you try to push him away from you. “I can’t do this to him, Dick.”

Dick takes a deep breath before pulling away from you. “I know you do and that is my biggest regret, Y/N. If I had known of your feelings before, I would have acted on it – I may be really oblivious to my own feelings at times but I do have feelings for you and I care for you deeply.” He shakes his head when he catches sight of your boyfriend heading towards the two of you. “I just want you to know that I will not stop until I am able to win your heart once more, Y/N.” Dick stands up and you follow suit. He leans over to press his lips tenderly against your cheek causing you to blush. “I’ll call you, Y/N – have a good night.”

At first you had been confused as to why Dick retreated but when your boyfriend calls out your name, you turn to look at him with a bittersweet smile. Mentally, you curse yourself for being weak to Dick’s charms and for not being able to move on like you said you would. When your boyfriend approaches you and asks you if anything is wrong, you resisted the urge to answer ‘everything’ and simply tell him you had a headache and that was why you had gone out for some fresh air.

“You do look flushed.” Your boyfriend comments and you almost feel guilty – you know the reason why you look flush and it was none other than Dick’s fault. “Come on, let’s get you home.” You wanted to protest because you actually feel fine but thinking of going back to the table and acting like nothing had happened between Dick and you made you feel unsettled so you simply nod your head and let your boyfriend lead you away from the restaurant with a heavy heart.

Tonight, you have come to realize that the lies you tried feeding yourself is simply lies and that you are still irrevocably in love with one Richard – Dick – Grayson.

[kingdomofthelogos]

Dangerous Power of Holiness

Read Mark 11:13-26

Download a printable version here.

To truly appreciate the love of God and the holiness to which we are called, then we must understand the dangerous and compelling nature of God. The heavenly throne above all worlds is not safe, but the power of God desires that we find repentance rather than destruction. The curse of the fig tree in Mark 11 is not a random or senseless condemnation, but Jesus paying the tree the wages it earned by pretending to bear fruit when it did not. Furthermore, Jesus uses the tree as an opportunity to call His followers to have honest faith in God, for doing so will bless them with the dangerous goodness of God which can move mountains.

Isaiah 6:1-8 reads In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

The prophet beholds the dangerous presence of God, whose appearance is so powerful that the seraphs must cover their feet and faces to avoid destruction. To even declare His holiness shakes the structure of creation’s most perfect architecture.

When Isaiah witnesses God without any blinders or veils which might lessen his view, his immediate words are “I am ruined!” Different translations might approach this by saying “I am undone,” or “I am lost,’ but the Hebrew “damah,” is a word which means irrevocable destruction. The prophet recognizes the truth that God is too dangerous to even lay eyes upon.

Yet, the One whose beauty alone can destroy hates destruction, and desires goodness and redemption for His creatures. Isaiah finds himself in an hour from which there is no escape, and yet a burning coal is placed on his mouth to render him clean and sufficient to endure in God’s presence.

The imagery around the curse of the fig tree is neither passive nor casual, but instead  the message is overwhelmingly fatal. Ranging from the plain notion of withering to the extraordinary notion of a mountain being tossed into the sea, these are images of finality, conditions from which one cannot escape. In the midst of such heaviness comes the Gospel truth: that if one abides faithfully with God, then they will be graced beyond measure; however, those with impure hearts will receive their earnings in full and meet an irreparable end.

The fig tree is placed in an urgent moment, for there is no opportunity for it to return to a comfortable state of idleness. It must either bear fruit, or accept the curse for its dishonesty. Moreover, dishonesty is a prominent aspect of the fig tree’s failure, for it is displaying prominent leaves as if they were actually bearing fruit. From a distance, the tree has all of the visual aspects correct to suggest it is doing what it is supposed to do. However, upon close examination one finds that there is nothing really happening.

The fig tree is bearing false witness about its life, just as there are many people who prefer to appear virtuous rather than actually be virtuous. There are many who desire the approval of the world, to be viewed as activists and caring people who are dedicated to particular causes; yet, when one looks beneath the facade there is nothing good happening.

Romans 6:23 read for the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Wages are earnings and not gifts. We must understand that death is earned by sin, it is the necessary and correct reward for the aberrations which grate chaos against the created order of God. The fig tree bore false witness about its virtue, it claimed to be producing something good when in fact it was doing nothing. It was running a scam, misleading others and taking up space that could be given to a more honest tree. As a result, it earned its death, and the withering curse was the true seed of its dishonest actions.

Genesis 1:1-4 reads In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. We must understand that creation is not tame, and nor is the goodness which God spoke. In order for there to be anything of value, anything of meaning, there must be an extraordinary amount of power binding it in shape to prevent it from collapsing back to the void. One might wonder why the forces of nature are so extraordinarily powerful, but the throne above all worlds is dangerous and unsafe. Moreover, even what we consider to be the slightest of sins can mangle creation’s great power into meaningless suffering.

There are many who find it difficult to understand what it means to fear God. Moreover, there are a great many theologians of our modern era who churn over ways of interpreting and translating this concept so that they might discover some relevant understanding. There is a simple reason why people find it difficult to understand fear of God: they have forgotten how absolutely dangerous He is.

When Jesus curses the fig tree in Mark 11, we are reminded that the power of God is a serious affair. Our modern world has conjured up the fake virtue of living “judgement free,” but what this often means practically is to live without standards or upward aspirations. The call of Christ saves us from the condemnation of sin, but expects us to live holy lives which reflect Christlike love. The One whose face could destroy Moses if he were not hidden in the cleft of a rock actually wants to love and bless Moses. Furthermore, God does not want to use His power to destroy us, but to call us to a higher standard of living that can only be found through His truth.

Proverbs 1:7 states that fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, and truly, when we recognize how severe God’s danger is then suddenly the dark valleys around us do not have such weight. Moreover, once we realize that God’s dangerous and compelling nature is to love us and call us to His Kingdom, then we can be liberated from the wiles of chaotic, evil, and petty living.

[juju-on-that-yeet]

When Evil Rears its Head: Chapter 4 - Snap

Peevils is still fighting Wilford, and Dark is still stuck under her spell. Maybe Yandereplier can help him out?

Read below or on AO3!

Two floors above Wilford and Peevils’s struggle, Darkiplier is still in his office as Peevils commanded. Although his expression is empty and his is body still, his mind is racing. The words Peevils used are slowly wearing off. His mind is mostly clear of the fog the strange statements brought on, his throbbing headache has diminished to the point where it’s not the only thing he can think about. But he needs an outside push, something else to help him break through.

Luckily, it is about the time of morning that Yandereplier usually shows up at Dark’s office.

Nearly since the moment of his creation, Yandere has lived to please Dark. He admires the older ego deeply. Dark is evil, powerful, handsome, mysterious, and everything else Yandere could wish for in a senpai. There’s no one else Yandere would rather have as his senpai; indeed, even trying to imagine an existence without Dark is too upsetting for Yandere to do for very long. He does concede that Dark is becoming less mysterious to him as the days go by, but this is only a good thing. It means that Yandere is learning ever more about his senpai, getting ever closer to truly becoming his kohai. Back when Yandere was new, it was difficult to get much more than a sneer from Dark (which he still relished, because being noticed by senpai in any context is more than enough for Yandere, and always has been). But now, Dark notices Yandere all the time. If Yandere didn’t know any better, he’d guess that Dark has become fond of him. Imagine that! Dark liking Yandere. A blush rises to Yandere’s cheeks just thinking about it. Yandere tries not to get too ahead of himself. He sees how seriously Dark takes himself and tries to emulate that cool attitude. But he’s a teenager at heart; a hopelessly romantic and moody thing. It occurs to Yandere that most teenagers do not long for, seek out, or participate in mindless violence and bloodshed, but he has that youthful pride that assures him that he is better than some silly child. After all, he gets noticed by Dark.

He hums to himself as he skips to Dark’s office. He doesn’t care enough about what others think not to, and besides, no one rooms on this floor but him and Dark (who, initially, was deeply unhappy to have to share a floor with the upstart young ego, but eventually seemed to get over it). When he gets to Dark’s office, he feels Dark’s aura from outside the door, and knows he’s there. Even though Dark always lets him in, Yandere always knocks anyway.

“Ohayou gozaimasu~!” Yandere greets Dark through the door. “May I come in, Yami-san?”

Yandere waits for a reply. He waits again. A moment turns into a pause turns into a stretch and Dark has not responded. Yandere frowns. Even if Dark doesn’t want him to come in, he’d say so. Dark has never not answered Yandere’s morning greeting. Not once. Even in the beginning he’d reply, if only to tell Yandere to go away. This silence is not like Dark. Yandere begins to feel his nerves prickle with anxiety.

“Yami-san, are you not feeling well?” Yandere asks. “I would never want to bother you when you’re sick, so please tell me if you’d prefer to be alone.”

Of course, if Dark is sick, Yandere would love to take care of him, but he knows that Dark would never abide by that. Either way, Dark still does not answer. Yandere get more nervous. He starts to notice that Dark’s aura, while still palpable through the closed door, is subdued, restrained. He’s been around Dark enough to get to know his aura as well. While the aura is irrevocably connected to Dark and can be controlled by him, it seems to have a mind of its own. It slithers differently depending on Dark’s state of mind, without Dark commanding that of it. Right now, Yandere can feel how closed-in and tight the normally loose and vibrating aura is. He’s seen Dark’s aura when he’s sick, and that isn’t nearly as bad as this. It dawns on Yandere that something has happened to his senpai. Something bad.

“Yami-san,” Yandere says, an anxious tremor in his voice, “I apologize, but I’m going to come in.”

Luckily, the door is not locked, so Yandere doesn’t have to break it down. It already amplifies his nerves to be entering Dark’s office without his permission; he doesn’t need the added stress that destroying his office door would bring. Yandere opens the door and steps inside, and is surprised to find Dark standing in the middle of the room, instead of sitting behind his desk as per usual. Even more shocking is the way his aura clings to him, black wisps barely branching out a few inches from Dark’s body before winding back in. Most shocking of all is the look on Dark’s face, hollow and utterly blank. Yandere gasps at the sight.

“Yami-san, what happened to you??” Yandere steps closer to Dark, cautiously, as if closing the distance between them might make Dark worse. For all Yandere knows, it will. Yandere is so like a teenager that he has a teenager’s insecurities, the same uncertainties that plague the victims of whole-hearted crushes. The young ego takes such care not to take his relationship with Dark for granted that he sometimes feels it could fall apart at any moment and he’d be forced to start again.

But Yandere notices a slight change in Dark’s aura. The tendrils still cannot go far, but rather than splitting off in random directions, they now reach out towards Yandere. If Dark cannot speak, Yandere decides he will have to trust his aura to tell him what the older ego wants. So Yandere continues to approach Dark, and the longer he looks at Dark’s face, at the strange empty expression of it, the more anxious he gets.

“Yami-san, please snap out of it,” Yandere says, his nerves upping the pitch of his voice. He’s right in front of Dark now, only a foot away. Dark is looking at Yandere, the younger ego can tell that much, but there seems to be little else he can do. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Yandere feels his heart hammer in his chest, and blush color his cheeks. He can’t help but react to his sudden proximity with his senpai. Hitting his emotions even harder is the fact that Dark’s aura is beckoning him still, urging him ever closer. But it’s too close. If Dark can’t tell Yandere to come up against him, chest-to-chest (Yandere reminds himself to breathe normally), then he won’t do it. He looks closer at the aura. Its movements have changed again. It angles itself a certain way, like it’s pointing at something. Yandere follows the trajectory of the wisps, and realizes that they’re pointing at Yandere’s hand.

For once, Yandere tries not to think too hard. He lifts his hand, and the aura reacts. Yandere lets it draw his hand up and closer, until he can feel it slithering between his fingers. Even subdued like this, its power makes Yandere shiver. It urges his hand forward like a cool, tugging wind. Yandere takes a deep breath in, and places his hand on Dark’s chest, just below his shoulder.

Something happens in Dark. His eyes close, his body tightens, then trembles. His aura shakes itself out and expands, regaining its power (it is fortunate that Yandere took a breath a moment ago, because the strength of the aura steals that breath and then some from his lungs). Dark’s body stills, relaxes, and when he opens his eyes, they’re as clear and sharp as they ever were.

“Yami-san,” Yandere breathes, cheeks completely red. He thinks he should probably stop touching Dark now, but he can’t pull his hand away.

“Thank you,” Dark says, huffing out a relieved sigh and rolling his shoulders. He steps back, and Yandere lets his hand fall away from Dark’s chest. He sees something new in Dark’s body language, something…worried? Angry? Afraid? Shaky though Yandere’s self-esteem can be, he’s certain Dark’s emotions have nothing to do with him. Though his expression is no longer so unnervingly detached, he still seems to be a million miles away.

“There’s no time to explain,” Dark says, “But something terrible is happening, and I have to stop it.” In the next moment, he disappears with a burst of black smoke.

Yandere blinks, mystified. He should probably be at least a little concerned for what Dark is getting himself into, but he’s still mired in the feelings of what just happened. His hand is still cool from Dark’s chest, and he imagines he can feel Dark’s suit beneath his hand, even now that he’s left.

Yandere and Dark have just had, Yandere believes, a moment. And he wants to live in that moment for as long as he can.

                                                           ~~~

As Yandere is going to Dark’s office, Peevils is fighting with Wilford. He hasn’t beat her yet, but he’s getting close. The void they’re fighting in twists and turns with Wilford’s whims, doing everything short of throwing its own punches to give Wilford the edge. Every time Peevils gets the upper hand, the floor falls out from beneath her, or the wall she was slamming Wilford against disappears, or the cotton candy clouds of the void float over her eyes and obscure her vision. Wilford, it seems, was not kidding when he said he would not be fighting fair.

But Peevils doesn’t have to fight fair either.

She’s reluctant to use her language’s words again, so soon after using them on Dark. She doesn’t want to hurt herself with them, but she realizes now that she can’t win without them. If Wilford beats her, he’ll expel her from Mark. Once that happens, Peevils loses. And she cannot let that happen, not after all the time she’s spent planning this.

Wilford tries to choke her again, holding her down to the floor. The fight’s been going on so long that even Wilford is nearing his limit, so Peevils hopes to save herself some (literal) headache. Instead of pulling herself away, she pushes her head close to him, and whispers:

“Crexliq malgu ih trel.” The same phrase she used on Weather Jim so long ago, but amplified, worse.

She might have overdone it. The prickle in her head becomes a light throb, and she hears Mark groan. But it has the desired effect on Wilford, whose face goes white. He makes a sound that wants to be a loud cry of pain but is barely stronger than a whimper. Peevils grins and pushes herself up, flipping her and Wilford’s positions. She grabs Wilford by his shirt collar and slams his head into the ground as hard as she can.

There’s a crack, and a strained gasp. The void suddenly vanishes, and Peevils and Wilford are back in the studio. For a moment, Peevils can’t tell if she broke Wilford’s skull or his neck, but then he coughs, and his neck moves like it should. His skull, then.

“Fuck,” Wilford gasps. Peevils almost laughs. Even with a fractured skull, half-blinded eyes, broken teeth and countless bruises, he’s still Wilford. Peevils gets up to look for Dark’s gun, not worried about Wilford stopping her. He manages to turn over onto his stomach, pushing himself up on his hands. His head swims when he tries to get up, both from Peevils’s words and the break in his skull. He feels blood drip out of his ears. He collapses onto his elbows, and can’t lift himself up any further. He looks up at Peevils as she returns, having found the gun. But before anything more can happen, they hear a knocking coming from the studio’s entrance.

“Hey, Wilford, did you still want help with those scripts?”

It’s Bim, of course. Peevils eyes Wilford, waiting to see what he’ll do. She sees how hard he’s thinking, trying to decide how to react. If he wanted, he could yell for Bim to come in, or at least try to. Peevils already knows he can still speak, injured though he is. She fully expects Wilford to call for Bim to come into the studio and kick her ass.

“Will? You in there?”

Wilford’s face clouds with something like resignation, but softer. He stays quiet. Peevils quirks an eyebrow, but Wilford doesn’t react.

“I…guess I’ll come back later?”

Peevils waits a few moments before speaking.

“Aww, how sentimental of you, Wilfy,” she teases, “Who knew you liked the guy so much.”

“Bim is my friend,” Wilford spits, “You wouldn’t know about those.”

“You mean we were never friends?” Peevils puts a hand over her heart. “You wound me, Wilford. I’m pretty sure you at least thought we were friends. I have to admit, I think I like you more than anyone else in this place. And I’ll give you credit where it’s due; you really gave me a run for my money just now. Not like the Host,” she grins, “He went out like a bitch.”

Wilford’s eyes widen and his face twists in anguish, like the news of the Host’s death causes him more pain than Peevils’s alien words ever could. As much as she enjoys his reaction, Peevils doesn’t give him time to get angry enough to retaliate before she shoots.

The bullet lodges into Wilford’s forehead. His body slumps into the floor. Blood pools around his head. Mark starts to cry again, as fiercely as he did for the Host, more so. It practically hurts him physically, twists up his heart to see one of his oldest egos, the face of his channel, someone so larger than life that he barely understood mortality, dead on the floor.

(The sound of the gunshot carries far, echoing in the high ceilings of the studio and bouncing out into the hall outside, just catching Bim’s awareness. Already mystified by Wilford’s silence, he feels anxiety wriggle up his back.)

(Dr. Iplier’s clinic is too far away for the sound of the gunshot to travel. But once again he feels that shot of pain in his chest, this time as he’s checking his own heartrate. It spikes for the duration of the ache but quickly settles back into normalcy. The doctor is as confused about the pain’s cause as ever.)

Peevils, for her part, lets herself take a breather.

“Sheesh, Wilford’s a piece of work,” she huffs. Her (Mark’s) body aches all over, especially her neck, which she’s sure is bruising, and her head, which might have a concussion. “For not wanting to kill you he sure did do a number on your body.”

Mark, still weeping, doesn’t answer. Peevils rolls her eyes, then thinks.

“You know,” she says, “Wilford never did show me his gun closet. I wonder what he’s got.”

She knows that Wilford’s gun closet is in his bedroom, which is directly attached to the back of the studio. She’s never been inside it, and never had an inclination to be, aside from wanting to see Wilford’s gun closet. But, as Wilford had said with a wiggle of his moustache and a wink, “I don’t show my guns to just anyone.” But Wilford’s dead, so Peevils will check out his guns regardless of what he wants.

She walks to the bedroom, opens the door, and finds that perhaps the term “gun closet” was something of a misnomer. The bedroom, while containing a bed and dresser and clothes closet and all the typical bedroom things, has guns hanging from every spot on the wall, including the ceiling. They don’t appear to be organized in any fashion, or at least not any fashion that Peevils can detect. They’re simply wherever there’s space. She looks around, amazed despite herself.

“Man, where did Wilford even get these?” Peevils asks, more to herself than to Mark, who is still crying. Peevils looks up above her at the ceiling. “Is that a bazooka?? A bit overkill for my taste, but man, Wilford has some style.”

Then, suddenly, Peevils hears a sound in the studio, a quiet whoosh. Immediately after it comes a palpable wave of hatred and anger, and her ears begin to ring. Has it been half an hour already? Definitely not.

“Ugh,” Peevils mutters, “Can’t a girl catch a break?”

Meanwhile, Dark, having just shaken off Peevils’s alien words with Yandere’s help, looks around the studio and nearly immediately spots who he’s looking for. He curses under his breath.

It’s too late. Wilford’s already dead. No doubt the Host is, too.

But Dark isn’t about to lay down and accept things yet. He still has to stop Peevils from killing Mark, and get her out of his body. It occurs to Dark that he’d never thought he’d be so desperate to keep Mark alive, but it’s what he has to do. Wilford and the Host may have had their disagreements, pretty severe disagreements in the Host’s case, but at one point they might have called Dark a friend, and Dark might have done the same to them. Even if not, Dark is the leader, and every leader has a duty to their followers. Besides, no small part of him wants revenge for what Peevils did to him. Taking away his free will, forcing him to help her, using him…no one turns the tables on him and gets away with it.

He walks through the studio, searching for Peevils. His aura is writhing with rage, spitting inky smoke out into the air around him. Before long, Dark reaches the back of the studio, and sees that Wilford’s bedroom door is ajar. He pushes it open and walks inside to see Peevils, still in Mark’s body, loading a long, powerful revolver she’s picked from Wilford’s wall. Her back is to him, but she straightens as she senses Dark’s presence.

“So, the words wore off, huh?” Peevils asks, not turning around. “You’re a tough cookie, Dark. And you sure are fashionably late.”

“Your plan ends here,” Dark growls, voice vibrating with fury.

“Oh, sure,” Peevils says, “Get me out of Mark’s head without killing him. See if you can.” She finally turns to look at him. She’s smiling. “You could still join me, you know. You can kill Mark right now and we could run the show like I’ve planned. Or I can just do it myself.” She raises the revolver she’s finished loading to her (Mark’s) temple. Mark whimpers with fear, too weakened from crying to be any louder. “It’ll be pretty messy that way, sure, but I can totally just kill Mark on my own right now.”

There’s a short pause. Nothing happens.

“But you won’t,” Dark says. Something icy churns in his veins. Is this terror?

“I won’t,” Peevils repeats.

“You aren’t going to stop now,” Dark continues, realization dawning, “You never were.”

“Nope.” Peevils shakes her head.

“You’re going to kill them all,” Dark breathes.

“Bingo.” Peevils grins.

Dark is the oldest ego, the strongest, and the onus to keep the others safe therefore falls on him. Whatever happens, whatever events come to pass, whatever disagreeable things he might have to do to reach his goals or keep the peace, Dark will never let the other egos fade. He remembers the times they’ve come close, the times certain egos were almost forgotten, and how hard he worked to bring them back into the consciousness of the fanbase. He remembers almost fading himself, how it felt to lose himself into the air, surviving only by the skin of his teeth. He remembers, still, when he was only out for himself, with no one else to protect. He remembers how it felt to be the king of an empty castle.

Not again. Never again.

Peevils, clearly, is weakened. She’s covered with bruises, her neck is mottled purple, and there’s dried blood in twisty lines below her nostrils and down her chin. With his aura and physical strength, Dark can overpower her easily.

But Peevils knows this, too, and she knows better than to try her words on him again. Her alien words, that is.

“Hey Dark, before you kill me or whatever,” Peevils begins, “I have to ask, how did you not see through my plan right away?” She lowers the gun from her head and turns back around, away from Dark. “I figured the second I implied that my desire for death and suffering could be quenched by killing just two people you’d kick me right out of your office.”

It’s a trap. It has to be. But Dark knows she’s used all her tricks, and he has yet to use his.

“You’ve lost your touch,” Peevils continues, turning the gun around in her hands, “You’re so used to being the most powerful player at the table that you’ve gotten arrogant. I wanted to work with you, truly, but I do hate you. So much pride, so much pomp and circumstance, and for what? You couldn’t even recognize a liar when she stared you in the face. And you couldn’t stop her when it mattered.”

Peevils doesn’t see it, but she hears Dark’s shell crack, warping wildly in the air, letting out an angry scream. But she waits, waits until the moment she feels Dark’s aura reach out and grab at her consciousness. At that moment, she puts the gun up and fires at the ceiling, and ducks down. There’s a bang, a boom, and Peevils feels heat lick at her back, and a couple pieces of metal bite into her shoulders. She hisses, but stays crouched until the heat dissipates. She then pulls the shards of metal from her back as she stands up and turns to see her handiwork.

“Huh,” she says, “I actually wasn’t sure that would work.” She wrinkles her nose. “A bit messy for my taste, though.”

The bazooka she’d admired earlier is nothing more than a charred black mark on the ceiling and a thousand bits of shrapnel on the floor. Dark, it seems, was almost exactly underneath the bazooka when Peevils’s bullet hit it, left with no time to poof somewhere else or shield himself. His upper body and face are littered with shrapnel. One large piece has shattered through his nose, sticking up from his face like a shark’s fin, leaving a hole of gore in its wake. His eyes are still there, but his mouth is nearly gone, tongue torn up by force and metal, bits of teeth like oversized grains of sand littering the area. Some of his hair is burnt off, leaving brittle black strands and a patch of shiny, mottled red skull. A pool of blood surrounds him. Peevils feels Mark’s wave of revulsion, hears him gag.

“You should be used to this,” Peevils notes, “After all the violent horror games you’ve played.”

She isn’t sure exactly how long she has before Dark comes back, but she knows it probably won’t be long. There’s a lot of factors to figment regeneration, and willpower is one of them. Dark’s resolve to stop Peevils will no doubt help him return to life pretty fast.

Still, she probably has a couple hours or so. And a couple hours are all she needs.

The next part of the plan is the last thing she has fully fleshed out. She’d seen once, in the control room where the Googles monitor the ins and outs of the building, a map of the building’s air vents. It had piqued her interest, and she’d ended up going back to it several times. She hadn’t tried to steal it, or memorize the whole thing, neither of which would’ve been practical. But she had memorized one section of it, one that begins in Wilford’s studio, in a vent behind the stage.

First, though, Peevils needs a power nap. Wilford really had dished out a beating, and she can still hear the ringing of Dark’s aura in her ears.

She flops onto Wilford’s bed and falls asleep almost immediately. Mark tries to use the opportunity to break free, but he’s exhausted too, and his connection to Peevils means that he falls asleep himself, left to dream Peevils’s dreams of blood and gore, of destruction yet to be wrought.

[post-febrile]

Totally respect Jon Steinberg’s vision for Black Sails. And I actually love where he left Silver and Madi in the finale. It felt right, you know? The two of them on that bluff facing each other, neither quite ready to close the distance between them. It made sense. And I loved it. But. This notion of Steinberg's …this head canon that he's expressed in recent interviews (because lbr if we didn’t see it unfold on screen, then his ideas are personal headcanon - and no more or less valid than yours or mine) that has Madi marrying Silver despite feeling that their relationship is irrevocably broken? It just doesn’t bear out. “itsjustnotrealistic.gif.

Because unlike Silver, Madi has options. She is a free woman with a home, a family, and a fucking royal lineage and legacy. Without love, there is no reason for her to bind herself to a man that describes himself as a wretch, “a no one from nowhere, belonging to nothing.”

So why would she do it? Why would Madi not only forgive a man with whom, according to Steinberg, she could never again connect emotionally, but actually MARRY him?

It doesn't make sense for someone as surefooted and self aware as Madi is. now, I get that this break between Silver and Madi, this irreparable damage, is central to the sense of loss and tragedy that Steinberg has tried to imbue into the finale. But I just don't buy it lol. And obviously I reject Steinberg's headcanon because I love Silver and Madi and want nothing but happiness for them, but I also reject it because it doesn't map to the way he's built either character - Madi, especially

In the finale, Madi cast Silver out of her life, but in the end, she sought HIM out–ostensibly to grant her forgiveness. Given how surefooted and self aware Madi was written to be, I don’t believe that she would do that unless she understood on some level what Silver did–-and wanted to make peace with it. And maybe the distance between her and Silver on that bluff speaks to that. She sought him out having arrived at a point where she was ready to make peace with what he had done. And though she wasn’t quite there yet, she wanted to be, and, perhaps most significantly, she KNEW she was capable of getting there.

You could argue that her disappointment in Silver is just too great - that she would resent him forever for cheating her out of her war. I disagree. Yes, Madi’s anger at being lied to and undermined was justified, but I’m certain that she would inevitably see the wisdom in choosing that peace treaty. Remember Madi’s commitment to her people. Remember when she told Silver that: “No one has greater cause to swear England an enemy and desire vengeance against her as we do. Yet I believe if we were offered…a chance to be made free in the eyes of the law, it would not have been so roundly rejected.” I imagine that Silver returned to those those words often as he was setting his covert plans into motion. In the end, all of his behind-the-scenes wrangling led to her people being offered that choice–and they took it. They did. Can you imagine Madi lashing out at them for making that choice? I can’t. I cannot imagine Madi NOT understanding why the people of Maroon Island and the other camps chose peace and freedom over carnage and ideology. And if she could understand and empathize with their view, than she could do the same for Silver. Tl;dr - Madi climbed up to that bluff because her anger over Silver's betrayal was outmatched by her love for him. And while their marriage - like ALL marriages - is flawed, the love that they share is deep, abiding and worth the effort.

[truthtriumphs]

The Power of Love's Wisdom

As the divine nature, the very being of God which is love empowers his creation. As sentient beings with both internal and external awareness we sense at a very early age a presence greater than ourselves. We attempt to orient ourselves to both the internal and external environments, generally with an imperfect balance—some of us more internally perceptive, some more focussed on the external as a frame of reference for life. Some, however, conscientiously seek to reconcile the internal with the external, the spiritual with the physical, by heeding a consciousness of a wisdom that seems at the periphery of our attention. Or perhaps it is really at the core of our being veiled sometimes lightly or sometimes heavily by imaginations and distractions from the world. This internal wisdom that can be sensed seems imbued with kindness, with a love that surpasses emotional earthly love, is attractive and gives a sense of well-being. Yet, in spite of its goodness, it is not always valued because it appears at odds with the kind of group-think people strive to gain approval from in the world, and so is rejected as not being expedient to fulfill immediate desires. Instead of trusting this inner wisdom, people become oriented to physical perceptions and the emotions that become their framework for making choices between what they judge as good and evil. And yet, in the midst of a life oriented to worldly perception that all but drowns it out, the inner wisdom quietly and persistently calls. This wisdom bears a heavenly atmosphere that can imbue our conscience with the values of God. It is rooted in the mystery hidden from the ages, now revealed as Christ in us—Christ who is our wisdom. This is the wisdom that will lead us to the enduring truth that pervades and upholds creation from the heart of the Creator. Can you distinguish this wisdom from its earthly counterfeit? It is not our mental constructs, it is not our religious doctrines, and it is not discerned by our emotions. It is wholly not sourced in the earthly dimension, although it permeates it with beauty. It is in the world, but not of the world. Although it transmits deep understanding that can be translated into our metaphorical native languages, it is not an intellectual idea. It is the language of God’s divine nature of love—it is the presence of his being and consciousness that he shares with us. It draws us to him through his presence as Christ in us with whom we are one spirit. This beautiful wisdom is spiritually discerned by a heart and mind set on knowing God and our own true nature. The power of this wisdom that God gives us through our shared being is his very nature of love. When we receive and live by this wisdom, we are spiritually empowered by love—love which vitalizes and transforms us into the likeness of Christ, love which surpasses all earthly knowledge with the deep wisdom of God, love which casts out fear so we abide in the liberty of the children of God with his nature of love issuing from our hearts. It is this love-imbued wisdom by which we are and by which we recognize God’s ambassadors of peace and reconciliation in the world. It is this wisdom by which we can appear foolish to the worldly wise, but which irrevocably changes the spiritual atmosphere to touch hearts wherever it is dispensed. We should never ignore love’s call through this glorious wisdom who is Christ in us—both to renew our minds and lovingly share it with others in words and actions—for it is God’s own power and wisdom born by love to us in Christ.