#like. it may sound weird but the incest part is important !

[rabarbarzcukrem]

Incest in Utena

(warning: long.

...and probably incohesive)

So, I have once encountered an opinion that Revolutionary Girl Utena doesn't take a definitive anti-incest stance. This person argued that while there are abusive and unhealthy relationships in the show, their toxicity doesn't stem from them being incestuous, but from the abuse itself. So in their opinion, incest wasn't presented as being directly related to abuse in Utena.

And I disagree. I think that to ignore and overlook the incestuous elements in Utena, to say that they simply happened to be that way with no purpose and connection to be made to their abusive nature, is to do a great disservice to the creators and the show itself. For a series that is so complex in its ambiguity and usage of metaphors, that crafts its symbolism so deliberately, to simply put such a major factor into the story without intention of a deeper reading is just... extremely unlikely?

I think familial dynamics play a crucial part in relations between characters. When in comes to the Kaoru siblings, for example, the central point of their obsession with each other is their shared childhood, and the unique bond between them, on the account of them being twins.

It's also interesting how often the show blurs the lines between romantic interest and familial love. Kozue's possessiveness over her brother, which at first glance resembles jealousy, can also be read as a deep longing for Miki's understanding and affection that she used to get when they were children. Her brother is fixated on his idealized vision of her, perfect and pure. His distaste for her sexual relations with other men also comes off as a desire to keep her to himself - which may lead to an incestuous interpretation. Their unhealthy fixation on the past stems from a desire to restore the special connection that they lost when they started growing up, even though its perfection may have not existed in the first place. The innocent world of their youth, where they were free of worries and completely compatible. They share a deep longing for closeness with each other, but the fact that they grew up into very different people, whose worldviews are in conflict, makes it impossible for them to regain it. I think it could be also quite useful to take their parents into the account - whose separation and cold treatment of their children played a part into shaping the tight connection between the two siblings. They are the closest two people can be, they share everything - their room, the milkshakes, their parents, their blood, their memories and history. They are (to each other) the only person that could ever understand what the other went (and is going) through. And yet they don't. Their siblinghood and kinship is the very basis of their relationship and it could have never become this intense if they had not been twins.

The lack of love from the parents being the factor that brings the two siblings closer together, is a phenomenon that also occurs in Nanami and Touga's storyline. The girl has become thoroughly dependent on her brother and has built her entire identity and personhood around being his sister, which starts falling apart the moment she finds out they aren't blood related. This stems from the concept prevalent in the whole series - that familial relationships are fundamentally superior to chosen ones. This notion is supposedly true because of the fact that blood relationships are something one is born into - they are stronger, natural, and eternally binding. It's not difficult to notice how easily this belief can be used to diminish the meaning of abuse in the family and prevent the victim from pursuing escape. And it is used that way, both in the show, as well as in real life.

Nanami is aware of how insignificant the girls Touga dates are to him, and has accepted his way of evaluating people as her own. She thinks of them as vermins, after all. But while he can play with their feelings and discard them one after the other, she will always be his sister, which grants her a right to Touga's affection and a place by his side for the rest of their lives.

However, the fact that she feels the need to assert her superiority over other girls so frequently and violently clearly shows that the relationship between the siblings is far from stable and points to Nanami's deep insecurities, resulting from her brother's manipulation. He deliberately witholds affection from Nanami as a form of control and purposefully maintains the ambiguity of their relationship. This specific type of emotional abuse she faces can only happen if they are siblings and is very closely related to the pseuo-incestous nature of their bond, resulting from the very problematic environment that the two have grown up in and Nanami's feelings being twisted and used by Touga to his advantage.

Nanami prides herself in being "in love" with her brother only as long as she doesn't realize what that entails. The moment she recognizes the implications of her behavior and sees the consequences of a real incestuous relationship, it immediately becomes clear that this is not what she has ever desired. But it is her separation from Touga that allows her to do that, and to wonder about who she is and what is it that she really wants.

And so we move onto the most abusive incestuous relationship in the series, which is thought to be the one every other relationship in the show mirrors in some way... Akio and Anthy's. This example is the primary reason why I think that omitting the connection between incest and abuse means misunderstanding one of the core elements of the show. The very reason Anthy keeps on enduring her torment is the fact that Akio/Dios is her brother. He's her only family - the one person always tied to her, that has seen all of her, that knows and has experienced what she had done - and will not leave her.

The knowledge that Akio will always be her brother is a curse - but a comforting one. It absolves Anthy of having to experience the new, which is scary. After all, a coffin is a cage and a prison, but is it not safe? She stays both because of this resignation and fear, and because she holds onto the sweet memory of a person who used to love her, and who she loved in return. One could argue that Anthy perceives herself as deserving of this suffering simply because of being a witch - but upon a closer look it becomes obvious that Anthy is a witch...because she is Akio's sister. It's outright stated in the play performed by the shadow girls that the reason why she could not become his princess is the fact that she's related to him. We are shown later, in the true version of events, that Anthy locked Dios away out of love and care for her brother, but that becomes twisted into selfishness and jealousy in the play. This is also a way to shift the blame for Anthy's abuse onto her - "Isn't this what you wanted?"

Again, we encounter the phenomenon of the line between platonic affection and romantic desire being extremely thin. However, it's not entirely clear if this is simply a way to visualize the intensity of the complicated feelings between the characters, and to obscure the true meaning and nature of them by symbolism (as Utena often does) or something that is supposed to be read as a commentary on the omnipresent sexualization in Ohtori/society. Perhaps it it both.

And now... How does Utena fit into all of this? She is an orphan - a fact that is frequently overlooked and treated as a "protagonist thing" that makes a simple yet impactful backstory. But it is crucial to Utena's personal journey and the way she perceives Akio and Anthy's relationship. She doesn't have any close family that we know of, no point of reference to what healthy familial bonds look like. This is the main reason she stays ignorant and oblivious of Anthy's abuse for so long.

When it comes to Akio's advances and her own feelings towards him, it induces a certain sense of wrongness and unease in her (although she explains it to herself using incorrect reasons: Akio's engagement status, and not the massive power and age imbalance between them). But the way Anthy is treated and her strange behavior goes unquestioned by Utena, as she's always able to explain it by thinking of it as a part of a perfectly normal sibling relationship.

A lot more can be said about incest in Utena - its role in the system of Ohtori, or how gender and age play into it (I haven't even mentioned Tsuwabuki...) But it seems evident to me that the familal dynamics are inherently tied to the toxicity and abuse that occurs in the relationships discussed. It is purposeful. All instances of incest in Utena are shown to be harmful and this element is never excused or glossed over.

Because this contrast between blood bonds and the bonds one builds (for Anthy, between Akio and Utena) is crucial to understanding the show, and is precisely the thing that makes Utena's queerness so revolutionary. Instead of compliance and conformity, it signifies defiance, choice, agency and freedom. Akio's control is built upon the notion that he's the only one able to accept Anthy for the terrible witch she truly is, but this is not true, and Utena proves that. She experiences cruelty at Anthy's hands, she's stabbed and betrayed by her, and yet doesn't give up on her. Anthy can only stop being afraid of the world beyond Akio once she sees that it is worth it, that there is a person out there, waiting for her. That she is not forever doomed by being Akio's sister, and the outside world holds hope and love for her.

[atopvisenyashill]

So I came upon your blog while looking through the asoiaf tag and explored it a bit. Would you please explain to me how are you against Targaryen incest, but find Jonsa fine? I’m genuinely curious, as I’ve just started reading the books (I’m half-way through a storm of swords) and find nothing fine about any form of incest, whether it is or not considered as such in-universe. I also find little to no Jonsa moments. Could you help me? Thank you!

okay so first of all i got sent an ask forever ago about what the appeal of jonsa is and i’ve been working on explaining basically where i see the plot going and why it’s thematically relevant and is2g i’m still actually putting it together it’s just doing that in a middle of a reread is tough bc my ideas are kinda all over the place lmao (just like this ask is about to be sorry!) (also once again, sorry if my tone comes across very weird, i swear i reread like twelve times to make sure i don’t sound too snarky and wasn't just vomitting up a thousand words of nonsense lmao!!).

BUT. Well there’s three points to this: what the characters may feel, what i feel about jonsa, and what i feel about targ incest. so first the characters:

I think it’s important to point out that first cousin marriage (and auncle/nibling marriage, esp if it’s a “half” relation) are not considered true incest in westeros and in many parts of our world. rickard and lyra, ned’s parents, are cousins. joanna and tywin lannister are first cousins. jonnel and sansa and edric and serena are uncle/nieces, and you’ll note that when alys karstark comes to jon for help, he is disgusted that her uncle is trying to steal her inheritance and not that he’s her uncle attempting to marry her. i point this out because not only is there nothing legally stopping a jonsa marriage, the characters themselves may also see it that way (as not incest). and if your next point is “well they grew up thinking they’re siblings” my answer is - yes and? One of the influences on this series is Mervyn Peake, who wrote gothic medieval stories, and both incest and pseudo-incest is very much a big part of gothic stories! A lot of the storylines in this world are dedicated to exploring incest as a force of socialization and romanticism, from Naerys pleading to live “as brother and sister” and Aegon insisting “we already are” to Alysanne’s “Alyssa is meant for Baelon” to Jaime’s “he heard none of it" in the sept. I don’t think it’s that far of a stretch to posit that two characters we have POVs for will fall in love and grapple with what that love says about them, about society, about their role in the world - and in fact, about half of Jon’s most popular ships are between him and a female relative. Sansa makes more sense to me because she’s closer to his age than Arya, has a more troubled relationship with him, is involved in the political aspects of the story just as much as he is, and isn’t likely to immediately start setting people on fire after they meet.

Now as for me, basically - i think both types of incest are the result of socialization + extreme trauma, and I fully expect that if Jonsa goes canon it will have a tragic ending. I think Jonsa takes some of the inherent misogyny of targ incest and plays around with it - Jon having significantly less societal privilege than basically every other Targaryen and what that means for Sansa as an heiress - but just because I think an exploration of that dynamic will be interesting, doesn’t mean I don’t expect it to be rife with problems.

because the problem with incest is the power dynamic ultimately, and you cannot escape that power dynamic bc people don’t exist in a vacuum. For all the Starks have some fucked up skeletons in their closet, Lyanna doesn’t show up in Ned’s bed naked and ask him to stop her betrothal to Robert, does she? This is the fundamental difference between targ incest and Jonsa or even Lannicest; Lannicest is rampant with toxicity from both of those deranged weirdos but they feel entitled to each other's bodies because of their own trauma surrounding their tumultuous childhoods (and probably some normalization of incest from their parents and proximity to Aerys/Rhaella/Rhaegar), but no one is saying "Jaime you are owed Cersei's body" or "Cersei your womb belongs to your brother and your brother alone." So I don't feel the need to sit here and go "Lannicest is toxic" like yeah? Clearly, lmao, these two feel like they are so damaged, and made so special by that damage, that they can only love one another, that's not what anyone would call healthy. I don't think it's necessary to sit here and explain that dynamic has abuse problems; it's right there in the text!

"well what about the power dynamic between jon and sansa?" YES WHAT ABOUT IT. that's the point! i'm interested in how a dynamic that is inherently abusive will play out between two people who were raised to believe some types of incest are okay but not others, who are victims of abuse and societal alienation themselves. because at the same time that i condemn targ incest, there are obviously real feelings and genuine care in these relationships and in these people, because again, people don't exist in a vacuum. daemon backs rhaenyra into this corner and then crucially does not kill any of her children because he realizes that's a step too far, she'd never forgive it, perhaps even because he grew to love them (i mean, Lucerys and Joffrey likely barely remember any other father but Daemon!). maegor is a monster who very specifically never harms rhaena's daughters! aemon is a useless pos but it seems likely he had a hand in raising naerys' son to be better than aegon because he could see the harm he and his brother were doing to naerys even if aemon was too much of a coward to actually stop that harm in any meaningful way! the difference, to me, is that jon will see that this relationship built on trauma and grief may be the only love he and sansa will ever allow themselves to feel but it is not healthy for them, and jon will leave! and sansa will realize she is not the impassive, frozen, detached symbol that the men around her want her to be, but a living, breathing person with her own wants and desires and agency, and will let him go!

Ultimately, while i think romanticizing and sexualizing the taboo is fine and even healthy, for me, there has to be some acknowledgement that you are in fact romanticizing the taboo. This is why the shitty dudes in asoiaf work for me in a way shitty dudes outside of asoiaf don’t usually - my general bitching about parts of the narrative that don’t click for me aside, there’s firm condemnation of the people engaging in these behaviors, from cersei sexually abusing lancel to sandor creeping on sansa. just because the narrative also shows us and wants us to feel empathy for sandor and cersei and why they’ve become bad people doesn’t mean what they’re doing isn’t bad. that’s what i like! i don’t want a story that holds my hand and drags me to the moral nor do i want a story that presents a god awful person who is supposed to be morally upright and not mean for us to dig deeper into them!

(this is why i like the pt but not the st of star wars, if you want an example - for all the prequels are um. flawed. lucas has an overreaching story about the effects of war, slavery, and interpersonal abuse that he’s dedicated to, and we are meant to be horrified by anakin choking padme just as surely as we’re meant to mourn their relationship and love for each other when palpatine gleefully tells anakin she’s dead and ani destroys the room in grief. vs like. what were the sequels even fucking doing man).

So the thing here is that I actually do in fact find Targaryen incest interesting while being morally repugnant as a practice, and I'm positive Jonsa will play around with both the morality of incest and the romanticism of it in a way that I find just as interesting, varied, romantic, and fulfilling as like, the Jaime/Cersei(/Brienne/Tyrion) mess or the Daemon/Rhaenyra/Laena/Harwin debacle! I like incest and I also hate it! I contain multitudes!

[attilarrific]

OKAY. I’m writing, I’m a writer, I’m a person who occasionally puts writing out into the universe.

This is not the Hidden Track update you’re looking for, this is a direct follow-up to the AU of the Hidden Track AU, the one where Wei Wuxian ends up fake-dating Jin Guangyao instead. The first part is here. This part got VERY LONG, but does include both Wei Wuxian and Lan Xichen, so...yay me?

(For those wondering how the two AUs relate to each other---basically, the inciting incident of this, Jin Guangyao and Qin Su’s blood relation being widely revealed to the public, occurs maybe a month before actual Hidden Track starts and thereby preempts all of that. In actual Hidden Track, that reveal never happens, so none of this ever does either. All backstories that get established in either are canon for both, not that it particularly matters.)

Also, I don’t know if this is weird, but this update is dedicated to @ralfstrashcan​, who left me the best comment ever on the first part of this. I know we don’t know each other at all, but thank you, it meant a lot, I reread it often.

.

Jin Guangyao video calls Qin Su on his computer so he can hang up on the phone, and in the space of a single too-fast inhale, she appears on the screen. In the high-definition of her expensive webcam and their internet connections working overtime, he can see her red eyes and white knuckles, the way she’s clutching at the sweatshirt she’s wearing. He’s pretty sure it’s his sweatshirt, actually, and he has a sickening moment of wondering if it’s a relic of the days when their spaces and things and lives were interchangeable, before remembering that he’d left it at her house a month ago when he’d gone over to read a new script she’d been working on.

“This isn’t going to work,” she says now, sounding exhausted. “Why would this work?”

It would be too much work for Jin Guangyao to try to explain that he knows the way Wei Wuxian looks when he’s asked for things. That he understands it, the almost-relief, the lean forward, the light in his eyes---the look it had taken an absurd amount of time for Jin Guangyao to realize that, on Wei Wuxian, is nothing but the pure and uncomplicated truth. That for Wei Wuxian, that’s the tell, not the mask.

Wei Wuxian’s artifice leads you in a different direction.

“Just call your publicist and give them the new story as soon as I say it’s all right,” he says calmly instead, absently scrolling his contacts up and down as he stares at the Ws. “Pretend you feel guilty about spilling the secret, but the heat from the incest story has gotten too bad. Can you do that?”

“This isn’t going to work,” she repeats, but then she shakes her head. “All right, all right. You’d know better. I’m not much of a liar, though.”

“Do you feel like crying?”

She rolls her eyes, swiping at her face with the back of her hand. “I’ve been crying all morning.”

“Good enough,” he says. “Cry on the phone and they’ll be so desperate to get you to stop that they won’t be able to think about anything else.”

“Cry,” she repeats, and then she squares her shoulders. “Okay. Don’t worry about me, A-Yao. I can do it.”

He’ll worry about her anyway, because she’s his sister and because once he walked deliberately into love with her and because she might be the person who understands the most of him. And because she really can’t lie, but her publicists won’t care if their cover-up is true or not---no paycheck if she flees Hollywood in disgrace, after all---so it won’t matter. No point in telling her that, though, because it’s still better if they believe her, so she may as well think it’s important.

He smiles at her reassuringly, and then he hits the call button on his cell phone.

It rings four times, and he has a nerve-wracking moment of wondering if Wei Wuxian is doing a morning show or something else that would keep him away from wondering why the subject of the latest scandal is calling him personally, but then the line connects.

“If you want to get drunk,” Wei Wuxian says, sounding determinedly cheerful, “you’re in luck, because I’m actually in LA right now.”

Jin Guangyao feels the laugh that starts to rip its way out of his throat before he hears it, but he can already tell it’ll be rough and broken enough that it he just lets it happen. Do you feel like crying, he’d said to Qin Su. The secret to lying---acting, they call it now, but it was lying when he was a child and still is---is to make sure you aren’t. Today, he woke up and discovered that someone had ruined his life. He woke up to the reminder that his father’s mistakes will somehow always be his. He woke up and remembered, all over again, that he will always be one wrong move away from losing everything.

Yes, he feels like crying.

He takes a deep breath, and lets it catch in his throat on the tears that are about to spill, and says, “I---I mean, yes, I want to get drunk, I---is it bad if I get drunk this early in the morning? I’m not going to, I just---I---”

“Oh, god.” There’s the horror, the kneejerk how-do-I-make-this-stop suffusing Wei Wuxian’s voice. “It’s definitely not bad, breakfast drinks are a whole thing, I have so many breakfast drink recipes, do you want a breakfast drink recipe---my sister has even better recipes, do you want my sister’s number---actually, yeah, please let me give you my sister’s number, she’s great--”

“Wei Wuxian,” Jin Guangyao breaks in, once he’s fairly sure Wei Wuxian has worked himself up into enough panic. He sniffs, and his voice breaks when he says, “I need your help.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian says, and then, like magic, he sounds perfectly calm. “Yeah. Sure. What’s up?”

Just like that. They aren’t even friends.

Jin Guangyao doesn’t let himself smile, because it might interfere with the crying, but he does let the relief come, lets his shoulders slump with it. Let Wei Wuxian hear that in his voice. It’ll just be another part of the act, another perfect true lie.

#

He gets off the phone almost an hour later. Wei Wuxian had been wickedly amused at the idea of pretending to date, laughing for almost a full minute before he’d even bothered to check and make sure that he didn’t have to lie to his sister or band, just the rest of the public.

“Don’t worry,” he’d said, when Jin Guangyao had let vulnerability seep into his voice and anxiously clarified for the fourth time that they couldn’t leak it to the media. “Literally the only one of us who actually likes talking to the press is me, and that’s mostly because it’s so much fun to fuck with them. This is going to be great! Can I call you disgusting pet names and talk about how great your dick is?”

So nice that someone’s having a good time.

Jin Guangyao hangs up and texts his own publicist while he waits for Qin Su to get off the phone with hers, and then he smiles at her. “Okay?”

“You’re a genius,” she says with feeling, and he has to duck his head to look modest instead of smug. He likes getting the reminder that she’d do anything for him. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t need her to. He might someday.

“You and me,” he says, wishing he could hug her through the screen. “We have to take care of each other.”

She grins at him, still a little watery, but not so shell-shocked. “Of course we do.”

He shakes off the preemptive triumph he wants to feel, because they’re still in trouble if they can’t pull this off. “I talked timelines with Wei Wuxian. We agreed it doesn’t matter if he flirted with other people after we supposedly got together, since we were trying to keep it a secret anyway, so---fuck.”

“A-Yao?”

He takes a deep breath. He’d forgotten about at least one person Wei Wuxian flirts with relatively frequently, apparently wholly unintentionally. “It’s nothing,” he says, very calmly. “I just remembered I need to talk to Xichen-ge.”

“Oh, of course,” Qin Su says, sounding amused. “We can’t have him thinking you’re dating someone else.”

That is not why---honestly, seeing if he could somehow make Lan Xichen jealous would be enough reason to keep it a secret, under other circumstances---but he doesn’t bother correcting her. “Can I call you back in half an hour?”

“You know, if you just told him you’re madly in love with him and want to have his babies, this would probably go a lot faster---”

He hangs up on her.

Maybe. Maybe it would go a lot faster. Because even though Lan Xichen is kind and attentive, and even though his eyes follow Jin Guangyao whenever he walks into a room, and even though Lan Xichen never seems to be too busy to talk, it’s entirely possible that that’s just what he’s like. Jin Guangyao has been demonstrating careful, polite interest since about five seconds after he decided Lan Xichen probably wouldn’t care much about the whole closeted-for-professional-reasons thing, and he’s gotten absolutely but completely platonic affection back.

He scrubs a hand through his hair, since no one can see him, trying to pick an emotion for the call. Something that won’t result in Lan Xichen realizing that Jin Guangyao is perfectly willing to place his career before anyone else’s happiness, including Lan Xichen’s beloved brother’s. Something sympathetic. Pitiful. He loves being pitiful.

He wraps a blanket around his shoulders, curling up in the chair to feel suitably vulnerable, even though he’s not planning to video call. It’s easier when he gets the details right. As he taps Lan Xichen’s contact information, he thinks, settling into the character, Your life is ruined, you ran roughshod over Lan Wangji’s feelings, Lan Xichen will never forgive you.

So it’s easy, when Lan Xichen picks up on the first ring and says, voice warm and worried, “A-Yao, I’m so glad you called,” for Jin Guangyao to blurt out, “Please don’t hate me.”

There’s a shocked silence, and then Lan Xichen says, sounding horrified, “A-Yao, I would never.”

And he means that, Jin Guangyao knows, even though it’s probably not true. Everyone has their breaking point. He draws his legs up, resting his forehead on one of his knees, and reminds himself that the hollow hurt in his heart is good. Useful. It makes his voice soft and weak, and that’s what he wants. “Xichen-ge,” he murmurs, letting himself feel it. “I did something, and I think you’re going to be mad about it.”

“I won’t be,” Lan Xichen says immediately. “A-Yao, I’m not. Whatever happened between you and Qin Su, I don’t care.”

Right, they have to talk about this too. Of course. Well, it’ll certainly help Jin Guangyao sound pitiful. “It’s true, you know. She is my sister. I had sex with my sister. I proposed to my sister. I---” His voice cracks.

Lan Xichen makes gentle soothing sounds into the phone. “Is that why you broke up?”

Jin Guangyao takes a deep breath, one he knows will be audible even through the phone. “Yeah. That trip, when we went to tell her parents we were getting married---her mother told me then.”

“That must have been awful,” Lan Xichen says, sounding completely and utterly genuine. “I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell me. I wish I could’ve been there for you.”

God. Jin Guangyao presses the heel of his hand against one of his eyes, and hears himself say, completely unintentionally, “I wish you were here.”

There’s a resounding silence, during which Jin Guangyao thinks every swear word he knows. Clearly he overdid it on the feeling vulnerable front.

And then Lan Xichen says, “I can be on a flight to LA in a couple hours, just let me call a cab to take me to the airport---”

Jin Guangyao sits bolt upright, because yes, he wants that desperately, and yes, just the thought of it is going to keep him warm and smugly contented for days, but also, that’s insane. “No! Xichen-ge, you can’t, you have a concert---”

“You’re more important.”

A horrible, inelegant, choking noise rips its way out of Jin Guangyao’s throat as his protests die. No one has ever---has ever---

“Xichen-ge,” he says weakly, “I haven’t even told you why you’re going to be mad yet.”

“I’m not going to be mad.”

“Your brother’s going to be mad.”

That finally makes Lan Xichen pause. “Why?”

Jin Guangyao mentally tries at least five different ways to explain what he’s done. “I thought---I thought if could convince the press that I’d never actually dated Qin Su, and that actually I’m gay and we’d been faking it so I could stay in the closet, it might be a good enough story that it would become the narrative. You know, instead of our incestuous affair, which really isn’t my fault, I---” He makes himself stop. “And I know that doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Lan Wangji, but then I decided it would be more scandalous if I’d also been hiding a relationship, and now I’m pretending to date Wei Wuxian.”

There’s a long, long silence, during which Jin Guangyao has to bite his tongue to keep from explaining why he didn’t have much of a choice, and honestly, if he hadn’t done something, he’d have been completely unhireable by tomorrow, and his entire future was on the line, so---

“I see why you thought Wangji would be upset,” Lan Xichen says at last, sounding slightly odd. “Ah, why Wei Wuxian, precisely? Surely---surely you had other options.”

“I knew he’d do it, and I knew he’d keep it a secret.” Jin Guangyao rubs his forehead, feeling tired and wishing he’d gotten more sleep. “And the tabloids love writing about him. The only way I could’ve come up with a man as attention-grabbing is if I’d picked someone married.”

Another silence. “I see. That...makes sense.”

Jin Guangyao bites his lip. “Ge,” he says, letting his voice go soft and needy, “are you mad at me?”

“No. No, I---of course not, A-Yao. Never.” Lan Xichen laughs, the strangeness gone from his voice. “Just surprised. And thinking how I’m going to explain it to Wangji. I don’t anticipate that conversation going well.”

The relief is shocking in how strong it is. “Just let Wei Wuxian explain it to him?” Jin Guangyao offers, feeling the corners of his mouth quirk up into a smile.

“Oh, yes, I imagine that would go very well. Thank you so much for your help.”

Jin Guangyao laughs, and Lan Xichen says, apropos of nothing, “Good.”

“Hmm?”

“Oh---oh, I was just thinking how convenient it is that I’m still mostly packed. I can be in LA later today, I---”

“Xichen-ge,” Jin Guangyao says helplessly. “You can’t really.” He hears Lan Xichen start to protest and adds quickly, “Come tomorrow. After your concert. I don’t even know yet how I’d sneak you into my place if you came; there are so many reporters outside.”

Lan Xichen takes a breath as if to argue, and then he stops. “Are you sure? I would rather be there.”

Jin Guangyao is sure, and that’s the problem, because he’s sure of the wrong thing. He’s extremely sure that Lan Xichen should get on the first plane west that he can. Jin Guangyao wants, with a clawing, hungry desperation usually restricted to vicious revenge and his career. Jin Guangyao wants to say, no, come now; he wants to drag Lan Xichen through the door in front of all the reporters and their flashing cameras; he wants to grab Lan Xichen with both hands and keep him here and never let him leave. He wants to lock Lan Xichen with him in a room so they’re stuck together forever.

He allows himself a single moment of that unpleasant, savage desire, and then he locks it away firmly under his carefully constructed layers of being-a-normal-person. He makes himself smile. “I’m sure, Xichen-ge,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

.

hidden track masterpost

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Riverdale should have been a Disney show

Riverdale should have been a Disney show. There I said it. I'll admit the first season was fine Great even. Self-contained with an intriguing mystery and you waited at the edge of your seat for what will happen next. But then... Part of the problem for me is because I've read the original comics since I was a girl. I still do get some from my mom, and the way they have changed the characters just bug me.Betty used to be the girl next door, always hopeful, smart, trying to figure out the mystery. And it was perfect that she was a reporter because Betty was always someone who valued honesty so her being the roving reporter was perfect. And her taking pills for anxiety or some sort of disorder was also a nice take because she does take on so much, and tries so hard to help and be good and nice and perfect. All the stress. Archie was also great in the first season. A bit horny, but he means well, and he truly is an average American boy so his big trouble of choosing between music and football. He's a klutz and sometimes his plans go sideways but he means well, he's all for family and Riverdale and school spirit. None of this whole Red Hood/semi mafia/wrestling nonsense. I actually really liked their take on Veronica, she still a bit materialistic and thinks she can depend on her wealth to get her out of trouble but I do like their take on trying to be enterneauripal and working to act less high class society girl as she was used to. 

Jughead, I'm conflicted with. Because he's good I guess as a brooding, investigative journalist he's good. It fits the setting of the show. But I do have a soft spot for him as the sane man to Archie. Going about his business, surprisingly philosophical. And you can't forget the most important attribute to him. His love of food! I miss that. Like the one scene in season 1, I forget what exactly but basically he ordered burgers and when Cole Sprouse just protectively held the burger to him...such a nice touch. That sort of guy I can see as a DCOM. The genius ditz I guess it's called. But he's not dumb. He just prefers napping to being awake. 

Now the others...omg.I have a bone to pick when it comes to the other characters in Riverdale. Josie and the Pussycats-- they are such lively musicians who solve crimes, sometimes in space. ABsolutely wasted here. Melody barely had any lines. And they didn't have Alex or Alexandra Cabot which was such a shame. I know, I know they're in the new Katy Keene show but having them be step-siblings who used to date is wrong and weird and bad and no! Stop having the twins in these shows with vaguly incesteous feelings. It's weird!

Kevin Keller, all his storylines revolve around his bfs or lack of bfs or how much he wants a bf. The Kevin of Archie comics was so much more well-rounded. He was head of ROTC, he was class president, he ran marathons, he was Veronica's bff, he was a reporter. He had an appetite to match Jughead's. He even had a brief crush on Jughead! He was so much better than this sham. He was confident in who he was and did his best to help others feel good about themselves too because he knows not everyone is lucky to come out as LGTBQ in a supportive environment. 

Reggie. I think not giving him enough of an arc in season 1 really backfired because if he appears, it's only as Veronica's arm candy. Which is a shame because he is a good contrast to Archie. A bit richer yet a cheapskate. Thinks he's a casanova, loves being the class prankster. A modern day politician with his sweet words when all he cares about himself. Basically like 

Yet he has his hidden depths with his neglectful workaholic parents and jealousy of Archie's popularity. Cheryl. Omg Cheryl. They have ruined you here. I'm sorry, I do NOT find any of her lines iconic. It's like she swallowed urban dictionary and a gothic novel and came out all jumbled in a google translate. She may be abused but the way she still treats others like shit and gaslights her gf and makes everything about her is just...ugh!!! OMg, comics Cheryl is actually fun and iconic. She's as rich and pretty as Veronica and unafraid to use it. She wants to be a star like a modern day influencer. She's a red-haired Sharpay Evans basically. 

Also Jason, her twin whom they sadly killed off. He was also fun like a meaner, snobbier version of Reggie. But with a huge crush on Betty which I think could have been used to milk such drama. 

Polly also got hit badly. She was a good older sister. She was a reporter, and inspired Betty's enviormental-feminist activities. A sane person. Not a cult worshipping cuckoo. Toni Topaz, ah she was so good in season 2 and then they made her Cheryl's arm candy. Alas. I liked her as a friend to Jughead. In the comics, she was his equal in food contests. That's no small feat. She was cool, and joined Betty's band and... she was her own person. Remember when Toni used to be a photographer for the South Side paper. Yeah. Basically Toni as a 3d character with personality. Please return. 

Dilton. Oh Dilton. Once the smartest person in the Archie universe and they turned you into a survival freak to get killed by the gargoyle king. Or whomever. I just remember he got killed somehow. Honestly, they should have stuck to smart Dilton. They need a smart scientist there, cuz no one is using their brains in Riverdale. 

Chuck. They have done you SUCH A DISSERVICE! So so bad. Chuck was a good person! He was a cartoonist, and a basketball player and Archie's friend. (Yeah, that's right Archie has friends in the comics. Even though Riverdale makes some effort to show Archie and Jug's bond, they're mainly consorting with their gfs. In the comics, they had guy nights. Reggie, Chuck, Kevin, Dilton, Moose. Come on show. Friendships are just as important.) And what did they do, make him a lying scumbag, turn him good and then have him arrested because of what Cheryl did! No, no no. Bad writers. Just no. Ethel Muggs. You have also been wronged in season 3. Making her a crazy freak. Ethel in season 1 was nice. Ethel in the comics is nice. Plain but with a good heart even though she had a slightly obsessive crush on Jughead. Here, making her cult worshipper.... smdh.  Okay at this point I know I sound like a bitter, bitter person complaining how it'S nOt liKE tHe cOmICs. But hey, I admit season 1 was good even if they changed the characters a bit. It’s just that I watched Riverdale because of the property it derived from. Because of the comics. At the least I expected some faithfulness to the characters. Not make them all so inconsistent and crazy. 

It's just the writing is so inconsistent! The plots hop around and so do their moods. Bughead and Choni broke up for one episode and then they got right back together. Even though they had VALID reasons to break up. Nope. That made fans mad. So they had to get back together. Ugh. And Archie got attacked by a bear and was so traumatized that he broke up with Veronica because "he's changed" for like two episodes before forgetting about it and going back to Veronica. Oh which brings me to the ridiculous "love triangle" of Archie/Reggie/Veronica where she couldn't choose. Please, Archie and Veronica were reuniting and planning to go run away for a weekend together. Reggie was completely forgotten until he walked in on them. And Veronica couldn't decide because she loves them both? No, she didn't. She may have felt bad to tell Reggie but it's not because she loved him. Forgetting a guy so quickly...yeah great proof of love. Horniness maybe. But her indecisiveness makes her look bad. Don’t tease a will they, won’t they when the answer is so obvious.  If you're going to do something like that, you should have there be something called CONSEQUENCES! They can get back together but at least wait. Wait 8 episodes at least so they can have character development. But who am I kidding. Character development is not the goal of this show. The character's just move because the writer's want them too not because it fits their personalities. Such as Archie's grieved reaction for baby Teeth in season 3. 

Not only do I have no idea when (the ridiculously named) Baby Teeth appeared, much less why Archie or I should care about his death. But sometimes the show juggles too much. Too many characters. Too many plots. It's all so ugh!!! So my final thought on this is... Riverdale should have been a disney channel sitcom. Archie comics are about family friendly entertainment and sometimes imparted lessons... well so does Disney. I get the appeal of having Riverdale reach a new teen generation, but from what I can see the only big thing Riverdale on CW is that it allows alcohol and gartituous sex scenes. 

Which is another small gripe of mine. I can handle sex scenes (hello Magic Mike XXL) but so many at such inappropriate moments too It's like that scene in an action movie where they suddenly kiss when they should be running for their lives. No teen is that horny all the time. Plus there's always less is more. If one kisses so much it loses the meaning. If you think your shirtless Archie is going to distract me from lack of plot haha. No. Plot and consistency still sucks and shirtless Archie does not make it better.

But Riverdale as a Disney show can work. After all the comic stories are a bit formulaic. It's all high school hijinks. And all the characters fit an archetype. Archie, the protagonist. Veronica, the fashionista. Betty, the reporter. Jughead, the slacker. Reggie, the class clown/bad friend. Cheryl, the Sharpay, Kevin, the sane one. And if people want a season long story arc with dramatics, Disney can actually handle it too. After all they had the mysterious "threat' lurking in the background of My babysitter's a vampire season 2. Or the Juliet and Mason saga of Wizards of Waverly Place. And if people want adult situations, look on to Jessie. Rewatching an episode now, there were so many adult jokes and references that flew over my head so they could sneak those in. Heck, Disney channel is infamous for all the innuendos they manage. And they handle consistency. Cody and Bailey broke up in Suite life on deck, they actually stayed broken up for a good half season. Gabe matured from a prankster tween to teen in love in Good Luck Charlie. Actions have consequences, characters grow. Storytelling 101

And the best part is they don't even have to think too hard for the plots of the week. They literally can build on stories from the comics. All 80 years of it. And I have put some examples right here from my own Archie comics. Like Veronica literally being the fashion police. 

Veronica and Cheryl teaming up + rolling around in their money. 

Cheryl changing the Cherry Blossom Festival to the Cheryl Blossom Festival 

Archie doing his classic Valentine's Day mix up

Veronica and Betty buy Cheryl’s maid service when her father forces her to get a job. 

Jughead and Trula (Jughead's nemesis & psychoanalyst in training) get amnesia and become friends. 

A boy dares to change Veronica

Jughead falls in love with the lunch-lady 

Betty and Veronica pretending to be distressed damsels to get Archie's attention (it backfires) 

Toni and Jughead foil each other in a food eating contest. 

Betty's cast causes more pain to other students

Reggie dates Cheryl (for real) 

Reggie helps Kevin dress for the dance and his mystery date 

Riverdale Shore. 

Cabot vs Lodge

I think all this pretty much illustrates my point. Archie comics equals Disney sitcom all by itself. 

[otakumagicmusicgamer]

Spoilers Ahead for the first season of My Next Life As A Villianess <3

Oh where to begin. First of all, when the summary said it was a comedy of misunderstandings, I got scared. I have really bad second hand embarrassment and it’s a very fine line of Dense Misunderstandings For Comedy and A Cringefest of Pain For “Comedy” (even playing an anxiety spiral itself for laughs). But oh! How I was happily surprised! It really goes with the flow and doesn’t rely on ridicule or anything. There’s just Catarina, dense weird wonderful Catarina, and everyone in some fashion accepts her for her. So this is actually pleasant to watch!

Now, Catarina- what a delight. What makes her interesting is she takes Fortune Lover Catarina and humbles her. Takes selfish and mean and spins it 180. If she puts out mean into the world, it comes back at her in the end. She knows she has the potential for a ‘scary face’ and actively chooses not to use it. And her feelings on the matter are not just for survival, theyre genuine too. But what makes this fascinating is her lack of accounting for things *not* in the game. She doesn’t consider, by blazing a new path in the game -where Catarina is nice- that new ‘routes’ form. She focuses on Maria’s pov so much, she doesn’t see her own. She doesn’t see the good she’s put out, cuz she’s supposed to be the antagonist. She’s so focused on the doom flags, she doesn’t realize there *are* no doom flags. There’s nothing for the game to doom, no punishment for cruelty. What’s more, even by taking the place of ‘The Suitors’ in scenes with Maria, she doesn’t consider /any of them/ having feelings for her. (Geordo kisses her neck for crying out loud.) Why? Because Catarina Claes is not a romanceable character in Fortune Lover. There are a lot of paths, but she is not one of them. She has no successful romantic relationship, nor any. Which makes this whole anime downright Fascinating. By taking out the antagonist, there is no doom. By inserting a reborn earnest friendly kind tree-climbing high school girl in her place, there is no Fortune Lover. The fact that she is aware of Fortune Lover makes her almost omnipresent, and putting all her points into Survival and Durability and Craves Sweets and nothing else, makes her human. No high marks, denser than bricks, but damn if she ain’t the prettiest embodiment of a Nokia phone. She’d be an apocalypse survivor. “How did she survive a landslide in a volcano? Idk it’s Catarina.” Oh, and the last scene? The friendship ending? Yeah, she’s not wrong. It is a friendship ending.... for Maria. She ends up with none of the interests and stays good friends with them, no bad blood or nothing. Cuz again, Catarina isn’t a love interest. It just so happens that the entire company present in the area is so fucking in love with her that they say the Line Of Romance to her and, while they may bicker, they do not hold bad feelings for each other. If all of them could be married to Catarina and live in a big ol house together, they’d be so fuckin content. And best part? None of this is condemned. No “ya gotta pick one and only one”. They saw a harem and went ‘ya know? Let’s embrace this’ and now the characters r so chill with their plant growing, tree climbing gf. (I’m sure her mother wishes *something* good could rub off on Catarina lol) You hear that? That’s the sound of a Polyamorous nerd feeling validated. (It’s me, I feel validated by this Polyamorous romcom anime, this is my home now)

My thoughts on the rest of the cast aren’t going to be as long. The anime does a good job of going through each characters thoughts and arcs. And I adored Anne’s POV on things as well, how she is also moved to tears by Catarina’s good heart. Even her mother, who is harsh but only because she cares. (I would have loved to see the look on her mother’s face when she was in the coma, how she would have grieved, what she would have reflected on. Her father is a bit more transparent in emotions, but he would have been great to see too). I also would have loved to see Mary and Maria in the book of desire. I figure Maria would kinda be like Alan, but oh, what would Mary have done? (Guess I need fanfiction to answer that lol.) Keith’s role as a love interest for Catarina is the only least liked thing I have on here. And honestly it’s cuz they keep *calling* them brother and sister. I know they’re not actually siblings, mostly that’s left over from Fortune Lover, and “distant relative” can and is shorthand for a lot of things so like it’s even possible they aren’t related at all. And the characters don’t find it horrible that he loves her, and probably know he’s a Distant Relative so they’re like whatevs. So like, it’s not incest. It’s not even as potently close to incest as anime can get. But it’s the only thing that could be deemed a Flaw about this anime, so it stands out. I do wish the ending couple of eps could have been a little more Maria, and her having a bit more importance in general. Also her light magic having an effect a bit in the ‘fight’ with Sirius. Although I do want to think the green glow of hope was Maria, tho I’m pretty sure the assumption is Acchan.

Which btw can I say was an absolute treat? I suspected something was up with Sirius but I did not suspect that. I wonder what his base magic is, if it isn’t dark magic? I had thought he saved Sophia and Catarina and thus also had wind/light magic. But oh man, when he started lashing out on Catarina cuz he thought she was also faking kindness? That she was purposely saving people? That a part of his resentment of nobles was being projected? That somewhere he also caught Feelings and thus the mage doubled down on his control? That when Catarina looked at Sirius and touched his hand and face, her (Nerd™️) instincts kicked in and pieced everything together and also saw him in such pain and misery? That she holds herself to the antagonist title, that she’s there to ruin and thus can’t *save* anyone, (a bittersweet sentiment) so she’s not intimidated by the burst of dark magic and just honestly wants his friendship and sit with him through his pain? MY HEART! IT SCREAMS! (I love this sort of dynamic yes Ive loved Fruits Basket for years don’t look at me like that).

What else.... the little peppering in the fact that Oh Yeah She’s Dead hit like a truck. The little bit with her family, of her past life? Yeah, ouch. Got me crying. Don’t think to much into that rabbit hole, you’ll get sad. I fucking ADORE the twist of Sophia being Acchan, or at least part of her. Her being so scared of loosing her best friend (and love of her life) again? Yeah, tears man. Catarina accidentally mending the relationships between Geordo and Alan and Maria and her mother was great. Having Mary and Sophia dance with Catarina at her birthday party was a delightful touch, as was not having all the romance novels be m/f, and none of it was a joke or negatively placed- just *there*. I do enjoy the interests butting heads with each other over private time with Catarina. It was mostly Geordo and Keith (“they’re such good friends” girl if they had a tenth of lil Alan’s Fight Me energy you’d have to put them on leashes) but I loved the little bits of Geordo vs Mary and Sophia cheering on Nicol and I reeeeally hope to see more of that. To provoke subtle sass from Alan and Maria would be a great sight, and more of Raphael joining the ranks. I laugh at all the times they mutter “gotta protect her, she’s seduced another one” cuz like, girl ain’t doing shit but running into people that happen to be Moron-sexual, holding their hand and refusing to leave. And they KNOW that. And it’s great. edit: HOW COULD I FORGET HER MAGIC! God I want Catarina to get better at magic. More than just Earth Bumps pls

All in all? I love this anime. 9.5/10. Tis good stuff. And if ya read all my late night/oops it’s 4am ramblings, good on you! I feel bad tagging this cuz it’s long but I’m also on mobile so god knows what this actually looks like but I needed my thoughts down so hey, thanks

[oumakokichi]

Hello I am the Tsumugi love hotel anon Thank you for answering my ask it's great to know that other people have the same problem Sorry if this sounds strange but it's hard for me to enjoy V3 without thinking about this I love Danganronpa and I like Tsumugi but this really really bothered me And I kinda don't want to assume that someone who created a series I like so much is like this I guess as a fan Do you have any advice? So sorry but I have this habit of overthinking things and just want help

Hi again anon! It’s not a strange question at all; this is sadly kind of a common dilemma to run into in most fandom spaces, and it’s perfectly normal to have conflicting feelings about these things.

The best advice I can give is to view everything through a critical lens. By this, I don’t mean “you can’t ever enjoy things casually” or “you have to hate the media you consume in order to be a Good Fan™.” I simply mean that it’s important to be aware that pretty much all media is going to be flawed on some level, and that it’s important to not brush aside those flaws when having a real discussion about the content we enjoy and consume.

Part of the reason why I love meta and analysis so much is precisely because it’s a really good way to sort through some of these more complicated feelings I have on certain topics. For as much as I love DR and as much as it’s been a huge source of enjoyment and comfort to me for quite a few years now, I’m never going to sit here and act like it doesn’t have its fair share of flaws. It’s certainly not for everyone, and I can completely understand why some people may not like it.

There’s a very fine line when discussing media too, between raising awareness that all media and content we consume is inherently flawed in some way, and simply dismissing it as okay because “well, everything is problematic in some way so it doesn’t matter.” These things do matter, and I feel like discussion of them is a very important part of critical analysis, especially when it raises awareness of potentially upsetting subject matter to people who may have been unaware of it before.

The entire love hotel scene with Tsumugi is undeniably in extremely poor taste, particularly when incest is a very real and terrible form of abuse that real survivors have suffered through. Seeing it used for nothing more than skeevy fanservice to pander to an otaku audience is deeply upsetting, particularly coming from a game that explicitly touches on the ways in which fiction can and does impact reality in very real, tangible ways.

It doesn’t help that the love hotel scenes themselves hang in a weird sort of limbo as far as their role in the game goes, either. There’s been a lot of debate in the fandom as to whether these scenes can even be considered “canon” on any level—and even if they’re not technically canon, which I think is a fair assessment given that none of the other characters even remember them after waking up and they have no real lasting impact on the plot, the decision to include them at all is still gross on some level.

In my personal opinion, the best way to determine how comfortable you are continuing to support a series or not, is to try and gauge authorial intent: why are these topics or themes included in this piece of media? What purpose do they serve? Are they contributing to a larger narrative by being included here?

To take a topical example… let’s compare this with Harry Potter. DR certainly has its flaws, and ndrv3 is no exception. Not only are certain unsavory “tropes” like incest played as either a punchline or a tool for fanservice, but even earlier parts of the series don’t hold up particularly well (like Chihiro’s “gender reveal”). These things are definitely not enjoyable parts of the narrative—but their presence in the narrative seems to stem from a larger issue of fanservice tropes in visual novels and anime overall, rather than some overarching attempt to either demonize any marginalized group or normalize harmful behavior in real life.

By contrast, through watching JK Rowling’s downward spiral on twitter in the last few years, we’ve seen her become more and more brazen about her hatred of trans people, and trans women in particular. Though she often attempted to brush these tweets aside at first as “middle-aged moments” or “accidents” where she wasn’t aware of the content being spouted by the people she was following, she’s become perhaps one of the most unapologetic T*RFs in the public consciousness.

No matter how much a series like Harry Potter may have shaped my and many other people’s childhoods in the past, it’s really impossible for me to go back to it nowadays as a trans individual. Re-reading the series with a much more critical eye shows that many of Rowling’s most harmful, offensive beliefs are not only something she spews on twitter every other month, but also downright woven into the narrative. Lines about “boys pretending to be girls to try and sneak into the dormitories” and Rita Skeeter’s “rather large, mannish hands” while she “disguises herself” to infiltrate the school premises just hit differently, knowing Rowling’s stance on trans issues and the disgusting harm that she advocates for with her huge platform.

I suppose that’s the biggest line I try to be aware of in deciding where I draw the line between enjoying a series while remaining critical of it, and just flat out refusing to support said series anymore. This line is understandably going to be different for different people, no doubt—but I think being mindful of what creators are actually doing with their platforms is the biggest indicator about the potential intentions behind their works.

The only other piece of advice I can think of to offer, and perhaps the most important one, is to simply support small creators with all the enthusiasm and love that you would for a large series. As long as we maintain a critical eye and awareness about the flaws within popular works like Danganronpa, I think it’s okay to keep enjoying said works. But there are so many content creators out there trying to contribute all kinds of meaningful works with better representation than anything we’ve seen in mainstream media, and it’s incredibly important to support these people so that their works can become better-known.

My best recommendation is to make sure you’re striving to support these smaller content creators: especially black artists and trans artists, who often get overlooked even when hashtags on twitter to support smaller artists are trending.

This sort of became a lengthier response than I was intending, but I felt your question deserved more of an in-depth look at the topic. I hope I was able to get my points across! Thank you for the question anon, and I really hope I could help.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Week 1 | Week 2-3 | Week 4-5 | Week 6-7 | Week 8-9 | Week 10-11 | Week 12-13 | Week 14-15 | Week 16-17 | Week 18-19

Week 20 (p. 651-808)

"Hal himself hasn't had a bona fide intensity-of-interior-life-type emotion since he was tiny; he finds terms like joie and value to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he's in there, inside his own hull, as a human being -- but in fact he's far more robotic than John Wayne" (p. 694).

I'm pretty much over this week-to-week business. Now that the end is in sight (roughly 300 pages), I'm abandoning the schedule and reading as much as I can. Scheduling reading has only ever worked for me as far as it goes. I prefer to immerse myself, however much a novel like IJ seems to discourage that. The book is always structurally interesting, but it starts to get more complicated now as various characters and plots begin to almost slide into one another. There's a cool series of scenes where Matty Pemulis observes Poor Tony, Kate Gompert, and Ruth van Cleve pass by, with Lenz running around the fringes, where pretty soon all the paths intersect at some point, with or without the characters (or the reader) noticing. There's a lot in here about J.O.I.'s films, which seem increasingly unnecessary (but so much of the book is, and is meant to be). The section on the Incandenza family from Joelle's perspective provides some of the clearest insight we have of them, and they are indeed one of the saddest families in literature. We also get Joelle's history from Molly Notkin, both interestingly told from outside perspectives, as if main characters can't be trusted to see their own families clearly.

Week 21 (p. 809-981)

I forgot how totally frustrating it is to near the end of this book and realize the plot isn't going to wrap up in any sort of satisfying way. Wallace commented in an interview (I forget which) that he didn't need to talk about what happens at the end of the book because we know what happens. Buddy, YOU know what happens. The rest of us are here flailing about trying to fit a thousand pieces together, as I suppose we're meant to. We know that the A.F.R. is planning to infiltrate Enfield by the end of the novel, that Poutrincourt is one of their spies ("...which is the slip that indicates that Poutrincourt's figured out that Steeply is neither a civilian soft-profiler nor even a female ... and would require an almost professionally hypervigilant and suspicious person to notice the significance of" p. 1052)., and that John Wayne has some vague connection besides simply being Canadian. We know that, given Orin's capture at the end, they will probably have a Master copy of the Entertainment very soon. What we don't know is how that all goes down, what the fallout is for O.N.A.N., or how Hal gets to be in the state he is in the first chapter (DMZ? AFR? I still can't decide).

"...but it couldn't ordinarily affect anybody or anything solid, and it could never speak right to anybody, a wraith had no out-loud voice of its own, and had to use somebody's like internal brain-voice if it wanted to try to communicate with something, which was why thoughts and insights that were coming from some wraith always just sound like your own thoughts, from inside your own head, if a wraith's trying to interface with you" (p. 831).

This seems like the most compelling motive for J.O.I. to want to dose Hal with DMZ, if in fact he did. Wraiths can only talk to someone who has slowed way down and is no longer experiencing time the way humans normally do--which sounds exactly like what happens when someone ingests DMZ. By the end of the novel (the beginning chapter), we know that Hal can no longer communicate with the outside world, but that there's nothing wrong with his brain voice ("I am in here" p. 3). Will Hal and Jim finally get to have a conversation?

It's clearer than ever that something has happened to Hal though. I don't know if there's any support for the DMZ toothbrush theory--I was actively looking for it and didn't find any, other than the DMZ obviously being missing when Pemulis goes to get it and Hal and other E.T.A. kids vigilantly guarding their toothbrushes. If it's true, it's a leap, but making a leap may be the only way to make sense of that particular conundrum. Whatever has happened is getting worse, as people continually interpret Hal's facial expressions as either very sad or very amused, when we know he's neither. Most tellingly, the narrative switches to first person point of view, Hal telling his own story for the first time (chronologically, if not structurally).

"He dreams he's with a very sad kid and they're in a graveyard digging some dead guy's head up and it's really important, like Continental-Emergency important ... and the sad kid is trying to scream at Gately that the important thing was buried in the guy's head and to divert the Continental Emergency to start digging the guy's head up before it's too late, but the kid moves his mouth and nothing comes out ... while the sad kid holds something terrible up by the hair and makes the face of somebody shouting in panic: Too Late" (p. 934).

It seems like Gately eventually recovers, since we know he goes with Hal to help dig up J.O.I.'s head (verified in chapter one when Hal recalls it). It's possible the Wraith told him about the Entertainment, and this seems especially plausible when Gately somehow knows the plot of the Entertainment while he's still lying in the hospital. It's also possible that Joelle told him about it; through her conversation with Steeply (p. 940), we know that she knew the Masters were buried with Himself--which, ironically, is now buried in the Great Concavity. I'm still not clear about how John Wayne got involved, but there's this super oblique comment in an endnote about Bernard Wayne, a potential A.F.R. member who had not jumped when the train arrived and later drowned (p. 1060), which could potentially be John's father or grandfather.

I had forgotten that the 'Swiss' hand model was actually Luria P----. There are two obvious nods to other novels near the end here, with Fackelmann's A Clockwork Orange style end, and Orin's business with the cockroaches echoing the rats in 1984, specifically his nonsensical shouting "'Do it to her!'" (p. 972). Her who? Luria? Avril? All Subjects in general? I'm a little curious as to why Wallace bothered to make the references. He was doing well on the graphic horror all on his own, no need for outside references.

I'm amused by how many of my questions in my Q and A section are still unanswered. I thought if I paid closer attention on a second read that I would pick up more of the plot things I'd missed on my first, but I don't think that was the problem. I think it's that those answers simply aren't to be found in the actual text. Of course, they can point us toward various conclusions, and the novel certainly encourages us to speculate and make connections, but I don't think the actual answers are there. I have some more thoughts on this, and I'll likely have a review up this week or next.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

Questions & Working Theories

[tw: drug mention, infidelity, incest, statutory rape]

Q: What happened to Hal? (Obvi) - Hal purposely ate the DMZ. He even says in this section, “I cannot make myself understood, now. Call it something I ate” (p. 10). I never bought this explanation, though, because later in the book it seems like Hal is making an effort to come off drugs. - The mold Hal ate as a child had long-term effects, and something (coming off drugs?) may have triggered his current condition. Also supported by, “Call it something I ate” (p. 10). - Aaron Swartz has a very convincing theory that Hal accidentally ate the DMZ when The Wraith placed it on his toothbrush. (Again, supported by above.) Hal is an excellent communicator but lacks feelings, and J.O.I. was attempting to create something that would draw his son out of himself. - Hal was injured when the A.F.R. attacked Enfield Tennis Academy. There’s a weird line in this chapter: “I once saw the word KNIFE finger-written on the steamed mirror of a nonpublic bathroom” (p. 16). This is likely also the work of The Wraith, indicating some kind of violence, perhaps the A.F.R. attack on Enfield. - "A surreal memory of a steamed lavatory mirror with a knife sticking out of the pane" (p. 951). A: Still unclear, but I'm leaning more toward DMZ than A.F.R. on this read. We can see Hal's symptoms growing worse from the Eschaton game onward, and in the last chapters, people think he's either laughing or grimacing when he's not feeling either of those things. Still super interested in the mirror/knife asides though. Is this part of the A.F.R. attack?

Q: Why was Hal hospitalized “almost exactly one year back” (p. 16)? - The side effects of the DMZ were first starting to appear. - Hal was injured in the A.F.R. attack. - It’s clear, also, that this was when Hal met Gately. Although they never have an on-page scene together, Hal refers to the two of them attempting to dig up J.O.I.’s head to find the Entertainment, alongside a masked John Wayne. A: Unclear. See above.

Q: How did Gately, Hal, and John find out about the Entertainment in order to dig it up? How did they discover where it was hidden? - Himself actually mentions that the cartridge has been implanted in his head when he’s talking to Hal as a posed conversationalist. However, this is all the way back in the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad, when Hal is only ten-going-on-eleven. Hard to imagine that Hal remembered what was basically a throw-away comment, let alone understood its meaning. - The Wraith may have told Gately about it while he was lying in the hospital, the same way Gately somehow knows the plot of the Entertainment while he's there. - Joelle may have told them about it, since from her conversation with Steeply, we know that she knows that all the Masters were buried with Jim, which is now buried in the Great Concavity. A: Unclear, but several plausible scenarios.

Q: Who is mailing out the Entertainment? - Swartz suggests that it’s Orin Incandenza, who later under threat of torture releases it to the A.F.R. This seems well-supported by the text, since the initial cartridge is mailed from Arizona, and it’s conveniently sent to a medical attaché with whom Avril probably had an affair (per J.O.I.’s conversation with Hal). - Some support for this theory during one of Hal and Orin's phone conversations: "'What are you doing going to the post office? You hate snail-mail. And you quit mailing the Moms the pseudo-form-replies two years ago, Mario says'" (p. 244). Why is Orin at the post office, if not to mail more copies of the Entertainment? - However, as Marie pointed out, we don't know for sure that Orin was in Arizona in April YDAU. He's there in October, but there's a flashback of him in New Orleans in July that doesn't mention the year. If it was YDAU, Orin couldn't have postmarked the Cartridge from Arizona in April. - Orin also asks Hal directly about the days leading up to Himself's death, and he seems suspiciously interested in whatever film he was working on. "'Did he have film-related things with him when he flew somewhere? A film case? Equipment?'" (p. 250). However, if he already knew about the Entertainment back in April, why ask Hal about it in November? - This conversation is continued in a lengthy endnote where Orin asks about the definition of samizdat ("the generic meaning now is any sort of politically underground or beyond-the-pale press or the stuff published thereby" (p. 1011) and comments, "'So you'd have no idea why The Mad Stork's name would come up in connection with somebody saying samizdat?'" (p. 1011). Again, it's suspicious that he's even asking, but also, if he already knows about the Entertainment, why bother to ask? Is he trying to find out, or just trying to find out what Hal knows about it? Why? - "...place the likely dissemination-point someplace along the U.S. north border, with routing hubs in metro Boston/New Bedford and/or somewhere in the desert Southwest" (p. 549). Obviously, the Southwest could be Orin, but who's distributing it in Boston? Orin before he moved? I'd guess the Antitoi brothers, but their copy turned out to be blank (or seemed to be, if it was played on the wrong model). Orin has motive to want the medical attache dead for the affair with his mother, but why the film scholar, the avant-garde film festival, and the members of the Academy of D.A.S.? Were these Himself's rivals, or people Avril also had affairs with? - "Swiss cuckolds, furtive near-Eastern medical attachés, zaftig print-journalists: he felt ready for anything" (p. 597). - "There was reason to think M. DuPlessis had received his original copies from this relative, an athlete. Marathe felt U.S.B.S.S. felt this person may have borne responsibility for the razzles and dazzles of Berkeley and Boston, U.S.A." (p. 723). Did Orin give a copy to DuPlessis, or did he send it to him to kill him? A: It seems pretty clear on a re-read that it is Orin sending out the Entertainment, either from Boston before he left it or from Arizona where he currently lives, or both. I'm still not clear how he knew about it in the first place though, in order to dig it up. Between Orin's capture/torture at the end and the Antitoi brothers' having copies of DuPlessis's stolen cartridges, it seems certain that the A.F.R. will soon locate a Master copy. (The Antitoi's turns out to be Read-Only p. 725.)

Q: How did Orin find out about the Entertainment? - Joelle might have told him, though this was after her disfigurement and their breakup, so I'm not sure why she would. A: Unclear.

Q: When did Orin transfer from New Orleans to Arizona? - In June YW-QMD, Orin was still with the New Orleans Saints, per the mail between him and Avril (p. 1006-7). - In October YDAU, he's in Arizona. Q: Unclear.

Q: What happened to John Wayne that he can’t win this year’s WhataBurger competition? A: SUPER UNCLEAR. Thanks for nothing. We know he survived the A.F.R. attack (if Steeply didn’t stop the attack) because he’s in the off-page graveyard scene with Hal and Gately. Was he an A.F.R. target after that for going against them?

Q: What “sordid liaison” (p. 30) with the M. DuPlessis, who dies in a later chapter, did the Incandenza family have? - Still not clear, but it sounds like J.O.I. either purposely or under duress gave a Master copy (or copyable copy) of the Entertainment to DuPlessis, or had it stolen from him before or after his death, and it was then stolen by accident when Gately robbed and killed DuPlessis. ("Whether or not the A.F.R. ever even recover this alleged Master copy from the DuPlessis burglary..." (p. 489).) A: Best guess is that Avril had an affair with DuPlessis, Orin/Jim discovered the affair (possibly with a name written on the fogged up glass of Avril's car), and Orin sent him a copy to kill him, which he didn't watch (because he died? Not clear on the timeline). The copy was then stolen by Gately and ended up with the Antitoi brothers.

Q: Is Marathe a double-agent, or is he just pretending to be a double agent? - Marathe has betrayed the A.F.R. and is aiding Steeply and the Americans in finding the Entertainment in order to get medical care for his wife. - Marathe is only pretending to betray the A.F.R. in order to get more information from Steeply. A: Marathe is a double-agent, and is actually betraying the A.F.R. "The A.F.R. believed Marathe functioned as a triple agent, pretending to betray his nation for his wife, memorizing every detail of the meetings with B.S.S. ... M. Fortier did not know Marathe had reached the internal choice that he loved his skull-deprived and heart-defective wife Gertraud Marathe more than he loved the Separatist and anti-O.N.A.N. cause of the nation of Québec..." (p. 529).

Q: Where did the tripod set up in the middle of nowhere on the ETA grounds come from? - The U.S.S. Millicent Kent set up the tripod as an excuse to get Mario alone. - This is the possibly the first instance of the Wraith's work. He's responsible for most of the odd occurrences at ETA, and "Mario said his late dad had used a somewhat less snazzy IV-model Husky back in his early days of making art-films..." (p. 122).) A: The Wraith put it there. "But it's true. The Husky VI tripod of Mario's near-fatal encounter with the U.S.S. Millicent Kent was only the beginning" (p. 632). After this, the instances of objects being in odd places around E.T.A. increases dramatically.

Q: Who is the narrator in some of these sections about ETA? - It's a distinct voice from the sections that have conversations, but it also sounds a little like someone talking to us. ("I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me..." (p. 128). Is this a character? A: Unclear. The only clear first person POV character we have in the novel is Hal. In some ways, the narrator's voice does sound a lot like Hal's, but if this is the case, he also discusses himself in third person a lot (which... Hal is pretty removed from himself, so that's not entirely impossible). I'm not confident enough to say that Hal is the mystery narrator throughout the book though.

Q: Are the effects of DMZ the effects we see in Hal in the first chapter? A: Very likely. Whatever starts in the Eschaton game grows worse toward the end of the novel, as people continually interpret Hal's facial expressions as either very sad or very amused, when we know he's neither. Most tellingly, the narrative switches to first person point of view, Hal telling his own story for the first time (chronologically, if not structurally).

Q: Why do Hal's symptoms in the Eschaton game seem more like DMZ side effects than marijuana side effects? Was there DMZ mixed with it? Was it purposely mixed in, or was it the work of the Wraith? - This is the first time we see Hal with similar symptoms as the ones he has in the first chapter, which seems to suggest that--whether or not the DMZ and marijuana are related, whether it was intentional or not--Hal did take the DMZ on Interdependence Day YDAU. - Pemulis goes looking for the DMZ later on, which seems to suggest it wasn't intentional, at least not on his end. Hal also doesn't consciously acknowledge that he's going to take it in this chapter either. - Mario reflecting on his brother: "He can't tell if Hal is sad. He is having a harder and harder time reading Hal's state of mind or whether he's in good spirits. This worries him. He used to be able to sort of preverbally know in his stomach generally where Hal was and what he was doing, even if Hal was far away and playing or if Mario was away, and now he can't anymore" (p. 590). Why the change? DMZ-related? - "But the crisis of faith that cost Stice the match had concerned a different Hal, Hal can tell. It's now a whole new Hal, a Hal who does not get high, or hide, a Hal who in 29 days is going to hand his own personal urine over to authority figures with a wide smile and exemplary posture and not a secretive thought in his head" (p. 635). If Hal took the DMZ on purpose, does he know it will be out of his system in a month? What else could have created a "whole new Hal"? It seems like a leap to think that quitting marijuana is the sole cause of all the changes. A: Very likely that Hal took DMZ, maybe more than once, starting at the Eschaton game.

Q: Who is Mario's father, Jim or Charles? - This is more of a detail question than anything because I'm not sure I care about the answer. It certainly doesn't seem to matter to Mario. He obviously bonded a lot with Jim over film in a way that seems almost worshipful at times, and I'm always in the camp of family is who you choose, not necessarily who you're related to. Also, Charles seems repelled by Mario, whereas Jim apparently loved him and spent time with him, so fuck Charles. A: Unclear.

Q: Is Charles Avril's half-brother or step-brother? - Again, this is a detail question, although one is significantly grosser than the other if they're having an affair, which it sounds like they are/were. ("...the thing it's not entirely impossible he may have fathered asleep up next to the sound system..." (p. 451).) That’s... not really a question if they weren’t sleeping together. Fuck you twice, Charles. - "Charles Tavis is probably not related to the Moms by actual blood" (p. 900). A: According to Hal, he's most likely her step-brother, though it doesn't seem like anyone ever cared enough to verify this.

Q: Was Pemulis selling DMZ to the Antitoi brothers, or buying it from them? - "Bertraund had been starry-eyed enough to agree to barter the person an antique blue lava-lamp and a lavender-tinged apothecary's mirror for eighteen unexceptional-looking and old lozenges the long-haired old person had claimed in a jumble of West-Swiss-accented French were 650 mg. of a trop-formidable harmful pharmaceutical no longer available and guaranteed to make one's most hair-raising psychedelic experience look like a day on the massage-tables of a Basel hot-springs resort..." (p. 482) A: Unclear, but I'm guessing buying, since Pemulis ends up with it and, as far as we know, the Antitoi brothers don't.

Q: What's the significance of Lucien Antitoi's spirit immediately after his death? Does this have an impact on the Wraith's activities? - "...and is free, catapulted home over fans and the Convexity's glass palisades at desperate speeds, soaring north, sounding a bell-clear and nearly maternal alarmed call-to-arms in all the world's well-known tongues" (p. 489). A: It seems like the Wraith's activities amplify after Lucien's death. If he knows that Hal is in danger from the A.F.R., he might be trying to rally Gately to help.

Q: If Pemulis has Avril's affair with John Wayne to hold over her, why is he still expelled at the end of the novel? A: WOOPS. Peemster accidentally dosed John with 'drines, as well as his very public tennis opponent. Can't help feeling Pemulis unfairly got the worst of it, while Avril got in zero trouble for having an affair with a teenage student. Also, hilariously, Hal already knew about the affair and didn't care about it.

Q: What's up with John Wayne and Hal? - "...John ('N.R.') Wayne opened up the ajar door a little more and put his whole head in and stayed like that, with just his head in. He didn't say anything and Hal didn't say anything, and they stayed like that for a while, and then Wayne's head smoothly withdrew" (p. 560). - "I could somehow tell for sure that John Wayne's head was inside the open door. I could feel it clearly, almost painfully. He was looking down at me lying there on the Lindisfarne carpet. There was none of the gathering tension of a person deciding whether or not to speak. I could feel my throat's equipment move when I swallowed. John Wayne and I never had much to say to one another. There wasn't even hostility between us" (p. 956). A: No idea. There’s the possibility that John is a spy for the A.F.R. the same as Poutrincourt, but I’d thought they had to infiltrate the tennis academy because they didn’t have another spy already in place. Thanks to the weird endnote, we know he has some connection, but I’m not totally sure what it is.

Q: Do Pemulis's descriptions of the effects of annulation have anything to do with how DMZ affects people, or the effect the mold Hal ate as a child had on him? It seems oddly similar to how Hal is experiencing time in the first chapter. Is this how J.O.I. stumbled onto it? - "'Accelerated phenomena, which is actually equivalent to an incredible slowing down of time", "relativity of time in extreme organic environments" (p. 573). A: Could be one of a million metaphors in this book.

[dunderklumpen]

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau interview: Lannister’s greatest battle yet — defending the Amazon

The Game of Thrones star is now a UNDP goodwill ambassador on climate change. It’s hard to care about dragons when the rainforest is burning, he says

Was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau — best known as the “Kingslayer”, Jaime Lannister, the sexy, incest-loving baddie (turned goodie, turned . . . it’s complicated) from Game of Thrones — devastated when the hit television show ended this year?

The Danish actor shrugs. “No, I was fine.” After eight series, though, many of the cast were apparently inconsolable. “Yes, I heard that, but I wasn’t. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, I really enjoyed it, but at the end of the day it was just a television show. I would work on it for a maximum of 30 days a year, then I would do other stuff that I would spend more time on. Of course it was a bit sad, when you’ve spent 10 years with a group of people, to know you won’t be seeing them regularly any more, but the job was over. It had run its course — you couldn’t really squeeze any more out of it.”

When he was cast in Game of Thrones a decade ago, Coster-Waldau, long a jobbing actor on both sides of the Atlantic, had no clue that the production he had signed up to would become a cultural phenomenon.

“Actually, when the show started there was a lot of stigma. When I told people I’d got this job with HBO, they were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be amazing — is it about gangsters?’ And when I said, ‘No, actually it’s a fantasy with dragons’, they were like, ‘Oh well then, good luck.’ A lot of people had to be almost forced into watching it before they realised the supernatural stuff is really not what it’s about.”

If Coster-Waldau sounds dismissive about his part in TV history, it’s because, post-Thrones, he has been busy. As well as finishing a couple of Danish films, the 49-year-old is making a documentary about the nerdy world of “comic cons” — comic-book conventions. He keeps in touch with a handful of Thrones pals, especially Gwendoline Christie, who played his non-sororal love interest, Brienne of Tarth.

He has also become a goodwill ambassador on climate change — and on gender equality — for the UN Development Programme. Why do actors seem compelled to bang on about climate change, even when the public makes it clear they don’t enjoy receiving lectures from luvvies whose job consists of jetting around the world to prance around on sets with carbon footprints greater than most of us will produce in a lifetime?

“I acknowledge 100% that actors talking about climate change annoys people. It is ridiculous. I understand why people say, ‘Why should I listen to him? — he’s a f****** actor’,” he says.

“They’re right. You shouldn’t listen to me. It’s what I’m saying: don’t listen to me, but do listen to the experts, the scientists, the people who actually have their feet on the ground and know what they’re talking about.”

Coster-Waldau, 6ft 2in, understands the public are more likely to pay attention to him than to a group of scientists. Dressed in sensible Scandi weatherproof gear, he is determined to talk about his recent visit to the Amazon rainforests of Peru, which have been devastated by fires set by farmers and loggers.

“There’s a huge spotlight on Game of Thrones and I’m happy to use that, because I believe climate change is a global problem and we all have responsibility for each other,” he says. “The UN is a very flawed organisation, but I still think it’s the way forward.”

There is a pleasing Nordic frankness to Coster-Waldau’s refusal to provide simplistic or patronising narratives about the cause of the fires and how they can be prevented. “Fires are very scary and very visually stunning, and there’s no question the deforestation of the Amazon is a huge problem. But when you’re actually there, you realise that everything is complex.”

The actor has long been an activist. When he was a child, his mother “dragged” him on anti-nuclear marches (his late father was an alcoholic).

“In my teens I was very involved in the anti-apartheid thing and we did a lot of ridiculous stuff. There was one night called Close the Doors of Power, when my friend and I went round at night putting sealant into all the locks of every bank and every insurance company. If I saw it today I’d be like, ‘You kids are so stupid. One guy will have the job of cleaning this all up, and nothing’s going to change.’ But at the time it was very fulfilling.”

Coster-Waldau is mindful of what happened when another do-gooding star meddled in complex local issues. “When I was a kid in Denmark, there was the big campaign by Brigitte Bardot and Greenpeace to end seal-clubbing. I remember those posters of her with the cute baby seals. We were like, ‘How can anyone kill them?’ Well, that campaign succeeded, but it also pretty much destroyed the livelihoods of the Inuits in Greenland, so Greenpeace is hated in Greenland. They destroyed a community. That’s what can happen when f****** actors tell us what to do.”

Coster-Waldau is big on Greenland, where on a previous UN trip he witnessed the rapidly melting ice caps. His actress wife, Nukaka, is a former Miss Greenland. She has never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. “She promised me she was going to sit down with my mum [to watch it], but it’s a long series. It requires some dedication.” So his mum hasn’t seen it either? “No, it’s not her thing,” he giggles. “Nor have quite a few of my family. Actually, it’s quite nice when there’s so much craziness surrounding it.”

At least his 19-year-old daughter has watched it. “My 16-year-old has started, but she finds it weird to see me as someone else. I mean, in the first episode I’m having sex.” And not just with any woman — with Jaime’s sister. “Yeah, exactly,” Coster-Waldau sighs. And Jaime then pushes a 10-year-old boy who catches them in flagrante out of a window. “Actually, for some reason people find that bit OK. It’s always the sex that gets people going. But without those scenes, we wouldn’t have had a show.”

No matter how deep into the rainforest he travelled, Coster-Waldau was recognised. The indigenous people had watched the series on the internet — which is also where they had educated themselves about climate change.

“In my own ignorance, I assumed they wouldn’t have much knowledge about it, which is really embarrassing because of course they did. They have a very clear understanding that what is happening to the Amazon is not great. This is their home, which they love and have real interest in seeing preserved, but it’s a question of people doing things to survive. You can’t say to them, ‘Why don’t you go and do something else?’ They have got to feed their families. There are no other jobs — it’s an impossible choice.”

Does Coster-Waldau, who was rumoured to be earning more than $1m (£760,000) an episode for the final series of Game of Thrones, plant trees to offset his hefty carbon footprint, like his fellow eco-warrior Emma Thompson?

“Yeah, when I buy a flight I do that thing of paying extra [to offset]. I just got an electric car. But listen: I don’t have a leg to stand on. I have two homes, one in Denmark and one in Los Angeles, which is absolutely horrific. But we also have to live in this world. I just don’t believe that anyone can magically transport themselves back to living how it was 100 years ago. We need to move away from that guilt thing.” Is he attacked for hypocrisy? He snorts. “I don’t read the comments.”

It is important to be optimistic, he adds. “If we can come up with so many amazing inventions, surely we can find solutions to this. I hate to believe we are so stupid we are just going to destroy ourselves.” This may all sound a bit woolly, but — as Coster-Waldau has made abundantly clear — he’s only a f****** actor.

By Julia Llewellyn Smith December 22 2019, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

[wiseabsol]

WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 13: A Start

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/13/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.  

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 13!

CHAPTER 13: A START

Alright, on to chapter thirteen. Before I begin, since there have been some people in the comments expressing interest in my full reviews, they can be found at: wiseabsol (dot) tumblr (dot) com (slash) tagged (slash) dominion (percent sign) 20by (percent sign) 20aurelia (percent sign) 20le. I might also run the idea of setting up a forum for “Dominion” by Aurelia. That way, you all would have someplace to read my reviews on this website, as well as discuss the story with each other outside of the reviews section.

 On to the review. Zuko has slept past sunrise, which may be an indication of how bad a shape he’s in, since firebenders are supposed to rise with the sun (Azula, note, still rose with the sun while hospitalized). But he managed to sleep the night through without nightmares, which is progress for him. Turns out he’s achieved that by drinking a sedating tea left by Iroh.

 “The old man had even gone do far as to pretend Mai told him, to try to get Zuko to talk. It was the kind of thing Azula would do.”—Iroh and Azula are both cunning, strategic thinkers, which may be part of why she makes Iroh uncomfortable. She probably reminds him of himself when he was younger. If she’d been a boy, it’s possible that he might have tried to take Azula under his wing…but given that she was a girl, and thus had gender roles that she was supposed to conform to (hence him giving her a doll), he didn’t. That and Ozai snapped her up quickly, with Iroh soon afterwards writing her off as Ozai’s “creature.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if we later find out that part of why Iroh considered her so dangerous was because she reminded him of his younger self, rather than Ozai.

 Apparently Zuko blew up at Iroh for the deception, and said some things he shouldn’t have. Old habits die hard.

 “What his uncle couldn’t know was that there was no help for what he did.”—Yeah, sleeping with your sister is not something you can take back.

 Zuko has some manservants in the room with him, who offer him fruit, foot washing, and hot towels, which he doesn’t accept. What even is the point of being royalty if you can’t enjoy some nice things, Zuko? Though you probably don’t think you deserve nice things. As the manservants go about getting him ready, Zuko has this pleasant memory of Mai: “Mai used to put his hair up for him, when she woke at the same time as Zuko. She wasn’t much good with hair, in truth, but that hardly mattered. More often than not, it was just thinly veiled foreplay”—So they were a genuinely sweet couple at one point.

 But then it’s time to go to Squicktown: “But when he tried to recall those mornings now, it was his sister’s slim fingers that raked through his hair, her mouth that he tasted, the warmth of her skin—“—That’s gross, buddy. While we could chalk this up to being a sign of his continued obsession with Azula, it could also be a sign of trauma. Good memories triggering associations that trigger bad memories. If he was wanking off to the memory of Azula, then I’d say it was an obsession thing. As it is, it’s causing him distress, so trauma seems more likely.

 “A memory made all the more painful by having to wonder how much of that Azula did at their father’s command, those years he abused her under the guise of training….”—Sadly, I think Ozai does believe it was training. Though this is also the dude who believes that suffering is instructive.

 “With such dark thoughts as he had for company, he barely noticed the comings and goings of the palace staff anymore.”—Losing your situational awareness is not good, Zuko. Especially when you know there are people who aren’t happy with your reign.

 “Uncle thought it started shortly after Zuko was banished. She would have been eleven.”—Ugh. That is vile. Though I suspect that Ozai was grooming her before then.

 Ozai is dying from his burns. While I’m inclined to say “Good riddance,” if he dies, it means that Zuko will have committed patricide, which will cause a public outcry and earn him more enemies. Also, Azula will never forgive him for it.

 “The man lived to plague him, he knew.”—Ozai is absolutely that spiteful.

 “He remembered asking Iroh if his banishment might have been planned. If his father might have sent him away just to do that to Azula, to remove the last family member she might have turned to for defense, the last witness to his crimes. He remembered the look his uncle gave him then, when he said they may never know.”—I think it’s probable that Ozai was looking for an excuse to get rid of Zuko, just like he did with Mai and Ty Lee. He wanted to isolate Azula, but he also wanted to get Zuko out of the picture so he could make Azula first in line for the throne.

 That being said, I don’t think Ozai believed that Azula would turn to Zuko for help. The siblings were already poisoned against each other back then. I think the look Iroh gave Zuko wasn’t because he knew the answer to the question—it was because he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered whether Zuko was there or not. Ozai would have done this to Azula anyway, and given how careful they were to hide it, I don’t think Zuko would have noticed that something was wrong until the abortion. I doubt that Iroh would have noticed either, since he was so focused on Zuko. While the idea of, “If I was there, I could have done something!” is a comforting one, it’s also naïve on Zuko’s part. He was a child then, too. And given Zuko’s disposition at that age—to confront evil head on, without thinking through the potential consequences—he probably would have ended up in a much worse position than he did in canon. He would have been a security risk to Ozai—a security risk that can’t lie well. No, I think Zuko being there would have resulted in disaster. Iroh, on the other hand, might have been able to figure out a quiet solution. But he wasn’t there, and so the possibility passed.

 Iroh, in any case, left after receiving a letter from Rai, without telling Zuko the contents of said letter. Iroh says this is so Zuko can have plausible deniability, but because Zuko is in bad mental shape, he’s slipping into some paranoia about it—paranoia rather like Azula’s at the end of the series. He’s unkempt, he can’t sleep, he is wracked with self-hatred and guilt (Azula was, too, though her mind expressed it through Ursa’s hallucination). If he starts banishing people, it will probably start rumors that madness runs in the family.

 “He wondered if his uncle began to mistrust him around Azula. If he knew what you did, he would never trust you with her again, he reminded himself.”—Which would be fair of him, Zuko. But Iroh is too convinced of your goodness to suspect that you would hurt her intentionally. He was ready to handwave away you killing her as an act of self-defense.

 “And Mai would not receive the old general at her parents’ house, sparking rumors she had left the palace to avoid him, rather than her husband.”—I think because Mai knows that Iroh will side with Zuko in a conflict, and that’s not something that she wants to deal with right now. I do not blame her.

 Zuko continues to contemplate Iroh’s visit, sliding into self-pity as he thinks of how tired Iroh must be getting of him: “[Iroh] was probably just as relieved to go as Zuko was to see him away….”

 “‘It isn’t fair,’ [ . . . ] That one mistake with Azula should poison the only healthy, loving relationship he had with any blood relative. It wasn’t fair.”—Zuko thinks this, but he’s the one who is pushing Iroh away. I think he could have told Iroh a portion of the truth—that he and Azula argued, that he got angry and intentionally hurt her, and that he feels horrible about it now. I think that would shake Iroh’s faith in Zuko, but I think he would still be supportive, and would understand, finally, that Zuko still has lingering behavioral problems from Ozai’s abuse that need to be worked through. It might have opened up some routes to healing faster…though I daresay that Mai wouldn’t have been pleased with Zuko giving his uncle a sanitized version of the truth.

 Zuko’s chamberlain comes in, with a list of what sounds like some very important meetings that Zuko should go to, but Zuko has other plans for his day. He’ll still keep the meeting with the “Advisory Board for the Reformation of Asylums,” which Zuko created sometime in the last few weeks. For now, though, Zuko is going to see Mai and Lu Ten.

 We transition to Iroh meeting with Rai. Apparently, Iroh recruited her after her banishment from the Fire Nation. Rai catches Iroh up on how her time with Azula went, but feels that she could have done more for Azula. Iroh interrupts her by placing a hand on her knee—weird choice there, Iroh—and says that it was for the best that she didn’t reveal that she knew who Azula was, because, “‘She might even have killed you.’”

 Rai, though, has more faith in Azula than Iroh does: “‘No.’ The cook shook her head, surprising Iroh. ‘She makes threats when she’s under duress. And she certainly knows how to sell them [ . . . ] But she never struck me as particularly bloodthirsty, either then or now. She would avoid unnecessary violence, if only to keep a low profile.’”—Thank you, Rai!

 Rai, bless her, also dismisses Iroh’s question of whether the wounds could have been self-inflicted. I see why he would ask this, given the self-harm Azula committed in the asylum, but it does make it clear that he hasn’t seen her any time recently, after she started getting better. He then wonders if maybe the asylum had been mistreating her and covered up the signs, since his visits were announced in advance and he only ever saw her from a distance.

 Then he wonders if Zuko was the one who injured Azula—ding, ding, Iroh, you are correct! “It would go a long way toward explaining his obvious guilt, and Zuko had always been given to emotional excesses.”—No kidding. In regards to the burn, he thinks, “He could not see what purpose it had served, except to hurt her…”—CORRECT AGAIN!

 Rai, meanwhile, wonders about Azula being sent to the asylum. She thought that Azula might have been jailed or banished by Zuko instead. This ticks Iroh off: “Her brother showed her compassion,” he insists, but Rai is not convinced, since the workers at the asylum might have hurt Azula. When she expresses that, Iroh responds hotly, “‘He knew naught of this, woman,’” and breathes out flames. I’m not fond of him calling her “woman” here, because when men do that, it’s often meant to be dismissive or demeaning. The show of flames is also not cool of him. Control yourself, Iroh.

 Rai isn’t impressed by him and plans to leave, but Iroh has more questions. He asks what happened to the man who assaulted Azula, and Rai responds: “‘Dead,’ Rai told the woodplank floor, her voice barely breaking a whisper when she crossed white arms under her ample bust.”—Why are you noticing the size of her breasts, Iroh? But also, this does seem hard for Rai to talk about.

 Iroh assumes Azula killed the guy, but Rai corrects him, telling him that she did it herself. “The woman raised her eyes to his, and Iroh was reminded uncannily of his missing sister-in-law.” Oh, I hope that Ursa kills Ozai. I feel like it’s improbable that that will happen, but I want it. Also, the phrase “silk hiding steel” comes to mind here, both for Rai and Ursa.

 Rai discusses her reasons for killing Lee—both to give Azula a measure of protection and for justice—and how her own husband, Shou, abused her. “If she had been abused, of course this cook would look coldly on what she likely viewed as excuses for the abuse of Azula. Her own husband probably made her parrot lines like that, that it was an accident, she did it to herself….”—As much as I obviously empathize with Azula, I should point out that there is, theoretically, some danger in Rai doing the same. If Azula had continued to behave abusively towards others, Rai’s empathy for Azula’s suffering might have made her inclined to excuse Azula’s actions, much like Iroh currently does for Zuko. And if she’s excusing those actions, then she might have been caught off guard and hurt by Azula during their time together.

 That being said, in this case, Rai’s empathy is refreshing, and also lends itself to a more accurate reading of Azula’s character than Iroh has. Iroh, very confused by this point, asks Rai why she would go to such lengths to help his niece. As it turns out, Rai worked in the kitchens at the palace, while her husband was an imperial firebender. She couldn’t accuse him of abuse or get away from him, but when Azula started banishing people, Rai was banished before he was—and so she managed to escape and stay ahead of him all of this time.

 “‘Rai,’ he said quietly, a little concerned for her sanity at this point, ‘you must know she didn’t mean to help you. She banished her servants because she was crazy, not out if any altruistic urge.’”—It rubs me the wrong way that Iroh thinks that Rai might be crazy. There’s a part of me that wants to throw at him, “You only think that because you’ve never known what it’s like to be helpless,” but I know that’s not true. It’s not like Azulon was compassionate to Iroh or cared about his emotional needs, and losing Lu Ten would definitely have made Iroh feel helpless. Still, this grates on me, possibly because Iroh is a very privileged man and hasn’t faced the same hardships as Rai. I feel like Ursa would understand Rai, though. I don’t know if they would get along—somehow, I doubt it, since Rai has faith in Azula and Ursa does not—but I’d love to see a conversation between them someday.

 Much to Iroh’s discomfort, Rai talks about how the palace staff knew that Ozai was mistreating Azula, and hints that there were rumors about the sexual abuse, too: “Those years Prince Zuko was banished, her father kept her so close [ . . . ] She turned up all manner of strange injuries [ . . . ] and even disappeared for a week once. There were some as said he killed her. And those were the least of the rumors. [ . . . ] There was something…wrong there. [ . . . ] Everyone knew it. And no one did anything. [ . . . ] Not even me.”

 When Iroh points out that Ozai was the Fire Lord and there was nothing that she could have done, Rai is not consoled: “‘And she was a piece of work,’ Rai finished bluntly, holding his gaze. ‘I know. She was also a child, with no one to treat her like one. I thought I might be someone to look out for her, even years too late’”—God, it’s so nice to hear someone point out that no matter how cruel Azula was, she was a kid and didn’t deserve what happened to her. It’s so good to see someone want to look out for her and help her. I’ve never thought that Rai could have been an inspiration for Tam, but she’s hitting the same points, even if she’s a very different person. I wish we had more of Rai in this, but I suspect her role in the story is done by the end of this chapter.

 As their conversation winds down, Iroh reassures Rai that she did help Azula and pays her for the information. Rai urges him to help Azula, even if Azula pushes him away. “‘She really seems to hate you,’” Rai says, and I think that’s due to, A.) Ozai turning Azula against Iroh, B.) Iroh’s claim of killing the last dragon, C.) Iroh sending Azula gifts that catered more towards who Ursa wanted her to be, rather than who Azula wanted to be, and D.) Iroh choosing Zuko and telling Zuko to confront Azula and take her crown from her. Iroh says his goal is to help Azula, but he inwardly admits that he’s not sure how.

 We shift back to Zuko, who is just arriving at Mai’s place. Mai’s uncle, the warden from the Boiling Rock, is there, and isn’t happy to see Zuko. He escorts Zuko in, and there is a brief exchange with Mai’s parents, during which her mother seems to imply that Mai’s uncle better not mess things up with the Fire Lord. Once the rest of the family is gone, Tsutomu quickly establishes that if it weren’t for Mai, he’d gut Zuko, because Mai has told him everything.

 I’m not sure this was a wise call on Mai’s part—the more people who know a secret, the harder it is to keep—but I understand why she did it. She knows that her uncle is loyal to her. She knows that he doesn’t like Zuko. It would feel safe to go to him with this. That and he has contacts who could help her.

 “Zuko was glad Mai had him to support her through this. But the warden would have done his utmost to poison her against him”—You did that yourself, Zuko.

 “But then, a man who lays with his sister and tries to kill his father, what would you know about [family]?”—Woof, yeah, Zuko is a walking Greek tragedy. I’m curious about what Hu Xin did to be considered an equivalent.

 “And I’m not sure that’s something I can allow in my niece’s life, regardless of her wishes.”—Fair, but you can’t support Mai if you’re executed for committing treason and regicide, Tsutomu.

 Zuko asks if Mai’s parents know, but Tsutomu dismisses the idea: “‘They still think you fucked that waterbender.’” I am slightly amused by the confusion there, but not amused by the warden calling Katara a “nubile little savage” right afterwards. Gross and racist, Tsutomu.

 “Zuko could only stare at him, sick with the realization that Mai’s parents suspected he cheated on her, even if they didn’t know with whom. And they still treated Zuko better than their daughter.”—More evidence that monarchies and patriarchies are terrible. The warden acknowledges that, saying that Mai’s parents expect this sort of thing from a noble husband, and that they think that Mai should suck it up and make sure her son’s and her family’s futures are secure, rather than let her hurt feelings get in the way. Which the warden thinks is bullshit, and as much as I don’t like him, I agree with him.

 “‘Be the man that she deserves,’” he tells Zuko, and I’m like, “You tell him, Scary Warden.”

 Zuko goes to find Mai, who is still wearing her crown. “She wouldn’t if she meant to desert him, would she?”—Dude, she earned that. I wouldn’t give it up without a fight either. Like, I don’t like monarchies, and I’d set up a council if someone gave me a crown…but like hell if I’m giving up that crown! It’s shiny!

 Mai has been waiting for him to approach her to talk. I don’t know if I’m supposed to find the bed exchange amusing, but—Mai, come on. The bed needed to go. How could you sleep in it again knowing that Azula was raped and impregnated there? No, let it burn. Throw some oil on it while you’re at it. There’s bad juju in that mattress. I don’t think making Lu Ten in that bed erased the aura of squick. Though also, Zuko, you should have offered her a different bed. Come on, my dude.

 “‘Really?’ Mai sprang like the jaws of a trap snapping closed. ‘So you were thinking of me the whole time you were with her?’”—Yikes!

 Mai continues to press him on why he slept with Azula, with him getting “unaccountable angry that she wouldn’t just accept his explanation.” She doesn’t buy that the fight spun out of control, though that was a part of what happened. But that isn’t why it happened. Zuko reveals the ugly truth of it: “‘She made me so angry [ . . . ] I just lost control.’”—Meaning that Zuko didn’t have sex with Azula because he loved her. He did it to punish her.

 Mai then asks why Azula would sleep with Zuko, and Zuko tries to explain that it’s because Ozai abused Azula. Mai isn’t convinced by this—maybe she thinks that this is some kind of Morgana plot on Azula’s part—and doesn’t believe that Ozai would admit to the abuse, either.

 “‘He just let it slip, in a moment of anger!’” Zuko says, to which Mai responds, “‘Really? Because that sounds a lot more like you.’”—Yes. Yes, Mai, Zuko and Ozai are very similar people. Similar explosive angers, similar self-centered natures, similar disregard for Azula’s personhood. Yes, you got it in one, even if you don’t realize it yet.

 “‘You’re a fool if you think it ever happened.’”—This is so ugly. Mai, don’t be this person. Don’t be the person who thinks that the rape victim is lying.

 “‘Because I know Azula, I know how she thinks [ . . . ] She makes you feel sorry for her, you give her want she wants. You let her bend again when she starved herself, maybe you’ll give her a royal pardon when it turns out Daddy fu—’”—Mai, I don’t think you’ve ever understood Azula. Not really. Right now, you sound like all of the Azula-haters out there, who see Azula as a conniving snake, rather than a deeply troubled girl. And honestly, when did Azula ever act weak to try to get what she wanted? And why would she want this story to be spreading about her? It will make everyone look at her differently. At best, they’ll pity her; at worst, they’ll find a way to blame her for what happened, or say that it served her right, even though she was a child.

 Zuko raises a hand to strike Mai at this point, almost adding wife-beater to his sin list, but Mai intercepts him and tries to kiss and come onto him. When Zuko pushes her away, Mai asks him why he didn’t push Azula away, too—which HE SHOULD HAVE. Which he had opportunities to do! But he didn’t and he doesn’t know why.

 Mai has a theory, though: “‘It wasn’t just the fight. You wanted her. You lusted after her. Your own sister. [ . . . ] You act like you caught some disease that impaired your judgement. [ . . . ] But people don’t do what you did without feeling that way for a long time. And you never said a word to me.”—I think Mai is correct here, though this doesn’t touch on how his resentment towards and his desire to dominate Azula pushed him over the edge. I also want to sit her down and say, “He didn’t know, so he couldn’t have told you,” because I don’t think that Zuko knew on a conscious level what he felt for Azula, besides anger. Also, Mai, would him telling you have made it better, somehow?

 “‘You would never talk about her! I had no one I could talk to about her—’”—Ty Lee is glaring at you from the other side of the planet, Zuko.

 Mai accuses Zuko of raping Azula, which he denies, but Mai asserts what I’ve been saying for chapters now: “‘If she was crazy, how could she give consent?’”—Thank you, Mai! Thank you for calling him out on this!

 Mai wants to play the blame game, either having Azula or Zuko be entirely at fault for what happened. It’s not that simple, though. The truest answer here is probably Ozai—he’s the one who messed both of his children up—but at the same time, Zuko was in full control of his actions, unlike Azula. So we can’t and shouldn’t absolve him of responsibility.

 As Mai starts to cry, Zuko tries to hug her, but she pushes him away. “‘I want my husband [ . . . ] I want the man who would never do this! I want the man I trusted!’”—This reflects the pain that people feel when they find out that one of their loved ones has abused someone, except without the denial that usually comes with it. It feels impossible to reconcile the person you thought you knew and cared about with who they’ve been revealed to be. As much as I don’t like how Mai demonizes Azula, I understand and feel for her here.

 Zuko asks if this means that she won’t come back, but she clarifies that she will, with some conditions. After all, there’s Lu Ten to think of. “‘He asks for you every day.’ A tear dripped from her chin, and watching this, Zuko needed a moment to realize she was talking about their son.’”—Dude, think more about your son! You barely seem to!

 Mai’s conditions are reasonable: Talk to her before telling their son about what’s going on. Give her her own quarters. Don’t come into them unless she summons him. Keep her in the loop about the search for Azula. She’ll probably have more requests in the future, but this is a good start.

 We switch over to Aang and Katara, who are visiting Bumi in Omashu. Bumi captured Azula at one point and she escaped, which is what the pair are here to discuss with him. We get the detail that there are now bounty hunters looking for Azula, and that the people of the Fire Nation aren’t thrilled with the search.

 “[Aang] began to realize that he was not these people’s hero. He wondered if Azula might be.”—Honestly, Aang? Yeah, she is. Their princess is the youngest firebender master in centuries, she has blue fire (which could be seen as a sign of Agni’s blessing), and she conquered Ba Sing Se with only two comrades, after their most famous general failed to. Iroh and Zuko are also, technically, traitors to the Fire Nation, since they defected and helped overthrow the king. This isn’t even touching on the dismantling of the Fire Nation’s military, the trials against many of the Fire Nation’s nobles and generals, or the massive amounts of reparations that Zuko has given to the other countries. Are these things, in the broader sense, justified? Of course. The Fire Nation’s imperialist regime brought 100 years of suffering to the world, suffering that is still fresh for the other countries. But from the perspective of the people of the Fire Nation, this looks like a deep betrayal from their leaders. The fact that the economy is tanking and the crops aren’t good must look like further signs that Zuko is bringing disaster onto the realm. Of course the people would look up to Azula instead. She brought them glory. Zuko is forcing them to feel shame. It’s little wonder that they prefer her to him.

 Moving on. Bumi is apparently 117 years old now. I know that Kyoshi lived to 230, but this is still wild to me. It’s also wild that Bumi became the king of Omashu, considering that he was a commoner and is still illiterate. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things—I think that compassion is a much more important quality in a leader, and Bumi has that in spades—but I’m surprised that the Earth Kingdom allowed it. I have to assume his prodigious earthbending was part of what elevated him. I bet there’s a whole story there, which we’ll sadly never see.

 Katara is offended to learn that Bumi shared a meal with Azula, but Bumi reminds her that he shared a meal with them, too, when they were prisoners. “It’s the little things that count, you know, Aang [ . . . ] Never forget that.”—Bumi knows how important kindness is, and probably suspects how little of it Azula has been shown in her life.

 Bumi doesn’t buy that Azula is crazy and dismisses the danger she poses if angered: “‘Oh, all Fire Nation people are like that’”—Which is too much of a generalization for my tastes. He thinks that Iroh might be an exception, but given that Iroh breathed out flames at the suggestion that Zuko put Azula into an abusive environment, I’m not convinced.

 When Bumi compares Azula to her “prince” brother, Aang worries that he might be going senile, but Bumi gently corrects him. They then get back to business—Bumi reveals that Azula stowed away in a cargo caravan and was caught by inspectors when she fell asleep. Aang is surprised by this, but Bumi reminds him that Azula was sick during her stay in Omashu. Azula was with Bumi for two days—god, I would have loved to see that—before he let her go. Aang and Katara are shocked and ask why. Bumi confides that he’s worried that Azula’s capture and death will lead to war, since Zuko threatened as much.

 Aang and Katara don’t believe Bumi at first, with Aang going so far as to say, “‘He wouldn’t endanger [the peace] for personal concerns.’”—I’m sorry, Aang, but have you met Zuko? Family is super important to him, even if that family is dysfunctional. Katara understands, since she’s the girl who went on a revenge quest to murder her mother’s killer, but only stopped when she realized that the killer wasn’t worth damaging her soul over. But if Sokka’s life was on the line, you better believe that she would start a war for him. Katara is just as ruled by her emotions as Zuko is, and just as inclined toward dramatic gestures. Aang’s own culture works against him somewhat here, since it emphasizes the communal over blood relations (which are functionally erased, though there must have been someone keeping records of who was related to who, to avoid accidental incest). It makes it difficult for him to grasp how deep a bond with a family member can go, even one who you have a bad relationship with. Zuko and Azula are parts of each other’s identity, difficult though that is for both of them to accept.

 Bumi points out that the Earth Kingdom is part of why he didn’t turn Azula over to the Fire Nation or Aang—the Earth Kingdom is more of a collection of countries in a trench-coat, rather than a single, organized government. If Omashu defied the wishes of Ba Sing Se by turning Azula over to safety, rather than to them, the people of Omashu would pay the price. We also learn that since Bumi outed himself as a White Lotus member, he hasn’t had access to privileged information, like Azula’s trial in absentia.

 Regardless of who catches Azula, though, the Earth Kingdom sees it as a win. Either they catch and kill her and restore their honor, or Zuko shelters her from them and they can start a war over it—a war which would help them seize Fire Nation resources and recover from the occupation. Zuko has, apparently, suspended reparations to them.

 Bumi adds that a war with the Earth Kingdom would be extremely difficult to fight: “‘A continent this vast supplies almost unlimited troops, and plenty of places to hide private armies. And our chain of command is more convoluted than the 52nd Earth King’s family tree.’” The technological gap between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom has also been closing since the war ended, and with the Fire Nation’s military gutted, it would be challenge for them to get an edge on the Earth Kingdom again. Overall, our heroes are in a bind, but there’s still time for them to find a way out of it. Until Azula is captured, that is—that will force the issue.

 At this point, some letters arrive. The Gaang, thinking that Azula went to Kyoshi Island to recruit Ty Lee, are relieved that Ty Le “refused.” In truth, Ty Lee would have gone with Azula, but Azula told her no, because she understands the pain that she caused Ty Lee by forcing her to choose between her friends, and doesn’t want to do that again. Zuko tells them that he’s going to Kyoshi Island himself to ask questions, and that they shouldn’t waste the trip, which they accept…but Aang is starting to feel like he can’t trust Zuko, which troubles him.

 We cut to Zuko as he arrives on the island. It turns out that Kaede actually bought that Azula and Ty Lee were fighting, and gave Ty Lee some light work to cheer her up. Zuko thinks that maybe Azula told Ty Lee everything and that’s why she’s not acting like herself. I wish that Azula had told Ty Lee, since it would be good for her to have someone in her corner who knows what happened from her perspective. But I understand why Azula didn’t say anything—it’s a memory that causes her shame, she’s used to keeping stuff like this a secret, Ty Lee might have let it slip to someone else, and it would have driven a wedge between Ty Lee and her other friends, something Azula is being careful not to do. But even so, I wish Azula had someone who knew and was supporting her in the aftermath, rather than her carrying it on her shoulders alone. But Azula isn’t used to accepting help from others, especially with things that are this sensitive.

 When Ty Lee and Zuko meet, Ty Lee says that she didn’t think that Zuko would want to see her, and Zuko contradicts this with, “‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’” I don’t think that is true, given how Zuko thinks about her and how dismissive he’s been to her in the past. Zuko tries to apologize for that, but Ty Lee is more upset about how he’s treated Azula than with how he’s treated her. Zuko gets to the point: he wants information about Azula, such as why she was crying. Ty Lee refuses to give him that info because it’s personal to Azula, which tells us that Ty Lee wouldn’t have shared what happened to Azula if Azula had told her.

 When Zuko says that he’s just trying to help Azula, Ty Lee calls bullshit. “‘You’re just trying to help yourself! She never would have ran if she thought there was any chance of you ever letting her out! But you never saw her; you wouldn’t even answer her letters! [ . . . ] Even I could tell you just dropped her there to forget about her—”—So true, Ty Lee. Especially the part about him never seeing her, which works on both a literal and figurative level.

 “‘I never forgot!” Zuko insists, but this is actually more damning. It suggests that he kept Azula there so he would always know where she was and have control over her life.

 “‘You never helped her, either [ . . . ] I know she didn’t always treat you right. I know, because she hurt me too. [ . . . ] But that’s not all she was. She’s not a monster. [ . . . ] She feels remorse, and she can repay kindness with kindness. She’s just—seen so little of that, I don’t know if she knows what it looks like anymore.’”—Clearly Ty Lee dumped most of her character creation points into Wisdom (and Dexterity). She might not be cunning, but she understands people, Azula included, much better than most of the other characters do. She has a lot of empathy, which I deeply appreciate.

 Interrupting their conversation, though, June the bounty hunter storms into the clearing, with her shirsu paralyzing Ty Lee with a lash of its tongue. And that brings us to the end of another chapter! As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia!

 Sincerely,

WiseAbsol  

[queenfredegund]

The Quest for Fredegund [1]

So folks, welcome to a long post that I would dedicate to the wonderfull regina Fredegund. I’m aware that there is already a large part of fiction and biographies which have been made on her (at least in french, not sure for the english part), but all of that is actually quite of lame and/or false on many assumptions. Truth is that Fredegund is a member of a large group of misogynistic historical characters and that she is often made used for depicting some weird fantasies for historians.

She is the evil pagan witch, the murderous, the bloodthirsty woman who wraps men around her finger and made use of violence to reach her goals. She is also a voracious sexual monster, using lovers again and again. She kills, she burns, she steals, and even makes her stepdaughter gang-raped for her own revenge. 

She is the DEVIL!

Drawing by Alessia de Vincenzi for the comics Fredegund, the Bloodthirsty

But, you know what, folks? I came to become very cautious with years: when a man tells me “here, this is a vicious woman” and when an mid-50yo lady takes the man’s statement litteraly and explains to me why that same woman was vicious, gives her reasons to do that and finally claims that she was right to do all these things (you know, the murders, the gang-rape...), I kinda want to search on my own and see by my eyes only.

So, let’s go on a quest, the Quest for Fredegund. All my sources will be referenced, with links when I can (for example, I have the Fredegar’s Chronica only in scans on my PC). Most of the original texts are also on the MGH, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Here are some of the sources where you can find informations on her:

Gregorius Turonensis, Decem Libri Historiarum

Fredegar, Chronica

Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina

So... let’s begin!

What do we really know about Fredegund?

Truth is, not so much after all. At least, not so much about her personal background. For people who are not yet accustomed with her: 

She is the third chief wife of King (but I prefer using the word “rex”) Chilperich I, one of the three leaders of the Gauls in the second half of the 6th century.

Her birth is unknown, and she died in 597 as the mother of Chilperich’s successor, Chlothacar II.

She gave birth to 6 children in total, including 5 sons, which means she’s actually one of the reginae who had the most children known during the period. Their names are:

Chlodobert († 580)

Rigund († ?)

Samson († 577)

Dagobert († 580)

Theodorich († 583)

Chlothacar II († 629)

There is actually no representation of her and no description of her looks, but people assume very often that she was a beauty and made her a bloody sex-symbol of the Early Middle Ages (yikes...)

When does Fredegund appear for the first time?

The first mention of Fredegund that we have is actually a short mention in Gregorius of Tours’ chronicle, Decem Libri Historiarum (aka History of the Franks). 

In DLH, IV, 28 (x), Gregorius described how in 567 Chilperich got engaged to Galswintha, daughter of Athanagild and, in order to gain her hand, had to dismiss all his “ uxores / wives”.

King Chilperic sent to ask for the hand of Galswinth, the sister of Brunhild, although he already had a number of wives. He told the messengers to say that he promised to dismiss all the others, if only he were considered worthy of marrying a King’s daughter of a rank equal to his own.

Still no mention of Fredegund at that moment, just that Chilperich had a certain amont of unnamed women around him. The only who appeared of the whole is Audovera, mother of 4 children, including 3 sons, Theodebert, Merovech and Chlodovech.

Chilperic had three sons by one of his earlier consorts, Audovera: these were Theudebert, about whom I have told you already, Merovech and Clovis.

The first time she is named is later on the text: at that moment, Chilperich got married with Galswintha, but their relationship tend to became difficult months passing, and Gregorius implied that it was because of the presence of Fredegund.

A great quarrel soon ensued between the two of them, however, because he also loved Fredegund, whom he had married before he married Galswinth.

Fredegund is so introduced as a precedent concubine/wife of the rex (depend of the people and how they see her actually). None is said about her life before that year 567/568, apart that Chilperich seems really infatuated to her.

So, was Fredegund really a slave?

Technically, yes and no. Yes, because we have some hints that could lead us to think of it, and no because finally it’s just hints and not reals informations.

First mention is: in DLH, IX, 34 (x), Fredegund had according to Gregorius of Tours a big quarrel with her daughter Rigund and as they were arguing against each other, Rigund threathened her mother to “servitio redeberit / revert to her original rank of serving-woman”

Rigunth, Chilperic’s daughter, was always attacking her mother (Fredegund), and saying that she herself was the real mistress, whereas her mother ought to revert to her original rank of serving-woman. She would often insult her mother to her face, and they frequently exchanged slaps and punches. 

Second mention is actually a mention in a later-one abbey’s chronicle, called The Chronicle of Saint-Vaast of Arras (x), in which the author says that Fredegund was born in this place (Angicourt, in the Oise department) and that her parents belong to the villa, and so were perhaps slaves. 

Haec ex territorio Belvacensi nata est de familia atque sancti Vedasti villa Vunguscurht, quam, ut praetulimus, Lotharius rex dederat nostro patrono.

But that mention should be taken with precaution as the chronicle was written during the 11th century and as religious chronicles are often full of false stories and approximations: the meaning behind the redaction is not to write facts, but to justify of the longevity of a foundation and of its links with well-known protectors, and the most ancient, the better for that! 

Third mention: in the Liber Historiae Francorum, a major compilation of the Decem Libri Historiae, the Fredegar’s Chronica and some made-up characters and facts, Fredegund is introduced as “ex familia infima” (LHF, 31), and, most important, as the maid of Audovera, first chief wife of Chilperich.

That’s in fact all of we know. It is also true that Fredegund did not seem to have any significant relatives, father, brother, even uncle... but it was also the same for several others reginae, so I’m not convinced that it could means something about her social background.

Now, if we talk about fiction and theories, I really like the possibility that she may have been a slave, and if you ask me to write a fictional story about her, my favorite theory would be that she was a weaver slave, some kind of skilled embroiderer girl before becoming a concubine of the rex, but it’s just FICTION, not FACTS.

Last thing about that matter, scholars often think down of her background because of her name: 

“Fredegund” is composed of the terms Fried / “peace” | Gund / “war”, meaning litteraly “war and peace”, which sounds funny to scholars.

Still during the 6th century, Franks had the habit to create names for children by mixing parts of the parents’ names (e.g. in Rigund : Rich from ChilpeRICH and Gund from FredeGUND), so the theory is that she was born from low-rank, perhaps slaves, parents who were not aware of the subtility of such creation and so created a strange name for their daughter... (I guess these scholars never heard of a name like “North West”, that must be it...)

But, was not Fredegund Audovera’s maid/servant?

Most historians and writers indeed say that Fredegund was actually Audovera’s maid before her own elevation as mother of Chilperich’s children and chief wife. But as we had seen it before (DLH, IV, 28), none of the sources say that: Fredegund is only said to be "married [to Chilperich] before he married Galswinth” and Audovera is designated as “one of his earlier consorts” even not the only one.

So where does that story come from? Once again, from the Liber Historiae Francorum... In LHF, 31, the unnamed author tells a story about how Audovera have been evicted from the royal palace, based only on Fredegund’s trickery. Alone and pregnant while her husband was away at war, Audovera just had given birth to a little girl that she named Childesinda, or for some autors Basina. 

On Fredegund’s suggestion, a baptism was prepared before the return of the father, but at the beginning of the ceremony, the lady who would have been the godmother of the princess was still missing. She so persuaded her mistress Audovera to hold herself her infant daughter, whithout saying to her that by doing that, she would become de facto the godmother of her own daughter.  However, a canon law strictly forbidding marriage between parents and godparents, Audovera was convicted of incest and kicked from the palace. 

The problem with this whole story is not only that it is a complete invention, written long time after the real events, but most importantly, that the taboo forbidding marriages with godparents was in fact officially voted in the Council in Trullo, held in 692, which means 130 years after Fredegund and Audovera possible hostility! But because this is an undeniable dramatic storyline, writers and historians are really unwilling to abandon it and continue to spread it...

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

[sabaku-no-livna]

Is your oc a Mary Sue ?

Okay I created this test back in 2016 on the french fandom, for the french fandom but its still so funny so if you want to try that test, please do. Don’t take it bad if your oc has several points doesn't make her Mary Sue and again these are only the clichés I noted, doesn't mean I got the absolute science on how to make a good OC and that my OCs does not correspond to these clichés or arn’t Mary Sues. Beware this test is full of sarcasm and second degree. Anyways ! Enjoy !

I. The design  of the OC  For your OC to be shitty, appearance is primordial. Therefor, I made you a list of clichés that you can try to cumulate to create a perfect Mary Sue. Are you ready ? At the end we’ll count the M.S points of our own Oc.  ღ Spiky hair, must be long, more likely black, red, yellow, with two colors that MUST be extra saturated ! You can take your favorite color if you want, it will work. Why thinking further ? xD  If you put two colors, make sure they clash with each other. Your hair style must be edgy, emo, so 2012 fashion with some bangs in front of the eye, nothing original please. Its weird to be original. AND WE DON’T WANT THAT. 

ღ  Piercings and tattoos are SWAG. But not any piercings or tattoo ! The labret is swag, the septum is swag, the eyebrow is swag, the belly button is swag but NEVER on the nostril its’s a golden rule of swag. Sorry. Have you ever seen an oc with a piercing in the nostril ? Nope, then don’t do that. Don’t try to invent new things. Originality is weird. 

ღ  About the body type, you got to stick to the canons : Huge breasts, large hips and butt, narrow waist (so narrow you don’t know how she can possibly bear her own weight). 

ღ If you REALLY don’t have any design ideas it doesn't matter. Make a gender-bend of Naruto or Sasuke. IT WORKS. 

II. The back story of your OC

For your OC to fit in the story like some shit falling on top of carbonara pastas, your backstory must be as CHEATED as possible. It must affect the main manager plot a maximum, just to enhance your oc. NEVER FORGET IT : Your OC is the center of the world. 

ღ Lets start by the beginning. For the name of your OC take some name that sounds Japanese. You can even invent one, as long as it sounds Japanese its perfect. To do so, insert some “ki” “ko” “su” “shi” “mi” et you got a name ! 

ღ Here is one of the supreme principle : Your OC is the most gorgeous, intelligent and strong. Its legit ALL THE MEN IN THE PLANET are desperately in love with her. 

ღ Your OC must be paired, or have had an affair, with at least one of the canon characters (better if its a main one) of the anime. Leave Shoji and and all the other Rock Lees for the ugly ones, YOU got Sasuke and Naruto waiting for you in your bed. So here’s a list of decent crush for a Goddess like your OC : 

Sasuke, Itachi, Naruto, Kakashi, Neji, Gaara, Madara, Deidara. Others are for the ugly ones. Don’t touch it, may have diseases ... :/ 

ღ  As your OC is the strongest, she must have super badass jutsus and have a chakra of ALL TYPES AT A TIME, she must master ALL the technics, and the must is her having an demon within. If possible a demon with tails (we don’t know why it wasn't mentioned in the manga but WHO CARES ?) that would be stronger than all the canon demons combined ! OR she can cumulate all the demons. Another SWAG thing is to have special pupils. If you don’t have the creativity to invent some, just use the sharingan/byakugan, or directly the rinnegan. OR you can cumulate them. Do like Sasuke ! This guys was clever. He knows the secret of success. 

ღ  Your OC must FUCK the game, so don’t hesitate to make her a princess, a vampire, a Rage, or even a Goddess. SHE IS TOO HOT TO BE HUMAN. Regular shinnobis are for people with no ambitions. 

ღ When you have to describe her personality always indicate this : “sweet, shy, friendly, cold, mysterious, choleric, courageous.” How is it totally paradoxal ? WHO CARES ? It doesn't have to be accurate in your character in her story anyways, that’s just for the presentations. For your OC to be really obnoxious she has to have a shitty personality. She has to clash every canon characters, be a burden for everyone else, OR, the opposite, a fuckin’ Deus Ex Machina ! Your girl she would have kicked Madara’s emo ass in a sec ! 

ღ  Her relationships with the canon characters are VERY IMPORTANT. Try the hidden blood binding. It’s SOOO original. Incest is not to provide, we all love what’s forbidden by the law and morals ! But always use main characters first, and don’t hesitate to put your character in a canon team, even if you have to kick off Sakura to do so (after all who cares for her ?). And for secondary but popular characters such as Itachi, Gaara and Neji ... Well as long as they are canons and popular ! Its better if they are in the Akatsuki or Kages though ! The best thing would be to be the hidden maleficent twin of Sasuke and have an affair with him OR Naruto’s genderbend paired with Itachi. The really SWAG clans you can put your OC into if you got no creativity to create an over powered shitty clan are : Uchiha, Uzumaki, Namikaze and Otsutsuki, and Hyuga only if there is no more room in the previous I quoted. 

ღ  Your OC must have a tragical backstory, horrible and complicated, incoherent or completely empty and lacking of depth cumulating all the best clichés of the fandom. 

In the first case your OC is broken by her past traumatic experiences, which gives her a dark side, a madness within, an emo vibe. She must be complaining all the time about her misunderstood pain. 

In the second case, your OC must be cheesy, always smiling and enthusiastic for no reason, and be a little stupid. Okay VERY stupid. But well ! She has big tits at least ! So its fine. Her biggest trauma must not exceed in terms of violence her little brother finishing the Nutella. 

ღ  Or, you can also try having a SUPER weak OC. Because with Mary Sues you are either TOO strong or TOO weak. No nuance please. It would make your character too credible. AND WE DON’T WANT THAT. Your OC must be rejected by everyone, hated and underrated (#victimlol) only her One True Love will see the light behind her shaggy hair. 

ღ If you are a bit CrAzY you can invent a country where she’ll be on top, but the best is for her to come from Konoha. Stay on the right track. 

I think I gave you all the best tips I had to make an OC perfectly obnoxious. ♥ To illustrate my own sayings, let me introduce you, my own Mary Sue : 

Suskiki Uchiha ! 

Name : Suskiki Uchiha

Age : Immortal 

Team : 7 (who cares about Sakura anyways ? Lol) Family : parents : Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha / big brother : Itachi / twin brother : Sasuke / cousin : Naruto (yes its possible) Personality : Has big boobs Love interests : Sasuke, Naruto, Itachi, Gaara, Deidara, Suigetsu, Kakashi, Peter Pan, Edward Cullen and Jon Snow Story : Suskiki is the hidden sister of Sasuke. Not so hidden bc she is in team 7.  For real she is the princess vampire of and has the power of emo. Her childhood was so terrible you cant imagine. What was it ? Idk you cant imagine i said ! She supports Naruto since childhood bc they were both rejected. Why ? Bc she was too beautiful duh ! She has in her the demon Nyan cat dragon of darkness the most powerful of all ! She has both sharingan and byakugan for no reason (maybe her mom had an affair ?).  NOW LETS TRY THIS QUIZZ : 

Does your OC have : 

1)  Spiky or flashy hair ? 2)  Piercings/tattoos ? 3) Big breasts ?  4) Is she the female equivalent (physically) of a canon character ? 5) Was her name picked randomly because it sounded Japanese  ? 6) Are several canon characters into her ? (3 and more is yes).  7) Is she paired with one of the decent canons quoted before ?  8) Has she got a demon ? 9) Has she got special pupils ? Is she from a SWAG clan ? (if not you suck) 10) Does she have a special statut ? (princess, vampire, kage ...) 11) Is she “ “sweet, shy, friendly, cold, mysterious, choleric, courageous.”  at the same time ?  12) Does she have any blood binding with one of the canon characters ? Marriage doesn’t work.  13) Incestuous with one of the canons ? 14) Is she part of one of the main teams of the Naruto gen ? 15) Has she got a tragic back story ? 16) Is she bad at everything/super powerful ? 17) Was she rejected ?   18) Does she come from Konoha ? 19) Does she look like the  character she is paired with ?  20) Was she part of the Akatsuki or did she join Orochimaru ? 

So now you can count your points and it will give you a grade over 20. The closer you are to 20 the most Mary Suish your OC is. I personally tested it on Yukiko she got : 6 points. And you what is your score ? ;)

[bsd-fitzgerald-appreciation]

BSD Karaoke HC

Imagine all the ADA go to CoKa. How would the night go?

OSAMU DAZAI

Would absolutely be into it!

He’d spend most of the time teasing Atsushi and Kunikida, while simultaneously trying to encourage everyone to have a bit of fun.

He’d be the type to manipulate people into singing specific songs that he’d enjoy or would cause embarrassment, really the most entertainment for him.

He would order alcoholic drinks (such as sake) but not much; he is the classy type. He never would get drunk anyway without a lot.

I can see him singing along to some Bon Jovi , pop rock or even some Katy Perry. You may think he can sing brilliantly, and tells everyone he can sing, but is tone deaf. It is both surprising and expected from everyone.

ATSUSHI NAKAJIMI

Hed either be dying of embarrassment or second hand embarrassment for fellow agency members.

He’d be so wrapped up in the weird shenanigans of his co workers, that when it does cycle to his turn, he doesn’t even realise.

He’d lampshade his own singing. “I’m really not a good singer!” And then proceed to sing at a not too bad a tone. He doesn’t have much confidence, but thanks to everyone, he’ll finally get into the song midway through the first chorus.

If the lounge serves tea on rice, bet your ass he will order. He would most likely stick to juice though.

The orphanage never really played music. So he’d get someone else (likely Junichirou) to pick a song for him. That is unless he recognises a song that was plays on the radio. As long as everyone liked the song, he wouldn’t mind.

DOPPO KUNIKIDA

Dying. Inside. He would just be waiting for the night to end, keeping to his own corner to ignore everyone’s shenanigans with budgets or future cases. He’d bring as much work as he could get through.

Though at some points he may tap a foot to some melodies, he’d restrain himself from joining in the fun. Work was too important.

Eventually he would get roped in, most likely due to Yosano’s determination or Fukuzawa’s encouragement to take a break.

He would only ever order water; someone’s gotta stick to budgets. The agency is spending this money out of its own pocket.

He’d likely end up singing whatever was picked out for him. He’s not wasting mental energy on picking out a song, and (wrongly) trusts his fellow members to pick something good for him..

RANPO EDOGAWA

He would definitely be joining Dazai in the persuasion of other member’s song choices.

Would order every single sweet on the menu. There wouldn’t be a moment in the night where he wasn’t eating some kind of a sweet treat.

Uses sweets to bribe everyone into letting him pick their songs. Then he resorts to blackmail.

Even though he’s just as into the karaoke shtick as Dazai, you’d never find him pick out a song for himself. Everyone in the agency respects him too much to persuade him otherwise, so he’s the only one who gets away Scott free.

AKIKO YOSANO

She’s the most chill person of the night. Though she does partake in a little teasing of other members, she doesn’t full out embarrass them (like Dazai).

She spends most of her night with Ranpo, giving him ideas as to what the song requests should be (in a mostly joking tone), that is until he takes it seriously, though she doesn’t really mind - more amusement for her.

She’d be ordering Saki with Dazai. She wouldn’t give a damn about no budget.

When it’s her turn to sing, everyone knows she SLAYS. I can see her going for the Aggretsuko style screamo, or the opposite end of the spectrum with a bit of old pop.

JUNICHIROU TANIZAKI (+ Naomi)

Junichirou and Naomi are sticking together with glue, and more if our dear Imouto can help it.

Not that Junichirou minds. If they sing a duet together, though he isn’t the best singer, the two together sound like an angel. The weird incest stuff is a small price to pay to avoid humiliation... I guess.

Junichirou is a little concerned about his fellow members and experiences quite the second hand embarrassment, but is discreet with these feelings. Naomi isn’t phased by any antics, always focusing on her big bro.

At the same time, Naomi wants other agents to have fun too.

Shield Kenji and Kyoka’s eyes. Think of the children. Pls.

80s pop duets are there jam. Seasons of Love, that kind of thing. Maybe even some Disney classics with a sprinkle of Musicals.

KENJI MIYAZAWA

There’ll be that jerk making fun of the ADA outside on the way to the vending machines. Kenji is the one to teach him a lesson. A lesson of hugs and kindness! (and maybe a punch)

This is a much deserved rest, so he is going to stuff his face at the lounge (but is wary of Kunikida’s stress over the budget, and is considerate boi).

After he eats, he sleep for almost the entire night, except for moments that he’s eating or singing.

He’s a ray of sunshine. Even if he can’t sing, he gives the aura he can, and everyone will be super supportive. It’s impossible to dislike anything he does after all. Late 2000, early 2010 upbeat songs are what he’d sing.

YUKICHI FUKUZAWA

This man is in charge of making sure everyone is relaxed. Especially if there’s been a really hard mission they’ve just come back from.

He will most likely pay for the entire event from his own pocket. He wants everyone to be okay, and to enjoy themselves to the fullest.

After the night is over, he will see everyone off to make sure they leave safely. The agency members are like children to him (some still are children, and others certainly act the part). It’s also to make sure everyone had as much fun as they could.

He’d definitely sing old Japanese folk songs.

KYÔKA IZUMI

She’d stay with Atsushi, though less bewildered with the antics then him or Junichirou. She’s dealt with the Port Mafia after all (Higuchi, Chuya, Kōyō, Kajii, and the whole gang were all preparation).

She’d be honest with everyone about their singing. If they sing badly, then she’ll tell it straight. Dazai may get a little upset, but recovery is quick. The scene plays like a theatrical play then a simple conversation (the theatrics provided purely by Dazai).

She’d be sipping her tea and eating tofu in the corner. Of course.

This girl is perfect. She’s adorably cute, is polite, can assassin like no man’s business, and has the voice of an angel. Fukuzawa and Ranpo are giving her all of the treats (provided Ranpo resists them in the first place, which is unlikely).

She and Yukichi are in the old folk song gang.

[stagekiller]

“Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.”  ―  Ayn Rand  

  To cut a long story short, we could conclude that clownman grew up in a toxic environment. And as much as I hate to make him sound like a victim, he...was a victim of circumstance. So, today, we delve into Jerome’s feelings in regards to his past.

  Before I begin, I would like to declare that I am very much opposed to any fandom interpretations of his character that present him as a ‘poor wittle baby whose mommy didn’t love him yadayadayada’. This is watering down the character. It’s Bonnie & Clyde syndrome. And my goal in this post is NOT to make you sympathize with him, hence the quote.

  Second, small disclaimer; these are fictional characters in a fictional settings. Though it may bare resemblance to things that happen in real life, I, as the mun, by no means condone any actions described.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: child abuse, corporal punishment, incest, gaslighting, spoilers

  Throughout this post I will be making references to Arthur Phleck, so consider it a spoiler zone for JOKER(2019). These references are mostly used as comparisons in regards to ‘The Joker’s essence and how the victim mentality comes into play in all different iterations of this DC villain, establishing victim-play as a character trait.

PART ONE : ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY

 To begin with, I want to delve into how Jerome himself sees his childhood, how he feels about these past events and how he chooses to present them to others.

  Jerome is someone who hates vulnerability. He is not one to open up or be vulnerable around others where it counts. That is a symptom, or rather, a consequence, of the abuse he has suffered. Child abuse survivors often have severe trust issues, because the people they were supposed to trust (their family) have betrayed them in some shape or form. For example, if a parent baits their child to confess a naughty thing (”If you tell me, I won’t ground you.”) they did and then punishes them after confessing, it is very likely that this child will be more hesitant to confess the next time. After enough repetition, the child may start suspecting other adults of similar behavior. The foundation for a cognitive structure has been laid; “If I trust people with information, they may use it against me.”

  According to Mary Ainsworth, the bond between mother and infant is the most important because the child will then base their future attachments on that prototype. In an oversimplification, parents teach us how to bond with other people, among other things. They are responsible for teaching us how to behave socially and how to interact with others. Furthermore, research has shown that children with depressed mothers are more likely to develop conduct disorders, due to the lack of proper interaction and stimuli at an early age.

 PART TWO: THESE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

   Now, to put all these things into perspective, in my headcanon, Lila Valeska was very much a depressed mother. A depressed alcoholic, to be exact. A broken woman, looking for self esteem in any embrace that would be offered to her. And, because of that,s he was completely incapable to equip Jerome and Jeremiah with the social skills they needed. She never intended to abuse them. And she wasn’t evil. She just wasn’t enough.

   But the problem only begins with Lila. Zachary Trundle very much played the part of her controlling older brother. We can actually see that he was rather controlling in canon, telling her what to do with her kids ( note how Zach told her to throw Jerome in the river but Lila still kept him around ) and being in charge of moving Jeremiah when the time came. We can conclude that Zachary played the part of a father, a brother and potentially a husband substitute as well.

  And it was Zachary who molded Jerome into what he became later on. But... more on their relationship on a later post. ;3c

 Last, but not least, let’s not forget about Paul Cicero, who not only wasn’t there to console Jerome but also gaslighted him. ( “The world doesn’t care about you” ) He tried to instill the core belief in him that he was unworthy and he should just suck it up. And what that does to kids is usually make them think that they deserve the abuse and not try to escape from it. In Jerome’s case, it also resulted in him abusing himself later on. Because when this kind of situation has been NORMALIZED for you, anything other than pain feels abnormal and weird. Jerome would not know how to react to healthy relationships.

PART THREE: ONE IN EVERY DECK

  “Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else's behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.”    ―  George K. Simon Jr.,  In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People    

  All iterations of the Joker have a tragic backstory. Most DC Villains do, as a matter of fact. But how they deal with it differs from one iteration to another. For example, Ledger Joker uses different versions of a tragic backstory to either disturb or gain sympathy from his victims, or to make a point ( ‘you wanna know how I got these scars?’ ). Nicholson Joker uses his tragic backstory as feud fuel and victim cards to pin his misery on Batman. BTAs Joker is shown using some tragic backstory to sway Dr. Quinzel, but later on in the Mad Love episode we see that he’s used the same victim card on Batman too.

  But Phoenix Joker is by far the most compelled to play victim cards. The difference with previous iterations is that Phleck Joker sees himself as the victim too. I’m not saying that the others didn’t, to some extent. But Arthur is immersed in the part. He thinks of himself as a mentally ill loner. He doesn’t just use the victimhood card in a manipulative fashion. He actually experiences emotion over it. That is a much more realistic interpretation of what has come to be known as the serial killer victim complex.

  I’ve dropped a link to a video of a real life criminal talking about himself and his past actions in a very similar way to Arthur Phleck, here. Please view at your own discretion, it does contain disturbing material.

    So how does Jerome view the things that happened in his childhood?

  On the show, Jerome uses victim cards in a similar fashion to previous Joker iterations. “ With Uncle Zach, the beatings never stopped...they went on and on, and yet...nobody ever helped me... ” He tells Bruce. For a moment, we see him performing an emotion. But it is shallow. And that is because, as I mentioned above, Jerome hates vulnerability. So, to me, he is somewhat of a combination between Phleck and the previous Jokers.

  He will use his tragic backstory for pity points when it is convenient. But does he actually see himself as a victim? No. Because that would contradict his prideful nature! A victim is weak, puny, abused and broken. Jerome can’t be those things, because seeing himself as such would be an ego collapse. Jerome sees his life as a movie. Another soap opera. He removes himself from the reality of the situation. There is a ‘that’s life’ mentality in that too. There’s a ‘my life is a comedy’ mentality in that too. But, unlike Phleck, Jerome doesn’t feel bitter about it anymore.

   Even when referencing how he killed Lila to Jim Gordon, or complaining to Jeremiah for abandoning him, the emotional aspect lasts for a minute. Then he starts laughing and making jokes about it. It’s like he wants to distance himself from the reality of the situation. And that’s why he doesn’t use the victim cards in most situations too. Because they would make him look weak and small. And he’s not pathetic like that.

  For example, he wouldn’t start talking about his tragic backstory just to sleep with some cult girl. These tactics are RESERVED for very special individuals, like Bruce Wayne and his brother. He would use this kind of thing against people he knows are emotional or bonded with him to some extend. That’s why he doesn’t do it to Jimbo, for example, because he knows Jimbo isn’t as openly compassionate as Bruce, who would feel sorry for him and want to help him.

   TO CONCLUDE: Once again my post got huge and if you made it this far, thank you for reading :D I hope I conveyed the general picture adequately to you!

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.”   — Flora Jessop, Church of Lies

[noddytheornithopod]

So it’s chapter 4, and things are heating up.

Very eerie Rantaro message. He says there’s something important about the rule to the two people left rule, and that this isn’t their first something (their first killing game?). Whoever finds out who they are will come for them, and that they apparently wanted this. I assume Rantaro is talking to the students... what does it all mean? I mean, the wanting the game definitely ties into that memory of Shuichi wanting to die. All in all, this is all pretty weird.

So what’s up with that writing on the rock? Who’s writing it?

Gonta also apparently keeps seeing bugs, weird.

Okay so Kokichi is REALLY getting into the killing game now. He’s no longer just an annoying brat, but he’s actually starting to show his Ultimate Supreme Leader side. I still can’t help but wonder if he knows something the others don’t. And of course, the Mastermind could STILL be one of the students. I feel like Kokichi would be too obvious to be the mastermind (as said, it feels like he’s a Byakuya/Fuyuhiko type, though him getting more serious and manipulative is very Nagito too, plus like Nagito he has a major link to the story’s central themes), but I’m still keeping an eye on him.

Kokichi steals one of the items you need to unlock new areas... and it just so happens to be a card. I have a feeling it might be the library card for the hidden door. What’s really in there?

Tsumugi gets her lab, nice. Also turns out she was a bartender as a job to get money before sponsors, cool. You’re back to being adorkable instead of a creepy cult follower, Miss Shirogane.

Shuichi gets his lab, huh. I thought it would be the checkered one downstairs, but I guess we get this one. Whose lab is it down there then? Rantaro? Or maybe Kokichi... maybe his checkered scarf is a clue.

Keebo gets a lab... and doesn’t like it. Monokuma tailored to everyone except him, of course. :v

So they get another memory flashlight and we see the meteors. We also hear about something called the Gofer project to save humanity which supposedly failed... and we also got some weird culty group saying mankind deserves damnation. Sounds kind of Ultimate Despair-like if you ask me.

Wait... this is the crisis Kirumi was overseeing wasn’t she?

More training. I’m enjoying the Shuichi, Maki and Kaito trio. Also Maki weirdly asks a question about whether Shuichi had feelings for Kaede, and if it’s rational. TBH it’s like she’s asking if she has feelings for someone. :v My guess is Kaito, lol.

That bonus I got with Himiko and Gonta training was fun. Seeing Himiko try to live her best life possible and move forward is pretty cool... even if she’s trying too hard sometimes, lol.

Okay this Monotaro and Monophanie subplot is REALLY weird. Monotaro malfunctioning is one thing... but the weird incest thing too? And domestic violence? What even is this? And there’s an ending??? Wow.

So we get Maki’s tragic backstory with training... ouch. So the Ultimate Child Caregiver cover has some truth to it, being something that happened at her orphanage. But then she was forced to be an assassin so she could get the money to keep the orphanage running. It sounds like that life really took a toll on her, huh. Amazing how she went from the most invisible character to TBH one of my faves. I like this main trio we currently have, as said.

Also got another bonus event with Shuichi bringing a practice katana to train with Kaito and Maki during the day... but unfortunately it makes Maki remember her failed mission. Turns out she failed the assassination because they thought she was cosplaying as a character and everyone loved it... and the attention meant she was almost discovered and couldn’t do her job. It’s kinda cute, but Maki is pretty upset by it because of the aforementioned backstory. I have to admit even if it’s a bit cliche with her kind of character, seeing Maki warm up to the others like this is nice.

Okay so free times... I finished Tsumugi’s since she’s now un-cancelled, and it actually got really sweet in the last one where it turned out Shuichi really liked a show she not only adored, but also inspired her to cosplay. Also wow, they get a bit awkward at the end, in a bit of a romantic tension kind of way. First character I completed too.

Also did some more Kaito free times. He’s really talking himself up, huh? I don’t even know if I believe these stories about having a pirate rival out at sea and running into an anaconda that guarded some ancient empire? IDK what to make of it, but it seems like he really has a taste for adventure and that’s why he wants to explore the Universe (gosh I hope he’s not blackened and that’s his Monokuma execution). Best part though was when Shuichi was really fondly of Kaito but then was like “WAIT I SHOULDN’T BE THINKING ABOUT A GUY LIKE THIS!” Shuichi Saihara is not straight confirmed, honestly this makes me ship him and Kaito even more.

Speaking of Kaito, he seems pretty unwell. It’s interesting that even though he’s trying to push and inspire Shuichi and Maki, he’s afraid to admit his own weakness (even as he encourages the others to talk about what’s bothering them). That end of chapter 3 thing implied he was dying, but from what?

Kokichi, what are you up to? I don’t trust you. It’s implied he’s somehow using the card for the second Neo World Miu was working on, but IDK how that works, especially if it’s the library card. Unless there’s something IN there he’s using, or the card is something else completely (like it has code or something)? And again, I feel like he might know something the others don’t. Also wow, his sprites get progressively creepier.

I guess Chapter 4 is the “callback to last game’s setting” chapter now, lol.

They do make a good point about wondering why Gonta feels such a need to be useful and protective to everyone.

So it also becomes apparent that even though Miu was working on the Neo World, she’s up to something with Kokichi. Miu decided she wanted to use it so they can all escape, but it seems like Kokichi has conspired something with her, or at the very least is manipulating her into doing things that he’d want. Is there really a secret in the Neo World, or is that all just an assumption that Kokichi wanted the others to make?

Miu, with vegetable and the R word, enough with the fucking ableist slurs.

Wow, so this Neo World has them all looking like weird funko pop things. Miu is as crass as ever (and there’s some odd exchanges about Tsumugi being sensitive on her neck and Kaito being a perv WTF), but also using her authority as the one who developed this version of the Neo World to steer things in her (or Kokichi’s?) direction.

Wow, Kaito is pretty excited about snow, lol. Maki says he’s acting like a puppy. Also when they split into groups to search Maki sounds disappointed she wasn’t with Shuichi and/or Kaito, and later comments that Shuichi really is cold for not checking the roof of the mansion to see if Kaito was there when he goes missing.

Miu gets rid of the bridge for the mansion group, which is pretty suspect even as she (really badly) pretends it’s an accident.

So they hear the chapel side even though it’s far away from them... is there some circular aspect to the loading of the world? Like you can travel between the supposed ends to reach the other world and not just the middle loading point?

Keebo makes a peculiar comment wondering if the world’s borders here with nothing beyond them reflects the academy they’re in right now. Huh.

Alright Kokichi, just spill the beans already. You asking Shuichi to basically join you is pretty suspicious. I have no idea what you’re planning, but it’s clearly not good.

So they exit the Neo World and... Miu’s dead. This is intriguing, since it seemed like she was planning something (or Kokichi was and using her). Kaito being missing makes him an obvious suspect, but even if it is obvious, I do think they’re setting something up with him dying and all that. Maybe he discovered the plan and at the last minute killed her to stop it, whatever it may be (I mean, chapter 4 IS the “super tragic sacrifice” chapter... gosh Maki if you have any feelings for Kaito say them before it’s too late)? Kokichi is also suspicious of course for seemingly orchestrating everything, but I feel like he’s too smart to be the killer directly right now.

[mst3kproject]

Elves (1989)

Christmas is a weird holiday.  We all talk about joy and generosity and love, while it’s actually a season full of stress, greed, and hate.  We hate our politically incorrect grandparents, we hate our in-laws asking why we’re not pregnant yet, we hate the expense, we hate the crowds, we hate the traffic, and most of all we hate anybody who doesn’t partake in this flaming bag of holiday. Partly because how dare they actually relax and enjoy the season while we go festively mad, but mostly because we’re white people and we just hate everybody.

That brings us to Elves, a Christmas movie about Nazis.

Three ditzes meet in the woods for a dark ritual in which they officially swear off Christmas.  In the process one of them cuts herself – the blood falls on the ground and naturally awakens some primal horror sleeping below. It follows her home in a POV shot, and then we spend a little time getting to know Kirsten and her abusive family. There’s her German grandfather who slaps her around and enforces weird rules, her mother who steals her money and drowns her cat, and her perverted little brother who spies on her in the shower. All right, these people definitely need to die.  Bring on the evil elves!

But no, instead we follow her to work at the department store, where she gets hit on by a drunken Santa Claus.  This guy at least dies quickly, stabbed to death by the elf while trying to do a line of coke without getting it in his beard (is this a Santa Claus and Coca Cola joke?  I hope so).  Later, the evil elf digs up the body of the cat and leaves it on Kirsten’s windowsill, which gets Herr Grandpa thinking.  He meets up with some of his old Nazi friends, and learns that after forty years, their terrible plot is finally coming to fruition.  It seems that Kirsten is the last pure Aryan virgin, who is destined to mate with the evil elf on Christmas Eve and give birth to the Antichrist!

Are you going wait, what the fuck? at this point?  Don’t worry, so am I, and this is only the first third of the movie.

Meanwhile, we’ve also been following a homeless guy who gets hired to replace the murdered Santa Claus and decides to play detective.  The girls invite some of their boyfriends for an orgy sleepover in the department store, but the boys are killed by Herr Grandpa’s Nazi buddies who are here to offer Kirsten to the elf.  Replacement Santa saves Kirsten herself but her girlfriends get killed, and the elf (and the Nazis) decide to follow her home.  Herr Grandpa tries to atone for the mistakes of his past while Replacement Santa consults some scholars to find out what’s up with the Nazi Rape Elf.  The elf was the product of genetic engineering.  Kirsten was the product of incest between her mother and grandfather. A car blows up for some reason.  The elf has a gun.  My brain hurts.

The upshot is that with Herr Grandpa dead and Santa Claus neutralized, it looks like Kirsten’s got to save herself.  I don’t give that good odds.

There’s quite a bit of foul language and a few boobs in this movie that MST3K would have had to cut or cover, but it would have been worth it because god damn this movie is bad.  The summary above probably makes it sound weird and incoherent but trust me, it’s a vast improvement on actually having to watch this thing.  There is no entertainment value here whatsoever.  Thirty minutes in I felt like I’d already been watching it all day. Not even my incredulity that I was watching a Christmas movie about a Nazi Rape Elf could carry me through it.  This is the Manos: the Hands of Fate of Christmas movies.

Most of the time you can barely tell what’s going on.  An awful lot of important scenes take place in various levels of darkness, and then they pile the distorted elf-cam on top of that.  There are bits where you can’t hear the dialogue and when you can it doesn’t make any sense.  The characters aren’t likable and nobody can act – the nearest thing to an exception is the Santa Claus guy.  The character seems like a really decent person who doesn’t need to get involved in this but does, simply because it’s the right thing to do.  Dan Haggerty occasionally tries to give a performance, but mostly he just stumbles through the film in the same dead-eyed how did it ever come to this? haze as Graham Greene in Atlantic Rim.

Kirsten and her two friends are annoying bimbos.  The friends’ names are Brooke and Amy but I don’t remember which one is which… one of them’s the horny one and the other one is the stupid one, and that’s the extent of their personalities.  Maybe they’re both horny and stupid.  Their boyfriends are absolute assholes, who are thankfully only on screen for thirty seconds total before they get killed.  Kirsten’s mom is a sadistic bitch (I guess at least she’s got a reason), her bother’s a brat, and the bad guys are a bunch of German accents distinguishable only by the fact that Herr Grandpa is in a wheelchair.

The elf is made of disconnected puppet parts so ugly and immobile they almost wouldn’t be out of place in Troll II.  It moves about as fast as the Creeping Terror and kills people by stabbing them repeatedly with a fruit knife.  There is nothing remotely threatening or scary about it.  The only emotion it inspires in me is an urge to punt it across the room.  It looks like a cheap, shitty Hallowe’en decoration that isn’t sure how it wandered into this cheap, shitty Christmas movie.

Every so often the movie tries to be funny, but it never succeeds.  The thing with the tape on the door seems like it’s setting up a wacky misunderstanding, but it’s a joke without a punchline.  The guy explaining the history of Nazi Rape Elves while his children sit there waiting for him to carve the turkey is probably supposed to be a joke, but again, it never goes far enough to get a laugh. The closest we get is with little details that are often more clever than funny, like Santa and his coke – or my favourite, a shot of a rack of guns with a sign that says gift ideas for mom.

I understand the urge to make a Christmas-themed horror movie.  Christmas is, frankly, just begging to be ironically subverted, and plenty of film-makers have tried to rise to the challenge.  Not all of them have succeeded, but Elves doesn’t even try.  A movie that has, say, a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus (examples are numerous) is commentary.  It’s saying something about how we tell children to put complete trust in a guy in a weird outfit who breaks into our houses every year. The Christmas imagery in Elves is completely irrelevant.  If this were a movie about one of Santa’s elves snapping and killing people, it could be about holiday stress and taking advantage of the working class.  It’s not.

The movie can’t even keep its own mythology straight.  One of the scholars tells us that the elves were on Noah’s ark and are supernatural beings that have been around since the beginning of time – that’s why the offspring of an elf and a human will be the Antichrist, and why it must be conceived on Christmas Eve.  The other one says the elves were genetically engineered by the Nazis to be the fathers of the master race… so which is it?  The fact that Kirsten has had visions and the elf is so desperate to get the deed done before midnight speaks for version one, while some of the stuff the Nazis say seems to point to version two.  If this ambiguity is intentional, they could have made that way clearer.  The elf draws a rune by each of its victims but these don’t seem to serve any purpose besides being creepy and giving Santa Claus a clue.

I think some symbolism may be intended by having the guy investigating all this be a department store Santa Claus.  Santa Claus is a lover of children and a giver of gifts.  When he catches the girls sneaking into the store after hours, he allows them to stay and have their fun as long as they don’t steal anything – this might metaphorically be considered a gift for good children.  Later he gives another gift, when he passes the ‘elfstone’ to the little brother to pass on to Kirsten.  This isn’t really developed enough to accomplish anything, though.  It’s more of a motif than an actual theme.

And of course, there’s the ‘it’s not over!’ ending, where the credits begin to roll over a shot of a fetus.  What?  There was definitely no rape scene in the movie, nor any implication that one had occurred and the film-makers, showing more restraint than usual, didn’t show it. While Kirsten waited injured in the woods for her brother to bring her the elfstone, the elf was distracted eating a toad.  Did it impregnate her by passing a hand over her stomach, like the guy in Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe?

Man, do I ever hate this movie.  What a boring, stupid waste of my time.  Who makes something like this?  Who decides to put the words Nazi Rape Elf in that order and then thinks the result would make a good Christmas movie?  I dug this piece of shit up in search of something to watch and review besides The Star Wars Holiday special and I’m actually sorry I did.  I’m not even joking.  Elves is that fucking bad.

[schrijfpen-blog]

Beckoning Dreams Ch. 3

Story Navigation

“So how was it?”

I cradle the phone between my shoulder and cheek as I place my mail on my desk for later. “It was amazing,” I tell Paris over the phone. “Well, he was amazing. I was stupid.” I groan a bit, as I think back to how awkward I was during the date.

“Did you spill the cake on his shirt? It looked pretty expensive.”

I let out a strangled sound that may or may not have been a choke. “I did not!”

“Oh.” I sure hope that isn’t disappointment I hear in Paris’ voice. “Then what?”

“Just,” I sigh, switching the phone to speaker as I drop onto my bed, letting my phone fall next to my head. “It was hard to talk, somehow...”

“I can think of a lot of things I’d rather do with that guy, other than talk,” Paris says with a chuckle, and I can imagine her licking her lips suggestively, like she does whenever she sees there are still cupcakes left after work.

A small laugh leaves my lips. “Not like that, it’s something different. Like...” I struggle to find the right words to describe my dilemma. “It’s like there is this haze in my head every time he’s near.” I decide that is the best way to say it. I can think so clearly, now that he’s not around. However, if he were to show up, I just know, I’ll practically go mute again, following along with whatever he wants.

It’s actually a little scary!

“-Aaaand you’re not listening.”

Paris’ voice snaps me out of my thoughts, causing me to let out a highly intelligent, “Huh...?”

Paris sighs on the other end of the line. “Honey, at least pretend to listen to me.”

“I’m really sorry,” I apologise quickly, “I was lost in thought...”

“About Dante?” Paris guesses, correctly.

“Yeah.” I admit, sheepishly.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was talking about him, too.”

I laugh a little, shaking my head slightly.

“So, did you ask him if he has a twin brother?” Paris asks.

I clear my throat. “No...” I trail off. I almost asked him at one point, but hadn’t. I didn’t want Dante to think of me as weird... even though he probably thought that anyway. Nice going, me!

“What if I miss my chance for romance because you’re not checking if my future husband exists?”

I smile at the joking tone in her voice. “What if he has a sister?”

There is a slight pause, before Paris replies, “Then ask him if she looks manly and resembles him closely.”

I burst into laughter, giggles coming out from her end of the phone, too.

“So? Did you plan another date?” Paris asks, once our laughter had calmed down.

“He hinted for a second date, but...” I trail off.

“But?” Paris urges me.

“We didn’t make anything concrete, so...” I sigh, “I don’t know, maybe he was just saying it to be nice.”

“Surely you weren’t that horrible. You were just quiet, it’s not like you called his mother a llama or something, right?”

“Right,” I agree. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I was a boring date...”

“Most people have an awkward first date, don’t worry about it.” Paris comforts me in a cheerful voice.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right...” Turning the phone off speaker, I place it against my ear and get up. Paris comforts me with tales of some of her first dates with guys, while I move to the window, looking outside.

Movement catches my eye, and I must have let out a small sound, because Paris immediately asks me what’s wrong. The words barely register as I lean out of my window a bit, looking at the deserted street. “Nothing...” I say finally, letting out the breath I didn’t even realise I was holding. “I thought I saw someone, but it was probably a cat or something.”

“Are you sure?” Paris asks worriedly. “Maybe someone is there, you should call Luca.”

“It’s nothing.” I say, shaking my head even though Paris can’t see. “Just my imagination.”

“Well if you’re sure...” Paris murmurs, though she still sounds worried.

“Everything is okay, don’t worry,” I smile a little. “If there really is someone, I’ll call Luca.”

“If there is someone you should call the police,” Paris corrects, before adding an afterthought, “and then Luca, he’ll be there sooner.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. It just makes me happier to know that there is no one here. After how we left off, I don’t really want to call Luca, though I have no doubt in my mind that he would come to my rescue no matter what. He really is a great friend, and remembering our fight just kills the good mood I had gotten from talking to Paris.

“Hey, I should go.”

“Is there someone there after all?” Paris asks, and I think I can hear her open a bag of chips at her end of the phone.

I smile a bit. “No, there isn’t. It’s just...”

“Just?” Paris urges.

“Well,” I sigh, before flopping back down on my bed. “Luca saw me returning with Dante... He was pretty unhappy.” I sigh.

“Well of course he was; the girl he likes went out with another guy. Who wouldn’t be unhappy?”

Everything in my head slows to a stop, and I utter a relatively unintelligent, “Huh?”

“Oh please?” Paris snorts, and I just know she’s rolling her eyes. “Don’t pretend you don’t know, Kiara. It’s so obvious!”

I laugh a little. “Paris, you have it all wrong. Luca doesn’t like me in that way.” It’s a little amusing that she would think so. “We grew up together, we’re practically siblings. Him liking me would be like, you know, incest.”

There is a slightly awkward silence coming from Paris’ end. I don’t blame her; she’s probably embarrassed at her mistake. I won’t hold it against her though; other people have made that mistake through the years. “He was probably just worried, though...” I sigh softly, closing my eyes. “I was really unfair to him. I should go and apologise, and talk it out,” I decide.

“Yeah, you should do that...” Paris says, sounding absent minded.

“Though, I guess it’s late now. I’ll go by his place tomorrow before class instead,” I decide.

Ever since I can remember, Luca has been by my side. I really hate it when we fight. Fortunately we always make up really fast. Hopefully we can do so this time, too.

“Yeah, you do that...” Paris clears her throat and switches the subject, “How is Matt?”

I sigh, “I don’t know. He’s mostly been keeping to himself, in his room.”

“Still no luck with him?” Paris asks sympathetically.

“Nope, still nothing...” I murmur.

“When are you parents coming home, anyway?”

“I’m not sure.” I think for a moment, “Mom’s new movie is almost out, so I guess she’ll come back for a short while, soon; after the premiere and before the movie starts playing everywhere.”

“Must be hard, being the dirty little secret of a celeb.” Paris teases.

“Hey!” I try to sound indignant, but I laugh anyway, Paris laughing with me.

“Why don’t you call and tell them about this?” Paris asks once we’ve calmed down a bit. “You speak with them all the time, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want them to worry when they are too far away to actually help...”

“I guess I can understand that.”

I smile slightly, closing my eyes. “At any rate, it’s pretty late now, and I tried to hang up before...” I tease.

Paris giggles softly, “Oh I’m sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

“Yeah, you should be,” I reply, laughing. “I’ll see you in two days, okay?”

“Okay, take care. And if you hear from Dante, let me know, would you?”

“You’re really interested in him,” I laugh a little, trying to ignore the odd feeling in my chest.

“Who wouldn’t be? My bestie is a hot guy magnet- I’ll keep you around.”

“There is no getting rid of me anyway,” I say, “You’re permanently stuck with me. Good night, Paris.”

“Good night, Kiara.” Paris makes her usual kissy sound before she hangs up.

I lay there for a moment before I get up from my bed, and walk to Matt’s room. I can faintly hear him typing on his laptop, and the muffled sound of music booming through headphones.

I sigh touching the door lightly. “Good night,” I murmur, before letting my hand drop, and head back to my room to sleep.

My last thoughts are of Dante, and his mysterious mauve eyes...

“Here we are again,” Dante murmurs as he nears me, the incense of the now familiar room entering my nose.

“This dream...” I murmur.

A smirk plays on his lips as he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me closer, our thighs touching.

“Is it really?” he whispers huskily, and my voice catches in my throat.

His touches, this room... Everything feels so real... Is this really a dream? It’s so hard to tell. His hand slowly travels up my back, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

“You are beautiful,” He murmurs, eyes never leaving mine.

My heart skips a beat as he picks me up, before gently lowering me onto the bed.

“This time... No more interruptions.” he murmurs, sliding his hand along my leg slowly.

Not a single part in my mind wishes to object.

I wake up, flushed and strangely exhausted. For a moment I simply stare at the ceiling in a slight daze.

What happened?

No, I know the answer to that question. Feeling a bit embarrassed, I slowly sit up.

I can’t believe I had that kind of a dream about him. How am I supposed to look him in the eye, the next time we meet? Assuming we’ll meet again...

                Skin on skin...                 Groans echoing in the dim room.                 The candles casting shadows on his naked skin,                  his mauve eyes practically glowing in the semi darkness...

A flush works its way up to my neck, and I quickly move out of bed.

The room shifts around me as I stumble, my legs feeling like they’re made of jelly, but I am able to grab onto my wall; just in time to prevent me from falling.

“With a dream like that, no wonder I’m tired,” I mumble.

I can just imagine Paris’ face, should she even find out... It’s important that she never will.

Trying to shake the far too realistic dream off, I make my way to the bathroom for a much needed cold shower.

I’m sure I’ll feel better after eating breakfast anyway.

In the end I was so nervous that I couldn’t eat a single bite of my food, though it has little to do with the dream. I’m not sure when was the last time that I felt so nervous simply about ringing Luca’s doorbell. He was the one who came to me the last time we fought, though I’m not sure you can call our disagreement an actual fight... Or is it one? Does Luca think it’s one? Wetting my dry lips, my finger hovers over the door bell. After a few minutes I finally gather my courage, and push the door bell.

I can hear footsteps approaching the door and judging from the sound of heels on the hardwood floor, I’m willing to bet it’s not Luca.

The woman who opens the door has long, wavy, golden blonde hair and baby blue eyes. She is tall, and fit. I have always thought Luca’s mother is beautiful. It’s like she didn’t age a bit in the past twenty years.

“Kiara.” Merideth smiles beautifully at me, and for a moment I hope that she is about to tell me that Luca isn’t home. She stares at me, smile faltering from her lips, but it comes back before I can ask if something is wrong. “Luca is in his room. You’re here for him, right?”

“Ah... Yes, thanks,” I smile at her, a little unsure. Is something wrong? Though her face right now doesn’t show that anything is.

Merideth’s presence never fails to comfort me. One of my more embarrassing childhood memories is that I asked Luca if his mother was an angel; I can still remember the shocked look he gave me, even now.

After walking up the familiar stairs to Luca’s room, I pause in front of his door. I’m still a little upset, but I know he was just looking out for me, and it’s not like he was wrong, so...

“Luca?” I call, before grabbing the door handle. “I’m coming in.” I open the door and step inside. Luca’s room is white and orderly as always, religious artifacts here and there.

“Ah!” Luca glances up at me, standing in his jeans in the middle of shrugging on his shirt. His bare back is turned to me, the slightly tanned skin flawless, save for the two slash scars on his shoulder-blades; apparently a result of an accident when he was younger.

“You can’t just come in here like that. I’m a guy, you know?” He protests, as he pulls his shirt over his head, finishing getting dressed.

Paris’ words come to mind again. Luca liking me... Hah, there is no way.

“What is it?” Luca asks, looking at the socks he’s putting on rather than at me. Obviously he’s still annoyed about yesterday, too. I can’t blame him; I was more than a little harsh...

I clear my throat before straightening up, as if that will give me courage. “About yesterday...” I trail off.

His shoulders tense up slightly. “What about it?”

I open my mouth, only to close it again. In the end I utter a, “I’m sorry for being so harsh, when you were just worried... I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, before he shakes his head. “There are things you don’t understand.”

I frown in response. That is definitely not what I expected to hear in answer to my apology. It’s agitating. “So then make me understand.” I say, my voice a little sharper than I intended, “Make me understand why you practically attacked Dante. Make me understand why you hate him, even though I doubt you actually know him. Make me understand why-”

“I do know him,” Luca interrupts me, effectively ending my rant. “I know of him.” He glances up at me with a slight frown. “That demon,” he practically spits out the word demon. “He’s a womanizer. I don’t want to see you fall prey to that.”

I purse my lips together. “Dante isn’t like that at all.” We haven’t known each other for long, so I’m not sure where this conviction comes from, but... When we are together, the way he looks at me... It’s like I am the only woman in the world for him.

He grabs my arm, and I try not to think of how Dante had touched the exact same place in my dream. Luca’s blue gaze is honest, urgent. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He devours-”

“No, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I interrupt. “And I didn’t come here to make up just so that we could fight even more. I don’t want to talk about this, Luca.”

He mutters something under his breath that I can’t quite pick up before he shakes his head. “You’re right, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” he sighs and pats the bed next to him.

I walk over slightly reluctantly, before sitting down a bit away from him.

Luca sends me a sideways look before he snorts, reaching out and pulling me closer to his body before he drops backwards on the bed, dragging me down with him.

My gaze immediately goes to his painted ceiling; it’s beautiful as always, painted like a nice blue sky with fluffy white clouds; the sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds. Luca painted it sometime during our high school years, and I remember it took him a good two weeks.

I relax a bit in Luca’s loose hold, as we quietly stare up at the ceiling. Just like that, I know we are okay.

Soon enough a knock on the door interrupts our ceiling-gazing.

"Breakfast is ready~" Merideth calls out. "You're joining us for breakfast, right Kiara?"

Even though she asks me, I’m sure she’s already counting on it. I guess it’s a good thing that I was unable to eat this morning.

"Yeah, I guess I am," I smile a bit as I sit up on Luca's bed, Luca dragging himself up into a sitting position next to me.

As I predicted, the table in the pristine dining room is set for three people. Merideth is always so open. Whenever I come over, even when it's unannounced, there is always a plate waiting for me.

We sit down at our usual places, and after their breakfast prayers, it's time to eat.

"So how is school going?" Merideth asks me, glancing up after pouring her cereal.

"It's going pretty good," I smile slightly, while preparing my own breakfast. "I did pretty good on the last tests."

"If you did, you should teach Luca," Merideth snorts a bit, "He didn't do well at all."

"Hey, I did just fine!" Luca interrupts from next to me.

"You barely passed," Merideth rolls her eyes.

I laugh a bit, watching them bicker back and forth. It's moments like these that make me miss my own parents, but I don’t let that bring me down.

“Instead of talking about those things, ask how her auction is going,” Luca scowls, stabbing at his food with his fork.

“Oh! That’s right! It’s that time of the year again, isn’t it?” Merideth’s smile turns to me. “How is it going? Do you need any help?”

“Oh no, I think I’ll be fine,” I assure quickly, shaking my head.

“Besides, she’s already making me slave for her, you don’t need to help,”

“Hey!” I kick Luca’s shin under the table, earning myself a hiss and a small glare, and a return kick.

“Well I think that you’re doing a nice thing every year, hosting a charity auction,” Merideth’s soothing words break our childish shenanigans apart.

“Thank you...” I blush a little at the praise, glancing back at my plate and taking another bite.

"Still no boyfriend, huh?"

Merideth's question makes me choke on my food a bit, and Luca is quick to drop his fork on his plate and pat my back. For a split second, my mind goes to Dante, but then I banish the thought. He's not my boyfriend.

Rather than be concerned about my health, Merideth laughs at my response. "You know, my Luca is still single, too~"

"Mom!" Luca's eyes widen for a moment, before they narrow.

"I know," I cough one last time, before my breathing evens out again, my chest aching a bit. I'm pretty sure I'd know if he'd get a girlfriend... well, or a boyfriend, I guess. It's odd... All these years and I've never seen him interested in a girl... Again, Paris' and my conversation from last night comes to mind, but I shake the thought off. I'm not even sure why I thought about it again.

"Anyway, you two eat up now. You still have to get ready for school, right?" Merideth says, shaking her head a bit as she goes back to eating.

"Yeah..." I say before glancing at Luca, his hand still on my back. "Thanks," I smile.

Luca glances away, pausing from glaring at his mother, to send me a kind smile, "No problem."

A few moments pass, before his eyes widen and he seems to realise his hand is still on my back, "Oh!" He quickly pulls it back.

I laugh a little, shaking my head before going back to eating my breakfast.

Once breakfast is over, I head back to my house. Matt has already left, judging by the lack of his favourite coat. I’m not sure exactly where he’s gone since he’s suspended, I just hope he won’t get into trouble... One glance in the fridge confirms he hasn’t touched the food the housekeeper has left, again.

I close the fridge with a sigh. This is the fourth time this week. I’ll have to try to bring it up again when he comes home tonight. I hope he’s at least eating somewhere else.

With a heavy heart that I get in my car and start to leave for school. Matt has been so different lately, so closed off... He used to be such a good kid, and we used to get along so well. But now he keeps getting into trouble; stealing, lying, fighting... No matter what I do, I can’t seem to get through to him. And then there is the matter of mom and dad... I shake my head. Blaming them would be too easy. No matter what Matt’s teachers think, this isn’t because they’re never here. Of course it probably has something to do with it, but...

Movement catches my attention from the corner of my eye.

Black, mauve...

I nearly hit the brakes, a decidedly bad idea; I am on one of the busiest roads right now. It’d cause an accident for sure... Besides, how would Dante even be here?

“I need to stop thinking of him so much...” I mutter with a small groan, trying hard not to recall last night’s dream.

                Smooth pale skin...                 Alluring mauve eyes that look solely at me...

I nearly run a red light, but manage to hit the brakes just in time.

“What is going on...” I groan, dropping my forehead on the steering wheel. I just can’t get him out of my mind, that beautiful, sinful man. Though, considering my dream, aren’t I the sinful one? All the things going on in my sub- consciousness, I never felt this way about anyone before. What is going on...?

A car honking startles me out of my thoughts, and I quickly sit up straight. The traffic light is green. I quickly continue driving. This isn’t like me, so focused on a guy. Is my family cursed? Both Matt and I are acting completely different from normal.

I really want to sleep, I’m so tired...

I don’t know how I got through today’s classes without sleeping. To be completely honest, I doubt that I did. I’m pretty sure I dozed off at least twice. How do I know this?

Because I doubt Dante would actually whisper my name while I’m in class, especially considering how no one else heard it, and he wasn’t actually there.

“Kiara,” Oh look, there is my imagination standing next to my car as I enter the parking lot. My imagination is more amazing than I thought; the deep way my name is spoken sends shivers down my spine. I open my bag to grab my car keys. Odd, my wallet isn’t in my bag... Did I lose it? Or am I so tired that I forgot to put it in my bag this morning?

“Kiara,” Dante’s voice is no less alluring than it had been before, and the way he furrows his brows while gently touching my bangs startles me. He’s not a figment of my imagination, he’s actually here.

“Ignoring me... Did I displease you in any way?” He murmurs sadly.

“A-Ah...” I’m not sure exactly what I should say, my thoughts muddled again. Why is it always like this? Whenever I meet his eyes, it just becomes so hard to think.

“No...” I mumble, shaking my head.

A slight smile grows on his lips. “I’m glad,” he murmurs, touching the hairs behind my ear as he leans down slightly, lowering his face to mine. “So glad...”

My heart skips a beat, and I find myself leaning up slightly, to accept his kiss.

“How did you find me?” I whisper. I can’t believe he’s really here, and not just a figment of my imagination.

“You told me you went to school here during our date. I thought I’d pick you up.” He whispers back, his eyes not leaving mine for even a second.

Did I tell him? I don’t remember, but right now I don’t remember that much anyway.

His breath hits my lip and he leans down to close the gap-

“STAY AWAY FROM KIARA, YOU DEMON!”

Luca!? I look up, breaking away from Dante in surprise as Luca comes running towards us at full speed. For a moment it looks like something rips through his shirt, growing out of his shoulder blades, before there is this blinding white light-

                           - And then everything goes dark.