#or being a good person who ends up on the wrong side of the schism

[thesherrinfordfacility]

okay so... we do agree that the most sense for the first scene of season 3 is to show in some way the fall, right? we saw the before, we saw the after (as in eden), we now need to know why there was this schism in the first place

and so, my question is, since i've just finished rewatching the job episode - what do you think, in gomens' universe, is the point of that schism? why did the fall happen? why was there a Great War? who started the war, was the war just between the different angels? who actually cast the losing side away?

the whole bit with "an angel/demon who goes along with Heaven/Hell as far as he can" really made me think about this all. plus, i personally would find it very satisfying to finally find out at least a little bit of context of why this separation happened in the first place for the moment (i hope) when the whole system is finally broken down and dismantled

hey lovely!!!✨ i do think it will open with some reference to the fall (as you said, imo it makes the most narrative, poetic, and thematic sense!!!), but i also feel like a lot of the show's answers are going to be within the fall, so idk if we'll see all of it in the beginning cold open, or if some will be continued towards the end of the series?

as for the fall questions, wowzers, i'll do my best to answer what i potentially think could factor in here, although they may not answer your qs outright!!!✨ and probably link to some other specs/metas that ive had jumbling around!!!

i think aziraphale knew or suspected something about why it would be risky to question god; maybe not that the fall was already bandied about as a concept, but maybe that there were Things Afoot that made him think that going against her will and plan could be bad news

i think that god is ultimately a very neutral, very amoral party. i don't think she is good or bad, right or wrong, well-meaning or malicious; she just is. i even possibly think that the ineffable plan, if there is even such a thing like she says in s1, is that she has no plan at all. everything is up to everyone else. (don't really have a singular meta on this, but perhaps a bit of this and that)

metatron is the Big Bad. dunno why, necessarily (ie what are his motivations other than Power?), but i think when god goes AWOL somewhere between job (or maybe actually after golgotha?) and present day, he fills the void and acts like he is still the voice of god, that he is still receiving orders. (again, no singular meta on this, and ive kinda got it sprinkled across many posts tbh!!!)

so with those kind of things in mind, here are my possible thoughts (not committing to any singular one) on the fall and the schism you've mentioned.

the fall was not necessarily meant to be what it turned out to be. i think ultimately angels came to god asking questions, or questioning her and her Ineffability, or the plan, whatever.

god wanted all of her creation to have free will. if that free will was to break away from heaven and from her, and act in their own interest, under their own orders, by their own conscience, i don't think she ever had an issue with this. even if - in the presumed case of lucifer - the intention was to break away as a direct challenge to god, to have the same power as god, i similarly don't think she wanted to stop this. that is literally free will. so she does nothing to stop whatever happens when they choose to break away.

metatron however has other ideas; heaven is good, and is correct, and is right. anyone who even questions it, even if out of love and devotion to god, those who just want to understand, were forfeit. god has removed herself from the picture, not even there at the (literal? figurative?) trial, so metatron acts as judge, jury, and executioner. in some cases, i think there were angels who were pushed, not fallen.

we know there was a war, but i think it was out of the angels that remained 'on heaven's side' being told lies about their fellow angels - told that these defectors were actively working against god to jeopardise her creations and her plans. that heaven will fall if they are not cast out. conflict ensues - from their perspective - to protect the sanctity of heaven.

then, possibly, i think a memory wipe kinda thing did happen, but specifically on the events of the fall. i do also wonder if this is where the book of life comes into play, but not overly confident (on any of this, really)

and ultimately i think the whole concept of true free will might have been god's plan - if you can call Nothing a plan - all along? that she completely steps back, and let's heaven and humanity kinda work it out for themselves.

like, this is the kinda stuff that i hope they reveal later on s3; crowley falling with lucifer, and possibly meeting aziraphale again etc. would, imo, be great for the ep1 cold open, but the actual events of the fall i think needs to be the belter that comes out in maybe ep5 or 6. obviously i haven't gone into where i think crowley and aziraphale may slot within all of this, but most things can be found in my masterpost anyway, or indeed happy to summarise for anyone who wants it!!!✨

[iamthemaster]

𝐖𝐡𝐨'𝐬 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐌𝐞?

Just deeply thinking about how "Who Afraid of Little Old Me?" by Taylor Swift is just Master Coded to me because of how the Time Lords used them with the drums and helped turn them into the villain they became (along with the Doctor's deal with making the Master into Death's Champion.) ( Yes, I did just go into deep introspection about how all the lyrics fit them below the cut...)

The who's who of "Who's that?" is poised for the attack. --- becoming a villain.

But my bare hands paved their paths. You don't get to tell me about sad--- losing the life they could have had because instead they were used by the Time Lords, driven insane with the drums, and betrayed by their best friend who chose Koschei to become "Death's Champion" instead of Theta, creating centuries of a painful path in life to follow.

If you wanted me dead, you should've just said. Nothing makes me feel more alive. --- how they come to cheat Death every time, accepting their new role as Death's Champion.

So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street. Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream "Who's afraid of little old me?". You should be --- accepting their role as the villain they've been made out to become, while also fighting for their autonomy, always being the thorn in the Doctor's side.

The scandal was contained. The bullet had just grazed. At all costs, keep your good name. You don't get to tell me you feel bad --- this is all directed at the Doctor, who constantly tries to be the Good person and say they are better, but yet had a role in making the Master who they are.

Is it a wonder I broke? Let's hear one more joke. Then we could all just laugh until I cry. I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean. "Don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth." --- about the Drums by the Time Lords and the Betrayal by his best enemy and how he constantly hides the scared and lonely little boy he once was away behind a facade of control and villainy.

So tell me everything is not about me. But what if it is? Then say they didn't do it to hurt me. But what if they did? --- obviously about the Doctor, but also the Time Lords. Feeling used and hurt.

I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me. You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me --- how the Master constantly lashes out as the villain. Not to mention how Missy/The Master ended up escaping from Gomer's Asylum on Gallifrey after being treated for the Drums and getting their revenge on Rassilon for causing it. Also talking about how they were raised with the Drums driving them insane in their head to begin with since looking into the Untempered Schism at only Age 8 at the Academy.

I'm always drunk on my own tears, isn't that what they all said? That I'll sue you if you step on my lawn. That I'm fearsome and I'm wretched and I'm wrong. --- pretty self-explanatory here with the Master being known as Gallifrey's most Infamous child and being "one of the most evil and corrupt beings our Time Lord race has ever produced. Your crimes are without number and your villainy without end."

Putting narcotics into all of my songs. And that's why you're still singing along --- could be looking into this one too much, but narcotics can be like the Master's ability to hypnotize others. Mostly this one is directed towards their bond with the Doctor despite everything...

'Cause you lured me. And you hurt me. And you taught me. You caged me and then you called me crazy. I am what I am 'cause you trained me. --- again, coming back to the beginning of it all with the Time Lord's and the Doctor playing a part in making the Master who they turn out to be.

*bows. Exits stage left.*

[spectrum-color]

There was a post going around here a few weeks ago about the EF5 each having a dark Forsaken counterpart, which is a cool idea, but the one with the most obvious Forsaken parallel is actually a secondary character.

Gawyn and Demandred. A man who believes he’s destined for greatness but always ends up trailing behind Lews Therin/Rand al’Thor and grows incredibly bitter about it. This would have been more obvious I think if Robert Jordan had finished the books, as I doubt Gawyn would have had that weird moment where he suddenly becomes super self aware and introspective and gets over his issues with Rand without even speaking to him, but it is definitely there. It would at least give Gawyn something to do toward the climax of the series other than repeatedly fuck up on minor things and annoy Egwene. It would also make Demandred, a villain with a ton of potential who just kind of fizzled out and was only in the last book, more interesting (Justice 4 Taimandred!) So yeah this was def a thing and more should have been done with it.

[writerkatsblog]

Imagine a multi-episode arc (like maybe 3-5 episodes between) of the team having to deal with Chase and Evil! Omi, getting their butts kicked, and that eventually leading into Saving/Finding Omi.

Basically, this is a long way do me saying that the three-episode arc felt a little rushed and I wish that we had more time with Evil! Omi, his relationship with Jack, the team having to deal with not having Omi or Fung and doing things on their own, and good! Jack. Like we have Omi turning evil, then a few episodes of evil Omi, then the last two episodes.

Oooohoho anon you give me far too much inspiration to work with here. *rubs grubby little writer hands together*

Now, if we're talking about a full, proper Heylin! Omi arc, I'm going to go with the full extent of a five episode arc, not counting Judging Omi as the lead-in to the mini-arc, then going on to an altered version of Saving Omi as the episode 3 midpoint, and ending off in, again, a slightly altered Finding Omi.

Episode 1

So, here we start off with the episode coming right off of Judging Omi, as mentioned. Omi has just been turned to the side of evil, and the group of monks is sent reeling about the whole thing. Now this might seem a little cliche, but I think here is where the monks might have a bit of a schism in the group. With Omi suddenly turned to evil, the group is in turmoil because of the stress and how unexpected it all was. Old arguments start to arise, character flaws of each getting more focus and attention. Kimiko and Raimundo get into an argument due to the stress, with Kimiko wondering what they did that might've upset Omi to the point he turned to darkness, while Raimundo claims they didn't do anything wrong because it was for the sake of trying to save Master Fung and stop Chase Young. And Raimundo tries to question if Omi really did turn to the evil side because it's not like him and Kimiko, still smarting and turning to her default defense of anger, claims he's not really the kind of person to make that sort of moral judgement considering he himself willingly went to the dark side, which stings him more than a little. Clay tries to mediate, but Kimiko and Raimundo both get on his case because he always tries to play the peacekeeper and act like this doesn't upset him. Clay takes offense to this because he is upset about Omi seemingly turn to the dark side, he just thinks that hollering about it won't do anything productive to help them figure out why Omi did what he did. So they argue and yell until finally they all break, taking different Shen Gong Wu to go their separate ways, each declaring they're going to figure out what's going on. Leaving Master Fung and Dojo, who is still doing his thing trying to tidy up Fung after everything that's happened.

Chase starts off things by tying Omi to him by getting a swearing of loyalty to him. Then, Chase and Omi appear to all three of the monks, with Chase taking the opportunity to have Omi cement his hatred towards all of his friends by turning him against them individually. Possibly with Omi flanked by pairs different warriors against each of his friends (the Maasai Spearwoman and the Cuāuhtli against Raimundo, the Roman gladiatrix and the Polynesian archer against Kimiko, and the Ulfheðnar and the Samurai against Clay). With each battle Chase talking Omi into being more brutal against his former friends, claiming that each of them has wronged him in some way that's a mix of the reasons Omi went to Chase instead of asking for their help and blatant falsehood just to make him angrier at them. (Also Jack is there at each battle after having begged to come along and Chase basically lets Omi use him as a walking talking punching bag to let out his hyperactivity on.) Wuya is also turned back to a weakened physical body after Chase and Omi nab the Serpent’s Tail and Reversing Mirror while staging their attack on the Temple, where Clay is.

All three of the other dragons manage to survive and barely escape their encounters with Omi. Chase lets them leave on purpose and doesn't let any of his warriors, Wuya, or Jack go after and destroy them, because he wants Omi to do it himself. By the end, they all manage to drag themselves back together at the temple, and help patch each other up. While Dojo takes a break from tending to Fung to make them something to eat. They're still sore from the argument earlier, but after hearing what Omi said to each of them and what Chase told him, they end up comforting each other and tell one another that none of it was true, and that they know each of them cares about Omi. Ultimately they realize that them splitting off is exactly what Chase would want, and that no amount of arguing will help them get Omi back. The longer they fight, the more they lose any possible chance to bring Omi back where he belongs. So they all resolve to not let Chase or the situation come between them all, covering for each other's weaknesses until they can get Omi back and really work together as one like they're meant to.

Episode 2

There’s sort of an A Plot and a B Plot in this episode that gets switched between every so often.

A Plot: Chase takes the opportunity of Omi being evil to try and school him in the ways of being wicked outside of just randomly trying to fight people. As well as weaning him off using Shen Gong Wu like the Orb of Tornami sooner. He starts off small, having Omi tear up flowers and kick down trees despite his normal propensity against this. Teaching Omi how to use water in more versatile and dangerous ways that will come up in the battle between Omi and his friends in episode 3 when they have their face-off. Chase does eventually manage to get Omi to even use his water powers against animals, using their normal propensity to dislike Omi. Unlike Saving Omi, he doesn’t take Omi to the temple just to have him randomly kick his friends’ butts. He wants to try and make sure that when they do meet up again, there’s no doubt that Omi will be working to destroy them. He does eventually get Omi to flood a grass field and encase it in ice. But a zoom-in after they leave shows that Omi still kept the water from freezing the single flower that he had found in the grass, hinting that there’s still hints of Omi in there even with his evil side in place.

B Plot: The Dragons try to piece together what they thought about and found while separated in the last episode. Eventually they figure out what they did during the proceedings of Saving Omi. That Chase Young planned the whole events that led to Omi becoming evil and figuring out the requirements of safe usage of the Yin and Yang Yo-Yos. As well as figuring out that they need to go to the Yin-Yang World in order to retrieve Omi’s Chi. Episode’s end has them realizing they need to prepare to storm and invade Chase Young’s lair in order to retrieve the Yin Yo-Yo and get into the Yin-Yang World.

There’s also sort of a minor C Plot where Jack follows Chase and Omi around like a lost puppy, hoping to get in on some of the evil action, but Chase either kicks him aside or lets Omi continue to use him as a punching bag. With Jack still doggedly trying but also noting how he liked the “old cheeseball” better. Not the least because it makes him look worse by comparison, but he also in general kinds of misses how Omi usually is. Not that he would ever admit to it.

Episode 3

The Xiaolin Dragons make their way to Chase Young’s lair in the Land of Nowhere, trying to sneak in so that they can get the Yin Yo-Yo quietly. In this case they don’t utilize the Sweet Baby Among Us until they actually get inside the lair, when Chase sends the Fallen Warriors after them in order to trip them up. Which is when Omi comes in and attacks them like he does in the events of Saving Omi.

The fight between Omi and the others is a bit longer than the episode proper, and shows off the three working their elements together in ways that only just manage to counter Omi’s non Wu water attacks without trying to hurt him or properly fight back. This is exacerbated by Chase pointing out to Omi how they’re already trying to show how much they don’t need him, and Omi believes him despite their protests, but they manage to get their hands on the Yin Yo-Yo, and get to the Yin-Yang world with Jack Spicer in tow with the Reversing Mirror, like before. Omi is left frustrated and hurt because of what he was told during the fight, but Chase tells Omi that they’ll be back, and then he can finish them off once and for all.

The group gets ahold of Omi and Master Fung’s Chi, but in this case, they actually see the Chi Creature before leaving the Yin-Yang world, and it’s angry that it’s seen them trying to “steal” Chi that it’s guarding. They run around trying to find the Yang Yo-Yo and escape, until finally they learn it was with Dojo the whole time as before and make their exit with Jack Spicer in tow. Not knowing that the Chi creature is still invisible and following them.

When they emerge, it’s not where Chase and Omi are, and they prepare to put up a fight with Jack Spicer, believing he’ll try to steal the Chi they just got back because he pulls the Sphere of Yun. But instead, he uses it to trap the Chi Creature that was rising up behind them, and in this way they realize Jack has turned good, and reluctantly accept his offer to help get Omi back. Leaving the Chi Creature where it’s isolated in the bubble made by the Sphere of Yun.

They fight against evil Omi, who’s become determined to kill them for real now, goes mostly the same, with Omi coming very close to ending Clay and Raimundo (perhaps even closer) and Jack and Kimiko manage to get Omi’s Chi back to him, wherein he returns to normal. But then the end of Saving Omi plays out mostly the same as the actual episode, because Omi had still sworn loyalty to Chase, and he turns into a jungle kitten. Forcing the other Dragons and Jack to escape.

Episode 4

Unlike in the original series, Master Fung does Not have every bone in his body broken because he was not subjected to viciously sadistic slapstick over the course of a whole prior episode. Once his Chi is restored to him, though, he know that there’s not much he can do except to advise the Dragons on what to do next. The lot of them are discouraged and feel helpless, knowing that Omi swearing loyalty has made him obedient to Chase. All sharing the sentiment that they were stupid to compete over who got to be the Wudai Warrior. Each one expressing that they’d rather they hadn’t wanted it so badly it if it all led to this.

Fung manages to impart some encouragement and vague wisdom about how it’s not too late. That if they want Omi back, they’ll have the opportunity to challenge Chase Young for his freedom. At the risk of themselves. All of them agree in a heartbeat, saying they’d do anything to get Omi back, and that he’d do the same for any of them.

Meanwhile, back in the lair, Chase is enjoying having Omi as a jungle cat, and all the power that comes with it.  While Omi is unhappy, he’s getting used to being a cat. Until Chase reveals the Chi Creature in the Sphere of Yun. He frees it, forcing him and Omi to fight together while Omi is a cat, and to Omi’s horror he directs it to the Xiaolin Temple, telling it that it can find the stolen Chi there. So it runs off to find its missing Chi and then some.

It makes it to the temple, where Fung is with Good Jack and Dojo. Good Jack tries to help fend it off, but Fung instructs Jack to take the Silver Manta Ray to warn the others that it’s on the loose, and will likely come to hunt them down. Jack agrees and leaves, and Fung gets his Chi drained. Jack tries to warn the others, but he can’t catch up to them in time.

The episode’s end comes after the Chi Creature has hunted down all three of the Dragons in training, with Dojo barely escaping, picking them off one by one until their Chi is drained and they’re left in the zombie-like state. At which point some of the jungle cats retrieve them and drop their loopy selves at the throne where Chase is sitting with Omi in his lap like housecats dropping mice at their owners feet. Omi is being pet on the head by Chase, who tells him that he now has his friends, just like he wanted. Only Omi never wanted it like this, and laments how things have turned out, and how there’s no one left to save the world now.

Episode 5

The first half of the episode is split between Omi’s perspective as a jungle cat, seeing his friends put to work as Chase’s servants. Maybe even being instructed to play with Omi as much as he wants. While Omi finds the whole experience hollow and unappealing. Which suits Chase just fine because he wants Omi more interested in sticking by him rather than the other Dragons. With a small heart to heart happening where Chase expresses that Omi is far better with him than he is with the people who didn’t understand one another. That Omi always wanted them on the same side and that they Get each other in a way others don’t. And that Omi always fought with his friends anyway, but now they’ll never disagree with him and always do what he says. But Omi claims that he still wants how things always were with his friends. That no matter how much they argued, he knew they didn’t have bad intentions. Which Chase brushes off and tries to assure Omi that he’s much better off.

Meanwhile, Good Jack makes the decision to sacrifice his good half by going into the Yin-Yang World with only one Yo-Yo, because that’s all they have. He lures the Chi creature into the Yin-Yang world with himself as bait, rather than simply sending the creature to the world with the Yo-Yo, then splits himself with the Ring of Nine Dragons. One distracting the creature while the other grabs the Chi and bolts. Dojo snags the Chi from Jack as soon as he’s out and evil again, then books it for Chase’s lair.

After sneaking in, Dojo gives them back their Chi, and the rest of the episode mostly goes about the same as the rest of Saving Omi. With the Dragons challenging Chase for Omi’s freedom, them winning, and Omi getting his groove dots back. Then after doubting himself for not telling them how to destroy evil, Chase reveals that Omi  knew how to destroy Good, not Evil. The two share a last moment where they assert one another is better suited for the opposite side. Then part ways.

Then the final part where Fung reveals the Wudai Warrior. He first states Omi, who adamantly refuses, because he still feels himself unworthy after all that’s happened, trying to say why each of the others deserves the title more than himself: Raimundo because he never gave up on Omi’s goodness no matter what, Kimiko for being so clever as to figure out a way to help bring him back to himself, and Clay for being the hearty support that tried to keep everyone together and safe even when times were difficult.. But the others try to tell him that they don’t think so at all, and that no matter what happened with Chase, they think he deserves it, because when in his right mind, they’d never doubt his loyalty. But then Fung makes the reveal that All of them earned the title, because they all learned to work together and rise as one, by cementing their bonds and proving to one another how far they’ll go for one another.

And boom. That’s my take on a rewrite of the sequence of events in the Heylin Omi arc stretched out over a few more episodes.

[luluwquidprocrow]

(the three-part folding mirror)

the denouements & the snickets, olaf, r, olivia 

teen

15,985 words 

The year the schism gets worse is the year one of the quarterly information costume parties is held in the grand ballroom on the third floor of the Hotel Denouement. 

@lyeekha won my commission in the @asoue-network fandom against hate raffle and asked for the denouements, so i put together some shenanigans with the denouements and the snickets, with slight ernest/lemony kit/dewey frank/jacques, and a few other associates hanging around ~ 

some minor warnings – language; smoking; brief mention of murder; referenced parental death; identity anxiety about being seen physically and personally 

title from i am alone by they might be giants 

10:59 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

Kit skirted the perimeter of the crowded ballroom, stopping at the side wall by the drinks, one eye on the table and the other on the dance floor. She couldn’t put her back to it. Not now. There was a tall, potted boxwood nearby, unreasonably lush, almost slouching against the decorative golden pillar beside it. She picked up one of the wineglasses, the only signal she could think of to properly get his attention. She’d have to find Lemony as well; where was he?

The plant coughed.

“J,” Kit whispered, “listen to me.”

A few of the branches parted, and Jacques’s blue eyes appeared out of the green. “What happened?”

Kit breathed slowly. Her free hand curled into a fist, crinkling up the fabric of her dress. She swallowed. It did not help. She gripped the glass. Beneath her feet, the floor gave a slight shudder as the clock out in the lobby readied itself to chime the hour.

“Someone in this very room has—”

WRONG!

7:25 PM—Above The Lobby

It was Saturday night, and Saturday night always meant one thing—Guess The Guest.

Ernest stood in the small alcove situated around the gears of the hotel clock, far above the lobby, and looked down. Like any other night, the sleek gold and red lobby was filled with people, loitering around the front desks and the fountain and each other before they made their way up to the grand ballroom on the third floor. Well, the ballroom was different. This was a work event, as Frank had so brilliantly labeled it on their schedule, so no one was a regular guest tonight. Frank, who had never appreciated the joy in making up grandiose lies or exaggerated half-truths about the strangers who came in and out of the hotel, certainly wouldn’t appreciate the thrill in watching all of his associates in costume and trying to guess who was who, either. Dewey thought the game was slightly mean, because Dewey was just too kind for this sort of thing.

It was good that Ernest was not Frank or Dewey. Not right now, anyway. Ernest knew how to get joy out of the little things.

He watched a flash of green scales move erratically through the lobby, a cheerful voice calling enthusiastic greetings that echoed all the way up to the ceiling—Montgomery. There was a reason he did undercover work so sparingly. Two women in nearly identical butterfly costumes by the door, one purple and one white, hand in hand, standing close together—Ramona and Olivia. It was nice to see them together. A woman with a deep blue dress that swept around her like a wave—Josephine, here alone. Ernest had it on good authority that the Anwhistle brothers weren’t coming. Another loud voice, but deeper, following the confident swath a tall figure in black cut through the crowd—Olaf. Ernest turned away, in time to catch a glimpse of a long red cape shifting from behind one pillar to another around the edge of the room, carefully avoiding Olaf—aha. Kit. Which meant another one was nearby. Not that the Snickets had arrived together, because none of them ever did, but where there was one there was always at least one other, ready to make a decent amount of trouble. (Ernest liked trouble. The little things, of course.) And there, near Ramona and Olivia, Lemony Snicket, a figure shaped in grey shadows.

The alcove door opened. Ernest knew exactly who it was, so he didn’t give him the courtesy of turning around, keeping his eyes on Lemony. Grey was a fitting color on him, on the long line of his shoulders, his legs. Ernest’s stomach flipped over, once.

“It looks like a full house tonight,” Frank said, standing beside Ernest. He adjusted the sleeves of his jacket and folded his hands behind his back. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ernest leaned a hand on the alcove railing. “Takes more than a murder to stop a party, I suppose,” he said.

Frank didn’t reply, but Ernest knew that for once he agreed. The double murder in Winnipeg two months ago had, like any other sudden, suspicious death they’d dealt with over the years—Ernest shuddered and flexed his fingers—barely made a ripple in VFD, except that after the funeral, everyone had closed ranks significantly tighter.

This worried Frank; this did not worry Ernest. Very little truly worried Ernest, at the end of the day. That, of course, only made Frank worry more, but Ernest couldn’t help that. Frank would find something to worry about if Ernest was still on “his side”. Ernest had much more pressing commitments than the heavy, idle worry that everyone else shuffled between themselves without any results, and it wasn’t that he’d be found out. It was change. The real kind of change, not the noble one, not the fragmentary one. Change Ernest could see.

He shifted his hand on the railing once more. If he kept thinking about it, he was going to argue with Frank, and they’d rehashed the argument so many times the past few months without any resolution that it was better, Dewey had eventually insisted, if they just didn’t talk about it at all. So they wouldn’t. Ernest stood next to his brother, and the silence dragged out between them, punctuated by the soft ticking of the clock gears, and they wouldn’t talk about it. Not at all.

“Ernest.”

Almost.

“Frank,” Ernest said back, in the same critical tone, tilting his head to the side and giving his brother a look.

Frank shot him a flat and unimpressed stare in return. At least he still did that. “Promise me you won’t do anything—” he paused, his face pinching in an aggrieved sort of way before he settled on a word. “—rash tonight,” he finished.

Ernest laughed. “I don’t intend to do anything rash, Frank.” Of course not. You couldn’t carry out a pre-established plan rashly.

“I should hope not. I—”

The door opened, again. Dewey burst into the alcove, all smiles as always, and stopped on Frank’s other side and leaned over the railing, gazing into the lobby. Like Ernest and Frank, he wore the muted red manager uniform, because somebody had said it was the “host prerogative” to not dress up for a costume party. Somebody had felt bad about it when Dewey was disappointed, but somebody had still not relented, and there they were, a matched trio, everything outwardly perfect.

“Everyone’s costumes are so beautiful,” Dewey said. “Who’s that, in the big blue dress?”

“Josephine,” Ernest and Frank said at the same time.

Ernest raised his eyebrows. Frank, stooping so low as to actually guess the guest? Even Dewey blinked at him in surprise. The tips of Frank’s ears went slightly pink, but he didn’t say a word.

“Oh, Frank, you left your name tag downstairs again,” Dewey said. He pulled the name tag from his pocket, the slim gold rectangle glinting briefly in the soft light of the alcove, and pressed it into Frank’s hand.

“Thank you,” Frank murmured. But when Dewey turned away, Ernest saw the tag disappear from Frank’s fingers, most likely slipped up into his sleeve. None of them wore their name tags with regularity—the black ‘manager’ embroidery on their jackets was really enough—but Frank’s kept showing up places, and Ernest and Dewey kept giving it back to him, every time. Ernest didn’t quite know what to make of it. He wondered about asking Frank about it, but he didn’t want Frank to take it as another argument. Ernest didn’t actually enjoy arguing with Frank. About small things, sure, like Dewey’s stupid poetry and Frank’s inane hotel schedules, the sorts of things brothers argued about. But Ernest was sure Frank would make it into another one about VFD.

Dewey was studying the lobby, one hand on his chin. Ernest watched him go from one friend to another, then stop when he got to Kit’s red cape sweeping towards the stairs. It was an unusual color for her, but Dewey, whether he thought it was nice or not, knew how to identify someone from the pieces they let slip through too. Kit was straightforward about everything, and the way she walked, determined and with an endpoint in sight, was no different.

Ernest and Frank exchanged a quick glance.

“So,” Frank drawled, “when’s the wedding?”

“I look best in black,” Ernest put in. “Take that into account, Dewey.”

“I look best in blue,” Frank said. “Take that into account.”

Dewey’s face went its typical six shades of red, flushing through to his ears as well as he jumped back from the railing and sputtered, “What—we’re not—we haven’t even—I don’t—Kit’s not—you two are impossible.” He stormed out of the alcove, shutting the door with a slight snap behind him, because Dewey had never slammed a door in his life.

Ernest enjoyed a brief chuckle with Frank before his brother fell silent again. The lobby crowd was thinning as everyone made their way to the elevators or the stairs, or to the bathroom, or, perhaps, to some clandestine hallway somewhere else. Ernest could see the ring of neatly-trimmed boxwoods lining the lobby now. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there was one more than usual, sitting right inside the door.

He leaned forward, squinting. “Did we always have a boxwood there?” he asked.

Frank moved his head down a fraction of an inch and considered the lobby. “Of course,” he said. Then he straightened his sleeves one more time, and left the alcove.

7:35 PM—The Lobby

Among the Snicket siblings, there was an ongoing discussion about the best hiding place. Kit preferred the quiet, professional approach. She stood behind newspaper stands, put her face into books and brochure racks, stayed in the shadows of a store awning. Lemony was difficult about it. He thought the best place to hide was the least likely place someone would look for you; the place you wouldn’t look for yourself. He took dangerous perches in train station windows, seats in restaurants he vocally hated, or sophisticated and cramped corner cafes that had never heard of a root beer float.

Jacques, meanwhile, with a lifetime of hiding experience, always liked to hide in plain sight. People barely ever remembered what was right in front of them as long as it appeared relatively normal. And there were a number of options—a large potted plant could be overlooked among a dozen other potted plants, people received packages every day and wouldn’t notice if there was one more oversized box, every city park lost track of how many statues were supposed to be there, even a regular man in a fine suit crossing the street or driving a taxi was expected and forgettable. Another boxwood was just another boxwood sitting in a free space in the empty Hotel Denouement lobby, slowly making its way to the ballroom for optimal eavesdropping. Another volunteer in costume was just another volunteer in a lion costume borrowed from Bertrand, for the moments tonight when Jacques had to communicate information to an associate.

That was the point of the party, after all. Jacques couldn’t deny that everyone liked dressing up—he liked dressing up, a little—but the main objective for most of them tonight was the passing of relevant information that had happened in the three months since the last official gathering (not counting the funeral). It should have been at Winnipeg, as they usually were, the organization taking over the Duke and Duchess’s sprawling, sparkling mansion, the couple’s easy laughter flowing from room to room. Jacques didn’t blame Ramona for not wanting to do it after what happened there. He doubted she’d actually been in the mansion since, although it was entirely hers. But the Hotel Denouement was a suitable replacement. It was too public to ever lose its neutral position among both sides. No one was going to get killed here, Jacques was certain. But he was mildly worried something else would happen. He didn’t know what. But something.

Especially considering Lemony was here. Not that his brother was a troublemaker—Jacques would never say it out loud, at least—but because Lemony wasn’t supposed to be at the hotel tonight. He had told Jacques that he was going to be with Beatrice and Bertrand, who were working on plans for an upcoming assignment. This meant two things—one, that Lemony had lied to Jacques. But Jacques had counted on that. He had assumed, however, that Lemony meant the three of them were finally going on a date and hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Two, that if Lemony never did anything idly, without a specific purpose, then he was here for an unknown reason. Something else was going to happen, Jacques was certain. Something Lemony wanted to be here for.

First, though, he had to get the boxwood he was hiding in from the lobby to the ballroom upstairs. The pot was significantly heavier than Jacques had counted on.

8:05 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Every time they all got together, Frank was so amazed at how many of them there were. Despite some noticeable gaps—Beatrice’s overbearing presence, for one, which Frank was happy to do without for an evening—the grand ballroom had barely any free space. Every available and noble associate was here, and it filled Frank with a sense that everything was going to be alright. All these people, including himself, doing what was necessary to keep the world quiet. Tonight would be fine. Ernest wouldn’t do anything regrettable; Dewey would forgive him about the costumes and the gentle ribbing; the meeting would pass without incident. Tomorrow would come. Sometimes Frank almost thought that it wouldn’t. Typically when Ernest was being difficult, but tonight even he seemed to agree that the organization—their organization—was impressive.

He spotted a potted plant by one of the drink tables, a boxwood that matched the ones lined around the room and back in the lobby. One branch was bent out of place. Frank would have to have a word with the person responsible later. But he should fix the branch now.

Everyone he passed on his way across the room gave him a quick nod, a brief smile. Frank returned it as that familiar buzzing started under his skin, like it tended to in groups. He shrugged it aside. He gave the controlled smile of a manager with everything in place, and no one said a word.

All of a sudden, his view of the boxwood was blocked. Through the mass of associates came Olaf, head to toe in a suit and mask of black, spiky fur, smiling with all his teeth, unceremoniously pushing a woman in a silver dress painted like a large, rocky moon aside on his way towards Frank. Frank steeled himself. You never knew what you were going to get with Olaf, if he would try and charm you with a reckless humor or annoy you with a joking cruelty. It was one of the many reasons Frank had never particularly cared for him.

“Ernest!” Olaf exclaimed when he got close. He hooked an arm through Frank’s. “Lovely to see you, wonderful party.”

The cold, dark hand twisted its way along Frank’s insides. It gripped down through his chest, put a film over his eyes that made the room seem distant and wrong. The party continued around him, Olaf was still talking into his ear, and Frank couldn’t hear any of it. The name tag pressing into his wrist up his left sleeve didn’t help. Just because it was his didn’t mean it was him. His name meant nothing if no one was going to care about who it was, about what made Frank instead of Ernest or Dewey. No one should need evidence to tell the difference. No one should make a mistake between the three of them. How many times would it happen?

Time was still passing. Frank blinked once, twice, until Olaf’s voice filtered back in and the noise of the ballroom swelled up once more.

“—incredibly delicious, I have to say, but, to be frank with you—ha! This champagne has seen better days, which one of you is responsible for this travesty?”

Frank smiled, a little turn of the corner of his mouth, the professional smile of all three of them. If Olaf wanted Ernest, alright. Frank would be Ernest. “Frank,” he said. The word sounded like it couldn’t possibly have come out right, but Olaf didn’t break his stride, so it must have.

“That does not surprise me in the least,” Olaf said. “Meanwhile, allow me to take up one single minute of your time,” he continued, and pulled Frank into the shadows by the door. Frank’s stomach gave a terrible lurch as the stark terror he woke up with every morning came back, riding over the dissonant gap he still felt between his body and his brain. What did Olaf want with Ernest? Had Olaf found out about him? Frank had covered up for Ernest before, but would he be able to keep doing it if more people knew?

“Have you thought about it any more?” Olaf asked, leaning close.

The sheer relief that Olaf didn’t know battled with the swooping fear that Ernest was doing something new Frank didn’t know about, and with Olaf. He remembered, with startling clarity, the last time he talked to Kit, when she told him that Olaf had been spouting dangerous ideas about the organization and trying to rope in as many people as possible. It was one of the reasons, according to the rumors Frank had heard elsewhere, why he and Kit had ended their relationship. What was he trying to get Ernest into? Ernest needed absolutely no encouragement, and neither did Olaf. He had to say something.

“I have,” Frank said. It was the safe answer when you were pretending to be someone else.

Olaf grinned again, big and excited, which was a terrible sign. “And?”

“No,” he said, because it was also the safe answer, and the faster Frank could untangle Ernest from whatever trouble he was into this time, the better. “Sorry to disappoint,” he added, with the cool tone Ernest used.

Olaf frowned. “Really? I must admit, I am a little surprised. I mean, I know you weren’t entirely on board, but you’d given it a shot before, and I was hoping you’d come around again.”

Before? They’d talked before? Frank thought a series of incredibly inappropriate words Beatrice was always using that he would never say out loud.

“But!” Olaf pivoted quickly, in his speech and his actions, spinning on his heel away from Frank and shrugging broadly. “Who am I to bend your arm about it! I’ll keep you in mind, though, in case.” He showed all his teeth, his eyes glittering. “And keep me in mind, next time you have anything else worth sharing, will you?” He flounced off again, tearing through the crowd.

It took a few minutes for Frank’s heart to go back to where it was supposed to be from where it was thundering in his throat. He put his hands in his pockets and gripped the fabric, something real and his to hold onto.

Anything else worth sharing. Since their apprenticeships, Frank and Dewey and Ernest had been tasked with organizing a great deal of information, mostly about the history of the organization, but sometimes, and especially as they got older, the very information that was passed along between volunteers. It was part of the reason Dewey had started building his personal archives in the basement. He liked the business of collecting facts. Of course all three of them were still being given that information. Of course Ernest still had access to every single piece of that information. Ernest, collaborating with Olaf, Ernest, sneaking around behind Frank’s back, Ernest, who had promised, at the beginning of all this, that he wasn’t going to jeopardize their positions by doing something stupid.

Ernest, what are you doing?

8:40 PM—The Archives, In Progress

Dewey was not hiding. He liked parties a great deal, and he loved people, but like his brothers and everyone else, he too had his own appointment to keep tonight.

His just happened to be in the basement.

He still sort of felt like he was hiding, especially the further he went into the archives. But things always needed organizing, and while he waited, he had to do something to keep his hands busy. He searched for a set of organization accounting records for five minutes before realizing he’d already shelved it, last week.

So Dewey was nervous. Plenty of people were nervous. Olivia went around all the time being nervous and no one gave her any grief for it. But Olivia didn’t have a sister to give her any grief for it. And Dewey didn’t mind, not really. He loved it when his brothers teased, because it meant they were getting along. But this time it was slightly personal. Because he was meeting Kit, and he was nervous.

Kit was—well, normal. Like Dewey was normal. He loved his brothers, but Frank was high-strung and made it everyone else’s problem, Ernest was often disagreeable for the sake of it, and with the Snickets, Jacques was always hiding in furniture and Dewey didn’t think he’d ever seen more of him than one hand and possibly an eye at a time, and Lemony was wonderful but sometimes too cryptic and morbid for Dewey’s taste. He liked things a little more sensible, comfortable, pleasant. And Kit was organized, reasonable, quiet when other people were reading, cool under pressure. She let herself get lost in books and people she cared about, underneath all the professionalism. Her smile was a careful, slow thing, something private she only showed you if she genuinely liked you. And it meant a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile.

His brothers didn’t get it. He wasn’t involved with Kit, and he wasn’t going to ask her out, because you didn’t do that with Kit. If Kit wanted to spend time with you, that was her own choice. She never did anything she didn’t want or she hadn’t thought through first. That she wanted to spend time with Dewey, specifically, to see him, and no one else, was nice. It made the whole of him feel all tingly and weightless. He wanted their meeting in the archives to be as nice as that feeling.

Dewey grabbed a set of Agatha Christie translations he kept on hand for when things got boring (rarely, but Beatrice got bored easily, and if you gave her a translation she sat down for a while to prove she could read it) and walked to the next aisle to shelve them. His foot snagged on something in the middle of the floor and he stumbled, hugging the books close to his chest so they didn’t fall. He turned around to see what it was, and found Kit blinking up at him with wide eyes from where she sat on the floor, a thick book open in her lap, her long red dress pooled around her on the floor. Her dress had an off-the-shoulder neckline, but most of her shoulders were covered by the matching red cape pulled around her. In the wide diamond of skin left between the cape and the top of the dress, he could see the sharp edge of something black around her collarbone, a point of the nearly-finished tattoo she’d been getting done. The red sleeves disappeared into short white gloves, with her hands folded together at the bottom of the book pages. Oh. Dewey’s heart pounded for a horrible, exhilarating moment, his mouth going dry. He swallowed once, twice, a third time.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling wryly, closing the book and sliding it gently back in the middle shelf. “I got distracted.”

“Oh, no, that’s completely understandable,” Dewey said. He folded himself down beside her, crossing his legs, still clutching the books to him. “Happens to me all the time. What were you reading?”

Kit smiled again, and it was that slow, beautiful smile, her eyes lighting up. “Have you heard,” she said, “about the cookiecutter shark?”

Dewey had absolutely heard about the cookiecutter shark. “Isistius brasiliensis,” he said. “It can travel in schools, and it bites little circular sections out of fish, like a cookie cutter. Have you heard about the brownsnout spookfish?”

“Barreleye fish, has mirrors in its eyes. Toothless upper jaw,” Kit replied easily. “Anostraca.”

“Fairy shrimp, they swim upside down,” Dewey said. He leaned forward, grinning. “Sometimes even found in deserts. Frilled shark?”

This was his favorite game, with his favorite person, in his favorite place. Both of them were librarians, or librarian-adjacent, so he and Kit dealt in information, not only about nobility but about the rest of the world around them. And the whole world was so fascinating, and there was so much to know and share, so how could you not try and see who could stump the other first?

“An eel-like living fossil, with six pairs of gill slits. Chaunacidae.”

Dewey scrunched up his face, thinking. “I think you got me there,” he admitted.

“Sea toad,” Kit said, looking pleased, “and coffinfish. Deep-sea anglerfishes. The sea toad has fins that can be used as leg flippers.”

“Really? Wow.” Dewey made a mental note to check that out later. He hoped, on the scale of unsettling sea creature to pleasantly spooky sea creature, that it was somewhere in the middle. “So besides oceanic intrigue,” he said, “what else is going on with you?”

“I’m supposed to get something from Frank tonight,” Kit said. “But, I also came to give you this. From Bertrand,” she clarified, and then picked through the seams of her dress, which revealed themselves as hiding at least ten different pockets.

When he had the time, Dewey wanted to study clothing design. Kit and Beatrice always found the place for so many pockets that you could never see from the outside, and Dewey wished he had the same capacity in his slim manager’s jacket and trousers for all the things he wanted to carry around. Poetry; chocolate-covered pretzels; the pencils Kit always left behind; spare buttons; sturdy rope, in case he needed it; maybe a mini chess set. He’d have to work on it. Maybe he could hide them in shoulder pads, or his shoes.

Kit pulled out a book from a side pocket. Dewey finally put the Agatha Christie down, piling it in a neat stack between them, and took the book. It was the one Bertrand had spoken to him about last week—Undercover Underwater: Diving For The Truth, a truly terrible murder mystery novel he said Dewey had to read to believe. He was greatly looking forward to it.

“That was awfully sweet of him,” Dewey said, running his thumb over the cover. He looked for a place to put it, and then just put it on top of his book stack. It felt a little sacrilegious, if it was as bad as Bertrand said, to put it on top of Christie, but he didn’t want to misplace it. “Thank you very much.”

Kit shifted on the floor and put her back to the bookshelf. “Did you hear the Anwhistle brothers finished building that marine research and rhetorical advice center?”

“Yes,” Dewey said. “I guess that’s why they aren’t here tonight? Josephine was all alone when I saw her earlier.”

“They should’ve celebrated with the rest of us,” Kit said. “What a massive architectural achievement—and I wanted to hear about the leeches, too.”

“Yes!” Dewey exclaimed. “Have you seen them yet? I haven’t.”

“No,” Kit said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not in person. Ike gave Lemony one of the earlier ones as a paperweight some time ago but I haven’t been able to see their recent work yet. I hear the teeth are impressive.”

“Cookiecutter shark impressive?”

Kit grinned. “Potentially.”

Dewey laughed. He wished he and Kit could go see them, together. For the scientific curiosity. For spending time with someone who really, really wanted to see him. No, for the oceanic intrigue, of course. “You know—” Oh no. He hadn’t intended to actually start the sentence, but it was out, and Kit was looking at him expectantly, and Dewey was rapidly losing all handles on the conversation. His face was heating up. Everyone else made talking to people whose company they enjoyed look so easy, but the words jumbled together in his mouth. “We should—go? I mean—not right now, but, soon, we could—to the research center—for the leeches, for, for science.”

Pink colored Kit’s face under the freckles along her nose. “For science,” she said. Then—“Not a date,” she added firmly.

“Definitely for science,” Dewey insisted. “Oceanic intrigue, and everything.”

“Yes,” she said, blinking quite a few times. “That would be fine.”

They stared at each other for the longest minute of Dewey’s life.

“We should probably get back up to the party,” he said. The archives were feeling much, much too close, all the books and shelves pressed up against him, the point of Kit’s tattoo still peeking out from under the edge of her cape.

Kit nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

8:55 PM—The Ballroom—Near The Piano

Next—Jacques had to find Olivia.

He abandoned the boxwood by the east wall, for the time being, out of sight near the piano, where a man with a white half-mask played a pleasant Beethoven sonata while a woman in a sharp, pointed gold suit argued with a man dressed as an octopus with a hat. They did not notice Jacques, even in his own costume, but he noticed them. He noticed everyone in the room so singularly. He’d almost forgotten so many people could be in one place at the same time. You spent a lot of time alone, hiding in small spaces, you got used to yourself.

Olivia was easily identifiable. Nothing she did could ever disguise the tightly-wound nervous energy coiled inside her, not the shimmery white butterfly wings curled over her shoulders or the mask of purple flowers on her face. Something always gave her away. Tonight, it was her hands, twisting together as she talked to someone in a large, leafy tree costume, so consuming Jacques couldn’t make out the face. He scanned the crowd, trying to locate Ramona in her reversed purple wings and white mask. He saw her making her way towards one of the drink tables. Ramona wouldn’t leave Olivia alone for long.

The tree left soon after, and Jacques made his way over to her, getting a decent amount of elbows into the side along the way. “Olivia,” he said, when he stopped in front of her.

Her eyes passed over him and onto the rest of the room, like she was staring straight through him. Jacques frowned. He’d certainly said something. He’d certainly moved, Olivia was right in front of him. People moved around them without sparing him a second glance; someone said a cheerful hello to Olivia and she returned it. His voice dried up in his throat, like if he tried to speak he’d never make a sound. When was the last time before this he’d spoken out loud? No one expected him to talk, in his line of work. When had he done it? No, perhaps she simply hadn’t heard him.

He cleared his throat a few times. That was a sound. That was undeniably a sound. Jacques existed here.

He touched his hand to her wrist. “Olivia?”

Olivia jumped nearly a foot. She turned her head from side to side frantically, and Jacques gave her a short wave.

“Oh!” Olivia pressed her hands against her chest and laughed, breathless. “Oh, Jacques, you startled me. How are you?” she asked, as unfailingly kind as always, as if he hadn’t just frightened her. She looked like she wanted nothing more than for Jacques to tell her the long, substantial answer, instead of the polite one. He almost did. But Jacques was here for business.

“Fine,” he said. “And you?”

“Alright,” she said, still smiling. “Ramona’s gone to get some champagne, would you like to join us?”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I have a message for you.”

Her bright smile faltered, her hands seizing together again. “I see,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

“We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival.”

Olivia blanched. “The—the hinterlands?” she repeated. Her voice trembled. “That’s, ah, terribly far away, isn’t it?”

“It is a distance from the city,” Jacques conceded, “but not far.” It was far from Winnipeg, though. It was very far. Eventually, Ramona would be back there, at least in some capacity. Things would be different, especially if Olivia was wanted in the hinterlands permanently.

“Jacques, I really—I don’t—I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “I promise, I’ll think about it.”

An assignment from headquarters was not exactly optional. Her eyes darted somewhere behind him, and Jacques knew who she was looking at. She and Ramona had just gotten together only recently, before the Duke and Duchess’ deaths. Any kind of love was difficult within the confines of their organization, but the solace here, Jacques thought, was that she and Ramona were both there. They would never be that far away. They might see each other a good deal less, but they would see each other.

“You can take your time to leave, if you wanted,” he said.

“I’ll think about it.” Her voice was firm. “But, thank you for letting me know, Jacques.” She gave him her soft, breezy smile again, and slipped off through the dance floor.

Jacques watched her go. They would see each other. That was an invaluable thing, in their line of work. Being seen. Sometimes even the best person you loved with your whole being couldn’t see the part of you that mattered. To be seen when you disappeared from the rest of the world—that was worth holding on to. It would be difficult. But he had no doubt Olivia and Ramona would do it.

The floor rumbled, like it always did before the lobby clock chimed.

9:00 PM—Room 687

Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Does the clock always sound like that? Like it’s saying wrong?”

“Incessantly,” Esmé sighed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I think Frank’s responsible. Heaven forbid he goes an hour without reminding everyone else how little he thinks of their decisions, you know.”

9:00 PM—The Ballroom—North Drink Table

The hotel was not Winnipeg. But right now, that was exactly what Ramona wanted. The modern angles, the warm, well-lit ballroom, the dark corners and firm rigidity of it all currently felt homier than the soft, open pinks and whites of the Winnipeg mansion. She was glad to have another excuse to avoid it and the constant questions. Tonight, she was going to see her friends, and dance with Olivia, and drink champagne, because Olivia said every occasion was cause for celebration and champagne, and Ramona was going to have a good time. She picked up two champagne flutes from the table and took a sip of one in the careful way her mother taught her, so she didn’t leave lipstick on the glass. Her heart stuttered as she saw the press of plum purple streaks on the glass when she pulled it away. The hotel clock was chiming, sounding like a heavy, distorted vibration of a word. It was right. The lipstick was wrong.

Who had done it? Everyone wanted to know. The firestarters? Likely, but they had been quiet for some time, and Ramona wasn’t going to point fingers without evidence. Some older enemy? Ramona didn’t know enough about whoever that was to consider them. Someone new?

She didn’t want to think about it. Her parents were dead, and she’d found them, and she didn’t want to think about who could have done it or why they did. It wasn’t going to change that it had happened. Ramona wasn’t looking for answers. She was looking for—

An arm slung around her shoulders, jostling her and the champagne, which sloshed around in the flutes as she lurched forward. Scratchy fur and outrageous cologne bore down on her, and she knew exactly who it was.

“My dear duchess,” Olaf said, squeezing her tight. “How have you been?”

Ramona found it in her to roll her eyes. Some people didn’t like Olaf, which she completely understood. There was something about him though, as brash and outlandish and obnoxiously tactile as he was, that had to make you laugh sometimes. She felt comfortable, close to a friend. “Just peachy,” she said. She offered him the other champagne glass; she could get another for Olivia. “Champagne?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Olaf said. He hooked his free hand around both glasses and set them back on the drink table. “Look, I wanted to give you my sincerest condolences—” And he did look sincere, sliding around in front of her, his hand still on her shoulder, the joy immediately gone from his face and replaced by an uncharacteristic seriousness. She was struck by it, by how glassy and shiny his eyes were under the dark of his mask. “I’m sorry about your parents, Ramona.”

Her mouth wobbled at the edges. She knew Olaf could understand. They’d had similar positions in the organization their whole lives—their parents their chaperones, their time split between assignments and society, the safety that existed in his manor as well, its own controlled pocket of the world, like Winnipeg had been, like the Hotel Denouement was, too. She thought of the Count and Countess, still alive. She hoped they’d stay alive.

It wouldn’t do to cry at a party. Ramona picked up her flute again and took another small sip. “Thank you,” she said.

And just like that, he straightened up and pulled away from her. Some of the mirth found its way back into the shape of his mouth and his arm found its way back around her, this time a tight grip at her waist as he steered her back into the crowd. Ramona felt slightly less consoled than ten seconds ago. Easy come, easy go, with Olaf. “I hate thinking about you all alone in that big house,” he said with a sigh. “All that room, all those things—remember when I knocked into that vase in the hallway?”

“Very vividly,” Ramona said.

“A glorious time!” he crowed. “Well! At least you’ve got all of us, haven’t you. What are your friends if not your family, et cetera, et cetera.”

But he still understood. That was what made it so important to be here tonight. What were all the people in the room, the friends she’d grown up with, people she knew and loved, if not her family as well, just as much as her parents had been? They were more than associates or volunteers, stepping in around her not to fill a void, but to offer back some little part of what had been taken from her. Her throat tightened up as she thought about it. Everything they did was hard, but it was also so special. Ramona wanted to hold it close to her and never let it go.

“And what wouldn’t one do for one’s family, am I right?” Olaf continued. “So, if you ever need me for anything—a shoulder to cry on, although certainly not in this jacket, or, say, a partner in crime, or a willing participant in any daring assignment you might come across otherwise—do not hesitate to let me know, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I mean it.”

Ramona stumbled to a halt as Olaf stopped abruptly. He looked down at her with a gash of a grin. “People like you and me, we’ve got to stick together, duchess.” He gave her a squeeze one more time and then finally let go, dashing away.

Goodness, but he was rough about things. Ramona gave herself a shake, trying to collect herself back into order. She stood up on her toes to try and see where he’d gone. She didn’t get much more height, already being in heels, but she did manage to see him already making grandiose hand gestures across the room to those white-faced triplets Ramona had seen once or twice. They were younger than she was, still in their training. The three of them stared at Olaf with three immaculately raised eyebrows. Ramona chuckled a little, dropped back down, and went back for Olivia’s champagne glass.

9:40 PM—The Ballroom—Center

Over an hour had passed, and Frank hadn’t seen any sign of Ernest. He had better things to be doing than keeping track of Ernest, and yet here he was. He couldn’t have gone far—the hotel was enormous, but it was a hotel. The whole world contained on nine floors. You couldn’t disappear from it.

Frank edged his way through the dance floor, searching for him through three separate groups of associates doing three slightly different versions of a circle dance. A snake and a tree frog whirled past, a phantom with them, a tangled shape of dark greens and blacks and bright blues and exuberant laughter. When they’d gone, Frank found himself in the center of the floor and face to face with Dewey, coming towards him from the other direction, his cheeks pink.

“Are you alright?” Frank asked immediately.

Dewey blinked. “Of course,” he said. “Just dancing. Is everything okay?”

He should have known, but Ernest had him on an edge he hadn’t expected to be tonight. He tried to look apologetic but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. “Have you seen Ernest?”

“Not since earlier,” Dewey said. “Oh, and Kit was—”

“When you see him, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

Dewey’s shoulders drooped down. “If I see him,” he said. “Then I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you,” Frank said, and he meant it. He smiled at Dewey until he smiled back, and then Frank moved past him, pushing back into the crowd.

He hadn’t meant to be short about it, but Frank’s worry never came out like he wanted it to. It became biting irritation instead, or a slow-simmering temper he never let boil, or professional, distant orders about hotel business, or a refusal to talk at all in case he said the wrong thing. More often than not, he still wound up arguing with Ernest. He didn’t argue with Dewey, but their conversations were so much more stilted than they should have been lately.

But it was because he feared Ernest was going to slip away from him one day and never come back. Realistically, it was unlikely. After all, Ernest was still here. Indecision entering their home hadn’t taken him away from it. But what if that changed, one day, and it was Frank’s fault, because he reacted too quickly or too slowly? And Dewey—Dewey was so sweet and so kind Frank thought the world might crush him. He had to keep them close, and he had to keep them safe. It would’ve been so much easier, though, if Ernest wasn’t so difficult about it, if Dewey understood that Frank didn’t want anything to happen to him, if they would listen.

Frank glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He’d look for Ernest on the way, but for one small hour, Ernest was going to have to wait.

9:59 PM—The Floor Behind The South Drink Table

Through typical party events, The Herpetology Squad (Plus Hector) found themselves on the floor behind one of the drink tables.

“So how do you tell them apart?” Gustav asked, stirring his drink with a spoon. “Because, and I do feel terrible about this, but I can’t do it. We’ve known them for ages, and I can’t do it.”

“Frank is taller,” Monty said immediately, and very confidently.

“What, no, he can’t be taller, they’re triplets,” Hector said. “Do genetics work like that?”

“Hey Haruki,” Monty called around Gustav and Hector, “do genetics work like that?”

Haruki leaned into Hector’s shoulder and considered it. “I’m really not sure,” they said. “But, I always figured, Ernest was kind of quiet, and Frank was kind of stern, and Dewey was kind of, well, kind.”

“But that seems so reductive,” Gustav pointed out. “You can’t just identify a person down to one base trait and leave it at that. And I say this as a screenwriter and director. You need to be creative.”

“All your characters sound exactly the same, though,” Hector said, frowning. “Or, like, so different, I don’t think you’re keeping track of them between scenes.”

“Oh, that’s awfully rude,” Haruki said.

“No, he’s right,” Gustav said. He hung his head into his hands, his glass tipping sideways through his fingers. Haruki reached over and grabbed it, twisting their arm around and up to slide it back onto the drink table where it’d be safer. “I always thought they did, and now I know for sure. I’ll have to renounce film making and go back to herpetology. Or, submarines. I can’t disparage your honor too, Monty.”

“Oh, Hector, you hurt his feelings,” Monty said. He patted Gustav on the back consolingly. “Gustav, you write wonderful scripts. I loved the, the Werewolves In The Rain.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I can’t handle a drunk Gustav,” Hector said, closing his eyes. “Gustav, I’m sorry. To be fair, I only watched—what was it—” He waved his hands around. “—the one with the—you know—”

“Vampires In The Retirement Community,” Haruki said.

“And it was once. And—hey, weren’t we talking about something else?”

10:10 PM—The Short Hallway Between Rooms 40-45 and 46-49

Unassigned numbers within the Dewey Decimal System were not the trouble they appeared to be to a hotel based on it. They still existed in the hotel, no matter how much Ernest had protested that it made no sense to have rooms that had no theme or purpose in a hotel whose very purpose was theme—Frank and Dewey’s rebuttal was that it made no sense to nonchalantly remove numbers out of their sequential existence because they didn’t fit in neatly otherwise. They existed. They didn’t have themes, even this stretch of ten, which had been previously designated but was now just a blank space between encyclopedias and magazine publications, which left the rooms relatively blank and boring, typically unnoticed and unused, but they still existed.

In the brief, dark hallway between the two sets of unassigned rooms, Frank could sit on the bench against the wall, and he didn’t have to think about family or the hotel. Frank sat featureless in the shadows and thought about himself. Usually, it meant he felt better about everything. But tonight, with the worry set aside once more for now, all he felt was that chill through his insides again, when Olaf mistook him for Ernest.

He took the name tag out of his sleeve and turned it over in his hands. Frank was a man in a manager’s jacket, with a face that looked like two other faces, someone who could be anyone. The name tag did nothing but identify him without caring who he was. What was it that made Frank himself, the imperceptible, innate existence of him that mattered? His love for Ernest and Dewey? Visible. His organization? Trivial. The fear he was going to lose everything? Meaningless and a weakness, in the face of everything else. It was hard to say for sure. He had gone his whole life getting mixed up with Ernest and Dewey and it was exhausting to keep trying to prove he was real when it felt like the world was rubbing him out. He leaned his back against the wall.

He heard Jacques before he saw him, like always. Exact, economical footsteps, nothing extraneous, the tap of his expensive shoes on the rugs, the swish of his jacket. Everything measured, as it had to be.

Jacques appeared around the corner, that bent piece of the boxwood plant stuck in his hair. He seemed to brighten when he saw Frank, like Frank’s presence set something off inside him. Frank watched him. What did Jacques see, when he looked at Frank? What was it that made Jacques notice, over and over again, over other people? How was Jacques so certain that when he looked at Frank right now, at that moment, that Jacques was looking at him?

Jacques sat down next to him on the bench. Frank had seen him in a mask earlier, something terrible and orange, but it was gone now, and he faced Frank fully. He was inches away from Frank, and Frank could see every part of him, even in the dark—the calm, if tired, resolution in the set of his jaw, the way he waited, still and patient, as if he could do nothing else. He had the darkest eyes of his siblings, a steady and unchanging deep blue.

“That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” Jacques whispered.

Frank let out the breath he’d been holding. How long ago had he said that to Jacques? “I initially said that to insult you,” he said.

“It was deserved,” Jacques said. “And I never forgot. Do you know how I always know it’s you now?”

“Enlighten me.”

He put his hand against Frank’s jacket, resting his fingers against the fabric to the left of the buttons. Jacques kept it there, and he didn’t take his eyes off of Frank for anything, not even when the heartbeat under his hand sped up. Frank felt almost split open to the core. He always did, every time. Jacques saw whatever it was. The man who was always hiding knew exactly who he was, because he looked.

“How very sentimental of you,” Frank managed. His breath hung between them. He traced the side of his thumb over the collar of Jacques’s shirt, just below the skin. If he moved his hand just a centimeter he’d be able to feel his heartbeat as well.

“It’s the truth,” Jacques murmured. “Sentiment is—dangerous. Truth is immutable.”

“Do you know how I know it’s you?” Frank said against his mouth.

“How?” Jacques asked.

Frank finally pulled the branch out of Jacques’s hair. “You do terribly stupid things.”

Jacques laughed, and the sound vibrated all the way down through Frank’s throat.

10:19 PM—Room 366

Frank had to be somewhere. Kit was not overly concerned with finding him, but she would rather do it sooner than later. She worked from the ground floor up, combing through the hallways but finding no sight of the Denouement, until she was on the third floor again. The faster she found Frank, the faster she could, maybe, go back to talking to Dewey. About completely professional things, of course. The fact that she felt different when she was with Dewey was simply because he was pleasant, welcome company. He wanted to look at leeches with her, for the delight of science. They expected nothing from each other but a nice time.

She immediately pictured Beatrice waggling her eyebrows at her, if Kit had said that out loud. Not that kind of nice time, she thought, but the mental Beatrice kept laughing joyously at her.

“He’s a nice person,” she grumbled to the empty hallway. He was calm. Regular. Okay. The exact opposite of everyone else, Beatrice. Could she go five minutes without them all picking apart her romantic life? This was why she wasn’t interested. This was why it was strictly nice. There were other, more important things that needed her attention.

The door to Room 366 was ajar, and Kit, who had naturally been trained to investigate the suspicious, investigated the suspicious. She slid herself carefully through the gap in the door and into the dark room. She’d been in there a few times to know it was an absurdly comfortable meeting room, with plush chairs and a bookcase that spanned the length of the far wall. A figure sat against the side wall, reaching up and tapping ash from a cigarette out the open window. For a moment, they looked like a blank, featureless shadow, until a light outside the window shifted and Frank—no, Ernest’s face resolved itself in front of her. The tip of the cigarette burned bright orange against his fingers.

“I heard about you and Olaf,” he said. “Would you like an apology, since I’m sure you’ve been getting enough I told you so’s?”

Kit sighed. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” But she shut the door and walked over, sitting down on the floor beside him. She took her own pack of cigarettes out of one of her dress pockets and accepted Ernest’s lighter to light one. She never carried her own.

“He did,” she muttered, giving the lighter back. She brought her legs up and wrapped an arm around them. “Tell me, I told you so. Not in so many words, of course, but I knew he was thinking it.”

“Ah,” Ernest said. “The disappointed look of, I’m not going to say it, but I’m going to think it, in your general direction. Which is worse.”

“Exactly,” Kit said. “At least argue with me so I can tell him he’s wrong.”

Ernest breathed out a long line of smoke. “Yes.” She thought he was going to say something else, but when he didn’t, Kit pressed on.

“He acts like it was my fault,” she said. “Should I have known better? I—” It was a harsh thing to admit, but she and Ernest didn’t do this to lie to each other. “Yes. Fine. But he acts like I can’t be left alone now to make my own decisions. He keeps following me, hanging around.” She slouched against the wall. “My own brother thinks so little of me.”

Ernest hmmed. “Well—”

“Do not. Do not say I’m short. I’m not short. Jacques has one inch on me, Ernest. Esmé is short. I’m not short.”

“Sorry,” Ernest said, laughing.

“Say it,” she said, and pushed her elbow into his side.

“Ow—Kit, you are anything but short.”

“Thank you.” She took her elbow back. The two of them sat in silence, blowing out small circles of smoke as the cigarettes smoldered down. “What’s Frank disappointed about?”

Ernest waved his hand with the cigarette dismissively. “Frank’s disappointed he can’t find a tie that matches the custom paint in the lobby,” he said. “It doesn’t take much for him. I was five minutes late, I didn’t give him the mail on time, I missed a meeting, and he just—” He did an obviously perfect impression of Frank’s unimpressed stare.

Kit snorted. She had to admit, Frank did look like that a lot, even if you caught him in a good mood.

“If he wasn’t so difficult,” Ernest muttered, “he’d be almost bearable.”

“Wouldn’t they all,” Kit sighed. “Brothers.”

“Brothers,” Ernest agreed.

10:25 PM—The Ballroom—West Hors d’oeuvres Table

Dewey stood at the hors d’oeuvres table, away from the crowd of his friends, surveying the food. At least, with everything going on, there was always good food to look forward to. It was awful to glare at it like he was. He’d felt so good after talking to Kit, and now he was glowering at little rows of canapes like they were the source of his problems.

He wasn’t usually upset with his brothers. No matter what they did, he knew they had their reasons, and Dewey loved them regardless. But sometimes they really were impossible. Frank’s quiet temper and Ernest’s secrecy and indifference had driven such a wedge between the two of them that when Dewey suggested they didn’t talk about it, it had seemed like the best idea at the time to get them to go forward. Otherwise, he’d been worried that Frank was going to say something he’d regret, because he wasn’t going to change Ernest’s mind, and Ernest might’ve done something terrible. Dewey didn’t think he was capable of something truly terrible, because Ernest was his brother, and he knew Ernest. They both believed in a right way to live, just in different ways, so Dewey respected him. You couldn’t let anything change that. But he was still as worried about Ernest as Frank was, and he had just wanted the arguments to stop.

But it had led to Frank and Ernest almost refusing to talk to each other, ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent was pleasantries or conversations that skirted the edge of an argument, which was worse. Dewey particularly hated it lately, when he was asked to pass messages between them, typically from Frank. He wasn’t a messenger system, he was their brother, and he was, in fact, if either of them cared to remember, the oldest. But they treated him like someone to protect because he wasn’t as forceful as them. He frowned down at a section of tiny shot glasses of—he picked one up. Gazpacho. It looked so charming and Dewey couldn’t even appreciate it.

What it came down to was, the schism couldn’t come between him and his brothers if they didn’t let it. Just like his current irritation couldn’t come between him and his brothers if he didn’t let it. He considered it, because he was angry, but he didn’t let it change anything.

He found a narrow, palm-sized spoon from one of the other hors d’oeuvres and poked at the gazpacho with it. He thought, for a moment, about the Anwhistle brothers, sitting in their brand new marine research and rhetorical help center, probably having a lot of fun together talking about fungi and grammar. Gregor and Ike were two of the most different but most companionable people Dewey knew. Nothing got between them. They probably didn’t forget who was the oldest. Who was the oldest out of them, anyway? They probably didn’t let it matter.

Oh, Dewey was letting it get to him. He piled some of the gazpacho onto the spoon and took a bite. He wished Bertrand had been able to come. Bertrand would’ve loved the appeal of the gazpacho as well. Bertrand didn’t have a single sibling to complain about and he would’ve enjoyed the gazpacho wholesale. He could’ve stood around with Dewey at the table, and maybe they’d have brought in Lemony, too, and talked about flavor profiles. Lemony, who was legitimately the youngest of his siblings, commiserating over cold soup about how they never stopped trying to protect him either. Who could possibly think Lemony of all people needed protecting, too? There was always that quiet, competent energy around him.

Dewey finished the gazpacho and put the jar on a passing hotel attendant’s silver tray. Where was Lemony, actually? He was sure he’d seen him earlier. Dewey remembered, because it was the first time he’d seen Lemony in a long while. Wherever he was, Dewey was sure it was probably more enjoyable than here.

10:32 PM—The Ballroom—Dance Floor

“Josephine,” Olaf said, sidling up behind her, “Jo, angel of my eye—”

“The correct word for that expression is apple,” Josephine interrupted. She did not take her eyes off of her plate of puff pastry. “We’ve been over this.”

He continued, persistent as ever, his smile stretched like candy. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, angel of my apple?”

“No.”

10:45 PM—The Elevator

The night was passing by, and Kit still hadn’t found Frank. She’d made it all the way up to the ninth floor with no sign of him. Was he the type to be on the rooftop sunbathing salon? Unlikely. But she should check, just in case.

She had her hand against the rooftop door when the elevator dinged behind her. Kit turned to look. The elevator doors parted, revealing the gold-walled interior with rather harsh lighting, and there was Frank, standing with his hands folded behind his back. He caught Kit’s eye and gave her a slight nod. “Kit.”

“Frank.” She stepped into the elevator beside him and pushed the button for the third floor. As the doors closed, she smelled smoke for a moment, and her heart leapt before she realized the cigarette smoke must’ve clung to her gloves. She tugged them off and stuffed them into one of her pockets.

“I heard the Anwhistles finished the research center,” Frank said, as the elevator started to move down.

“Yes.”

“And the mycelium—are they still working on it?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

Frank sighed. “Do you have any concerns?”

“Some,” Kit admitted. There was no denying it was dangerous. Necessary, but catastrophic if it ever got out of hand. “If anything happens, it can be dealt with.”

“Good,” Frank said, decisively. Silence dropped through the elevator, the hand counting down the floors moving slowly from eight, to seven, to six. Frank raised an eyebrow; Kit realized she’d been staring at him. “Is something wrong?”

“I was under the impression that there was—” More, or something else entirely. It was Kit’s understanding that Frank was to give her a list. There was usually only one kind of list that mattered in their organization, and unless she had radically misjudged the ages of the Anwhistle brothers after personally knowing them for years, they wouldn’t be on that list. “—something more specific,” she wound up finishing.

Frank looked at her with his impassive, unimpressed mask. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

The hand moved again, six to five to four. Kit had the strangest sensation that she was missing something. She should’ve been given that list, not subjected to a brief interrogation, especially about something she was already aware of. The smell of smoke flitted in front of her again.

Disbelief shot through Kit like an arrow, pushing the air from her lungs. She felt like the floor was dropping out from under her. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. She stared at the man in the elevator, and he stared back, cool and collected. It couldn’t be. Because that would mean—but the longer she looked, the more certain she was.

“Frank quit smoking,” she said quietly, “but you didn’t.”

The corner of his mouth turned down. “I—”

Kit slammed her hand against the stop button on the button panel, and kept her hand there, boxing him in against the wall even after the elevator had halted, the counting hand stuck between four and three.

“Don’t lie to me, Ernest.”

One Month Ago—City Headquarters

It wasn’t like there was, say, an initiation ceremony or anything. They’d been through that already, there was no need to do one again. You knew what you were getting into this time, you were just, “changing sides”. And it was so subtle that it barely mattered. Nothing about Ernest’s life really changed otherwise. He ran a hotel with his brothers. He ranked tea brands with Dewey during lunch. He played loud music in Room 784. He carried a lighter in his pocket that he used for other things. He went to headquarters, sometimes as himself, sometimes as Frank, never as Dewey. He acquired messages, and took his sweet time delivering them or delaying them, spaces of time where nothing changed, either. He almost wondered what the point had been, until he overheard Frank spout off some noble patter again. At least he wasn’t like that. At least Ernest knew better.

And since nothing had changed, no one knew. Not even the “firestarters” knew there was another one, namely because Ernest hated the name and disliked a great deal of them, but also because Frank made him be so careful about it. He thought a few people in VFD suspected, or at least suspected someone of switching, because everyone could feel something was happening and they were trying to pinpoint a source, and it was only a matter of time before someone suspected a Denouement. Triplets were naturally suspicious. But it wasn’t like they could do anything, even if they ever had proof—how often did anyone know which Denouement they were talking to, anyway? It was likely Ernest could exist like this for the rest of his life.

The thought almost stopped him on his way into the city headquarters. Day after day of calculated, performative nonsense without an end in sight. Age sagged through him. His bones were too heavy and to move them another step was impossible. He kept walking.

What had made Ernest change? That, exactly that. Change. He’d lived in VFD for practically his entire life, and nothing was different there, either. There had been no great strides made towards the nobility they all talked about, only tiny little steps that were easily set back. Ernest watched his friends and his family get sucked in by this big, dramatic fight that never ended, a fight none of them had ever initially had a part in. He’d learned that you couldn’t achieve “nobility”, whatever that even was, by a bunch of absurd spy behavior and kidnapping, or by coded messages and age-old discussions that went nowhere, or by acting like information weighed more than your life, by pretending any of that was normal. None of it did anything. Ernest was going to find some way to make something happen, to make what they’d lost worth it, and if it meant Frank thought he was a traitor, fine. He’d do it even if Frank didn’t appreciate that Ernest was doing it for him.

The note for Frank that he’d intercepted said that there was a file under the fifth floorboard of the back staircase in the city headquarters. Frank was supposed to give it to Kit.

He made his way to the back staircase. It went up to the observatory, which no one had used since Esmé burned that spot into the rug with her telescope out of protest. The corridor and the staircase were, predictably, deserted. Ernest slowly lifted the fifth board, but it came away without resistance, so he pulled it up all the way and saw the slim folder waiting inside. He took it out, replaced the floorboard, and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. He opened it.

He wanted to crumple the folder in his hands but he made himself breathe and look at it. It was the upcoming recruitment list. There were some he recognized faintly, distant associates, long-lived families in VFD, but a majority of the names he’d never seen before. New families to carve apart. He flipped through the pages—addresses, dates, times. A few photographs. Ernest closed his eyes and held them shut tight. When he opened them, he was still looking at the folder.

Of course none of it mattered, he thought bitterly, shoving the folder into his jacket. He could intercept or stop a thousand messages and there would still always be more. There would always be more children, more fires, more lies, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stop it.

Ernest leaned the side of his head against the banister. He thought about Olaf, suddenly. He’d been trying to corner everyone lately, Ernest among them, talking his ear off about big ideas that Ernest agreed with, but Olaf had a habit of taking an age to follow through with them. Ernest did not have the time to wait an age. He’d shared some information with Olaf a few times, on the off chance that it would spur him into action, but Olaf had hidden it away, for “later”, and it obviously had not helped.

Maybe the only way you could fight a long game was to play the long game back. Maybe that was what Olaf was doing. He was on to something, at least, with his words. Maybe Ernest could try again. Maybe he could learn to wait. Maybe the payoff would be worth it. Maybe.

Ernest stood up. He didn’t at all feel like going home, but he wasn’t going to stay at headquarters any longer.

The staircase creaked. When he looked up, he saw Lemony Snicket at the top by the observatory door, standing like he’d always been there.

“What are you doing up there?” Ernest asked.

Lemony watched him carefully. Ernest got the distinct feeling that he was being appraised. He shivered. When they were younger, you could look at Lemony and see the gears working in his head, like watching—yes, like watching change take shape and form and meaning before your eyes. Lemony Snicket was going to do anything, lead them all anywhere. Ernest hadn’t been foolish enough to believe a twelve-year-old in a brown hat was going to demolish VFD from the ground up. Then Lemony had disappeared, and in the years after resurfacing at sixteen, he looked less and less like that powerful, mythical figure everyone had worshiped and more like he’d seen too much. Ernest sympathized.

But here, Ernest finally saw it, that hunger they’d all talked about. In his eyes, bright blue in the shadows. Physical change, a juggernaut of determination. Ernest’s breath caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Lemony said softly. “Do you think we could talk?”

10:50 PM—The Elevator

Damn.

The disbelief on Kit’s face was gone, replaced by a blazing, dangerous fury, the threatening and exacting professionalism she hid inside her on full display. She wasn’t all that short, Ernest thought, inanely. He wasn’t going to be able to bluff out of this one. She knew. It was significantly more terrifying than Ernest had imagined it would be. How stupid could he have been, to forget about the way that cigarette smoke would cling, to think Kit Snicket wouldn’t notice. “Kit—”

“How long?” Kit demanded.

“Does it matter?”

He could see that it very, very much did. Kit was already disgusted over dating Olaf; that she’d spent so much time with Ernest when he wasn’t on her side was going to eat her alive, Ernest knew. He winced.

“It wasn’t personal,” he tried.

She glared at him. “What were the names Frank was supposed to give me?”

That, he was going to hold on to. They’d already burned the papers, anyway, up in the observatory. No one was going to get that list now. “I guess you’ll never know,” Ernest said.

Her hand clenched on the button panel. She stepped closer. For a wild and uncontrollable second that seemed to spin out into eternity, Ernest imagined she was going to kill him.

“The elevator is going to start again,” she said lowly. “We’re going to walk out into the lobby. You’re not going to make a sound. We’re going to go to headquarters.”

Ernest didn’t like what he was going to do next. But he was always going to have the upper hand for one distinct reason.

He swallowed and straightened the edge of his sleeve. “Who’s going to believe you, Kit?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Regrettably for you, I am at a distinct advantage,” Ernest said. “You and I are the only two people in this elevator. You did think I was Frank. Who will be able to figure out who was who when you try and tell on me? Who can really know for sure?” He hesitated, but it was true. “Why, I could be Dewey, even.”

Kit slapped him across the face, her cheeks flushed a fierce red. The force of it stung hard, knocking Ernest’s head to the side. She removed her hand from the wall and stepped back.

“Does it help if I’m sorry?” he asked, gingerly rubbing the side of his face.

“You aren’t,” Kit said.

Ultimately, it was true. He wasn’t. He was sorry he’d been caught more than that he’d done it. Ernest regretted nothing about what he’d decided to do. Not in his line of work; and Kit was the same, too. But he was sorry he was going to lose a friend.

Kit didn’t have friends, though. You were with or against Kit Snicket, and she always made that abundantly clear. Ernest touched his cheek again, and then lowered his hand.

“I’m not,” he said. He took the elevator key out of his pocket and put it into the lock on the button panel, watching Kit the whole time. She watched him back. The elevator slid into motion, settling down on the third floor.

The doors opened.

11:00 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

“Who?” Jacques asked.

Kit turned slowly back to the dance floor. Was one of them still here? Had she been followed out of the elevator? She locked eyes with a Denouement across the room. Which one? Was it Frank? Was it Ernest, again? Was it Dewey? The clock was still rumbling under her feet. The glass trembled in her hand and she felt almost sick, anger and shame and fear churning through her. She was in a nightmare and she couldn’t shake it off. The triplet held her eyes for a long moment and then walked away.

“Kit.” Jacques had a hand on her arm; he must’ve gotten out of the boxwood. “Who?”

But she couldn’t get the words out, not here. Ernest was right. She was at a disadvantage when she couldn’t prove it. If she pointed the finger now, what would be done? What could be done? How could he do that to Dewey and Frank? To put them in the position where they’d unknowingly cover for him merely by existing? Did they know at all?

What would she do if her own brothers—no. She couldn’t even think it. Kit couldn’t fathom the idea of her brothers doing anything like this.

“We have to find Lemony,” Kit said.

11:02 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Frank still couldn’t find Ernest. He did not have the time for him to be hiding like a child; where was he? Frank had looked everywhere over and over and was back in the same ballroom again, scanning through the associates for what had to be the hundredth time. He caught Kit’s eye—and stopped.

There was cold and intense fear looking back at him. It was unbearable to have it directed at him, and Frank turned away after a few seconds.

Ernest. A thousand possibilities ran through Frank’s head, each of them worse than the last. He had had enough. Frank strode towards the main doors, just as he saw Ernest making his way out of them as fast as possible. Finally. Frank followed him out into the hallway and grabbed onto Ernest’s arm, whirling him around.

“I asked one thing of you tonight,” Frank said.

“Don’t do anything rash,” Ernest repeated. He wrenched his arm out of Frank’s grasp and put his hands in his pockets. “And I didn’t, thank you.”

“Apparently I wasn’t specific enough,” Frank said. “When I said that, I clearly meant, don’t do anything stupid that’s going to compromise the family and our position in it. What information have you been giving Olaf?”

“Who said I was?”

“Olaf.”

“You know, that hurts a little, that you’d believe Olaf over me.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. Fine. Olaf was less important, anyway. “Then what did you do to Kit?”

Ernest raised an eyebrow. “Did I do anything?”

It was agonizing, seeing such a carefully blank mask on your own face staring back at you. Frank didn’t hate him, but he came close. “What have you done, Ernest? Do not lie to me.”

Something fractured through Ernest’s expression. “I just—miscalculated,” he muttered. “She found out.”

“She found out?” Frank echoed, his heart skittering in his chest. It had finally happened, and Frank couldn’t protect Ernest this time. Kit wouldn’t keep this a secret, not by a long shot. By morning—by midnight, because nearly the whole organization was already here—everyone would know. And Ernest didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it. “Ernest—”

“It’s fine,” Ernest said coolly. “Considering she can’t prove it.”

The world detached from Frank’s consciousness. Kit’s fear made a sudden, terrible sense. Ernest had used him as a shield between himself and the organization, on purpose, he’d positioned Frank and Dewey as pawns whose only use was whatever Ernest wanted. Frank could feel his hands shaking. They didn’t feel like his hands.

Ernest sighed. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “You’ve pretended to be me, that’s the only way you would’ve found out about Olaf. Don’t act like you didn’t use our face as an advantage too. That’s what we do. That’s what this family does.”

Anger burned through Frank, hot behind his eyes. That had been different. A sharp fury that had been building somewhere inside him all night snapped apart. “You are not a part of this family.”

He regretted saying it the second the words were out. Of course Ernest was still his brother. That was an immutable fact. But Frank was so tired of trying to hold onto Ernest when Ernest so blatantly didn’t care. He wasn’t looking at family, he was looking at a stranger, who stole his face, who used his name, who threw it around like it meant nothing, who denied everything noble and proper and real. It wasn’t how a brother was supposed to act. But it was how Ernest acted, and now Ernest was staring at him with an open, wounded expression, something Frank hadn’t seen since they were children.

Frank ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t—”

“No.” Ernest’s jaw trembled for a second, his mouth pressing into a thin, flat line. “I don’t think I am.” He took one step back, a hard glare in his eyes, and then walked away from Frank.

11:20 PM—The Rooftop Sunbathing Salon

Ernest hadn’t figured on Frank being angry, because, primarily, he hadn’t figured on Frank finding out at all. He hadn’t figured on Kit realizing what he was doing, either. Well, that was on him, but Frank didn’t need to be so—he didn’t have to say—

Shit, Ernest thought, breathing hard. He came to a stop in the dark, empty hallway some floors up from the ballroom and let himself think it, pressing his palms into his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. He’d have a brother after this, sure, a family member who stood by him and ran a hotel with him and played nice, but he didn’t know if he’d have his brother. He would have an associate, like everyone else, a found family of people who loved on conditions, not a family. Not his family.

He had to find Lemony. Just because he’d been hiding all night didn’t mean he was exempt from this.

Lemony disliked heights, open spaces, and decently-sized bodies of water, which was why Ernest found him on the roof, sitting on one of the pool chairs, his mask discarded beside him. He was studiously avoiding looking at the pool or the ocean or the night sky, dark and enormous above him. The rooftop salon was never used at night, but there were small lights along the edge of the pool and the railing, giving off slivers of stark white light. The brief anger Ernest felt downstairs evaporated the longer he watched Lemony not-watching the world around him. He wanted to say a million and one things to him, but the one that came out was, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

“What do you know about exposure therapy?” Lemony offered as a response.

“Enough to know you probably shouldn’t use it for heights,” Ernest said. “Among other things.”

“Point taken,” Lemony said. “What would you say if I told you I was now too frightened to move?”

“That you brought it on yourself,” Ernest said, but he didn’t mean it. He walked over and sat next to Lemony on the pool chair. Ernest stole a quick glance at him again, brief and fleeting. To look consistently was dangerous; Ernest always had to make a distinct effort not to touch.

“Your sister found out,” he said. “Not about you, but about me. She also hit me.”

Lemony’s head shot up. “What?” He reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing Ernest’s jaw as he turned his face towards him. They trailed warm over his right cheek, where his skin still smarted from Kit’s hand. Here in the dark, Lemony’s eyes were so bright again, full of concern, directed right at him. Ernest held himself so still, barely breathing.

Falling in love, if you could call it that, with Lemony was what Ernest personally considered the most ill-advised thing he’d ever done, even after lying to Kit. Lemony loved other people, and it was clear in everything he did, in the way he looked when they weren’t there. But Lemony understood what Ernest wanted, and Ernest craved that with a destructive ache.

Really, who else were they supposed to fall in love with but each other? They didn’t know anyone else. No one was going to get this life but them. It was probably why half of VFD had a crush on Beatrice, honestly. It was terrible, but none of them seemed to be able to stop doing it. Ernest included.

“You—” Lemony’s hand jerked back, shrinking down between them onto the chair. “What happened?”

“She knew I lied,” Ernest said. “About the information and about being Frank. I got out of it, but—she won’t trust us again, I think. And Frank—probably won’t trust me either.”

“I’m sorry,” Lemony said. “I didn’t mean for—”

Ernest shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. It wasn’t. He and Lemony had both just wanted something, desperately. Ultimately, they’d still succeeded, in the end. They had. Change he could hold in his hands had happened. He still felt hollow about it all, everything drained out of him, but he didn’t regret doing it. Not at all. The hurt would go away and he’d do it again. “What we did—that mattered.”

“It did,” Lemony whispered. “But I never like the cost.”

“Why did you do it?” Ernest asked softly.

Lemony smiled ruefully. “I guess I didn’t want to stop trying.”

The real, noble answer, Ernest thought. Why the “firestarters” and Ernest would never get him. He raised his hand. Slowly, without looking, he put it on top of Lemony’s. Lemony turned his hand over and gripped Ernest’s tightly. He knew that the way Lemony would try from this moment forward would be different than the way Ernest would, and he wanted to have this moment while it lasted.

Ernest stood, tugging Lemony up with him, and let go of his hand. “You should go back downstairs,” he said.

11:30 PM—The Ballroom—South Drink Table

The party would be over soon, but you’d never know it, the ballroom still thronging with people. But most of the dancing had died down, and Dewey was taking mental stock of how clean up would start. He found one of the attendant’s silver trays and picked it up, estimating how many glasses he could fit on it.

Frank came back into the ballroom and made a beeline for him, pale. Dewey’s shoulders tensed up yet again. What had happened now?

“I can’t believe it,” Frank muttered, grabbing a wineglass.

“Whoa, hey, hold on.” Dewey took the wineglass back and set it off to the side. “What happened?”

“He—” Which meant it was Ernest. Again. Dewey’s patience with both his brothers tonight was wearing extraordinarily thin. “He’s been passing information to Olaf this whole time.”

“To Olaf?” That was not what Dewey had been expecting. A flare of worry burned through him and curled his hands around the tray. “But—”

“No,” Frank said. “This time, I’ve had enough. I’m tired of covering up for him, and he’s going to have to deal with this mess himself.”

Olaf was certainly a threat in one way or another, but it seemed a disproportionately vicious answer for Frank. Dewey frowned. “Did something else happen?”

Frank looked so—frantic, was maybe the word, a terrifying energy breaking out of him in quick bursts of anger on his face. He looked at Dewey, and the emotion seemed to cage itself back in.

“He was found out,” Frank said quietly. “About being a firestarter.”

Dewey had counted on it happening. It seemed unlikely that it would be able to remain a secret forever. It still hurt to hear. Things wouldn’t be the same as they had been, if people knew about Ernest. Dewey imagined the division between the three of them only growing larger, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to do anything about it if it got too wide.

Something broke in Frank’s expression again, and Dewey startled—it looked like guilt. “Don’t defend him,” Frank hissed. “Dewey, he’s going to get away with it. He’s going to ruin what we’ve worked for, what you’ve worked for in the archives—do you want all of that information in the hands of the enemy?”

Dewey clutched the tray. “Ernest isn’t the enemy,” he said, darkly. The agitation from earlier at the hors d’oeuvres table shot back into him.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Frank said. “I—”

Dewey slammed the silver plate down on the drink table. A real, genuine slam, like he’d never done before, the glasses around it rattling. Frank stared at him, gaping a little.

“He’s still here,” Dewey said. “That’s enough.”

“Dewey—”

“That is enough.”

12:00 AM—The Lobby

Jacques had never seen Kit so unsettled. Even when she’d been arrested she’d kept her composure. But she stood beside him in the empty lobby, tapping her foot against the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. He still couldn’t get out of her what had happened, but it was obvious from her face in the ballroom that whoever betrayed them had to be one of the Denouements. It was a sobering realization, the worst possible outcome of the schism that had been building for too long. One of three identical triplets being a traitor complicated matters, although it was easy to figure out which one it was that had done it. Things were going to change after tonight.

He took a small, brief moment to appreciate that Kit actually wanted to stand next to him and acknowledge him as her brother. Lately, he’d gotten the impression that she couldn’t stand him. But now she needed him, and it was a relief to Jacques to still be needed by his siblings. He never thought he did that successful a job of managing to keep them all together.

The elevator dinged, and Lemony stepped out, adjusting his jacket. The only evidence he’d been at the costume party was the mask tucked under his arm, because his suit was as plain as ever. 

“Finally,” Kit muttered, and she ran over to him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly, something none of the siblings had done since they were children.

Lemony froze, and then hugged her back. He met Jacques’s eyes across the lobby.

Jacques knew it, immediately. Lemony had played a part in what had happened tonight with Ernest. It shouldn’t have surprised Jacques as much as it did. Lemony had held a perilous position in the organization for years now, and this wasn’t the first time he had wound up disagreeing with Kit about recruitment. But it was the first time it had involved other people. That made it dangerous.

Lemony shook his head a fraction of an inch. Part of Jacques relaxed. The three of them might still be okay. He wondered, with a slight jolt, how the Denouements would fare. 

Kit pulled away from Lemony. “Where were you?”

“Did you know the rooftop sunbathing salon has night lights?” Lemony said. Jacques couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked over to his siblings. “Very pleasant. I recommend it.”

Kit rolled her eyes, and she led Jacques and Lemony through the lobby and out of the hotel.

“I’ll drive you both back,” Jacques said. “It’s on my way.”

“You brought the taxi?” Lemony asked.

“Regrettably,” Jacques sighed. “I still seem to have it.” Headquarters refused to take it back for some reason, even after Jacques insisted he didn’t need it. It had been six months since the initial assignment with it and he was still driving it, and probably would be, for the foreseeable future. He took his keys out of his pocket.

“I’ll drive,” Kit said.

“You will not drive,” Jacques said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Kit said, snatching the keys out of his hand and walking briskly out of his reach. “Jacques, did you say something about hives? There aren’t any bees nearby.”

“Trees?” Lemony said. He jogged ahead a little and caught up with Kit’s pace. “They do look particularly lush this time of year, now that you mention it.”

“No one is in a rush, and Kit, give me my keys you are not going to drive—” His siblings raced ahead of him down the front drive, and Jacques ran after them into the night.

1:55 AM—The Ballroom

Olivia and Ramona stayed on to help the Denouements clean up. Ramona had insisted, saying that it was no trouble at all, and she owed them for being so kind to host the party. She was very good at insisting; Olivia had never seen anyone able to resist the charm of Ramona cheerfully demanding she was going to help and they were going to have to deal with it. She hid her smile in the champagne flutes she was stacking on a tray as Ramona talked with one of the triplets on the other side of the ballroom. She picked up the one rimmed with half-rings of Ramona’s deep plum lipstick and giggled.

She’d have to tell Ramona about what Jacques told her, of course. But for once, Olivia wasn’t all that worried about dealing with it. It had been an extraordinarily pleasant night otherwise. Ramona was happy, some of the glow back in her face, so Olivia was happy too.

All the glasses were stacked, the plates piled together, the tablecloths folded up, the lights finally dimmed. There was only one Denouement left in the room, and he stopped Olivia and Ramona on their way out. “Olivia, could I speak with you?”

“Of course,” Olivia said.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Ramona said, squeezing her hand, and she disappeared down the hallway, the hem of her dress sweeping the floor behind her.

Some people expected Olivia to be able to tell the Denouements apart, and some people expected her to be as clueless as most others as to who she was talking to. It wasn’t terribly hard to tell them apart, because Olivia liked to pay attention, but what she could never remember what when she was supposed to know and when she wasn’t. Here, she knew the one in front of her was Frank, most definitely. There was a weight to the way Frank carried himself, not like he assumed he was in control, but like he assumed he had to be.

“What is it, Frank?” Olivia asked.

He hesitated, which was rare for Frank. “When was the last time you saw Miranda?”

Olivia blinked. Had she misheard him? “What?”

“Miranda,” Frank said again. She hadn’t misheard. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Miranda?

“I—I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I—” When was the last time she saw Miranda? Years and years ago, wasn’t it? Shortly after they’d been taken. Olivia hadn’t minded. Miranda was older than her, not by much but by enough, and enough that they weren’t kept together. Miranda had thought it a chore to look after her, and Olivia hadn’t liked being seen as a chore. She wanted a sister, not a babysitter. So she’d been okay when Miranda was gone. They went to different classes, made different friends, passed each other in the hall without saying a word until their apprenticeships, where Olivia was shuffled around from chaperone to chaperone and Miranda—went where? What had become of her?

The questions spun through her head, dizzying, but they kept coming. What did Miranda look like, now that she thought of it? Had she looked like Olivia at all? Would she recognize her own sibling, like she could easily identify the Denouements? Would she know Miranda if she saw her in a meeting, on the street, at one of these parties, if she was an enemy? But what made a person wasn’t appearance—how did Miranda act? What made Miranda, in the way Frank’s quiet made him? How could she not know what made her sister? Miranda was her sister and it hit Olivia, squarely in the chest, that she didn’t know a single thing about her.

She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her gaze darting across the floor. How had she gone all this time without thinking about her? How could she not know? How much had she forgotten?

“I’m sorry I asked,” Frank was saying. “Olivia. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Olivia whispered. She took one step back, then another, almost hitting the edge of her dress with the point of her heel, and another, then made herself turn around and leave, back downstairs, through the lobby, anywhere else but there.

Olivia hurried out into the night with the front doors banging open after her; the humid air was sticky on her skin, sitting heavy in her lungs as she tried to inhale. She saw Ramona past the front archway, leaned back against her car a way down the front drive, her shoes beside her and her feet in the grass, the shape of her soft and fuzzy in the heat. Olivia tore off her mask and scrubbed her hand over her eyes, wiping the tears on the side of her dress.

There was a weight on her shoulders, more than just the heat. She had the horrible sense that she was going to turn around and see Miranda. Olivia wanted to leave. She wanted to leave the city, she wanted to go somewhere she’d be away from this. She wanted to take Ramona—would Ramona go with her? She had her own things to care about besides the violent anxiety shaking Olivia from the inside out. She had a duchy to take care of. She didn’t deserve to have to deal with Olivia.

We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival. The carnival was miles from the city, out in the hinterlands, flat and desolate blankness. Maybe she should go. Maybe that would be better. She would be away from the city and be one place where no one had to bother her and she couldn’t bother anyone else. Maybe.

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut again, and when she opened them the tears were gone and Ramona came into focus, all of her slender and beautiful in the moonlight. Olivia ached to look at her.

She went over to Ramona and slid her hand into hers, tucking her face into the smooth skin of Ramona’s shoulder. “I want to go somewhere else,” she whispered.

“Hey,” Ramona said, her other arm coming up and folding around Olivia, drawing her close. “We can go anywhere you want.”

Behind her, through the open front doors, Olivia heard the hotel clock starting to chime again.

[dwellordream]

“..In a sense, Mary’s attitude towards those who would not accept her ideas on religion is the central question of her whole life. She was blamed at the time, and sometimes still is, for not producing a child after she had wickedly married a ‘Spaniard’, but the real damage to her reputation comes from the burning of nearly 300 Protestants during her short reign. To being too old and increasingly ugly is added the charge that she was a religious fanatic and bigot, and in thrall to two foreign powers, Spain and Rome, which did not have the ‘true’, Protestant, interests of the English at heart. But even leaving these common stereotypes aside, a real problem remains. How did Mary come to back a campaign against individuals which led to their publicly enduring a horrible death? Mary had, after all, been known in her youth not only as beautiful to look at but also as possessed of an idealistic and ‘pure’ Christian humanist, religious nature. These ideas were strongly opposed to the religious and secular violence which was then tearing Europe apart. 

At the centre of her religious life, Mary had a deep devotion to Christ both in His personal sufferings, as recorded in the Bible, and as He was present to her in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, which she kept constantly by her as a focus for prayer and contemplation, in the form of the reserved or exposed sacrament. She fully shared the intense attachment to the saving sufferings of Jesus, in particular His trial and Crucifixion, which had been a central theme of Christian belief and practice all over western and central Europe up to and including her own lifetime. This core belief and attachment affected people who ended up on both sides of the Catholic–Protestant divide which was hardening during her reign. 

There was in fact no real conflict among Europe’s rulers and religious leaders over the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. His sufferings were described in agonizing detail in the Gospels, interpreted in the rest of the New Testament, and re-enacted in the traditional liturgies of the Church, especially during Holy Week, which had flourished in England, as elsewhere, up to Henry VIII’s reign, and which had been gradually restored when Mary became Queen. One might suppose that this form of religious devotion, together with ideas from predominantly pacifist Christian humanism with its intimate involvement in Christ’s suffering, would have led to compassion, rather than violence, in royal policy towards those who had followed Thomas Cranmer and his allies in their interpretation of the Gospel, and of what Christ did on the cross. Why was this not the case? 

In recent years it has been suggested that the hermetically sealed denominational narratives – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist – of those who died for their faith in the sixteenth century need to be treated as equivalent, without ignoring or downgrading the particular religious feeling and emphasis which underlay their suffering and death. Henry VIII had over thirty English men and women, some with a Catholic and some a Protestant orientation, executed for religious offences, the former category, with the exception of Friar John Forest, being convicted of treason, and the latter burned as lapsed heretics. Mary in effect added adherents of Cranmer’s reforms to the list of potential victims, which seems to be the right word to use in this context. 

In her time, religious knowledge among the general population, and not just the educated elite, whether lay or clerical, was amazingly extensive and sophisticated by twenty-first-century standards. People generally thought they knew very well how a good person should die, and what the death of a bad Christian or ‘heretic’ should be like. Yet there is ample evidence, not least from foreign ambassadors’ reports and from John Foxe’s Actes and monuments (‘Book of martyrs’), that people in the crowds which witnessed the burnings of heretics in Mary’s reign were also very sure who was a martyr and who was not, though they might differ in their views of each individual case. Words like ‘martyr’ and ‘heretic’ are slippery, though, and need to be looked at more closely

Put simply, ‘martyr’ is a version of the Greek for ‘witness’. In the first three or four Christian centuries, when followers of Jesus’s ‘Way’, as members of the Church, had been persecuted by ‘pagan’ authorities, ‘martyr’ was used to describe those brave or foolhardy individuals who died a horrible death for their faith, often in public arenas. Both concepts – witnessing for one’s faith, even to death, and the violent and cruel form of that death – had become fully part of the religious life and the procedures of the Church long before Mary’s time. ‘Heresy’, also a Greek word by origin, meant ‘choice’, but had come to mean, in the religious context, ‘wrong choice’. To it had become attached a set of unsavoury concepts involving anti-social behaviour and disease. ‘Wrong’ religion was thus an infection which had to be cauterized or cut out of the individual and of society. Those among sixteenth-century scholars who, like their medieval predecessors, engaged in the generally harmful and misleading practice of dredging for appealing texts in the Bible and taking them out of their contexts, could easily develop ideas about ‘sheep’ (Christians) who became diseased and infected the rest of the flock (the Church). 

By Philip and Mary’s time, such people were commonly dealt with by an ‘Inquisition’. This word, from the Latin inquisitio, was used to mean a legal inquiry, and from the thirteenth century it began to be applied to heresy. Specalized tribunals of churchmen, with papal authority, operated in some parts of Europe, notably Spain and, from 1542, Rome, to identify and try heretics. By 1500, a complex set of laws and procedures had evolved to deal with such cases and it was accepted that although the Church itself, through its clergy and lay officers, could not shed blood, lapsed heretics, in particular, could and should be handed over to secular authorities, who would administer the death penalty, usually by means of fire. This would purge church and society of their sin and, according to the prevailing Augustinian theology, send their souls to eternal damnation, as indicated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel (25: 46).

Without awareness of all this, it is impossible to explain Mary’s readiness to adopt such methods in 1554–5, and persist with them until her death. In the summer of 1553, she had at least appeared to outsiders to be willing to allow the reformed services of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer to continue, if only for a time, alongside the beginnings of the restoration of Catholic worship. It is commonly understood that, to begin with, she and her closest advisers, especially Gardiner and Bonner, thought that if they took the reforming leaders out of circulation, notably Bishops Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley and Hooper, their followers would quickly return to the old faith. It soon emerged, however, that this approach would not work, and even though the kingdom was still technically in schism from Rome, the Queen and her advisers chose the traditional remedy of an Inquisition. The problem was that the old English heresy laws, which were part of statute not canon law, had been removed in the previous reign.”

- John Edwards, “Battle for England’s Soul.” in Mary I

[threewaysdivided]

So I’ve read your Vlad analysis from a few months ago and I really enjoyed it, but if I’m going to be frank it does come off as…slightly ableist in a sense? “Malignant narcissism” isn’t a real thing, same with the other supposed “subtypes” of narcissism, there’s only NPD. And while I’m incredibly sorry about your family situation and can absolutely relate, please don’t claim they automatically have NPD just for being mentally and emotionally abusive. It’s a very harmful stereotype.

[In response to this post]

That’s a good point.  Mental health is a complicated topic and I didn’t necessarily phrase everything in that post with as much delicacy or nuance as I could have.

However, anon, I think you may want to re-read because I did say something to that effect:

Now, on its own this wouldn’t be a consignment to villainy - there can be narcissistic or egocentric hero characters (early MCU Tony Stark is like this, and it’s basically Neil’s whole bit in Class of the Titans) - but Vlad combines it with a bunch of significantly nastier traits.

I used the term “malignant narcissism” not because it’s an official sub-class but because I wanted to single out a set of toxic behaviours that are sometimes associated with some narcissists, rather than generalising Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a whole.  Having NPD (or BPD or ASPD) does NOT automatically make someone a bad person.  Empathy is a skill that can be developed, and even without it people can make the choice to behave in considerate, compassionate and respectful ways.  What matters is how we all choose to act, react and respond to information.  Which is also something I said:

He has needs and desires, and on some level he has the capacity to change and choose better, but until he learns to care about people for their own sake and to treat others with consideration and respect he will always end up driving those things away.

Now, as for “don’t claim [my own family members] automatically have NPD just for being mentally and emotionally abusive” I am going to gently ask you not to presume.  You don’t know my family’s personal experience.  You don’t know the nature, severity or duration of the abuse; you don’t know the direct, ongoing physical and psychological trauma it caused to the immediate victims, the generational impact it had on their partners and children (myself being one of them) or the schisms it created on both sides of my extended family.  You also don’t know whether we sought out behavioural information and input from therapists in order to understand and cope with what was happening (which we did).

And look, I don’t blame you for not knowing this. There was literally no way you could. Even for people who actively follow my blog, I’m pretty private about my personal experiences - it's an important part of shaping who I am, but that’s not what I want this space to be for (especially not on a public forum). And there are parts of the internet that are obsessed with pathologizing everything; that love to assign labels and line up to prescribe armchair diagnoses for real people who they’ve never met.  In isolation I can see how that post would have given the wrong impression.

I’m going to interpret this as being sent with good intentions, and take it in good faith.  However, with the extra context you might understand how your ask could come across as - to put it mildly - a little condescending.

There is a more nuanced conversation about mental health to be had.  But a fandom meta-post about the characterisation of a half-ghost cartoon villain inspired by a Marvel-comics vampire is perhaps not the place to find it.

[themildestofwriters]

Anti-Jedi Masterpost

Okay, so I’ve been told that I’m making shit up about Jedi Crimes so here’s the Receipts. And no, this isn’t about making The Good Guys Always Bad. We’re not saying Obi-Wan Kenobi is a horrible person you should feel bad for liking. We’re saying that the Jedi Order is massively flawed and the constant downplaying of its horrible traits doesn’t help anyone. You don’t have to hate the Jedi. We just want you to acknowledge their crimes without downplaying it.

The Jedi created the Sith

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hundred-Year_Darkness/Legends

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Exiles

At the end of the Hundred Year Darkness, a terrible war between Light Jedi and Dark Jedi of the Second Great Schism, the Jedi Council chose to exile the Dark Jedi into Unknown Regions so the war criminals may find redemption in their own time. Though noble hearted their goal, the exiles didn’t want redemption. They wanted revenge, naturally.

So when they found a species of powerful Dark Side savants, they promptly enslaved the species, named Sith, and became Lords of the Sith. These Sith were the forebears of the Sith Order which repeatedly went to war against the Jedi out of revenge or simple hatred.

The Jedi didn’t intend to create the Sith but through their ill thought out actions, they created their own enemy that would plague the galaxy for years to come. In fact, this can be stretched further as, aside from Vitiate’s Sith Empire, every other Sith Empire had its origins within the Jedi to some degree.

Freedon Nadd? Jedi. Exar Kun? Jedi. Revan and Malak? Jedi. Traya? Jedi. Sion? Jedi(?). The New Sith? Jedi. The Brotherhood of Darkness? A mixed bag but they came directly from the New Sith. Bane? Not originally a Jedi founded order but it was founded upon the beliefs of the Jedi-turned-Sith, Revan. The One Sith? Jedi.

The Jedi kicked people off of their homeworld for religiously charged reasons.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vahla

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ember_of_Vahl

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Post%E2%80%93Great_Hyperspace_War_counterinvasion

The Sith are an obvious one but they’re done to death. In short, after the Hyperspace War, the Republic (and Jedi) decided to bomb the Sith back to the Stone Age, kicking the Sith off their holy world, off their ancestral homeworld, and off many other Sith worlds.

However, was most don’t know is that the Jedi did this again to the Vahla, a species similar to the Sith in that they’re naturally dark side aligned and entirely force sensitive. Their religion was hedonistic (it’s not a cult if most an entire fuckin’ planet practices it, and just because the Jedi believe Vahl to be a Dark Side Adept doesn’t mean they are!). They were decimated by the Jedi for their  “destructive tendancies” (whatever the fuck that means) and kicked off their home planet long enough that it became lost.

Basically “Jedi didn’t like what the Vahla were doing on their home planet so they confiscated the planet as if they had any right to.”

The Jedi murdered ex-Jedi who wanted to peacefully form their own academy.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Legions_of_Lettow

A Jedi wants to learn about the Dark Side. He doesn’t do it behind anyone’s back, he makes his intent clear. He asks the Jedi if he can learn and they turn him down. He asks if he can make a Jedi Academy far away from the original Jedi Academy so he can learn safely. They say no. He decides “Fuck it,” and quits being a Jedi and makes his own Academy where the Dark Side can be learned. The Jedi are miffed.

Soon, the Dark Jedi’s academy gets big. Like, really big. The Jedi don’t like that. They really don’t like that. They want to fix the Schism and the way they do that? By declaring war and murdering them. Oh, but it gets worse. The Jedi Council decide that a war far away from civilization was no fun and decided to push the war closer and closer to the galactic core so that way the Republic would get involved.

The Dark Jedi tried to warn the Republic, but they wouldn’t listen. Instead, they declared war against him. And his side lost.

Taking this into consideration, it’s no wonder the Dark Jedi of the Second Schism preemptively took up arms against the Jedi, if it was truly them who fired the first shot, so to speak. They saw what happened last time and didn’t want a repeat.

The Jedi disarm and revoke the rights of Jedi who officially deny the Council’s commands.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Right_of_Denial

A story as old as time. Your peacekeeping order gets cast as the generals of a war and you and your academy decide you don’t want to be conscripted into the war. What follows is these Jedi formally denying the Jedi Council’s command in protest, but to do so they have to give up their rights as Jedi, including their right to wield a lightsaber--can’t having political opponents having weapons, now, can we?

The Jedi aided and abetted slavers.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Huk_War/Legends

When the oppressed fight back against their oppressors, the Jedi are there to kick the oppressed back down into the dirt--all because their oppressors got to the Jedi first and the Jedi didn’t bother getting the context. Important context, like the fact that the guys who started the war only started the war because of the whole “We’re being enslaved and we don’t want to anymore,” thing.

Also, Clone Wars. The whole deal with Jabba, known slaver. Make it worse by making known slave Anakin Skywalker do negotiations with them. I ain’t giving you a source, it’s the story of the animated Clone Wars film with Ahsoka in it.

The Jedi built a 20,000 year old secret prison.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Prism

Exact date might be off, but where’s the lie? They had a secret prison that not even the Republic knew about since the Second Great Schism. Who knows how it operated and changed over the years. All we do know is that whatever the Jedi did to their secret illegal prisoners in their secret illegal prison, it probably wasn’t good, from a certain point of view.

The Jedi have an elite force of assassins who murder anyone they see as wrong-bad-evil.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Shadow

Uh... Jedi Shadows. ‘nough said.

[incarnateirony]

Hot take, the reason handfuls of people truly hate Dabb era isn’t really because anything is wrong with it--but in using a mytharc that is more centered in personal involution and introspection, Dabb has created a schism.

I have said in the past that there are a few major impacts that make people hate canon over time: for example, old season SPN as much as we loved it, the characters were essentially fun base archetypes and the canon universal structure, plot structure, etc was a lot thinner. It was a huge sandbox to play in and imagine in--the characters, the world, etc. Over multiple showrunners and persistent callbacks and strengthening of old canon, this size narrowed down.

People used to filling in the blanks however they want lost the plasticity of the characters with how they inserted dreams and wants, and often even levels of self insertion. Some people truly felt the characters deviated from the fanon form they had crafted for them in their own heads, and other people still continued to resonate closely with what grew forward out of it as things became more clearly defined, less blur-lensed in the distance.

The issue being, alchemical involution storylines force us to confront our own weaknesses. For the people who at this point now hyper-identify with characters, in a highly heated fandom ready to turn any character fart or grilled cheese sandwich into a battleground or argument, everything escalates into an “attack.” or “hate.” 

The nuance of looking at our own weaknesses, flaws, and how to become a better person get lost in the fandom turmoil, and also in personal turmoil where people just aren’t ready or willing to take the steps that the characters in the show are now walking through, one pace at a time. Because if Dean has to address his anger as being unfair!! Is my anger issues unfair??? If Cas has to find some way to stand up to his depression!! are they just telling me that I can just blow mine off???? If Sam has to face his lifelong dependency issues, does that mean I need to find a way to branch off more individually? This sir is an ATTACK, I’m going to SUE. I’m going to write VERY LONG TUMBLR THREADS declaring this all cruel and unwoke and dumb dumbz poopie head or just send off 140 character tweets yelling that it SUX ASSBUTT.

And like... it’s kind of sad?

Guys, it’s literally okay to have weak points. We’re human. We all do. In fact that is a major moral of current Supernatural. Having flaws is okay. We can strive to become our best, perfect selves, but that also takes confronting where we have shortcomings. Even if those shortcomings come from trauma, even if those shortcomings come from all kinds of elements outside of our control, this is basically “Supernatural as therapy”. If we don’t look at those, figure out how to apologize for them, approach them, speak them out into the world, we actually get lost to a putrefied version of ourselves and if we don’t grow back out of it into something new, we just fester. If we take it one day at a time, one step at a time, bonding to the best interpersonal elements of friends and family around us taking us by the hand when we need it, without being fully reliant on or shoveling the entire weight of our burdens off onto them-- then we can become better people. The world can become a better place.

But SPN fandom environment isn’t very suited to this. It’s easy to tuck away, to pull the blanket over our heads and scream and yell that it’s not fair to a character, because we don’t want to face how that relates to us with our emotional lens characters. But screaming into a pillow all day isn’t going to make it stop. The end is here, and Supernatural is trying to get you ready for it, and at the same time leave you some very good morals for the future as long as you open your hearts and minds to it. Not just to cute guys stabbing monsters. 

Not just to a favorite ship’s goals. Not just to funny jump the shark episodes. But to an actual, meritful, mature discussion of life, self, personality, goals, dreams, futures and yes, eventually, death as something we will have to face in our distant future. I hate to break it to you, but nobody ever makes it out of life alive. But it’s okay. Because the point is that they were here at all and we got to know them. And, if you have faith, you can see them, one day, on the other side, once you’ve done your best to make a better world, here and now, for the legacies in your wake.

This is all but impossible for people to avoid now, like the days of the old sandbox, essentially imagining barbie characters of archetypes people can dance around however they want and spin around in the empty space. The dense canon leaves very little because the world is so thickly structured and powerfully written -- but not as powerfully as the characters, very defined and very grown, whether it’s what Early Season Barbie Players wanted, or Late Season Character Lensers that are actually struggling going “but--if (character) (issue)... then I--” 

It’s okay. It’s really okay guys, I swear. Nobody has to be perfect. Not your favorite character. Not you. But ... well, listen to Dean.

DEAN

it's not about being strong.

I mean...Look, I don't know what you saw over there, and I don't know what you went through.

I know it was bad. But I also know that you came out the other side because you are strong.

But even when we're strong, man, things are gonna happen.

We're gonna make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. Right?

But we can get better. Every day, we can get better.

So whatever you're dealing with, you know, whatever...whatever comes at us, we'll figure out a way to deal with it, together.

[serpentstole]

Luciferian Challenge: Day 12+13 (And 22)

A few of these prompts ended up being very similar in theme, so I’ve combined them into a bit of a long reply.

Dogma is something we throw about…that we reject it. Where do you think we may fall short as Luciferians/Satanists when it comes to dogma? Do you think dogma has a certain value?

I don’t think dogma has any value really, no, as I don’t like the idea of rules or ideas that cannot be questioned on principle. Even as a child, I took issue with blind obedience. My mother once called me downstairs, and I asked why, and my father got angry and said that I shouldn’t bother to ask why and just do it, and that even if one of them told me to jump out of a window they probably had a good reason for it.

That memory is seared into my brain and still irks me.

I do think rules themselves can be important, but when we speak of rejecting dogma it’s typically in the sense of it being some authoritative status quo that cannot be discussed or challenged. I think my example above is a good example of that, as petty as it may seem: that parents should be obeyed without question and with the assumption they have our best interests at heart.

I do not believe there’s room for that sort of attitude in an empathetic and respectful society, even towards children. Respecting their natural curiosity and teaching them about bodily autonomy is something I think can only be a net good. The only thing growing up in a strict household taught me, where there was little room for negotiation or challenging of the way things were, was how to be a decent liar.

It harmed me in far more ways than it helped instill any positive values, and while I would not want to belittle the experiences of anyone in a similar boat, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. There are some families where a dogmatic stance, whether based in politics or religion, can lead to the alienation or outright abandonment of LGBT youth, of young women who wish control over their own bodies, of those with views that differ from their parents’, or any other black sheep.

I feel like this question and my thoughts on it really go hand in hand with the next one, so I’m going to actually combine them into one post and make up the difference later.

Do you think it’s dogma or silly to say what Luciferianism/Satanism is not?

I do not think it’s dogmatic to say what Luciferianism or Satanism is or isn’t. The reason I’ve kept both labels in these two prompts, when I’ve removed them in every other post, is because I spent a lot of time in a mixed Luciferian and Satanist community during the beginning of my religious journey. Despite our differences, especially in the case of Atheist Satanism versus Theistic Luciferianism, I saw a great deal of overlap in a lot of the values/ideals, inspirations, and talking points. 

I think outlining those ideals and values is important to just… having a label. Words mean things. Religious affiliations and ideas mean things. Even saying you belong to or adhere to a school of thought typically has some manner of definition or parameters. While Luciferianism and Satanism can be incredibly diverse when it comes to the details of one’s ethics and morals, practices, views of the divinity or lack there of, and other suck points, there’s a good deal that does unite us that’s reflected in the archetypal figures our religions are named after. I also believe that certain aspects of what is seen as the Standard Luciferian should be weighed more or less heavily. For example, I don’t see my irritation with hostility towards Christianity as something that makes me less of a Luciferian.

However, I want to combine these two prompts with one more to round out my view of this topic. 

What do you disagree with Luciferians/Satanists most?

In the goddamn dogma they cling to and perpetuate while claiming to be adversarial to or enlightened above such ideas. It’s become almost a meaningless buzzword. It barely still looks like a real word to me anymore. This is honestly where my post goes completely off the rails into a mini essay, so it’s under the cut.

The idea that all “Abrahamic” religions should be treated as inherently harmful and oppressive is a bad take. 

That Christianity, Judaism, and Islam should even be lumped together when discussing such issues betrays a shallow understanding of these religions that’s been regurgitated from one person to another, typically through a culturally Christian lens.

The idea that “only LaVeyan Satanism should be called Satanism because nothing else that calls itself Satanism is actually Satanism” is exhausting, and I will fist fight Anton myself in hell.

The principles of Might Makes Right and Social Darwanism that some Satanists perpetuate is dumb and bad and wrong, sorry, that’s the only rebuttal I’m dignifying that school of thought with. Once again, I will be fist fighting Anton in hell.

And that’s to say nothing of the Satanists and Luciferians out there that regurgitate the same racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other assorted bigotries that they’ll condemn religions like Christanity for while perpetuating it with a coat of black paint. Because I have absolutely seen this first hand, both as an observer and as the target of it.

Like... I can’t speak on Islam at all, because I have very very limited experience with it from both a research and real life experience point of view, and thus I’m not comfortable making any claims. On the other hand, I do know that to list all the ways that Judaism is not a dogmatic religion would deserve its own post written by someone far more knowledgeable than me, and it somehow still gets lumped into the Problematic n’ Dogmatic category of AbRaHaMiC ReLiGiOnS. For that reason, in the case of Islam, I can’t help but wonder if the assumption that it’s also dogmatic comes from the harmful assumption that it’s a religion that’s strict to the point of harshness that a lot of people have.

Even in the case of Christianity, which I would argue (as someone who I’d say was raised within the church) is hands down the most seemingly dogmatic of the three (particularly in North America), this is just not universally true. If it was, there probably wouldn’t be so many branches and denominations, many of which cannot stand each other and think the rest are misguided at best and heretical at worst. This is something that’s even brought up in the Satanic Bible; I’ve read the miserable thing. Have you ever seen someone say “Christians and Catholics”? That’s a pretty loaded example of how much disagreement exists within the religion when an entire core branch of it is considered tangentially related.

Not to mention, I was raised Lutheran. That came about because a German Catholic got incredibly steamed at his own religion so he made a more boring different version of it. While the existence of dogma has led to these schisms, historically speaking, the end result has been a religion so varied that it’s hard to say what is and isn’t treated as inarguable law. If you don’t believe me, try talking to a Protestant pastor about the Seven Deadly Sins and see how far you get. I tried during confirmation class and got shut down immediately... but on the flip side, my church was pretty accepting of LGBT folks, which I think some people would claim Christianity is dogmatically against by default.

Is there dogmatic thinking within specific churches or branches or communities? Absolutely, I wouldn’t argue that. I think it can arise in any community, religious or not, but that some religious communities seem to be particularly vulnerable to it. But the harm those specific cases could do should be where our focus goes, not the condemnation of these religions or the concept of religion as a whole, which I touched on in a previous prompt. 

I’m not some glorious enlightened mind. I would not want to give the impression that I think I hold in my hands the One True Way to do Luciferianism, or that I think the majority of this religious community are uncritical edgelords. This is, after all, my answer to the thing I take issue with the most, not my thoughts on Luciferianism or Satanism as a whole. I just don’t think it should be a particularly hot take that Religious Discrimination Is Bad Actually, or that maybe you can be rebellious and adversarial and hedonistic and enlightened while still genuinely giving a shit about people. Because otherwise what’s the point?

If we are hostile and rebellious with no actual end goal, no greater cause or purpose, we are simply being contrarian for the sake of it. If we blame the idea of organized religion instead of those who manipulate and abuse faith and scripture for selfish and malicious ends, we’ve missed the point, as I said in the aforementioned previous post. Not all of us have the ability to become an activist, obviously, and I would not ask you to. But I think as those who would claim to reject dogmatic thinking and strive to embody either the ideals of enlightenment or the adversary would do well to be ever questioning their preconceptions of the world around them, of other religions, and of less obvious unjust structures of power.

I don’t know why a community that believes in illumination and free thinking sees the world in such black and white ways.

While I will always strive for a greater understanding of the world, and I hold the concept of enlightenment very dear to my heart, I think it’s something that one spends a lifetime working towards. Alongside my favourite quotes from Paradise Lost, I hold the Socratic Paradox of “I know that I know nothing” as a personal motto, and I wish more people who I share this label with would do the same.

[apprenticegamemaster]

Pern Au Lore Snippets

Will I ever actually write this au? Probably not. But I DO want to get this nonsense out of my brain, so here’s some bits of lore. Feel free to snag for your RPs or fanfiction or the like if you want, heaven knows I’m probably borrowing from half a dozen other things I’ve seen people write.

The larger holds didn’t always have the large outbuildings and surrounding cots that they do in the “modern” day. Back before the Plague of Moreta, pretty much the entirety of a hold’s population would live within the cliffs, sometimes far enough in that the air was pretty much always stale despite whatever vents were put in when the hold was first carved out. The plague, being a respiratory-based illness, meant that suddenly it was far more important than ever for holders to have access to fresh air both to avoid the illness and to avoid aggravating the lungs of the survivors afterword. The big holds built out more than they carved in from that point on, and eventually many of them kinda forgot about some of the back passageways and rooms.

Speaking of Holds, the majority of cots and small holds are structurally similar to single or multi-generation homes do on Earth, but the major holds tend to operate similarly to Ancient Roman apartment blocks- basically, an individual person might have a room for themselves or share it with a few other people, but sleeping’s about the only thing the whole wing might be set up to do. Bathrooms, restrooms, kitchens, etc, are all in other parts of the hold. Wealthier families might have something closer to a modern college dorm with a suite or pod of rooms that all share a bathroom, but hall-style dorm living arrangements are far more common if the sleeping quarters have a nearby bathroom at all.

Mixing a bit of the “Crafthalls are not Monoliths” lore from another post I saw a while back with something I vaguely remember from the Todd books: There’s been a good handful of schisms in the past between the main crafthalls, the biggest one on my AU being between the Eastern and Western Harper Halls. Generally speaking, most of them were caused either by a few rogue Masters or Journeymen running off to do their own thing or just by way of being too physically far apart to keep from going their separate ways.

Still, the biggest split is between the people who got apprenticed to the various Halls and the people who are engaging in the craft in a vernacular manner, e.g. the guy who learned to make furniture via being apprenticed to a Master versus the guys in the smaller halls that are making furniture because their Hold needs the stuff and it’s too expensive to get something made elsewhere, or the locally-woven cloth versus the stuff made in Weavercrafthalls. In my AU there’s quite a few people that can paint frescoes and the like, for instance, but your local man is probably going to be more along the lines of your average medieval monk’s artistic ability (aka not particularly detailed or realistic), versus the more Romanesque and Renaissance-styled artists you can hire out of the Eastern Harper Hall. There’s a strong element of classism there, but the crafthalls like to think they’ve got the One True Way of doing things even when they really don’t.

Bees made it to Pern. There’s no way that half the crops the colonists brought would’ve made it if the bees didn’t.

Similarly, I’m replacing the llamas that I saw mentioned in the Dragonlover’s guide to Pern with Alpacas, specifically the Paco-Vicuna variety, because llamas are Mean and Paco-Vicunas are Nice creatures that are Extremely Soft. The High Reaches have the overwhelming majority of the herds of them, and has a small Weavercrafthall set up just to make luxury woolens from them. Local holders call them llacuanas or something similar, though, because while the guy who brought them knew what they were, pretty much all the other holders just thought they were llamas and a few wires got crossed.

Cinnamon specifically might have failed to transplant to Pern, but the majority of spices did well enough once the right climates were found for them- mainly in Igen (Ingen? what is spelling). The area’s surprisingly wealthy as a result, similarly to how spices made the Arabian peninsula area wealthy during the days of the Silk Road and the like.

Tillek may be pretty rainy, but that’s because the climate is close to the Pacific Northwest- it’s a lot of temperate rainforest in that area. Pity the local flora doesn’t lend itself to woodcraft- most of the trees are either stubby and spindly and really only decent for firewood (if you can dry it out) or are the super-tough stonewoods that’ll pretty much break any ax or saw if you’re not careful... or if you’re just not lucky. Lots of marshes and fens and the like, too, so fishing really is pretty much the main way to go there.

Fort and Boll are accordingly north and south California. Nerat has a few parts that mimic Florida, but most of it’s tropical rainforest. Benden is just the middle coast of the USA. Heck, to an extent you can just mirror the Continental USA onto Pern’s Northern Continent- there’s general principles to how climate works re: coasts and interiors and the like and it’s just the same on Pern.

There’s been a few tries to get colonies up and going on the various island chains outside the Northern Continent, but none of them really stuck, even as a penal colony. The wyers just can’t extend protection over the oceans during Passes, and getting wooden ships to go out that far when threadfall is a thing was just too much of a risk, and it turns out that 50 years plus however long it took to send out the next few boats was generally long enough for things to go Horribly Wrong. There’s still a few landmarks there that dragonriders can Between to- mainly a couple Stonehenge-like setups- since the cattle that were released/escaped on the two biggest islands have done pretty well, making it a tasty stopoff for dragons. Plus whatever fruits and the like the wyers can scavenge. Most interesting thing otherwise is the unique subspecies of fire lizards, which have larger wingspans with a bit more patterning to the wings. They tend to migrate up and down the island chains as the seasons go.

The Southern Continent as a whole is held in about the same regard by sailors as Medieval kings held the mythical kingdom of Prester John- a super cool legendary location that TOTALLY exists, but is actually nowhere near as mystical and majestic as the stories say. It got lost pretty much the same way the islands got lost- the wyers just couldn’t spread out enough to cover the ocean passage, even if they could cover the landmass areas. By the “modern” time in my AU pretty much only the sailors near Ista and Boll give it any credit at all, and only because there’s always That One Ship that gets seriously unlucky and/or just has a shit navigator and ends up on the other side of the equator before they figure out how to get home. Boats from the Nerat area generally can’t stock enough in their holds to make it to the Southern Continent, much less make it back.

[bullets-and-masks]

Fantastic Flustercuck: Lore, Interesting points, and a little thinking through

Here we go! This list is really, really big. I’ll do a short analysis/critic later on, but I want to get this out now! We’ll have 4 sessions: 1. Krieg and the Crimson Raiders 2. Krieg and Maya 3. Krieg and Himself  4. Final Notes 

Session 01: Krieg and the Raiders

Sane Krieg starts by calling Psycho Krieg him; and dividing their mind between two minds, as if there are thoughts only Psycho Krieg has that he can’t access and/or understand 

There’s a constant JACK voiceover that can be heard anywhere. Sadly, I didn’t catch the words, but sounded like the pre recorded messages at the preserve in Bl2

The first section of the DLC, the Castle raid, is considered imporant because it’s the first mission Krieg did along with the Crimson Raiders after a while 

During this section, we fight the raiders

Brick and Modercai come first. They talk about how Krieg is too crazy to be a part of the Raiders. Sane Krieg does not want to fight them. Psycho Krieg fights - but it’s fear

Tannis quickly accesses it as fear of rejection. Krieg always had an issue with how the Raiders see him 

Despite this Sane Krieg does know they’re friends, his family 

Also sane Krieg uses the word oaf and that’s like... really funny 

In this, Tannis says she relates to fear of rejection, but quickly corrects saying she doesn’t care 

There’s the implication that Krieg’s eye was clawed out by a skag 

The “Evil Lilith” inside his head calls him an animal, a beast, a weapon just to be used. Says they never cared if he lived or died

Sane Krieg quickly corrects this isn’t how she spoke to us

Lilith is tagged as “Scary fire lady” and that’s kind of adorable

Sane Krieg shows Psycho Krieg an old memory about how the Raiders treat him, and it’s the Raiders inviting Krieg to a bar. They don’t mind how he acts and laugh along with him 

But Krieg follows from a distance

The Raiders guard his buzzaxe = strenght and attack

Krieg has a dialogue with himself that goes sorta like: Sane Krieg: (smth about finding out who is he, really) Psycho Krieg: Fragile Things

Sane Krieg also mentions wanting to learn dance, saying he has to exercise to keep his abs, calling it “lean muscle”

Session 02: Krieg and Maya

Oh boy

As soon as they see a memory of Maya, Sane Krieg wants to be careful. He doesn’t want the memory corrupted like the Raiders’. 

Krieg KNOWS she is dead

Sane Krieg says Maya is the only thing he and Psycho Krieg ever agreed on 

despite this, during the DLC they seem to get along better and better, Krieg is really working on themselves

Maya drops her book before proceeding. The player has to go after. Flowers grow on the ground where we walk

Tannis states diferent brain activity readings at this point, saying Krieg can really focus on Maya 

Maya is taken by Locomobius, the monster train, and Sane Krieg says it’s because at the time they met, Psycho Krieg thought the train was taking her

Maya tells him in a goodbye ECHO: “No matter how far appart we are, I’ll always be with you.”

The name of the mission to catch Locomobius and free the memories of Maya is what love remains 

Sane Krieg says the memories are all he has left of Maya

There’s a flashback to when they met, and it shows that Maya invited Krieg to come with her because he showed knowing how to fight 

She does call him Big Guy constantly

Krieg has memories of Athenas, implying he has been there 

Athenas is guarded by eridians, here funcioning as guardians to the memories of Maya 

This is all viewed by Tannis as the protections of a grieving mind

The flashback about when they met also reveals that Krieg expressed he didn’t think he had anything to offer Maya and she understood him 

It it’s not explained, whoever, how she understands him, but it’s very strongly implied that she sees his through thoughts/the translation of psycho speech

Maya guards his gauntlet = his defenses and hope 

Even now, Maya is still a figure of hope for him 

Sane Krieg complains about how Psycho Krieg lost a watch that he cared for

Session 2.5: Maya’s Spirit

Maya’s Last ECHO Maya leaves for Krieg one last ECHO that explains why she’s staying on Athenas for an indefinite time - to teach Eva.  She says she knows she’ll pass her powers to Eva which implies she suspects her death could be soon.  She says she can feel all the sirens that came before her like energy flowing, and says that if she days she’ll be among the stars waiting for him.  There’s the quote, from her: “Even death and time can’t keep us appart from each other.”

The Spirit Maya stays in Krieg’s mind in a shining black and white form. At first, It looks like it might be his perception of her, the way she appears in his mind, but upon further triggering dialogue, there’s a lot of things told from a perspective that make it sound like Krieg didn’t know, and that also Maya is aware of this new form for her.

Quotes say: 

that she never thought she could care about anyone the way she cared about Krieg

says that Krieg’s mind is less messy than she thought it’d be

had noodles in Minus-Prime, and loves it 

she dyes her hair!

Maya says with all the words Siren’s have the power to leave memory on objects, memory that are almost a spirt 

So this could be a fragment of Maya, alive in Krieg’s mind through the last ECHO he ever got from her

Also her spirit also mentions that one day a hotel showed up in Athenas, she slept there, it was a super interesting place, and she woke up lying on grass the morning after. Mancubus’ traveling hotel? 

Session 03: Krieg and Himself 

And Hyperion. 

Krieg was at Hyperion to do a job at a lab

but then was “taken” by them. also not specified if he was taken for doing the wrong job, or he was there not hired by them and was captured 

It is not specified what job, but he does mention he was a mercenary

The scientist responsible for him was Dr Benedict, and the called the subjects rejects of society

Sane Krieg says the lab saw the subjects as just meat. This is easily read as way Psycho Krieg registers meat as something that matters so much

Dr Benedict considered/might have done it: sweing the mouths of subjects shut or extracting their tongues so they couldn’t complain 

Sane Krieg was really soft y’all... He fights a rat while imprisioned and names it Tawanda - unclear what happens to it - but Krieg says they’ll take care of each other

Krieg tells Tawanda “I’m called Krieg”. In a further ECHO, Dr Benedict calls Krieg Subject 24C. So Krieg really isn’t his name, and he can’t remember it 

There’s an audio from Dr Benedict about an non specific subject asking to see his son, which the dr considers crazy, but all the others audios, even if not mentioning Krieg by name, seemed to be about him...

Sane Krieg sits along with Pyscho Krieg in an aparent crumbled cell space watching shadows that he calls The World. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, here showing Krieg is content with the world presented to him, unable, weak or even afraid to explore. It speaks to a false meaning he found to have the sense of living without having the strenght to do so

the player destroys the allegory, thus freeing Sane Krieg to see the actual world, a further step in regaining his mind as a world to really live in - he truly was trapped in himself

Bloodlust is a type of psychosis studied by Dr Benedict. It’s unclear wheter he created it, or what is behind it, but he uses a gas to infect people

considers making a gas bomb to infect whole populations

there’s a line from the Dr about how brain probing worsed pyschosis

the gas didn’t affect Krieg like the others - it is also unclear why 

a mission with a Fear Mom, completely referencing the Clockwork Orange, tells Krieg to drink Milk to grow strong so “no one will hurt you ever again.” This could be read as remnants of his past self, creating a place to feel cared for someway, but also embracing the ultraviolence of his being and the brainwashing he went through

this side mission rewards a gun with the flavor text our eyes are yet to open like a baby, or like someone who lacks clarity 

Krieg cared a lot about people before going insane. He holds strongly to a sense of right and wrong he calls goodness, and values innocence a lot

The Psycho personality is a schism that showed up in several test subjects that manifested the same personality

Dr Benedict wanted to change the subject pool to see the relation and considers an elementary school class

Also considers putting the gas in water supply to infect people since the gas won’t work on open areas

Psycho Krieg saves Sane Krieg when he had given up on scaping 

It is a bloodbath Psycho Krieg calls Tea Party

Sane Krieg sees this realization, about being saved and the Vault Hunter being inside his head, as Psycho Krieg letting people in

Hyperion kept his mask from him = “false face is protection”

Upon defeating the boss, the Gigantic Krieg tied to an experimentation bed fades.

After taking the mask, this Three Figures walk into a portal in his mind and disappear forever. Sane Krieg doesn’t remember who they are and remarks that he forgot his past entirely.  But looks at Psycho Krieg and decides on Forging a future.

They tell jokes to each other constantly, though Psycho Krieg only tells a decent joke by the end of the DLC. The joke is the one coherent sentence he can make; showing a lot of progress in how he communicates, but not changing who he is.  By the end, his mind is empty, and both Kriegs work together to fill it slowy with new memories and thoughts. They start with Maya, and keep creating until she says “Enough for now. Come in and tell me about your day”, to which Krieg responds FUSING INTO HIMSELF, WHOLE, and walking into the house with her. The voiceover from Krieg tells us we’re always breaking and hurting, but we put ourselves together again, never perfect, but close enough. Always fixing ourselves. 

Final Notes:

This DLC was really good, imo. I really liked the direction it took and I’m glad it wasn’t TOO wacky, loosing all the meaning and more seriousness it could have. It is a great character exploration, respects Krieg as a character and the one around him and their relationships.  Krieg comes out as not needing fixing, and instead making peace with all he is and growing.  Canon things confirmed:  Worked as a mercenary, was a Crimson Raider, was one invited by Maya, was loved back, was experimented on by Hyperion, was saved by himself.

[thespiralgrimoire]

I. NEED. TO. LEARN. MORE. ABOUT. FERRO's. UNIVERSE. Like are you kidding me? Fuego and Leo pulled a coup and killed every non-vermillion??! that's, wow, that's rich!! What's the heck is wrong with /THAT/ timeline? What about Asta's story there? the elves? the devils? Fuego really killed everyone? including NOZEL? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!

OH MY GOD ANON YOU’VE MADE MY ENTIRE DAY

HONESTLY this AU is underdeveloped because of the way it came to fruition in the first place, so nothing would make me happier but to make it a collaborative fandom project but here’s everything I’ve got on it

Under a Read More because it might get lengthy

First, a disclaimer: This AU was born out of a dream. I had a dream about a plucky teenager participating in a Magic Knight’s exam that was designed more like The Hunger Games, and when I woke up, I said to myself, I gotta get in on that. So that’s why some of the details of this AU are a little fucky. Dream logic.

Now, the inciting event for this AU is twofold: First, Acier lives. SECOND, her sister, Kirsch and Mimosa’s mother, dies giving birth to Mimosa.

Sister’s death completely breaks down any bond between the Vermillions and the Silvas. It’s just. Messy. A lot of finger pointing, a lot of people not handling things well. Because while the Silvas were taught from a young age to bottle up their feelings, Vermillions tend to use their feelings as a weapon. And relations go south fast.

Acier has still been training Meoroleona. Nozel and Fuegoleon have still been rivals. But when this happens, everyone is forced to pick a side. Acier and Meoroleona don’t end their relationship on bad terms, but they do end it. Nozel and Fuegoleon’s relationship swiftly turns hostile. In hindsight, nobody is happy about the way things went down, but at this point there’s a No Man’s Land to civility that nobody is willing to cross, and nobody will cross it.

The Vermillions have the roughest time with this, but unlike the way the Silvas handled Noelle, nobody actually blames Mimosa for her mother’s death. They turn their grief into what they see as righteous fury and determine to turn this into a “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” situation. This takes different forms over the years, but what basically happens is that everyone internalizes these feelings so deeply that while they all grow stronger, they also sort of grow apart.

Fuegoleon and Meoroleona have a blowout that completely shakes House Vermillion, and when Meoroleona leaves, she vows to never come back. No one believes that she would actually stay away, what with how close Fuego and Meoro were as kids, but when she leaves, she leaves. They see her once a year TOPS, and it’s never for a happy reason.

Fuegoleon, who has let his anger completely isolate him from the rest of his family, throws himself into being the Crimson Lion King, and while he’s incredibly successful, he loses parts of himself along the way. His ambitions override his caring nature and his inclination to share his strengths with others, and he becomes cold and determined, with a methodical outlook on relationships.

Leopold doesn’t become so callous-- he wasn’t old enough to remember his aunt’s death, he just had to grow up in the aftermath of it --but he follows in his brother’s footsteps, and while he’s not as mean about the way he does it, he’s not afraid to make some harsh decisions if it means being the best.

Kirsch and Mimosa decide that the best way to deal with this is to keep their heads down. Kirsch is fiercely protective of his little sister, because even though nobody is blaming Mimosa, he can’t shake the feeling that she may still have a target on her back. This makes Mimosa jumpy and clingy, never really developing the confidence to be her own person. While she can’t really nail down a particular reason for it, she’s scared of Fuegoleon and doesn’t trust Leopold. She can’t help but wonder how her cousins in House Silva are doing, but knows that all hell would break loose if she actually sought them out, so she feels constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place; the living embodiment of a schism between the royal houses.

The Silvas, on the other hand, go the other direction. Acier is still here, and she’s not letting her family rip itself apart like it did in canon. She remains the captain of the Silver Eagles and well-respected. Her kids have an even easier ride to the top with her still there to pave the way. She misses Meoroleona terribly. She knows that none of this was fair to any of them, and losing her sister AND her star pupil is a lot to work through. She keeps thinking that eventually she’ll get a letter or a surprise visit from the Undefeated Lioness, but she never does.

Nozel is genuinely heartbroken to have lost his rival and best friend, and, consequently, be left in the dust when he can’t keep up with Fuegoleon’s ambition, but he’s still got his mother and three little siblings, so they become his whole life. Without Fuegoleon’s rivalry to spur him on, he becomes good but not great, and is content to coast. He’s a mama’s boy, and as long as his mother is satisfied, he’d rather read and organize missions than go on them. On the bright side, he doesn’t deal with 90% of the stress he deals with in the canon universe. He’s actually pretty happy most of the time.

Nebra ends up being the classic middle sibling. Her magic is nothing special, but she’s a Silva, so she can go with the flow and still come out looking a little better than everyone else. While Nozel would rather spend time with books and Solid and Noelle would rather spend time with each other, she’s a drifter; she can hang with any of her siblings, or her mother, but she’s no one’s first pick. It doesn’t really bother her all that much unless she feels genuinely left out, and Mom never forgets about her, so it’s all good.

Solid and Noelle are thick as thieves, and the Silver Eagles’ superstars. They bring out the worst of each other and have a great time doing it. They’re a dynamic duo on the battle field and harbor unfathomable chaotic energy off of it. Getting sucked into their gravitational pull is dangerous, so Nebra, Nozel, and Acier tread lightly, lest they get dragged into, or end up the victim of their shenanigans. Of all combinations of Silva duos, they are by far the closest. Totally ride or die. That doesn’t mean that they don’t drive each other absolutely batshit crazy, and have some HUGE blowouts that waterlog half the castle, but that’s what siblings do. The nice thing about having each other is that neither of them end up in their siblings’ or mother’s shadows. The not nice thing about that is that they’re just. Little shits. Imagine Noelle acting the way she does in the beginning of the series, but being sincere about it. Imagine Solid acting the way he does, except he’s never checking to see if he’s got his siblings’ approval. Now imagine them patting each other on the back for acting like that. Yikes.

Then Ferro comes along. He’s the result of Solid knocking up his unnamed noble girlfriend when he’s 16-17. Acier is PISSED. All the other Silvas are scandalized. Solid is in big trouble. Acier suspends him from the Silver Eagles while she does damage control. What she eventually ends up doing is paying the girl off, and when the baby is born, she takes him into House Silva to raise him in secret. Nobody outside House Silva ever knows about him. He is House Silva’s best kept secret. This is an important detail.

The coup comes together. Fuegoleon has been working on this plan for a long time. Years. Leopold is on board, because Leopold would follow him off a cliff. But he’s also scared shitless. This is a much bigger deal than stepping on a few comrades to rise through the ranks. He slips a little. Kirsch catches wind of the plan. He gets in Leo’s and Fuego’s ear to remind them, hey, we’re Vermillions, too. So we’re cool, right?

Yeah, they’re cool. All they have to do is help their cousins kill everyone whose last name isn’t Vermillion. Kirsch thinks this is a pretty good deal to save him and his sister. Mimosa will later have her doubts, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Meoroleona was invited, but never shows up.

We’re about at the beginning of the show when the coup begins. I don’t have a good reason that it goes off as smoothly as it does. But everyone in Houses Kira and Silva dies, except Acier and Ferro. Ferro, now two, manages to watch his entire family get bodied without getting a scratch on him, because no one anticipated him being there. Acier is only able to defend herself and him before sneaking away.

Acier and Ferro flee to the Forbidden Realm, to a little town in bumfuck nowhere, to hide. They are never discovered by the Vermillions.

Fuegoleon becomes the Clover King. As far as they can tell, the coup is 100% successful. But the thing about fire is that it’s super useful for making people really dead, but when people are dying in heaps and being burned to ash it’s kind of hard to count how many bodies you’ve got. They don’t realize that they’re one short. With no one to stand in their way, Fuegoleon crowns himself Clover King. He disbands the Silver Eagles, and within the next few years, will crown himself Wizard King. It actually becomes pretty easy after Julius nerfs himself, whoops.

Unfortunately, Fuegoleon is starting to unravel. He gained a LOT of enemies doing all this heinous shit, and he is not a beloved king. Leopold is now the head of the Crimson Lion Kings, and he’s reporting back a lot of hostility among the captains. Not that they didn’t expect that, but there’s no way to practice sleeping with one eye open. That’s not to mention that the people are scared and confused, and that doesn’t make for a peaceful kingdom.

Over the course of years, he puts greater and greater restrictions on magic. It starts as permits to use spells in public places and soon grows into a near-total ban on grimoires for anyone outside the magic knights. With absolute power, he can kick people out of the magic knights AND take their grimoires. These rules both ease and exacerbate his growing paranoia. Everyone is pissed, but effectively stripped of their power, there isn’t much they can do about it.

Meanwhile, Acier is raising her grandson as a peasant, but never forgets that they’re royals. She teaches Ferro all of their family history, even though they have to keep it a secret. That gets kind of tricky since Ferro has royal-level magic in the middle of a town of peasants, but, you know, who’s gonna call him on it?

When Ferro is ten, he get recruited by a mysterious hooded figure to train his magic in secret. 90% of his magic training happens in a location he is taken to by a spatial mage. He, along with about a dozen other kids, are trained by a small band of mages who claim to be the resistance. Their goal is simple: Train the next generation of mages to take out the king and restore order to the kingdom. Ferro thinks this is pretty cool, and the honor isn’t lost on him, but he’s mostly glad that he can learn to control his magic in a way that makes his grandmother proud.

By the time Ferro is 15, grimoire ceremonies have been almost completely outlawed, so it’s a big deal when the resistance throws their trainees a grimoire ceremony. Once they’ve received their grimoires, they begin the next leg of their journey: become magic knights.

The Magic Knights Entrance Exam has changed a LOT in the last 15 years. This exam is deadly. In many instances, the point is to kill or be killed. Magic knights are being trained as a military force first and foremost, and their most important feature must be that they take orders unblinkingly. This does not fly with Ferro. While he’s extremely qualified for the position in every other way, he’s too nice to let people die, let alone kill them. He fails the exam. However, some of the other kids he’s trained with make it in.

So he needs a new plan. Spurned on by his grandmother and his teachers through the resistance, he decides to travel the Clover Kingdom. In the midst of his travels, Acier dies. At 20 years old, he is now the last Silva.

This fact makes Ferro pretty fatalistic, and at this point he decides the only rational thing to do is to force an audience with King Fuegoleon. Surely this won’t end in disaster. Definitely won’t be his untimely end by flames.

--

So there are a lot of holes in this AU, because it sprang up around this one character I had a wild dream about. A few mores notes:

Noelle joined the Silver Eagles, if that wasn’t obvious

The Vermillion coup takes place 1-2 years after the start of the show, and I have no explanation for how those events could fit into this timeline. They would definitely look a LOT different, that’s for sure

My notes on this end where they do because at the point where Ferro breaks into the royal castle to force this audience with the king, he actually gets thrown out of this universe and into another. So I guess for all intents and purposes, the Silva line ends for good in this universe

I know exactly where Meoroleona is and what she’s doing

I don’t know where exactly Kirsch and Mimosa are and what they’re doing when they disappear

So that’s all I’ve got! This isn’t a super duper happy AU, and definitely not flattering for everyone, but I was forced to flesh it out because I was told, very emphatically, “Evil Vermillions sexy.” I don’t disagree.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

This is a cracky question, but suppose the Animorphs saw Captain America Civil War. Would they be Team Cap or Team Iron Man?

Okay, if I can be a raging hipster for a minute: I LOVE the comic book arc of Marvel’s Civil War, and I’m not a huge fan of the movie they made from it.

The comic story was an excruciatingly effective execution of an argument where no sides are right.  Team Cap correctly argues that it’s wrong to force heroes like Spider-Man to out themselves, but takes that argument way too far when they skip over diplomacy and go straight to stabbing people.  Team Iron Man correctly argues that superheroes have way too much power to have so little oversight, but takes that argument way too far when they start imprisoning metahumans just for failing to register.  Families get torn apart by politics, as in the case of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage’s struggle over what’s best for their daughter.  Politics get torn apart by families, as in the case of Black Widow being firmly Team Iron Man and the Winter Soldier being (of course) Team Cap but them both deciding to ignore their own ideals and focus on solving smaller problems instead.  Heroes die.  Captain America is so disgusted with himself after he beats Iron Man unconscious that he turns himself in, only to get assassinated in the midst of Iron Man’s gloating publicity ploy.  Iron Man’s so disgusted with himself over the death of his best friend that he stops enforcing the Registration Act and quietly lets the war die.  No one wins.  Everyone loses.

That arc isn’t cool or action-packed or any of the other terms we normally use to describe kickass superhero stories; it’s heartbreaking.  Spider-Man compares the fight between the Avengers’ co-leaders to a nasty divorce.  The schism destroys friendships with decades’ publication history.  The Superhuman Registration Act draws attention to Black Widow’s immigrant status and internalized fear of treason, Power Man’s and Cloak’s identities as black men who’ve been abused by police, anti-mutant prejudice as a constant fracture point, and questions of superheroes as law enforcement.  This is the comic book arc that started me reading comic books.  It’s sad.  It’s heavy.  It’s complex and uncomfortable.  It starts badly and ends worse, with no good answers.  It’s got all that depressing shit that makes me love Animorphs so much.

The movie adaptation was solidly okay, but it was also a fistfight in a parking lot over who got to keep Bucky Barnes.  There is a clear right side and a clear wrong one, because Team Iron Man is operating off a miscommunication.  It was a decent flick in its own right, but it captured 0.000001% of what makes me hug the comic books to my chest and cry tears of masochistic agony at night.

ANYWAY, that has all been a characteristically long-winded way of saying: there’s not a good moral divide in the movie Captain America: Civil War.  However, if the Animorphs all read the comic series Marvel’s Civil War, I think they’d land thus:

Jake: Team Cap, for most of the same reasons as Cap himself.  Like Captain America, Jake’s a true believer in the best of American institutions — and like Cap, there’s no American institution that Jake respects more than the right to overthrow any power structure that needs overthrowing.  They’re both tough-minded idealists, and they’re both a little too willing to take their ideals too far.

Cassie: Team Iron Man, mostly because Cassie has compassion for all people but also knows that there’s no such thing as a single right answer.  Cassie doesn’t trust the U.S. government, but she trusts a world with no government even less, and she more than any other Animorph understands the value of compromise.

Ax: Team Iron Man, because Ax tends to believe that the solution to any one group having too much power is a set of checks and balances.  He evolves over the course of the series to understand his brother’s anarchistic tendencies better, but he also experiences visceral disgust at the idea of secret assassin squads and other excesses on the part of the andalites’ War Council.

Marco: Team Cap, but only lightly.  Marco’s canny and cynical and definitely does not believe that the solution to an excess of law enforcement is more law enforcement.  But he also sees moral event horizons coming, even when he chooses to wave at said ethical thresholds as they go by rather than respecting them.  If one side seemed to be more effective at preventing violence than the other, he’d go for that one regardless of its ideals.

Rachel: Team Cap, because Rachel’s the type of person who gets angry at even the implication that someone is trying to control her.  Deep down, Rachel fears becoming a controller even more than anyone else on the team — definitely more than she fears dying — and she would not willingly give up her power to a relatively unknown government agency.

Tobias: Team Iron Man, but with Marco’s same lack of conviction and willingness to change.  Tobias knows his own limits, up to and including knowing that some ethical questions are simply too big or too complex for him to answer.  In Tobias’s case, it’d be a matter of wanting to at least give the Superhuman Registration Act a try, and then seeing how it’s working out before jumping to conclusions.

[beatricebidelaire]

(gotta admit it's been a while since I've seen that theory, and something about it opened a door of questions related to VFD I'd forgotten about) how far do you think some members of VFD are willing to go to appease either where they fall in the organization or their own personal gain? what or who makes them take a step back and wonder if they're willing to risk losing everything for VFD? how many families has VFD broken? are the Baudelaires the only ones who still have each other in the end?

hi! yeah the mrs quagmire esme twins/triplets theory really does open a lot of interesting dynamics

i think wrt sacrificing family in the name of personal gains or greater good for vfd varies from one individual to another, and in the case of putting vfd first, and i don’t think that we got much canon info on the former - like there are speculation and headcanons and theory about Olaf’s and Esme’s family but there’s nothing canonically showing that. in a way, olaf losing his family (his parents) is also a significant motivation for revenge. perhaps it’s not that they were willing to put personal gains so far above family, but rather after losing family, personal gains were all esme or olaf had left.

as for putting vfd first or families teared apart by vfd, the first that comes to mind is the snickets. the way that even back in atwq they seemed to be working on separate things, on their own. the way vfd had trained them well to not recognize each other when needed. i think something that always stayed on my mind is that the snickets were on the same side and they hadn’t seen each other for years, whereas the denouements weren’t all on the same side yet they lived together and worked together. it’s an interesting yet a bit heartbreaking comparison. like the denouements may be teared apart by the schism that they ended up on different sides, but at least they get to see each other every day.

that said, despite being separated (at least in physical distance) by vfd and the schism, and despite jacques’s (and kit’s) loyalty to vfd, i do not think they placed vfd so above family. see, jacques was loyal, sure, he believed the cause and believed they’re doing the right thing, but he also helped lemony go on the lam to keep him safe.

“until the fires have been extinguished we must go our separate ways and risk our separate lives” - its such a jacques line to say and it’s breaking my heart. and we also see him working on investigations trying to clear lemony’s name, as seen in tbb rare edition. we see him dropping by lulu’s to try to check on if lemony’s still alive. jacques may believe in vfd but also he may let vfd taught him into believing they should work separately as siblings from a young age, but even while doing vfd missions he’s still working so hard to help his brother, to ensure his safety to investigate on clearing his name, even if that part is not aligned with the organization goal. he did it because he loved his brother and also he probably considered it his responsibility. this is more personal, more family responsibility for him than a vfd/volunteer work one. he did it regardless. i like to think that yes jacques was loyal to vfd, but his family was also important to him - even if he didn’t know how to show it in keeping them company, but he showed it in his own way and he did his best. i think kit loved lemony as well and we were definitely shown scenes of them being closer than J and L, but i suspect kit wasn’t as aware of lemony being alive and thus we didn’t see communication between them afterwards.

jacques and kit - they were more complicated and we never really knew why they seemed to not have spoke to each other in years despite probably both being in the city. i think they loved each other but sometimes it’s hard to express that with all the secrets they had to keep, and so many troubles going on. i don’t think they would go lengths to put vfd above each other, but the problem was, they also thought as long as each other wasn’t in immediate danger, then it’s fine to put vfd work above repairing their probably already fractured sibling relationship. like they loved each other and they would try to save each other if needed, but until an immediate danger surfaced, they think it’s okay to put vfd first. vfd probably taught them that.

what they probably forgot was that if they let the fractured sibling relationship continue to be fractured, if they didn’t make efforts to keep in touch .... it’s hard to know when there’s an immediate danger and when news reached one of them it’s often too late (exhibit A: the vile village)

i think maybe jacques and kit never thought they’d lost each other so fast and so sudden due to vfd troubles. it’s not like they’re willing to risk everything, it’s just they thought continuing what they’re doing wouldn’t cause any negative effects, and when they realized they’re wrong it’s too late already.

and also, we see fernald and fiona choosing each other, the only family they had left, above other things. granted technically fiona’s not vfd and fernald had already left his family for reasons vfd caused years ago - but we did see them putting family first.

so i think i would say - vfd definitely broken many families in different ways and made them sometimes not know how to love one another best, but that didn’t mean the individuals we see always choose to put vfd first, and that didn’t mean they didn’t love their family, even if they weren’t sure how to sometimes. that even if vfd broke them apart, we see them trying to save each other in their own way, trying to protect their family even if that countered vfd goal sometimes. we see fernald and fiona choosing each other, we see the denouements staying together despite being on different sides, we see jacques helping lemony to stay safe and clear his name. in the end, they may not have each other the way the baudelaires did, but i think they tried their best to love each other in their own way. and sometimes that’s the best one can do under the circumstances one is given.

[hamliet]

Messy, Perfect Redemption: Dazai

My least favorite trope in fiction is probably redemption via death. It just seldom works for the best possible story and more often than not comes across as an author wanting to take the easy way out with having now made the audience like the character, but not having to deal with the repercussions with their relationships with other characters and actual work of changing. Which honestly is also fair. Writing is hard.

But one of the things I love about Bungou Stray Dogs is how the entire story is basically Dazai’s redemption arc in all its disastrous messy glory. Redemption is hard, becoming a better person is exhausting and it doesn’t happen overnight. Despite an often cavalier attitude towards everyone around him, Dazai never loses sight of Odasaku’s last words to him.

"Listen. You told me that you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side who saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity. (...) Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that'd make you at least a little bit better. (...) Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because... I am your friend."

Leaving the mafia and deciding to save people from now on is a good step, but it’s a process, as we see. It’s choosing every day to save orphans, to protect the weak, and even after making the overall choice to become a better man, there are still plenty of struggles along the way. It’s what makes Dazai such a compelling, powerful and ultimately hopeful character for me.

I know Atsushi is often seen as representing Dazai’s second chance after Akutagawa, his redemption in a sense, and that’s not wrong at all. Atsushi is definitely a major, even the main, part of it, but in my opinion it’s not the whole of it. Dazai’s mentoring of Atsushi is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it absolutely is a part of his redemption. He’s genuinely trying to do his best with Atsushi, and I do think he cares for him--clearly, he cares enough to let himself be captured by the mafia, even.

On the other hand, ignoring a kid you hurt for a kid you didn't is not redemption in and of itself when you could still do something about it. It’s not like Akutagawa has given up on Dazai in any way; he’s pretty desperate for Dazai’s acknowledgement even now.

If saving one requires you to abandon the other, are you really a better person for it ? Like, if you wanna save orphans, you kinda have to include the one who's literally begging you to save him and who is only in this bad place because of you.

If joining the agency would have redeemed Dazai, we wouldn’t have a story, though again I’m not minimizing the importance of this or the resonance of Dazai’s mentoring of Atsushi. But in joining the agency, Dazai left someone behind--more than one someones, actually. Dazai’s redemption is a process that will require him to face the harm he caused in the mafia and as much as possible, fix it. And he can’t fully redeem himself until he integrates with his shadow. Unlike Atsushi whose shadow is directly personified in Akutagawa, though, Dazai’s is in several other people (we could also consider Odasaku and Atsushi part of the anima), including Akutagawa, Chuuya, Dostoyevsky, and Mori.

Even the next time Dazai saves an orphan (Kyouka), we find out that a lot of the cruel ways Akutagawa trained her came from how Dazai trained him.

It’s a consequence coming back to Dazai that his mentee decides to save a child trapped in the mafia whom everyone wants to give up on, a child whose been through the same training he forced Akutagawa into (which I should remind you includes a canonical mock execution). The difficulties of saving Kyouka are probably exactly why Dazai took so long to make baby steps towards Akutagawa. But to his credit, while he’s not exactly compassionate with Kyouka while she’s imprisoned, Dazai does save her. If mentoring a kid on the verge of turning into a criminal is the first step to reconciling with his mafia self, then Dazai’s helping save Kyouka is the next one.

However, he doesn’t fully understand the cruelties of he did to Akutagawa, as shown in how he mocks him after his capture by repeating Akutagawa’s worst fears to him:

I know Dazai’s playing a long game with setting up Atsushi and Akutagawa’s partnership in shin soukoku, but the ends don’t always justify the means and that’s a lesson often shown to us in BSD (it’s in part the reason Dazai left the mafia; he couldn’t buy that Oda’s death was justifiable because it got rid of Mimic and got the Port Mafia their black ticket). This type of triggering really isn’t okay. Like I said here, Dazai is in part the cause of Atsushi and Akutagawa’s struggles to get along, and he should be part of reconciling that schism as well.

I know while some people are annoyed that fans call a person two years older than someone else their father figure, but the manga itself draws this comparison and codes Dazai/Atsushi and Dazai/Akutaqawa as a mentor/mentee relationship which is 99% of the time coded as parental in literature (and it definitely is here). Akutagawa literally draws the comparison himself between his relationship with Dazai and Atsushi’s with his abusive orphanage headmaster. Yes, Akutagawa’s making some logical jumps here (refusing to acknowledge that Dazai is just as much Atsushi’s mentor as his), but the manga wants us to make this comparison.

As Atsushi wasn’t able to reconcile his frustration and hurt towards the orphanage headmaster, he’ll probably do so through Akutagawa and through Dazai, because Atsushi’s view of Dazai is basically that he’s already redeemed and fantastic and justified in his choices--again, I know Atsushi complains about his irresponsibility sometimes, but it’s mostly played as a joke and isn’t a serious critique of just how he treated Akutagawa, despite Atsushi hating Akutagawa for how he treated Kyouka (take that train of thought a little further, Atsushi).

But onto Dazai’s other relationships. It’s telling that Dazai is at his most unrestrained and violent in the mafia when he partners with Chuuya, who despite being very restrained thanks to him being capable of uninhibited destruction that would lead to his own death without said restraint, knows who Dazai is and what he’s capable of from the very beginning (he’s so much as seen Dazai murder the orphans who comprise the Sheep even after promising Chuuya he wouldn't). Kunikida is Chuuya’s foil in that he works most closely with Dazai in the agency and is perpetually ready to strangle him, but Kunikida is also incredibly principled and restrained--yet he is significantly the only member of the agency who, prior to the Guild Arc, did not know Dazai used to be in the mafia.

Kunikida’s ideals including saving everyone if possible. Both Chuuya and Kunikida represent these two extremes of what Dazai is capable of--and yet notably both of them care about saving children and are in many ways more compassionate people than Dazai.

The one time we see Chuuya talk about killing a kid is with Q, who notably is introduced to us as another child with the soukoku partnership team-up.

Q, a child with half-dark hair and half-white hair (gee I wonder what that symbolizes) is a child made to curse the world and hate ever being born. Chuuya and Dazai team up to save him but contemplate killing him.

Dazai’s choice not to kill Q is stated to be to save himself, which is probably is, but it’s also symbolic of how Dazai’s saving other people is saving himself (and also ties back to another quote Odasaku liked to repeat from Natsume: “everyone exists to save themselves”).

But Chuuya’s motivation, as I wrote before, is because he’s grieved over the loss of his comrades. Chuuya really cares about people, including Dazai, and the fact that Dazai is actually going to far as to model Atsushi and Akutagawa’s team-up on his team-up with Chuuya pretty strongly implies Dazai doesn’t hate Chuuya as much as he says he does. To be able to truly leave the mafia, he has to make peace with those relationships there. It’s part of being honest with himself: like Atsushi, acknowledging the darker shadows, and like Akutagawa, acknowledging the better parts of him too.

At present, Dostoyevsky proves a perfect foil for Dazai, as @linkspooky has written here. They’re the same in a lot of ways, but Dostoyevsky has allowed nihilism and a god complex to completely consume him and is not trying to be human, whereas Dazai still tries to save people and was devastated by Oda’s death. Dostoyevsky’s ability, whatever it was, works by touching someone like Dazai’s, but since Dazai’s No Longer Human negates another’s abilities, Dazai is the only person on which Fyodor’s ability will not work, making them the perfect counters for each other.  Dostoyevsky is what Dazai could be if his feelings of alienation from human society (a prominent theme in the real life Dostoyevsky’s works) were taken to their utmost extreme, and so it’d be fitting for him to ultimately defeat Fyodor through the relationships he does have (including Atsushi and Akutagawa). 

To return to Odasaku, Odasaku is also kind of a warning to Dazai as much as he is a man Dazai wants to become like. When Odasaku lost the orphans under his care, he fell into complete despair and knowingly embarked on a suicide mission to do what Mori wanted him to. Still, Dazai tried to save him. He wasn’t able to save his life, but Odasaku’s death saved Dazai. Yet it’s potentially concerning that Mori used Odasaku’s human connections to engineer his downfall, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mori uses Dazai’s to try to engineer his downfall later on (like, way, way on).

The difference is that Dazai is a good foil to Mori, too, in understanding what makes people tick and always thinking several moves ahead. Mori groomed Dazai from the age of like fourteen (or younger) to be his successor in the mafia, manipulating his suicidal tendencies and hopelessness to get what Mori wanted from him. It’s telling that the earliest we have of Dazai is him with Mori, in that Mori instead of caring for a suicidal patient decided to take him along to murder the mafia’s boss and induct him into the mafia thereby. The thing about Jungian stories is that there are often some Oedipal tendencies to them--like, for example, a character needs to overcome/break away from completely/kill their father.  I can see Dazai at some point having to overcome Mori and his influence to cement his arc, but that’s highly speculative (yet fits with Mori’s build up as a villain), so we’ll see.