#some background on both in case that influences anyone's choices:

[dawning-day]

on this episode of freaks on the internet dictate my life choices

[svsss-fanon-exposed]

I find it interesting that the most controversial/widespread posts have been those relating to physical appearance/visual medium. Lbh's hair and body type and sqq's eyes. I wonder what's the underlying cause for this. Maybe because people get attached to designs they feel more protective of them? Just a thought.

Oh, I would say this is absolutely the case. Visual design choices are, after all, often symbolic reflections of parts of individuals' own selves in some way, or of other things that are important to them. Artists will also spend a lot of time and thought on creating their designs-- and in some ways, visual media and written media are also quite different. You don't need the visual contrast so much in a book, but you do need it more when it's pictures, because characters with good contrasts are pleasant to look at together.

I actually think the donghua designs create a sort of contrast too-- both by SQQ's lighter eyes to LBH's, but as well as with the broader silhouettes, where SQQ has flowing robes and hair and LBH's silhouette is tighter. Also in general, the black robes of adult LBH vs the teal & white. Western stylization just focuses more on body type+hair texture silhouette diversity, while eastern stylization is more about the clothing and hair-styling silhouette, in a broad generalization, so it's only natural that when people create their designs, especially for a media that is only written, like SVSSS before the donghua or official cover art came out, that they will draw influence from the background of their own culture in creating these designs, in addition to their own experiences.

It's difficult too in my position, because while I genuinely want to take a neutral look at trends and history and patterns and cultural influence as a scientific sort of examination, there are so many instances of attacks on character designs, which make both the artists and designers and the people who like those designs feel bad and just isn't productive, even if criticisms are genuine. Things should be talked over civily, without bashing, because a space where people are belittled and attacked is not a space where people can learn.

Anyway, everyone has reasons for their designs. Sometimes these may be rooted in stereotyping or westernization, but other times, they're based on personal reasons and don't actually have those roots. It's not my or anyone's place to declare, definitively, that someone is stereotyping (of course, there are some instances when things are very very obvious and that's a different story), I only try to explain what things i can so that people are then able to examine things for themselves. I do think it's everyone's own responsibility to look at their own biases and think about where their portrayal choices are sourced from, especially when engaging with a culture that isn't one's own. But I don't want people to get into a justification loop, because that's not going to help anyone-- just to honestly take a look at the why of things. Sometimes there's subconscious biases, sometimes it isn't about that. I don't know peoples' own experiences, so I'm not going to say what it is or isn't.

In the end, accountability is something that is definitely needed in sensitive areas like westernization or stereotyping. However, accountability is not dogpiling on someone. Instead, it's personally being open to consideration, to change, and to growth-- and we'll never have that in a hostile environment. People need to focus more on holding themselves accountable, and less on holding others accountable-- we all have unconscious biases. It's part of existing in any culture or environment, and it's a life-long process of examining them and growing in experience and knowledge. And I hope to contribute that knowledge wherever I can, and use what platform I have to foster that sort of gentler environment, where it's not about making people who genuinely didn't know things feel bad, but where it's okay to be wrong, and to learn and grow.

It's up to an individual to examine themselves when they hear new information. That doesn't mean everyone needs to change their designs to conform with Chinese beauty standards-- which have plenty of issues of their own, and shouldn't be taken as more "morally correct!" It's just so that as many people as possible can have as much information as possible, so they can make the best and most informed judgments and decisions they can about their own viewpoints and thought processes.

But yes, even saying all this, I can perfectly acknowledge that fan-designs of beloved characters hold a bit of their creator's heart. While creators can be imperfect, the experiences and emotions and care that these designs stem from is still genuine, and should be treated with gentleness and understanding.

No matter if someone's viewpoint is erroneous or just different from yours, it's important to remember that every person on the internet is a real, human person. Fandom culture can be so notoriously toxic-- and it's high time that people remember each other's humanity, and treat one another with compassion and understanding. That's the only way to create a better fandom space-- and ultimately, a better world.

[starrylayle]

Soman’s failed POC and Queer rep in the SGE saga — And why criticism is essential to the movie (franchise)

[repost]

Before I start though, I’d like to say that if you have any argument about forced representation, dni. I don’t give a shit that ur faves aren’t white anymore — and please stop fucking harassing Soman and the cast about this non-issue.

Now onto the racial criticism of Soman’s work, which I don’t see talked enough about.

Being a person of colour does not mean you are exempt from racial criticism. I’m sure this is known by now, but in the books, literally everyone is white. Like EVERYONE. And not only that, the beauty standards he portrays and tries to critique (but then fails miserably at unfortunately) are so Eurocentric it’s quite disheartening actually - pale skin, small noses, coloured eyes, etc. The themes are also quite Eurocentric as well — if you had told me that the books were written by a white author, I would believe you.

Now, I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt here, considering he was writing a middle grade series as a marginalised author, which was a lot more difficult at the time, and because he does genuinely try to improve his POC rep in the later books (even if that does include retconning character’s previous descriptions lol). In that same vein, the cast is also noticeably more diverse, and I truly applaud Soman for that. However, he has not said anything in regards to the racism the cast have been getting, which considering his influence on the fandom, would have been much appreciated. (The only casting choice he actually spent some time defending was brunette Tedros 💀💀 — like mate, get your priorities together!). Also, since whiteness is quite intrinsic to the core themes of the story (I’ll make a separate post on that later), I worry that the movie will unintentionally be pushing it. And if that’s the case, people should be allowed to critique this (hypothetical) poor depiction of race, without it being considered racist. (As previously mentioned — this excludes those fucking weirdos who just hate on the cast coz their faves aren’t white anymore 🙄🙄)

Ok so, in regards to the queer-coding/queer-baiting:

Just like being a POC doesn’t mean u can’t have internalised racism, being queer doesn’t mean u can’t have internalised homophobia, especially to other members of the community. I don’t know why exactly Soman struggles with writing queer rep so much (I mean I can understand in 2013 — but now plenty of middle grade books include queer characters), but he barely has any canon gay rep.

Tristan/Yara, who is not even specified whether they are gay or trans, is one of the first characters to die, with absolutely no resolution to their arc whatsoever - and their queerness is never mentioned again. The next confirmed queer couple are two backgrounder guys who barely have any significance to the story. The couple after that are two evil white boys, who are only confirmed to be queer after they both die. They are are the only relevant gay characters at this point — yet ofc they’re dead, white and evil. This wouldn’t be a problem if there were other (good) queer characters, but since that is not the case, it just comes off as rather… icky.

Now notice how all these couples, as poorly written as they are, are all (white) gay men? There are hints that Hester and anadil might be in a relationship, but it’s never explicitly confirmed.

In addition, sophie and Agatha are explicitly queer coded — (I made a post about it on my acc for anyone’s interested) — they even kiss!! Of course people are going to be mad that they were baited into a relationship that ended up being incesteous! Especially, ESP, considering that Agatha is now a Black girl in this adaptation. We barely see any white canon wlw couples in media — Black sapphics are almost unheard of in the mainstream, especially as leads. first kill, one show that featured a Lesbian Black girl lead (a Dark-skinned one at that!)— got cancelled. And this happens all the time. Lesbians/sapphics, esp sapphics of colour, ESP Balck sapphics are barely given any time of day in our media in favour of centring gay white men in queer narratives, and thus they have every right to be upset at the queer baiting.

I’m not Black, but as a queer woman of colour, Agatha’s character has always been very special to me. I’ve always thought she should be a POC considering how different her and her mum are from the rest of her cookie-cutter village, and queer because she did not fit into conventional notions of femininity. It would be so awesome to see Agatha, a queer woman of colour, as the lead in a high-budget fantasy series. But alas, that is too many marginalised identities for the general audience.

Not only that, the twin reveal was just plain bad writing. It had absolutely no bearing at the story whatsoever and is never mentioned again. It was just done purely for shock value, and for that, I will absolutely critique Soman.

I know that this discourse is tired and worn out — and understandably so, it’s been years. However, now that this movie is approaching mainstream — At worst, this queer baiting can already add to the whole ‘lesbian relationships aren’t serious’ and other terrible stereotypes. At best, it deprives sapphics of much needed representation in mainstream fantasy films.

Remember, unlike with the books, we as fans have the power to influence the story. If the creators see how unpopular the twist is with the public, they can probably change it. We can make a difference! Btw, this doesn’t mean sophie and Agatha should be endgame — I’d like for them to be in a short term relationship and be confirmed as canonically queer — Tagatha can still be the end couple! (Not hophie tho, coz sophie is a lesbian and I despise Hort lol).

[karahalloway]

Devil May Care

Fandom: Heaven’s Secret (Book 1: Season 1)

Pairing: Lucifer x F!OC (Devon Hart)

Series: Oh, So Devilish

Chapter summary: Devon sneaks off to track down a lead on her death... But she's not alone.

Word count: 5,100

Warnings: M (swearing, angst, suicidal thoughts, aggro, toxic behaviour, references to death, physical violence)

Chapter theme song:

A/N1: So. This is not what I was supposed to be working on. At all. Not only is this not Intentions, but it’s not even TRR… or Choices, for that matter. However, a couple of weeks ago, @angelasscribbles convinced me to take the plunge with a Romance Club choices game called Heaven’s Secret and I became instantly hooked… especially on Lucifer’s character. I have a type; can’t you tell? 😆

A/N2: This first part of what turned into a two-parter (it just got too long, so I had to split it) focuses on the events that take place at the end of HS S1E5 and the second part focuses on the start of S1E6. Because while I love the character of Lucifer, I felt like that his characterisation missed the mark a bit (especially considering that he is the literal Son of Satan) so, I decided to make… adjustments 😏

A/N3: I appreciate that this is not what most people on my tag list signed up to read, but I have tagged my Permas anyway, in case anyone wants to indulge me. However, in the (highly likely) event that I end up writing more for this fandom, moving forward, I will only tag people who specifically request to be tagged. So if you want in on Part 2, let your preferences be known, or forever hold your peace.

A/N4: By way of context for people who decide to read, but are not familiar with canon for this story, here is some background (which I have also tried to incorporate as much as possible into the fic itself): MC (default name, Vicky Walker, but for various reasons, I decided to create an OC instead) is killed in a car crash. However, instead of ‘simply’ dying, she is offered the choice to become an immortal and join the Angels & Demons Academy (located in Heaven) and train to become either an angel or a demon (your choices in the game actually affect your path — prior to choosing an eventual side, you are referred to as an ‘Unclaimed’). As part of her training, MC is sent down to Earth to complete assignments that require her to influence humans into making various choices… however, MC is also secretly trying to investigate the circumstances of her (highly suspicious) death. Also, for the purposes of this universe, Lucifer is the demon son of Satan and Lilith (not a fallen angel as per Biblical canon). Dino, Sammy and Fencio are true-born angels (don’t ask about the names), Mimi and Adi are true-born demons. Both angels and demons (and Unclaimed) are anthropomorphic and have wings; however, when they go down to Earth, they disguise themselves in human form. Hope that helps! 🤗

Devil May Care

“Ah, there you are…”

Jerking my gaze away from Dino, I spot Sammy’s human form standing a few feet away.

“Sorry,” I say, quickly wiping the remnants of the wetness from my face. “I… I just needed a minute.”

Sammy nods in understanding. “If it’s any consolation, the fact that you care is a good thing. It shows you still have your humanity. No death should be treated lightly, yet most demons… and a fair number of angels have lost sight of that. But it’s a strength. Don’t let Adi or Mimi tell you otherwise.”

“Thanks, Sammy…” I say with a sniffle, forcing myself to stand.

“Any time,” he acknowledges with a lop-sided smirk. “But we should get going.”

“Yes. It is time to return,” confirms Dino, coming to stand beside me.

As if on cue, the air begins to thicken around us, and a familiar crackle of energy raises the hairs on my arms. Glancing up, I see the very fabric of the night sky stretch and strain as an otherworldly wind whips the now-familiar bridge between the dimensions into shape.

Dino steps into the centre of the maelstrom first, lifting into the air as the vortex sucks him back to the ethereal realm. 

“See you on the other side,” Sammy winks as he leaps after the other angel.

With a heavy exhale, I shove my hands into the pockets of my biker jacket, and force myself to move towards the epicentre of the storm.

Finding myself back on Earth in the wake of my death hadn’t been easy the first time, and it sure as hell hasn’t gotten any easier the second time either. Because even though everyone at the Academy keeps reminding me that my mortal life is well and truly over, and there is no going back, for whatever inexplicable reason I can’t seem to accept my new-found providence.

And coming back here — to the human realm — just feels like a massive kick in the gut each and every time… Like a kid being taunted with everything they can’t have from the other side of a toy store window. A cruel reminder of what that was wrenched away from me. My friends… My family… Even myself.

The undeniable force of the vortex tugs at my clothes, trying to lift me skywards, but I find myself fighting it.

Maybe because my death had been thrust upon me with such shocking suddenness… giving me no time to prepare, much less come to terms with it before I fell into the world of angels and demons. Maybe because the grief I saw etched into my father’s face has woven itself into the threads of my soul as well, reinforcing the harshness of the truth that we got cheated out of what could have been left of our precious, irretrievable time together. Or maybe it’s because I know that my killer is still out there, living it up despite the crime he committed against me, free from punishment, free from the scythe of justice.

The tip of my finger brushes against the folded letter buried in my pocket.

Since picking it up outside of my house a few days ago — though, to be fair, I have no idea how time converted between Earth and the angelic realm, so for all I know, it could’ve been years since my last visit – I’ve carried the piece of paper with me everywhere. In part because I don’t want anyone finding it and wondering how I managed to get my hands on it in the first place… As given that we aren’t supposed to interact with mortals outside of our given assignments, I am not particularly interested in the chewing out that is no doubt in store for me if someone decides to rat on me. But also, in part because I cannot let what happened to me go… and desperately crave answers.

Digging my heels in on the edge of the swirling whirlpool of energy, I pull the letter out…

…but as if by fate, the square of paper is ripped from my grasp by a particularly vicious gust of wind.

“No…!” I gasp, throwing myself heedlessly after my only lead.

The letter zooms around the circumference of the vortex — like a hapless butterfly riding the edge of a tornado — and begins to track upwards, ever further from my reach…

But just as it’s on the verge of vanishing into the void, it is suddenly snatched out of the air with inhuman speed and precision.

I stumble to stop, mouth agape and arm outstretched like some drunken ballerina as I lay eyes on the dark form on the other side of the vortex.

Crap…

Of all the possible ways this screw-up could’ve gone, this is — hands down — the worst.

As even in human skin… without the horned wings gathered around him like a dark halo, or the pulsing, ethereal tattoos that seem to constantly shift along the visible surface of his skin… there is no mistaking the raw power emanating from the being standing across from me.

Lucifer cocks a lazy brow in my direction as he holds the note up. “Lost something, have we?” 

His eyes meets mine, and in spite of the distance separating us, I feel the full heat of the fire that burns in his demonic gaze scorch into me like the blade of a hot knife.

And despite drawing upon every ounce of my willpower to prevent it from happening, I feel an incriminating blush rise up my cheeks.

A slow smile curves at his lips. “I thought so…”

“Give it back!” I snap, my momentary embarrassment morphing instantly into anger… even though I know in the back of my mind this is exactly the reaction he is probably looking to goad me into.

Because I am angry. Angry at myself for being stupid enough to arm someone like Lucifer with such potent ammunition to use against me. Angry with him for the fact that he managed to sneak up on me like this in the first place.

But most of all, my heart is still bleeding for that little girl who died a senseless death mere minutes ago… and the knowledge that I had been complicit in it. 

And I cannot keep a latch on the tidal wave of red rising over me. Nor do I really want to. 

I have already cried a river on the bench with Dino — commiserating not just for the fate of the girl, but for the fucked up situation I now find myself in as well — and I have no tears left. Just raw, frothing rage at the inherent unjustness of the world, at the flippant and uncaring attitude of my fellow immortals who see humans as mere pawns on their eternal chess board, and my own powerlessness in the face of forces and rules that I don’t yet fully understand, but which I’m being steered to blindly conform to anyway.

And the arrogant demon standing in front of me is just as good a scapegoat for my ire as any.

“Or what?” he taunts, sliding his thumb slowly across the paper… taunting me shamelessly with the missive he now holds in his hand.

Something inside of me snaps and I launch myself at him with a wordless yell.

But the vortex has apparently had enough of being kept on hold by my indecision, and before I’ve made it two steps, I find myself being sucked up to go careening through time and space like a discombobulated pinball.

“Damn it!” I cuss as I’m tugged through the shimmering funnel against my will.

I had one chance to make some much-needed progress on figuring out who killed me and why, and I’ve managed to blow it.

And who knows when I’ll have the opportunity to try again? Or even if I’ll be able to try again…

As knowing Lucifer — the literal Spawn of Satan — he’ll end up throwing me under the bus the moment we get back to the Academy… just for perverse kicks.

“Asshole…” I gripe under my breath as I feel the speed of the vortex slow, indicating that my unplanned trip is about to come to an end.

But as my feet touch down once more, it is not back at the Academy where I find myself. Instead, I’m standing outside of a building that looks very much like a police station… in my hometown.

“Huh…”

Dino had mentioned previously that destinations in the vortex are set by one’s intentions.

Since I had been so focused on the letter — which my father had received from the lead detective assigned to my case — the vortex must’ve thought this is where I had wanted to go.

And I’m not about to look an unexpected gift horse in the mouth.

Knowing that I didn’t have a lot of time before my classmates — and Fencio! — notice my absence back in the angelic realm, I hurry across the street.

Taking the steps two at a time, I shove myself through the revolving door and step into the station. Luckily, I have the contents of the letter memorised, given that I no longer have it in my possession, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to blag my way through this with some semblance of grace.

The receptionist manning the counter looks up at my arrival. “Can I help you?”

“Erm… Yes,” I confirm, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear as I step forward. “I’m looking for DC Lawton. He was heading up the Hart case…?”

I cross my fingers behind my back, hoping against hope that it’s only been mere weeks and not decades since my death, and the police are still investigating.

The receptionist takes a moment to consult her computer. “Yes. He should still be in.”

A relieved breath bursts out of me. Another break!

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Not exactly…” I admit. “But… I do have some information relating to the case that he needs to hear.”

The woman behind the desk studies me for a long moment, no doubt wondering what a petite Korean girl wearing pink pigtails and spiked leather could possibly have to contribute to a homicide investigation… given that that is the mortal skin I am currently masquerading around in.

But she nevertheless seems to take me at my word. “Down the hall, second door on the left.”

“Thank you!” I blurt, already turning away.

Speedwalking past the desk and down the corridor, I locate the correct door and push down on the handle without knocking.

The lone man occupying the room barely glances up from his stack of papers at the sound of my arrival. “Yeah?”

“DC Lawton?” I ask, stepping into the room.

“That’s what it says on the name plaque,” he grunts, indicating the front of his desk.

“Great!” I exclaim, moving up to him. “I…”

I trail off, realising that I haven’t actually planned out what I was going to say when I got here. As I can’t exactly reveal that I am the dead victim from one of his case files, come to demand answers about the circumstances of the car crash that killed her.

The detective raises his head, waiting for a response..

I take a deep breath. “I hear you’re the lead investigator on the Hart case.”

He nods. “That’s right. And you are?”

“An interested party,” I admit. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

His brows furrow, no doubt in response to the same train of thought that chugged down the tracks of the receptionist’s mind earlier. “What kind of interested party?”

Shit…

I’m not sure exactly how I had expected this conversation to go, but it definitely wasn’t like this. 

But then I remember that I’m not a mere human anymore…

And I’m not willing to leave empty-handed.

Ditching any rational approach, I scrunch my face up in pretend grief as I flop dramatically into the chair at the side of the detective’s desk. “I didn’t want to say anything before because I didn’t want anyone to know… especially my parents… but I can’t keep it in anymore and I need to tell someone!”

DC Lawton startles slightly at my unexpected and borderline theatrical flip of composure. “Keep what in anymore?”

I slap an aggrieved hand onto his. “That Devon and I were in a relationship!”

The detective’s eyes widen in shock, and I use his momentary surprise to lock my gaze with his, just like we practiced back at the Academy.

The physical contact, combined with the suddenly unrestricted access to the window of his soul, allows me to breach the energetic wall encasing his body, and dive right into the hidden recesses of his mind.

Yes! It worked!

But I force myself to curtail my celebration, knowing that I need to focus all my attention on maintaining the delicate connection with the man sitting in front of me.

“You must help me, Detective,” I urge, tightening my hold on his hand.

DC Lawton looks somewhat dazed — like he’s been whacked over the back of the head — but at the sound of my voice, his pupils dilate eagerly. “How can I help?”

“The girl in the Hart case that you’re investigating… she was run off the road. Do you know by who?”

“No,” he intones, his voice slightly groggy. “The vehicle was a rental. A black minivan. I haven’t had a chance to talk to the rental company yet…”

“Which rental company?” I press.

“Global Drive,” he says. “The license plate is NYK 357.”

“Can you write that all down for me?”

He lifts his pen up with a nod to scribble onto a Post-It. “Your hand is so warm…”

“Thanks,” I say, snatching the note from him and breaking off the contact in the process.

He blinks up at me rapidly. “Any time…?”

Jumping up from the chair, I turn to dash out of the room…

…and nearly trip over my own feet when I come face to face with the glowering form leaning against the door jamb.

“What th—?”

Lucifer’s lips curl back to reveal teeth. “I should have you racked in the Pits.”

An involuntary shiver runs down my spine at his words. Not because of the sinister nature of the threat — I’ve been to Hell, and it certainly is no picnic! — but because I can see from the tight set of his jaw that he is actively considering carrying it out.

I force myself to meet his burning gaze head-on. “Well, unfortunately for you, I didn’t end up in Hell when I died. So, you don’t get to make that call.”

“No,” he growls back. “But your flagrant disregard for the rules makes you a liability, and I refuse to take the fall for you.”

“Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you decided to follow me,” I hit back, bumping him with my shoulder as I shove past him on my way out of the room.

His hand shoots out to latch around my arm with a vice-like grip, and suddenly I find myself nose-to-nose with him.

“I didn’t follow you,” he hisses into my face, his coal-black irises alight with the very fires of Hell. “The vortex brought me here because you can’t keep hold of your own fucking trash.”

“It’s not trash!” I spit back. “It’s—“

“Was it worth it?”

The question — and the sudden change in his tone — catches me off guard. 

I blink in confusion, wondering if I maybe misheard him. But while his piercing gaze is still locked onto me with the same degree of ferociousness as a moment ago, behind the raging inferno of irritation glimmers a genuine spark of curiosity.

“Maybe,” I concede tightly, trying to get a read on him.

As demons, I’ve learnt, are inherent wildcards. Unpredictable at the best of times, and downright diabolical at the worst. Which means their whims and whiles can change at the drop of a hat, and it is dangerous to get caught in a compromising position with them.

Which — unfortunately — is exactly where I have managed to find myself with Lucifer. Trapped in a corner, with him holding all the trumps. So, I don’t want to admit any more than I strictly have to.

He rakes his hot gaze over me one more time — as if trying to catch me out in a lie — before pulling back slightly.

“Hmm… Not a complete waste of wings then…”

I wrench my arm from his grasp. “Fuck you.”

I swear I hear a snort of amusement escape him as I stomp away… But I resist the urge to sucker punch him. He is not worth it, and I have better things to do with my limited time on Earth anyway.

Glancing down at the Post-It in my hand, I can see that DC Lawton has been kind enough to scrawl down the address of the rental centre… and that it is only a few blocks away.

Which is a blessing, given that I don’t have any money on me with which to hail a cab or jump on a bus, and our lessons at the Academy have yet to cover how to magically hotwire a car. 

So, walking it is. At least the physical exertion will give me a chance to blow off some steam.

Shoving the note into my pocket, I push through the revolving doors of the station, and back out onto the street. Pausing for a second to get my bearings – it’s been a while since I last frequented this part of town, having spent the preceding four years of my mortal life off at college – I quickly rake through my mental map of the neighbourhood before setting off to the right.

Except, I don’t even make it to the end of the block before I feel a tell-tale prick in the back of my neck. Glancing over my shoulder, my stomach drops as I catch sight of Lucifer a few yards behind me.

Gritting my teeth, I pick up my pace, hoping that it’s merely an unfortunate coincidence that he happens to be going in the same direction as me.

But it seems that I am in no such luck, as he’s still tailing me two blocks later, like an annoying black fly that I cannot seem to shake, no matter how hard I try.

With the result that by the time I get to the next crosswalk, my cool has evaporated completely, and instead of crossing the road in front of me, I end up rounding on him like a rabid pitbull.

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite!”

My outburst seems to catch him off-guard. But whatever jump I may have managed to get on him is fleeting at best, and in the next instant, he’s up in my face again, teeth bared and hackles raised. “Watch your tongue, Unclaimed. Before I rip it out of your mouth.”

“Oh, the truth hurts, does it?” I snip up at him.

“You don’t know the meaning of pain,” he grits, his hand snapping around the base of my throat.

My eyes narrow. “I know more than you think.”

“No. You don’t.” The flames in his eyes lick over me contemptuously. “And your arrogance will get you killed. Permanently.”

“Bet you’d love to be the one to do it, too,” I goad with a humourless smile. 

I know I’m playing with hellfire. But I don’t care. I didn’t ask for this life, and I’m still not convinced I want it. So, if Lucifer is willing to put me out of my misery, then so be it. Being who he is, I’m sure he has the means… and I’ve just handed him the opportunity on a silver platter.

The Prince of Darkness stares at me for what feels like an age, his hand wrapped around my throat, face a mere breath from mine, his gaze simmering as if trying to read my very soul.

“Unlike you, angel, I’m not that stupid,” he murmurs, his voice barely a whisper. His hand drops from my neck as he steps abruptly past me.

“Then why are you still here?” I demand, whirling around after him.

He stops a few feet away, shoulders tense. But when he looks back at me, rather than anger or annoyance, it’s that devilish grin playing at his lips again. “Maybe I’m just enjoying the show.”

“Eugh!” I grit, throwing my hands up in the air as I plow past him.

Conceited, egotistical, patronising bastard! Why can’t he fall back into the Seventh Circle of Hell, where he fucking—

I’m so incessed that I end up storming right by the rental centre… and have to retrace my steps from the other end of the block to correct my mistake.

So, by the time I arrive back at the correct entranceway, my mood is even more foul than when I left the police station.

“Save it,” I spit as I reach the still-smirking form of Lucifer, leaning against the metal fence post of the lot.

His brow arches. “Did you hear me—?”

I flip him off in no uncertain terms as I stride past without a backwards glance.

He wants to stick around? Fine. But that doesn’t mean I need to be nice to him. Hell will have to freeze over first.

Arriving at the first row of parked cars, I pull the Post-It out from my pocket and begin scanning the plates, looking for the black van.

“Good afternoon, miss. Can I help you find anything in particular?”

Looking up, I see a suited man with a combover and a name tag looking at me expectantly. The rental rep, by the looks of him.

“Yes, actually,” I affirm. “I’m looking for a black minivan.”

“You have come to the right place,” he tells me with an eager smile as he starts to lead me to the other side of the lot. “Global Drive stocks the largest selection of rental vans available for hire in the area, and we’re happy to accommodate both long- and short-term requirements. Are you moving, by any chance?”

“Huh?” I’d been too busy trying to match the van plates to the number on the Post-It that I totally missed the question.

The rep’s smile falters slightly. “Since your interest is in a minivan, am I correct to assume that y—?”

“No.”

Both mine and the rep’s gaze snap around to land on the hulking presence of Lucifer, who has managed to slither up behind us without either of us noticing.

“We’re not planning on renting it,” he adds, with what I can only deduce is his interpretation of an angelic smile.

My stomach drops. Oh, no…

The rep frowns. “Then why—?”

“Because this lovely young lady is of the belief that she may have left a rather intimate item in one of your vans following a recent excursion of ours. And she’s desperate to retrieve it.”

“Oh, well of course!" agrees the rep. “We pride ourselves on—"

“It’s lacy… And expensive…” Lucifer clarifies with a sly look. “And probably lodged between the—”

“The point is!” I interject loudly, my cheeks burning with mortification despite the fact that the entire story is a shameless lie. “We would like to take a look in the van. The plate number was NYK 357.”

The demeanour of the rep suddenly shifts. “Umm… Are you certain?”

“Yes,” I say, laying a hand on his arm to try and sway him like I did the detective. “Very—”

The rep snatches his arm away. “I’m going to need to see some ID. I cannot allow access to the vehicles without verifying that—”

I reach towards him again. “Surely that’s not necessary… We just want to take a quick peek, and—”

“He’s going to bolt…” breathes Lucifer in my ear.

I flick my head away irately. “Shut—”

But the rep has already turned tail and fled.

“Damn it!” I grit.

“Told you,” Lucifer smirks down at me.

I give him an annoyed shove. “He only did that because of you! If you hadn’t stuck your nose in it, I would’ve—”

“I did nothing,” he counters tersely, the coals of his eyes flaring in warning. “Your attempt to influence him was doomed from the start. But you were too obstinate to notice.”

“Obstinate!” I cry. “You were breathing in my ear!”

“And did you like it?” he purrs, suddenly all up in my space again as he flips the tables on me with diabolical speed.

“No,” I snort, turning pointedly away. 

Asshole…

He deliberately sabotaged my attempt to establish a connection with the rental rep. Whether for his own perverse enjoyment — like the Devil temping Eve in the Garden — or whether for some more sinister reason, it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same. And I have no clue how I’m going to be able to salvage this rapidly snowballing clusterfuck, given that I am already working on borrowed time.

But I know I have to try. I’ve somehow managed to make it this far, in spite of the successive obstacles Lucifer’s thrown in my way, and I refuse to give that bastard the satisfaction of believing that I’m going to let him win whatever one-sided game he’s playing.

“He is gay.”

I stumble to a stop. “Say what?”

Lucifer is standing in front of me, blocking the way to the door of the rental centre. “The rental rep. He is gay. That is why your feeble attempts to influence him didn’t work.”

“Yeah… Right…” I snap, trying to push past him. I’m not falling for whatever kind of trick this is supposed to be.

He grabs my arm. “Check that attitude before I check it for you, Unclaimed. Because you’re not going to like my methods…”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” I hit back. “Because based on what I’ve seen of your ‘methods’, they are mediocre at best.”

His eyes flash in fury. “You’ve seen nothing, angel…”

“I’m not an angel,” I deride, wrenching my arm from his grasp.

He scoffs. “Well, you’re certainly no demon. The way you’re floundering around like—”

I catch sight of something through the window. “Oh, no…”

Lucifer jerks his gaze over his shoulder…

…and before I can blink, he’s vanished into the rental centre, the glass door flapping wildly in his wake.

Catching the handle on the out-swing, I dash after him as fast as my stiletto boots can carry me… and an involuntary gasp escapes me as I lay eyes on the scene in front of me.

The rental rep is pressed up against the wall, his feet dangling a good foot off the ground as Lucifer holds him suspended with the hand locked around his neck. The phone that I’d spotted the rep frantically trying to dial a moment ago lies shattered on the floor.

“Please…” begs the man, clawing desperately at the fingers that are squashing his trachea. “I—“

“Shut up,” growls Lucifer, shoving the rep higher. “You have exactly two seconds to tell us everything we need to know before I rip your throat out. And if you even think about lying… Well, you don’t even want to go there…”

The rep blanches visibly. “Anything! I’ll… I’ll tell you anything! Please, just—“

“Ask him,” Lucifer barks without even a glance in my direction.

I take a shaky step forward. “We… We’re looking for the driver who rented the black van. License plate—”

“I… I know…” croaks the rep, his face starting to redden from the lack of oxygen. “I worked the shift and… and remember him. He never bought the van back…”

My throat tightens painfully. Because he rammed me off the road…

“Who was he?” demands Lucifer.

“Not… local,” the man rasps, struggling for breath. “Gave a hotel as an address… Hotel… Hotel Aphrodite. And his name… His name sounded strange… almost French. But he didn’t speak—”

“To Hell with all that,” comes the short-tempered command. “Give us the fucking name.”

“Am-Amidi Laurent!”

Lucifer drops the rep like a sack of trash. “You got that?”

“Yeah…” I confirm tightly, watching the man wheeze on the floor.

“Good,” he grits. “Let’s go.”

Without giving me a say in the matter, he grabs my wrist to haul me out the door.

I stumble after him like a witless marionette, trying to process what I just witnessed.

Lucifer… Willing to kill… For me…?

The concept simply does not compute.

“Happy now?”

The sound of Lucifer’s voice wrenches me from the whirlpool of my thoughts…

…and looking up, I find that we’re back out on the street, just around the corner from the rental centre.

“I…” I glance back in the direction of Global Drive with a lump in my throat. “Why did you do that?”

“To save time,” he replies dispassionately. “And get the truth out of him.”

“Yeah… But…” A shiver courses through me at the ease with which he’d immobilised the rep… The ease with which he’d threatened him. “Why?”

Lucifer lets out an exasperated exhale. “Hell’s bells, you Unclaimed are dense sometimes… Because that’s what you wanted.”

I gape at him, stupefied. This must be some kind of fever dream…

“Don’t I get a thank you?”

The simplicity of his question knocks me off kilter completely.

My eyes lift to his almost on their own volition, and I find him gazing down at me silently, intently… like a cat waiting to see in which direction the mouse will jump.

Except there is no malice or mockery in his gaze. Just plain old curiosity once again.

And because my tongue has become stuck in my throat, and after everything that’s just happened, my mind is a non-functioning mess, I do the stupidest thing imaginable…

…and reach up to kiss him on the cheek.

He stiffens — probably just as shocked by what’s happening as I would be if I could think coherently right now. But for whatever reason, he doesn’t laugh or pull away. He simply stands, still as a statue, hardly even drawing breath.

I have no idea how long we stay there, frozen in time with my lips pressed against his jaw — the heat of his skin burning me even through the dampener of his mortal guise — before we finally break apart.

I turn quickly away, face flushed and heart hammering, not being able to bring myself to look him in the eye for fear of what I might find there.

Oh, Christ… What the hell did I just do?

The story continues in Devil You Know

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[theodoradevlin]

Meet Theo

I know nobody cares that much BUT shamelessly introducing my MC cause all I seem to do is drop her name with no context, but I'm getting attached to her, so here's some background + indulgent doodles in case anyone is curious:

NAME: THEODORA DEVLIN NICK NAMES: THEO (Preferred), THEE (If you're feeling affectionate)

Birthday: February 25th

Patronus: Falcon

House: Hufflepuff

Wand Type: Sycamore, Dragon Heartstring - 10 Inches.

Quidditch Position: Chaser

Familiar: Owl, Hewin.

Physical Traits: Gray Eyes, with wavy/unruly auburn hair that sometimes looks like the deep dark brownish reds of fall - or at times brighter shades of copper depending on the light. Fuller upper lip, usually smirking or with brows pulled into concentration. Also big time blusher - which Seb loves to tease her about.

Personality Traits: Theo has a built sense of pragmatism that developed in her childhood due to hard choices she had to make, and fears she had to overcome. While typically strategic about approaching a situation, she is still mostly willing to try anything once just to do it.

Fiercely loyal, and slightly reckless, she will often be filling up time trying to help others that, before she realizes it, her nights usually blend into the early morning hours. Once she has time for hobbies at the end of they day - it usually involves solving a good puzzle, or reading about ancient tales while curled up with Highwing.

Despite having all the selflessness and hope of a Hufflepuff, Theo finds herself conflicted and slightly attracted to the darker parts of herself ....while also always trying to constantly do more for others to hide that part of her. Because of the truth of her darker self, she finds a strong friendship with Ominis Gaunt and Sebastian Sallow who seem to be able to relate to her trauma.

While she is influenced by the cunning and wit of her Slytherin friends, the boys tend to become more self deprecating, which will wind up with Theo using her emotional support Hufflepuff tendencies to bring them back up, and remind them to hope. She can't stand those who are unjust to others, and also has a great fear of loosing those she becomes close to again - so she will protect just them fiercely, which will lead her into a little bit of a frenzy. A trait that is apparent and contributed to her impressive duelling reputation as school champion - a title Sebastian warns her he is coming back for soon.

While she spends her emotional capacity mostly on others, she has been ignoring a few internal battles of her own that she stubbornly refuses to acknowledge.

Backstory:

Theo was born to David and Evelyn Devlin, both muggles.

As a child, she was happy and trusting - always running barefoot, rescuing rabbits, or constantly asking questions to all those she came across

Her mother was a librarian, while her father was an archeologist, which was partly why she was instilled with so much curiosity even at a young age.

Because of their professions, neither Mr. or Mrs. Devlin believed much in the propriety of the age, constantly letting Theo run in the woods or traveling together while her father was on site digs.

During one excavation in particular, her parents come across Miriam and Fig. Two seemingly ordinary historians that approached her father about the history of the area, and if they had stumbled across any artifacts made of ancient metal.

As it turns out, they had. After stumbling upon an odd looking relic, the camp is attacked in the night. Theo is woken by fire, and shouting. She rushes to find her parents tent, only to find that they have been murdered, and the relic gone.

Theo responds in panic, ancient magic surging through her for the first time. The attackers are all immediately killed, and Theo is left alone and shaking, not having known she was magic - much less capable of murdering everyone in a two mile radius from her.

Fig and Miriam rush back, hearing the commotion and find her there, clutching to her parents bodies, covered in blood. From that day forth, Theo finds herself plagued by nightmares of blood - unable to handle looking at even a cut on her skin.

They do all they can for her, take her in and explain everything.

They explain to her about the ancient magic, the wizarding world - everything. But it's too late for her to be in awe of it because she blames herself for drawing these people to her parents, and for their deaths. And Fig himself will blame himself for the loss of her parents for many, many years.

Over the next few years as she lives with her aunt, Fig decides to keep in contact with her, keeping the hope of magic alive and visiting her often, and she slowly decides to become more curious about the good possibilities of magic, and the world it exists in.

As he teaches her the wonder of it all, she comes to see him as a father figure, and also eventually is able to find the hope and curiosity at the possibility in such a world - where perhaps she can harness her powers for good, instead of destruction. If there's anyway she can redeem herself, and use it to constantly do good and help others - maybe she can eventually forgive herself.

After years of pressing from Fig, and though she has missed years of schoolwork, she eventually agrees to go with him to Hogwarts, where the journey begins in her fifth year.

[vickyvicarious]

Would you say Mina and Jonathan have some codependency? And, unlike Arthur and Lucy, did it get influenced by their being orphans and lower class?

I don't think so, no.

I think their behavior may certainly have been influenced by their background, a sort of "us against the world" mentality does seem possible to a slight degree, though by the time we meet them at the start of the book it's more just "we're a team" without any sense of the world being against them or whatever. (More just, they recognize the challenges they will face. Being realistic.)

But the thing is, their behavior is totally normal at first. They love one another deeply and their love drives them to achieve their goals, but they don't do anything unusual except work hard to do so. It's only thanks to Dracula that anything changes, and that still takes a lot of direct outside pressure.

What I was trying to verbalize in my meta to some degree is that while their motivations were in a sense selfish (because I love you it makes me happy to help you) all along, the outcome was usually either personal sacrifice or totally understandable behavior for most of the book. For example, almost anyone would have gone to their presumed dead fiance in the foreign hospital, since Lucy had her own support and wasn't that badly off at the time. They were 'selfish' in a way that hurt absolutely no one and was in fact usually very helpful. But when the Dracula attacks really kicked into gear, their desire to keep the other safe started to go against the other person's wishes and they began making their decisions independently in a way they hadn't really done before. This is where we got the divide from a 'selfish' motivation that they're united in and which harms no one, to each of them prioritizing their own individual desires and not consulting one another. This is where we get the vampire ultimatum at odds with one another (Mina: kill me. Jonathan: turn me). And those stated decisions seem to be selfless on Mina's part and selfish on Jonathan's in terms of effect (if those situations come about Mina reduces harm, Jonathan increases harm), but the core motivation is the same as it always was. Basically, their devotion to one another can turn darker but it's very situational (on an extreme situation).

Though their motives are selfish all along in the sense that it is their personal love for the other, it's usually in the "giving to charity makes me feel good so am I being dishonest?" way where the answer is obviously no, the result is doing good in the world. Their selfishness is not anything bad until we get to the vampire Mina question. They may always choose one another, but that's usually at the end of the day, not the drop of a hat, and in normal situations they're just a really dedicated couple. However, in this super-dire situation, their motivation stays the same and directs them to either extreme on the worst-case vampire question.

...Anyway, as regards codependency, that term is used typically for abusive and often one-sided relationships. The Merriam-Webster definition:

a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person manifesting low self-esteem and a strong desire for approval has an unhealthy attachment to another often controlling or manipulative person (such as a person with an addiction to alcohol or drugs)

And here is an article that lists some more signs of being codependent. JonMina are very dedicated to one another but they both can function very well apart. Their sense of self-esteem doesn't solely rest on one another, neither of them is truly any kind of dominant partner/they aren't unbalanced affection wise. I wouldn't call them codependent.

It's more that if the choice comes down to the wire, they pick their love for one another first. And again, the only time they get really unreasonable is when vampires ruin everything.

[autumnalwalker]

Untitled Solarpunk Witch draft, chapter 1.4

Spring, Week 4, The High Priestess

“The downside to government by consensus is that even in a village as small as Zello it can take a long time to come to a decision if the matter is contentious.  Of course, the fact that the consulting subject matter expert on safely dealing with old Corp era tech was laid out in bed for the better part of a week didn’t help speed things along either.  But now I was back in the discussion and had just given my argument for repurposing the drone instead of dismantling it when this guy agrees with me in the worst way possible.”

“I agree with the witch. And while we’re at it, if we’re keeping the drone, why even bother to disarm it?”  

I recognize the guy that just spoke up from the excavation solution group.  What’s his name?  Greg, that’s it.  He provided the cables and clamps.  Distracted as I am with trying to remember his name and with the mass murmuring that his question just caused, I almost don’t hear him when he continues.

“I’m serious.  As the wisdom of the revolutionaries of the Collapse says ‘To be peaceful is to be capable of violence and choose not to.  To be incapable of violence at all is to be merely harmless.’  We’ve always valued our independence, and with the world getting more interconnected again this could be a tool to help us keep it.”  

The speech sounds both excited and practiced, like he’s been just waiting for a chance to give it.  I almost feel sorry for him when the majority of the crowd all starts denouncing the suggestion at once.  But only almost.  I’d be one of the denouncers if I weren’t mentally scrambling to come up with what to say for damage control.

“Bast(et)?” 

No response.  That’s right, implants are still recovering.  On my own then.  Okay, go through what I know and work from there.  Greg’s right about Zello loving its independence; their isolation from the macro grid is a matter of choice as much as geographic logistics and the fact that they’re living in this marsh speaks volumes to their ancestors’ dedication to living away from Corp influence.  And this whole region has a gun culture that goes all the way back to the pre-Corp days.  At the same time, the quote’s a real one so he knows his world history as well as his local.  He’d asked a lot of questions about the workings of the drone and its armaments and seemed pretty fascinated with the tech specs I was able to provide.  At the time I thought it was a combination of safety precautions and a general interest in mechanics, but now…

Ah crap, he’s a Reconfiguration junkie, isn’t he?  It happens.  Kid grows up in peaceful times generations removed from old horrors and starts romanticizing the hard times and how exciting they must have been.  Gets real into the revolutionary ideology that we owe a lot to but doesn’t have a place anymore without oppressive powers to fight against.  Best case scenario they’re history nerds with a fixation on a particular time period.  Worst case scenario they start inventing enemies and causes.

I look around and the crowd still hasn’t settled down.  If anything, the discussion’s grown more heated and chaotic than I’ve seen in any of these Village-wide meetings so far.  To my surprise, a few people have actually started backing Gretg’s proposal, or are at least advocating to hear him out more instead of shutting the idea down outright.  I’m starting to get the impression that there’s some background and cultural sore spots at play here that I haven’t been privy to up until now.

I doubt anyone’s going to stop and explain to me right this moment though.  I sigh.  May as well make it clear to everyone else where I stand in all of this.

Take a breath to center myself.  Clap my hands together once, hard enough to hurt in hopes the unexpected noise will get people’s attention.  Raise my voice and hope it cuts through the din.

“May I add a few salient technical points for consideration?”

Some of the argument dies down, although the most heated pockets of debate continue on, ignoring me.  Cadaval, the sun-darkened, white haired old man who’s been acting off and on as an unofficial mediator speaks up, his voice loud but steady and calm.

“You may continue.”

Now I have all eyes on me.  For a moment I wonder why Cadaval didn’t speak up sooner.  Everyone certainly listened when he did.  No time for that now though.

“Thank you, elder,” I say, bowing my head in his direction.  That might not be a title they use here, but it seems respectful enough.  As I continue I keep my head inclined slightly so that the brim of my hat might hide my nerves displayed on my face.  “So, three points,” I say, holding up as many fingers.  “Point the first, any weapon systems on the are almost certainly damaged from its long submersion, so it’s not a question of removing them versus simply leaving them in place, but of removing them versus spending time, labor, and resources to repair them.  That doesn’t mean it’s still not dangerous to have around, as the original gas leak issue demonstrates, but it does mean that it’s not useful as a weapon.  And if all of you decide to go that route anyway, you’d need to find someone else to do the repairs and help you with reprogramming to make sure it doesn’t turn around and shoot you the moment you turn it on, because there’s not a witch alive who would willingly set up a weapon system like that.”  

That’s technically a lie, but we don’t like to acknowledge those people as witches.

“Point the second,” I put one finger down and continue, “even once the drone is repaired it will be poorly suited to use in the marsh.  The state we found it in is proof enough of that.  At best you’d have it walking around patrolling the boardwalks fully armed here in Zello.” That gets more than a few uneasy looks from people. “Unless of course, you’re planning on loading it on a boat and taking it to go invade your neighbors for some reason, but I can’t imagine that’s what you had in mind.”

I notice a few people back away from Greg.  “I wasn’t!” he blurts out, terror on his face.  “I swear to God that’s not what I meant.”

Shit, I didn’t mean to make him look that bad.  I don’t really want to contribute to turning anyone into a pariah.

“I believe you,” I reply.  “I’m assuming you meant well and just got carried away.  It happens.  So anyway, point the third.”  I put down the second finger.  “The first two points were why keeping it armed is infeasible.  This is why it’s a bad idea.  To your point about being peaceful versus being harmless, as a number of folks here have expressed tonight, keeping some guns around for hunting and encouraging people to think twice about harassing you is one thing, but nerve gas and explosive rounds designed to splinter into shrapnel inside their target is another entirely.  And I don’t know where you got the idea that connection and communication equals assimilation, but as one of those connecting outsiders I can say that’s patently false.  No one’s going to come to Zello and start telling you to change your way of life so long as that way of life doesn’t entail things like normalizing murder and child abuse.  But if you set up a Corp era combat drone fully armed with those kinds of weapons, that will get people asking questions and bring down the kind of attention no one wants.”  I put down the last finger.  Belatedly it occurs to me that I’ve made a fist to punctuate that last part that might sound like a threat.

“I… I see,” Greg says, head hung low.

Poor guy, I’m pretty sure everyone staring at the two of us right now is getting to him as much as anything I said.

“Will that be all?” Cadaval asks.

“Only a clarification that my intent from the beginning was to take the disarmed but intact drone elsewhere where it could be more effectively employed for good.”

“Very well then.  Now that we’ve all had time to calm down, we’ll hear some more cases for and against disarmament before moving onto the cases in favor of full dismantlement.”

*******

After that, the rest of the arguments “for” keeping the drone armed are more hypothetical and rhetorical than serious suggestions.  “What if we replaced the guns with ones that weren’t horrific overkill?” essentially.  Token academic efforts of considering all possible courses of action.

As we return to the repurpose versus dismantle discussion things stay civil, but remain divided enough that it once again spills over into the next day.  The big points in favor of dismantling are the justice in destroying a symbol of Corp era tyranny and violence, the potential usefulness here in Zello of some components and the trade value of those not needed, and the question of my ability to handle and repurpose the drone safely in light of the excavation accident.  And it would need to be me doing the repurposing.  That or call in another witch, roboticist, or hacker from outside Zello.

They’re all compelling arguments, as much as that last one hurts.  Even Bast(et), discreetly texting me through my grimoire expresses her favor of dismantling and tells me that I’m letting emotion cloud my judgment.  It’s rare for us to argue and the stress of that has me miss most of the last day’s proceedings.

At last though, a decision is reached.  The weapons from the drone are to be removed and dismantled.  What we can’t fully dismantle or melt down here they’ll take to the nearest town that has the facilities to do so.  I’ll be part of that effort, but I’ll be just one member of an assigned team.  A shelter where we can do this potentially delicate work while shielded from the elements is to be constructed a safe distance away from the village proper.

As for the drone itself, I’m given leave to take it with me once the disarmament is complete and tell the people in wherever I end up that it’s a gift from the people of Zello.  In the end, I don’t really believe it was the speeches about symbolism of making turning an engine of destruction into a tool of peace, the arguments that the drone could do more good in the world intact than as spare parts, or even the fact that the people who had been most directly hurt by it were all in favor of keeping it.  I think most of the dismantling crowd simply wanted the thing gone and sending it away with me was the fastest way to make that happen.

That’s all going to have to wait until my implants are fully regrown though.  And then two days later, I get the ping in my head telling me they are.

*******

“Hey Ursula, you helping out down at the fishery today?” I stick my head out the window and call out.

She sticks her out from the tent she’s set up outside the house I’m staying in and looks up at me, shading her eyes from the morning sun.  “That’s tomorrow.  Today…” she goes back inside for a moment before stepping fully out into the sun carrying an easel. “I paint!”  A slight pause for dramatic effect ensues until she tilts her head and asks “Why?  What’s up?  I’m guessing that dopey grin on your face isn’t just because you’re happy to see me.”

I laugh.  “No reason it couldn’t be.  But also, my implants are done regrowing!”

“That’s great!  The witch’s magic is back at full power!”

“Well, almost.  I’m going to need to spend the day recalibrating.  If anyone comes by to see me, mind telling them to come back later for me?”

She gives a mock salute.  “A day of peace and quiet for both of us.  Aye aye.”

I pull my head back inside, remember one more thing, and pop back out.  “Oh, and if you happen to come in and find me lying there totally unresponsive, that’s supposed to happen.  Mostly.  Bast(et) will let you know if there’s something wrong.”

“I promise not to paint a mustache on you.”

“That… wasn’t something I was concerned about until you just said it.”

“Ah, I’m just yanking your chain.” She starts making a shooing motion.  “No go on, go get your mojo back on.”

A few minutes later and I’m sitting on the the edge of the bed hitting the last few entries on my grimoire and starting the countdown for the recalibration sequence.  As I lie down flat my earlier excitement crosses the line to nervousness.  I know I’ll be fine, but I’ve had to do this a few times before, mainly back when my implants were still growing along with me the first time around and it’s always a bit freaky.  I feel Bast(et) nudge my shoulder with her forehead and give a comforting purr.  I flick my eyes toward her, trying to keep my head still.

“Thanks for that.  See you on the other side.”

A breath to center myself.  Close my eyes.  Less freaky when I go blind that way.

The first sign that the recalibration has started is a sense of my limbs growing heavy and numb. I fail to resist the urge to flex my fingers in protest. They don’t move of course, but that means it’s working. That numb, heavy, feeling spreads to the rest of my body and then, I cease to feel at all. 

Sight’s the next to go. Even with my eyes closed I can notice a shift. A slide out of the subtle redness of light through eyelids and into a truer black. The fading of the ever-present insect buzz of the marsh outside signals hearing blocking off. I don’t notice taste and smell until sometime after they’re already gone. Nothing like it being gone to make you realize your own mouth normally has its own default background taste. 

And then I’m left to float for a time. Hard to say how long. The implants are something like a second nervous system and it takes a bit for them to get back in sync with my natural one. I’m told that back in the early days of the tech they didn’t shut down the senses during initial calibration and people would get “overloaded” by the process. That reputation never fully went away; it’s part of the reason you rarely see anyone other than witches these days with extensive augmentations like this. 

The bigger reason though is that they became a symbol of Corp era invasiveness and control. Hard to stage a protest or start a riot when the people in control can remotely access the AR implants you had to get to do your job and make you go blind. Or hack your shiny new legs and force you to walk home. Or track your location through the credit chip in your wrist to stage a raid on your movement’s strategy meeting. 

We figured out how to defend against it and turn it back on them though. The reputation of witches putting hexes on people isn’t entirely born from folklore. 

That’s always been the irony of us. The most devoted advocates of a new world returned to harmony with nature are some of the most unnatural around and among the last to let go of the old world’s tech. That’s how we get people like me though I suppose. 

Why am I even here?  Someone asked that during the discussions about the drone. They meant “Why is an outsider getting a say in what Zello does?” but the more fundamental version of the question has been stuck in my head ever since.  By all reason, I shouldn’t have been deemed worthy of graduating and going out into the world on my own. Not and still call myself a witch anyway. 

Sure, I can talk the talk and recite our philosophy and tenets all day, but when it comes to living them? I’ve always been better at connecting to machines than people. And as for the spiritual stuff, as much as I jive with it conceptually, any time I talk with another witch about it I come away with the fear that I’m just not getting it on a fundamental level the same way they are. Don’t get me wrong, I think nature is cool and beautiful and vital and should be cherished and protected, but it’s easier for me to anthropomorphize a dumb killer robot than the planet that sustains us. I’ve never felt that sense of the divine that the others talk about. 

Wish I could. 

Maybe it goes back to why I wanted to be a witch in the first place. I saw one when I was a kid, thought she was the coolest thing ever, and wanted to be like her. Wanting to do good and help people, that all came later. I wanted to be a superhero, not a minister. 

With that kind of foundation, is it really any surprise that I suck at this?  I always thought that if I could just do the one part really well - be the best there is at the tech side of things - then it would make up for my other deficiencies, but now…  If I couldn’t even do this first job without hurting myself and putting everyone around me at risk, then what do I really have going for me?

On the one hand, there’s nothing else in the world I’d rather be, and I can barely even imagine life without Bast(et). On the other hand, if I’m really not suited to this, is it anything other than selfish pride to keep at it?

The witch I bonded to would never go for that kind of quitter talk.  If you’re bad at something, get good.

Ah, there’s the hallucinations.  I was wondering how long it would take for those to kick in.  Sensory deprivation voids are the worst.  Or is that just a me thing too?  I hear they’re supposed to be relaxing.

How much longer am I going to be in here?

As if on cue (or did I just not register the time between?) I begin to “see” something again. A ghostly blue mirror image of myself fades into the void before me, web of implants visible through the skin. A red highlight appears over my reflection’s toes and I feel a light touch of pressure there. The highlight begins moving upward and the band of sensation moves with it. In its wake the formerly highlighted areas turn green.  All in order there. 

Once my reflection is fully verdant, a similarly transparent woman in gold appears next to it. The standard grimoire avatar for these rituals. Every witch knows her, but we don’t name her. 

I will soon begin a series of motions to assess your rate of synchronization. Please try to mimic them. It’s alright if your motions are not an exact match. A mild sense of disorientation may occur as your physical body will remain stationary. This is normal and you are perfectly safe. 

Her voice and mannerisms are a triune of professional, nurturing, and friendly refined over decades of user feedback. Comforting enough to take take my mind off my previous thoughts and focus me on the task at hand. There’s still a hollowness that anyone who’s spent time around true AI would notice though. There’s no spark there, but the illusion is good enough to ignore that for this purpose.  There’s a reason she doesn’t have a name. 

Most of the calibration exercises focus on hand gestures and gaze tracking, but ultimately it’s a full-body exercise. All within acceptable margins; any mismatch to the avatar’s movements attributable to user error. I’ll be repeating it all over once I “wake up,” that time with my image overlaid on top of my physical body instead of in front of me.

 But before we get to that, there’s the network test. First interfacing with my grimoire and navigating some test menus. Then a spatial visualization of my other implements. Hat beside me on the bed. Wand on the nightstand. Broom in its umbrella-like charging configuration outside. Fainter lights appear after; indicators of other electronics in transmission range. 

We’re almost done. You’ve done a good job so far and soon you’ll be waking up. I and the rest of these visions will still be there when you open your eyes. There will be just a few more tests once you’re ready to continue. 

You’ve been lying down a long time, so as you come back to your body you may notice stiffness and thirst. There’s no need to be alarmed. This is normal and you are safe. 

I’ll be counting you up now. 

1, slowly drifting toward your body. 

2, feeling your senses return to you. 

3, slowly becoming aware of your surroundings.

4, more and more awake. 

5, wake up and open your eyes.

There’s the white ceiling above me, tinged gold with the evening sun.  I blink a few times, stretch, and slowly sit up.  The avatar wasn’t exaggerating about stiffness and thirst.  I’ll need to log some feedback about needing to address other bodily functions after a full-day calibration session though.

That can wait though.  I have higher priorities at the moment.  As I look around the room, the avatar, even more ghostly now that she’s projected onto the real world, senses what I’m attempting and speaks up.

It is generally advised to finish calibrations before restoring connection to one’s familiar.  Complications from doing so are unlikely but theoretically possible.  Knowing this, do you still wish to override the standard order of operations?

I know I shouldn’t, but I’m impatient and tired of being alone.  I give an affirmative.

Very well.  Restoring connection.  Please indicate when you wish to continue the calibrations.

The avatar and the rest of the test projections fade from sight.  A shiver runs down my spine and the background presence that’s been there for most of my life now returns.  The phlegmatic cholericness to balance my sanguine melancholy.  My eyes dart to the door just as Bast(et) walks in.

Welcome back.

“Thanks.”

[lesbian-octoling]

hey, i was the orca anon. how you approached it and how you approached the situation was.. really upsetting. i genuinely just wanted to know the reasons behind your design choices and nothing else because i take interest in that, especially as someone who designs characters with a lot of personal thought that i insert into my characters, even for characters that are just adoptables. i tried to state multiple times in the ask i wasnt coming for you in any way and i wasn't trying to say it was bad or to frame you badly, i just wanted to see what influences your designs and what story you want to make with the characters you design - if it was a intentional design choice, and if it wasnt i was just going to be like Okay ! cool. and if it was? okay cool, id like to learn more about it and thats all. genuinely, no harm was meant. i also want to state that i dont support or source peta whatsoever nor was that ever stated in my ask (so please dont put words into my mouth, you do not know where i come with my knowledge whatsoever from that ask alone), my knowledge also comes from studying marine zoology and studies (i cant quote exactly every single source im coming from here, but for example [Matkin, C. O., and E. Saulitis. 1997. "Restoration Notebook: Killer Whale (Orcinus orca)." Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, Anchorage, Alaska.] , [https://web.archive.org/web/20070221111451/http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/Marine-Mammals/Whales-Dolphins-Porpoise/Killer-Whales/Conservation-Planning/upload/SRKW-propConsPlan.pdf], running out of space for this please understand i cant insert more) but please know i am coming from a similar place from you and not just some random internet weirdo trying to vindicate or villify you.

I never said you were lol

I clearly stated that if you were genuinely asking. Then that's fine??? I literally apologized in the post if i misread it. And then answered the question genuinely

I have a lot of people who try 2 start drama on my blog, so you can't blame me for being wary. Especially since you are an anon, and you could literally be anyone. Like... you're right! I don't know your background at all!!! You could be anyone!!!! Like. You do see how that's scary to me, a person who's been accused of literally everything under the sun (antisemitism, racism, anti-lgbt, pedophilic, anti-asexual, literal MURDER ive been accused of MURDER on my CALLIE SIDEBLOG after I turned off anon) just for shits and giggles cus people have to try to make up stuff instead of just saying they don't like me. Literally none of which is true. Girl I literally am ace . lmao

So yeah! I was wary!!!! Cus people are usually mean!!!!! And you kind of ARE a random internet guy to me!!!! But i also did apologize and explain my reasoning.

Also the PETA thing wasn't @ you, it was @ anyone reading the post cus I'm passionate abt zoo and animal welfare facts. I didn't put words in your mouth, I never said you supported them, I was just stating to people that you shouldn't trust PETA cus it was part of what I was talking abt. Cus I noticed it's the first thing when you google and I wanted to point it out cus lots of people who don't do research trust the first fact they see, which in this case was... not good lol

TLDR I apologize that I upset you, but also I don't think I was wrong in what I did? Because you ARE a faceless stranger and your intentions and tone are a mystery to me. So i answered both as if it was in bad AND good faith. So if it was in good faith than the first bullet wasn't aimed at you. Which I stated

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

[nothorses]

You weren't fuckin kidding man. Someone saw that ask I sent you about how people assume I'm culturally Christian because I'm white and live in the US and they decided that actually I'm a stupid idiot who had "an explicitly Christian upbringing" and is just too dumb to realize that I'm part of the "oppressor class." It's not that I didn't believe you when you said how bad it was, I had just never personally experienced it before because I don't talk about religion except on very rare occasions. But these people are fucking unhinged!! Apparently the bar for being culturally Christian is as low as "has interacted with or been affected by Christianity at some point." This shit is wild!

Now I feel like I have to avoid anything that might be taken and misconstrued as me being "culturally Christian." Like I feel like I can't say omg anymore because it has "god" in it.

Oh yeah, it is absolutely wild lmao.

I think there are two pretty dominant ways of looking at cultural christianity right now:

You either Are A Cultural Christian or you are not, or;

Cultural Christianity is something that impacts an entire society, and that anyone within it can express.

Under the first one, they have to actually define who is culturally Christian, and what the bar for that is; which means we get different conflicting models of how to decide who Counts as a cultural Christian. So then we get "you're culturally Christian if you..."

Are a Christian

Were at any point a Christian

Were raised by Christian family

Live in a Christian-dominated society and were not raised under any other (non-Christian) religion

Live in a Christian-dominated society but "come from a Christian background"

Live in a Christian-dominated society but are not religious

Participate in any aspect of Christianity, even in a non-religious sense.

Or some combination thereof.

Each of which kind of falls short of capturing the full picture or being much of a useful term. Obviously Christians are Christian; we don't really need another term for that. But ex-Christians can convert, can't they? So is it just ex-Christian atheists, or are, for example, Jewish converts "still culturally Christian"? So can people who were raised by Christian family; again, does this only apply to atheists? What kind of atheists does it actually apply to?

And the last groups consists of a huge variety of people: again, atheists can raise atheists or have been raised by atheists, often going back multiple generations (I'm part of the third generation of atheists in my family- on both sides).

Is the deciding factor here whiteness? I absolutely agree that white people are more likely to be hostile toward other cultures and the religions generally associated with them; but that's not because white people are Christian (Black Americans, for example, have a long, complicated history with Christianity; from forced conversion to a modern unique relationship with their own Christian beliefs and practices, all of which should be defined by them). That is, imo, an extension of racism & white supremacy- which is itself very tied into Christianity.

And as for people who participate in Christianity- what about cultural conversion/erasure? What about mixed religion families; half-Jewish and half-Christian families that celebrate both sets of holidays, for example? What about people who "celebrate" only because family does? What about people who are forced by their families, or others, to participate?

Again, is "cultural Christianity" just something that applies to atheists? And if so, why?

Either we need a perfect definition and delineation that can adequately, respectfully categorize everyone from every complex experience and background and acknowledge that people change categories entirely, often by their own choice; or our entire culture is influenced by Christianity, in which case anyone can theoretically be influenced by it regardless of background, and atheists are not "more Christian" than anyone else by default.

It needs to be a broad and fluid umbrella, or we need a different one entirely.

I've seen @cleverthylacine suggest that we should talk about it like "passing", which I can honestly get behind; people who "pass" as Christian aren't necessarily gaining privilege, but depending on how congruent that external perception is with their internal reality, it can be a much smoother experience than those who are openly antagonistic, or inherently oppositional to Christianity are.

i.e. a Jewish person who asks for their holidays off is not passing, and is challenging Christianity in a way that is going to lead to experiences of antisemitism, specifically.

An atheist who celebrates Jewish holidays and asks for them off from work will likely experience some, or all, of the same.

An atheist who happily celebrates Christian holidays isn't going to face much hardship at all- or likely even notice that they'd be subject to opposition if they didn't.

An atheist who quietly avoids celebrating Christian holidays is going to have some internal struggles and awkward, uncomfortable interactions with Christians who want them to do otherwise.

An atheist who openly, vocally resists celebrating Christian holidays- and even goes as far as to advocate against their workplace holding celebrations for them- is going to face a lot of open opposition and bigotry from Christians in their workplace.

It's based more on action, personal relationship to the religion, and individual choices/situations/experiences, and avoids treating the "passing" experience as if it's inherently a privilege- or inherent to a specific group. And it allows a lot of room for those conversations around who exactly is Presumed Christian (white people, mostly), what that means, without assuming everyone from a certain category is going to have the exact same experience forever.

[catohphm]

A True Friend for a Werewolf

Hi everyone, here’s the third in a series of drabbles that shed some light on my MC, Cato’s relationships with the canon characters of HPHM. I’ve written pieces for Talbott and Badeea. It’s Chiara’s turn now. For a while, we didn’t know what house she was in. She was revealed to be Hufflepuff in the sixth year. Chiara’s life and personality are defined by her biggest secret: she’s a werewolf. Very mysterious, she is. But unlike Talbott, she also faces social rejection and shame if her status is disclosed, not just government interference. In time, Cato grows to build a very close friendship with Chiara based on trust and a vow to look out for each other and keep their secrets safe. Just beware, this post is longer than the others as I provided some background and more details to help build the foundation of their bond. Enjoy!

Chiara Lobasca was born to an affluent family. Her father was an arithmancer and her mother was extremely skilled with memory charms. Due to her knowledge of the spells, she was employed by the Ministry as an Obliviator, responsible for solving violations of the secrecy laws by wiping the memories of muggles who were aware of the incident, as well as knowledge of magic in general. 

As a young child, Chiara ran afoul of the infamous werewolf, Fenrir Greyback. She was bitten by him and became a werewolf too. He attempted to recruit her for his army, which sought to take over the wizarding world as revenge for oppression against their kind. Fortunately, her parents were able to stop him and send him packing before their daughter could be influenced by him. Chiara, aware that she got lycanthropy from her encounter with the cruel Greyback, was extremely scared that he had gotten very close toward taking her away from home and doing who knows what to her. Sheltering their daughter, they chose to keep it private that she was a werewolf, knowing of the large negative stigma and laws that would make it hard to live with her condition. 

The Lobascas managed to live stable lives for some time afterwards, but the expenses of procuring Wolfsbane potion to help Chiara get through her transformations put strain on the family’s finances. She eventually befriended a neighbor named Selina, who wasn’t intimidated by hearing she was a werewolf. They were good friends until the former saw Chiara after she transformed. Selina was horrified and never talked to her again out of fear. Her memories were wiped by Chiara’s mum so she wouldn’t have to live haunted by the memories. It was from this incident that Chiara became a more guarded person, being very cautious over who she let into her circle.

She was sorted into Hufflepuff upon arriving at Hogwarts. Her secret meant her life and she understood that if it went out, she’d be in great danger. Chiara’s greatest fear was the fact she was a werewolf becoming known at school. Inside though, she remained the sweet, goodhearted individual she was before she was infected with lycanthropy. Between classes, she would help out Madam Pomfrey with work in the Hospital Wing, her dream of becoming a healer. It was there she first met Cato.

While Chiara found the Ravenclaw boy to be a kind soul who valued people, they remained only acquaintances for a while because of her previous experience with her former friend. They said “Hi!” or even waved to each other when they passed in the halls, but Chiara tried to avoid conversation as much as possible. Cato wondered why she was like this, but he had a feeling that she had something she didn’t want to share, so he respected her choice. It was early into their third year that they got closer.

Cato, Penny and Chiara were all in Herbology when a boggart emerged from its hiding spot. It took the form of a werewolf. Hearing Penny’s shouts, Chiara ducked under a table and fled from the greenhouse when the boggart was repelled. Her memories of Selina finding out she was a werewolf were triggered by the incident. As a result, she became less like her usual self and isolated herself more from her peers. Both they and her professors caught on this and grew worried. Penny was concerned too, and she sought her best friend Cato to try to speak to her roommate and find out what’s going on. 

He was advised by Penny not to mention her to Chiara, as she is worried that her encounter with the boggart may create a rift between them. Cato was worried too, as he hadn’t seen Chiara in the hospital wing much after the ruckus in the greenhouse. He first questioned Madam Pomfrey on her whereabouts. She suggested he look in a cupboard down the hallway she uses to store medical potions and other supplies separate from Snape’s classroom so that students wouldn’t touch them during classes.

Cato went to the cupboard, quietly muttering "I hope you're in there, Chiara." A door opens and her, recognizing him by his voice, ushers him in and quickly shuts the door. Chiara explains that she has to tell him something, needing someone outside of her house that she can be able to trust with the information. He learns of a rumor that she overheard about a first year who was attacked by a mysterious white creature in the Forbidden Forest which was believed to be a werewolf. The victim is believed to be a Gryffindor named Pippa MacMillian as she was reported absent from Astronomy the night the attack took place. Hearing this made Chiara desperate. Afraid of what could happen if people started thinking she was the creature, Chiara wanted to tell somebody she knew who could be able to help her solve the mystery.

Together, she and Cato sought out Pippa, who couldn’t recall anything the moment she was attacked in the woods. With the help of a memory potion, she was able to explain that wasn’t sure if her assailant was actually a werewolf. Claw marks on the arm prompted the assumption it was a lycanthrope. Chiara was very relieved to hear this. The three of them dispelled the rumors with Penny’s help, who was also happy to learn the good news. Cato and Chiara became friends after the case was solved. They talked more, especially when they were assigned together in classes such as Herbology. She was still careful with how deep the conversations got, but entrusted Cato with her secret, knowing she could depend on him.

Eventually, their bond would be put to the test. Chiara introduced Cato to an acquaintance of hers, another werewolf named Remus Lupin. She revealed how she shared some of the wolfsbane potion she received from the school to aid in his plight. Lupin was poor and had to keep moving and changing jobs every once in a while to prevent people from finding out he was a werewolf. He stopped accepting wolfsbane from Chiara as it was now time for him to keep moving on. Before leaving, he reminded her that the full moon would be out that night.

That night, Cato and Chiara were playing gobstones, where they opened up a bit more about each other’s lives. She quickly left after remembering Lupin’s warning about the Full Moon. Urgently looking for a safe place to transform, a greatly worried Cato followed her to the Training Grounds. She was about to tell him to run. But it was seconds before she shifted into her werewolf form. Instead, she told him to not let her hurt anyone. As she transformed right in front of Cato, he covered his eyes with his hands, tripping and falling on the ground. When he looked back up, Chiara was now a large werewolf with white fur. She was menacing, but there appeared to be some hesitance in her motion. Cato pulled out his wand, got up and with it behind his back, he called out at her “This is not who you’re really like Chiara! Remember, you’re my friend! You can count on me!” Chiara pauses for a moment, halted by what he just said, but then becomes aggressive. He calls out “I’m sorry! I have to make sure you don’t hurt yourself or anyone, for you! Cato casts Flipendo but the jinx misses and the transformed Chiara strikes him, knocking him back to the ground. His arm is now hurting from the hard blow, but he remembers the Banishing Charm he had learned from Charms a few days ago. Teeth-clenched from the pain of his arm, Cato aims his wand at the werewolf as she closes in to him, his eyes now brimming with tears. He mutters out “Depulso” in a stressed, worried tone. A mass of bluish-white energy explodes from the tip of his wand, blasting the werewolf Chiara several feet away from Cato.

She gets back up on her feet and stares at Cato. A twinkle gleams across her eyes and she makes out a weak smile, before turning away and running back toward the Forbidden Forest to wait out the rest of the night. The morning after the fight, Cato joins Chiara in the artifact room to catch up on the night before. She, although surprised, thanks him for standing by her and not running away when she turned into a werewolf. She then explains why she was keeping her distance all this time, recalling the incident when her neighbor found out what she looked like as werewolf and asked her mum to Obliviate Selena so that she wouldn’t have to live in fear. Chiara was then reluctant to make friends as she didn’t want to harm others through her lycanthropy. Now confident enough to face her fears, she fully opens up to Cato. 

He presents her a photo he recovered from the Training Ground after the fight. It was a beautiful color photo of the sun setting over the Black Lake, with Hogwarts Castle in the foreground. Chiara lets Cato keep it as gratitude for his help, and tells him that Lupin gave it to her. The photo was taken by Lupin’s friend James Potter, both of whom were part of the Marauders during their years in school. Cato learns from Chiara that the message of the photo is “The morning will always come.” They immediately give each other a big hug, Cato still holding the photo in one hand. She remarks “This is for not giving up on me. Thank you, Cato!" He answers “Anything I can do for my friends. They’re like family to me.” Chiara then said “I’ll always be able to make it through even the darkest night, so long as I have the support of my friends.”

They were best friends after those events, and continued to be so well into adulthood. Eventually Cato would retire from the high-adventure lifestyle of curse-breaking, looking for a more stable job he enjoyed that could also support his wife Penny and their two sons. He was hired as a healer at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Working with Penny and Chiara, Cato and they would often reminisce about their past adventures in school and as young adults. He continues to keep the photo Chiara gave him back in Hogwarts as a token of their friendship.

[onewingladybug]

I know this trend is old but I’ve been wanting to do it with Fading Faith characters for a while. There were several cats I could’ve picked for any given box, but I didn’t wanna repeat any cats. 

For mother and kit, I chose Cinderpaw and Sootberry. Cinderpaw is a mama’s girl, and Sootberry dotes on her sick little baby. She loves all her kits, but has a special bond with Cinder. I also could’ve gone with Sunfin and either of her kits, Rosestorm and Alderbark, or Palebelly and Loudbird. 

Siblings, I picked an odd pairing, Plumberry and Creekpelt. These two are background characters, but I really like them and want to explore their bond a bit more. Plum is ditzy and extroverted, while Creek is more reserved and thoughtful. They balance each other out beautifully. I also considered Fawn and Berry (I could’ve filled this with Fawn tbh), Morningmist and Sandstream , who are Plum and Creek’s younger siblings, or Frogpaw and Minnowpaw. 

There wasn’t anyone I could pick other than Bunetleaf and Branchfire. They are my only confirmed mlm couple so far, and they’re just cute to me. Soft little boys who are expecting kits as of the most recent chapter. 

Father and kit I chose Ripplestar and Rainmist. Rainmist makes sure her father eats and cares for himself, and Ripplestar loves and cares deeply with both his children. Sleetclaw also could’ve been used in this, either alongside his father or with either of his kits Marigoldkit or Webkit. Jayflight and any of his kits could’ve been featured, and Loudbird and either Fawn or Berry. Runningbreeze and Wolfpaw were also considered, though they stay seperated due to Flystar’s influence. 

Friendship, I finally allowed myself to use Fawndapple and her best friend Minnowpaw. I love writing these two, and have such a soft spot Minnowpaw especially. Frogpaw could’ve been alongside Fawn as well, because I really love him too, or even Alderbark could’ve been used. Flutterwing was also a strong contender. Moving away from Fawn, I really wanted to use Waspwing and Sparkfur. 

Speaking of Waspwing, him and his mate Dappletuft were the only choice for favorite straight couple. I love these two so much, my favorite line to tell people about from Fading Faith is Waspwing’s “why would I fight with you? You’re perfect,” line. 

Grandparent and kit, I went with Palebelly and Berrypaw, or Berrykit in this case. Again, I could have used Fawn, but I think Berry also would’ve been close to his grandmother. I imagine as a young kit, already interested in herbs, he’d find ones and ramble on and on to Palebelly about what he thought they did. I’m sure he was also one to listen to elder stories dozens of times, instead of play fighting with the other kits. 

For mentor and apprentice, I picked my only toxic pair, despite how interesting they are. Jayflight and Wolfpaw undoubtedly are a horrible match as mentor and apprentice, with Jayflight being arrogant, snobby, impatient, and cruel, and Wolfpaw just trying to gain approval and get by in the oppressive Thunderclan. I also considered either Fawn and Rain, or Wasp and Minnow, but no repeats. 

Finally, my wlw ship is Quailfeather and Rabbitbush, another Windclan pair in the background. Like mlm, there will be more wlw, but I couldn’t use any other ones for this because of spoilers. I love drawing these two, they’re so cute. 

I might do this again with other pairs at some point, but this was fun! 

[embraceyourdestiny]

Theory about Riku’s Darkness and His Ties to Terra

We all know Terra passed his keyblade onto Riku. But what if he didn’t pass on just his keyblade?

Riku is known for embracing the darkness, both falling to it and using it to fight for the light. The way his possession of darkness is talked about within the series is as if it’s inherent, like he has no choice in the matter and is darkness regardless of what he wants or wishes to be. They speak as if he was born with darkness, but what if he wasn’t?

Kingdom Hearts’ attitude towards darkness is confusing, vague, and complicated and is especially so in the case of Riku. Riku is hailed as a being with such powerful darkness, an undesirable “evil” within the world, that even at such a young age he was able to use it at will and control the heartless. Riku is seen as bad and wrong during this time because he uses darkness and ends up hurting people with it. But at the same time and later in the series, Riku is view as good because of how he can also control the darkness in a different way; by keeping it under wraps and using it to protect the light.

Riku, as is his identity as “the one who walks the road to dawn” is smack in the middle of light and darkness, but he is still a being of darkness. He is the only person we see who uses darkness for good and doesn’t let it control him. But, where does his darkness even come from?

Even more confusing than the the conflicting messages around the nature of darkness in Kingdom Hearts (is it good? is it bad? is it neutral? or maybe is it even something else entirely?) is the nature of light and darkness itself. We don’t know where light and darkness come from, how they work, why some people are light and some people are darkness, we know hardly anything about them at all. The nature of light and darkness is vague and shapeless in the Kingdom Hearts universe despite having so much importance. So, as a fun theory, what if similarly to how you can pass on a keyblade through a bequeathing ceremony, you can also pass on your nature, your light or darkness, to someone else, maybe even at the same time?

Children in Kingdom Hearts are told to be, for lack of a better word, True Lights. Their hearts are pure and bright and they are what helped rebuild the worlds after they fell to darkness and destruction. All children are pure and light, but if that’s the case, how does darkness even exist? How do adults possess darkness if they were light as children?

There are two possibilities: either the True Lights that rebuilt the worlds were not only made of light, or children can somehow be influenced by the darkness in possibly a variety of ways. It might honestly even be both.

Instead of children being “pure light,” I think it makes much more sense for them to be “neutral.” Children are innocent and free of evil, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are inherently light. The “middle ground” between darkness and light, night and morning, otherwise called “twilight” in the Kingdom Hearts universe, is a reoccurring and important theme in Kingdom Hearts and I think that the children who originally rebuilt the worlds were not in fact light, but neutral. Twilight. Or, there was a mix of children that were light, darkness, and somewhere in between.

It’s echoed both in Kingdom Hearts and in the real world that nothing can exist without balance. You cannot have too much light and you cannot have too much darkness. If this is the case, a law by nature, why are we led to believe the ones who “saved the worlds” didn’t have a single speckle of darkness in them? That directly conflicts with the logic of creation and would be otherwise impossible, there has to be darkness and light or whatever you try to create would belong to “unreality.” (Which is something going to be talked about in the future of KH but not here because it’s not necessary to this theory but it is still important background and something to be thought about when navigating the world of Kingdom Hearts and the real world.)

(Tangent: I also believe the reason we’re told it was “children who’s hearts were pure light” that saved the world is because it’s Kingdom Hearts own case of an ahistorical and incorrect telling of events. Kingdom Hearts resides in the Realm of Light and those of light have been in control for a long time, and they therefore have a biased perspective of things. You can see this clearly with Eraqus, a man who was supposedly wise and yet shunned the darkness, called it evil and wrong, and even inflicted this harmful message towards his own students, one of whom actively belonged to the darkness. I think the demonization of the darkness has caused so many problems within the worlds of Kingdom Hearts and this legend of the Worlds is just one example of a ripple effect that having this perspective of darkness has lead to. But this is way too deep and again unnecessary to this theory, just something to think about. Tangent/rant over lmao.)

Now, we go back to Riku. Riku as a child is shown as kind, considerate, brave, a good friend, and even morally upright. These are all told to us to be traits of someone who belongs to the light and are directly conflicting of the traits of what we see those who belong to darkness have; they’re evil, manipulative, dangerous, and they harm people and have little regard for others. Though I don’t agree that either of these lists of traits can only belong to light and darkness, that is how they are portrayed in Kingdom Hearts. So, if Riku’s darkness is inherent, why is he kind to Sora as a kid? Why does he say he’ll protect him, and why, if Riku is evil because he is inherently darknesses, does Riku want strength to protect others? If he is darkness he has no need for friends and shouldn’t want to protect anyone because why would he care about anyone else, right?

This is the attitude he is shown to have when he falls to darkness in KH1 and this is how most people who possess darkness are portrayed. Again, I don’t agree, but that’s how it is. Riku is, once again, the only character who is of darkness that is shown to be darkness and yet not be evil. (I say only because we haven’t see Terra post-Terranort using his darkness freely yet, but even if that does happen and he does embrace it, that is still an exception to the unfortunate rule Kingdom Hearts has created for the darkness.)

So, if Riku wasn’t born with darkness because he wasn’t evil as a kid, where did he get his darkness? Most people would probably say Ansem SOD, and some might even say he had “grown” his own darkness, similar to how Nobodies grew their own hearts, because of his increasingly undesirable life on Destiny Islands, and I have to say both are wrong. The latter option is definitely more correct, since Riku was only preyed on by ASOD because he already had darkness in him and was an easy target, but it’s missing some pieces to make it make sense because again, if children are pure light, how did Riku already have darkness in him/develop darkness as a child?

The most reasonable explanation is this; children are blank slates and they develop into whatever they are shown by those around them. Just like how real kids are a product of their environment, the children of Kingdom Hearts will possess the ability of whatever is shown or given to them by the world. For simplicity and since Kingdom Hearts is all about passing stuff on and less about observing and learning, we will only focus on the “given” aspect of this and disregard the “shown” part.

Riku, like all children, was neutral. He didn’t have overwhelming darkness or light in him, he was simply a kid and that’s it. He had to, at some point, stumble upon darkness or light in order to inherent one or the other, and in his case it was darkness that found him first.

Introduce Terra. Terra, a being of darkness, bequeathes his keyblade to Riku. He passes down his ability to wield the keyblade to Riku, and along with it, his darkness. Riku was still only a child and this event is shown to have significant impact on the rest of his life, so this has to be the first time he even comes into contact with anything so powerful and strong, whether it be darkness or light. Destiny Islands is an extremely relaxed and peaceful place, so though darkness and light both have to exist there, there are no threats or immense stresses that would require such large outputs of either light or darkness, unlike how meeting someone from a different world who has had those stressed would effect a child. (This is also why Sora, who was also neutral because he was a kid, ends up becoming a being of light. Like it’s said many times, Destiny Islands was boring, nothing exciting happened there, so similar to how Terra would’ve been the first time Riku ever encountered such strong darkness, Ventus was the first time Sora encountered such strong light, but back to Riku.)

Now, this doesn’t immediately make Riku “I’m gonna destroy Destiny Islands” Riku. No, that comes much latter, and with influence of someone else. Riku, after his run-in with Terra, and until he is 15 years old, is still just a regular kid, he just now has darkness in him when before he was neutral, which again, isn’t inherently bad. From Sora and Kairi’s accounts, Riku was just a regular kid until he just “changed” one day. He was still kind, he played with the other kids like he always did, after being given darkness Riku didn’t change at all because there was nothing to be changed, darkness isn’t bad so there’s no reason why suddenly Riku would be too.

Enter the other influence; Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness.

Ansem saw that Riku had darkness already in him and used it to his advantage. With proper love and care, even with having darkness in him, Riku would’ve blossomed into a wonderful person who just happened to be of darkness, but Ansem messed that up for him. Ansem, also having a strewed perception of darkness since the one he came from, Xehanort, was the same way, decided to weaken Riku. We don’t know exactly how Ansem influenced Riku but based on the insecurities Riku talks about throughout the series, being jealous of Sora, thinking “the world was too small,” (a quote directly from Xehanort himself, which Ansem he had to have said to Riku since they both say it and Riku ended up believing him and internalizing it), etc, we can tell it wasn’t any good. Ansem planted seeds of doubt in Riku’s mind and then played off the results he knew he would get; Riku pulling away from his friends and becoming bitter to a place he once called home.

So, you see, both Ansem and Terra played a hand in Riku’s darkness. Everyone acknowledges Ansem’s role and you can’t deny that Terra’s appearance affected Riku’s life down the line, but it did much more than make Riku desire strength to protect those that mattered, Terra was the one directly responsible for giving Riku darkness, and it’s very sad because neither of them had to be “evil” just because they had darkness in them. Terra and Riku were both kind, wonderful people before Xehanort interfered with their lives and that negative experience continued to perpetuate the wrong message about darkness, that it’s evil and something to expel or hide away, and that made Terra fear and hate the darkness and Riku half-way ignore a part of him that he cannot change, because even if he uses the darkness still now, he doesn’t embrace it. It is still something to be controlled and feared in both of their eyes because, “what if I hurt someone because of my darkness again?”

This was originally a theory/analysis on Riku but I can’t end this without bringing up the fact that the way darkness is portrayed in Kingdom Hearts, and almost all media honestly, is wrong. The darkness is not bad, it is a requirement to life. Yes, you can do bad things with the darkness, but the same can be said about light. Eraqus harmed three of his students and who knows who else in “the name of light,” and Sora is constantly put at odds because of his “duty” to the light, to the point of being thrown into a war as a child and not only losing all of his friends but even his own life because it’s what he was “supposed to do” as a Guardian of Light.

Neither darkness or light are good or bad, they simply are. What one does with them is what is good or bad, but darkness and light themselves are not evil or right. I hope Kingdom Hearts pushes this message more because there are inklings of it there, Riku if his character developed more, Roxas and Xion’s identity crisis in Days, and honestly the concept of Nobodies as a whole. It’s a message that deserves to see fruition and I hope it does because it would add so much to Kingdom Hearts as a whole if it did.

But to wrap this up, my theory is Riku was originally neutral, Terra bequeathed him both his keyblade and darkness, and, though not a theory, darkness and light are not good or evil, they are meant to coexist together, and hopefully one day we will see that happen in Kingdom Hearts, with Riku possibly and even preferably leading the movement himself.

[flying-mochis]

A thought dump about Soukoku and Old Soukoku (slander)

I was thinking about how Fukuzawa and Mori were in their mid/late twenties when they met and became the first Soukoku. And how they were in their thirties when they ended their partnership. And that they ended their partnership.

They both discussed ending their partnership, Fuluzawa made an ultimatum and stuck to it. They both respected their agreement and kept out of each others business, professionally working together only when they were forced to.

I thought that story would be wild to Chuuya. Probably to both members of Soukoku, but I mostly focus on Chuuya. I thought about how SKK's young age played into how their partnership's been built and taken apart.

Chuuya and Dazai became SKK when they were fifteen years old. They had definitely not processed any of their trauma- and there was more to come- they were never taught how to communicate with each other like adults. They were young kids who were shoved together and told their lives now depended on each other, that they had no choice other than to trust each other. Fukuzawa and Mori were equals in their partnership, and while they disagreed and didn't work in the end, they had built up enough respect to let it die and keep it dead.

SKK isn't really that equal. Not the way I read it, it seems pretty clear to me the power dynamic. Dazai makes all the choices, while Chuuya just follows them through, even if he doesn't want to. Dazai could manipulate situations to bend Chuuya in the direct he wanted. If Dazai wants Chuuya to use Corruption, Chuuya needs to use Corruption. If Chuuya doesn't want to use Corruption, Dazai's the one who's formed the situation that requires him to use it. The decisions already been made for Chuuya before he even steps into the field. Thats one example. Chuuya functions more as an extension of Dazai than as a partner who works with him. He is a weaponed to be wielded by Dazai, not a human who is equal to him.

It's a partnership built on the foundation of Dazai's influence over Chuuya and the objectification of Chuuya. That's what they were both conditioned to live in when they were fifteen.

They were eighteen when Dazai left. No explanation. No contact after he leaves for four years. I thought about what that would look like to Chuuya. One day the partner who he's been told since he was a kid was the only one he could trust leaves. No explanation could lead to a lot of assumptions. Since Dazai doesn't take responsibility for- like- anything- that leads a lot of room for self blame by the people left behind. Maybe Chuuya somehow knew a bit about Dazai's struggle to find a reason to live in the Mafia, so maybe he thinks he wasn't good enough to stay for. Which is kind of true, I guess. What would Chuuya think about Dazai not telling he was leaving, not contacting him at all? Maybe he didn't care about Chuuya enough to say anything to him. Maybe Chuuya just faded to the background in his mind as another thing to leave behind.

Dazai leaving for years looks like Dazai ending the partnership. That didn't end up being the case but it would be the obvious reaction. This (temporary) end of the partnership was abrupt and not discussed with Chuuya at all before hand. Like I said, they were kids who never learned to communicate with each other. They were taught that just surviving in the field together was good enough to hold up a partnership. It would've been a messy way to end a partnership on it's own.

But then Dazai doubles back on his decision.

Four years later, Dazai jump starts the partnership again in an on-and-off fashion. Picking Chuuya up to use in a battle or for information or something, and just as quickly dropping him. Sometimes litterally. Their partnership becomes something Dazai only has to participate in when it's convenient for him. Or the partnership was always kind of like this, just it's more extreme now that they don't have to look each other in the eye everyday.

Even more now, Chuuya is treated more like a commodity than a person. Something sat on a shelf, waiting until Dazai's generous enough to use him for some task.

So the partnership is abruptly ended on Dazai's terms, with no input or heads-up to Chuuya. Then the partnership is relit, again all on the terms of Dazai, with no explanations or apologies or anything. And Chuuya's still being treated like something less than human, after all that objectifying bullshit he's already had to deal with.

Chuuya can't catch a break, and Dazai's no better than anyone else when it comes to how he treats Chuuya. I guess that's my conclusion. And fuck Mori, as always.

[masterweaverx]

So I’d like to open this by saying I’m autistic, and I generally operate on the presumption that I don’t understand anyone--at least, not without some investigation and interaction. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Recently, I’ve seen posts about an interesting paradox regarding representation; a lot of writers want to include XYZ group, but don’t want to risk doing it ‘wrong.’ Thus characters are Gay/Trans/Bi/Jewish/Islam/Black/Whatever and, yet, this is unimportant. Or we have tokenistic characters where being a member of This Group is their defining and, in fact, only character trait. Either too little, or too much. Or maybe they’re background characters, done right except for the part where they don’t affect the plot.

I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of representation is influencing this. We’re thinking of the group as archetype--a statue that is All Defined and we put clothes on it and make it move. But... paradoxical as it seems, being a member of a group is but one of many possible character traits. And the thing about character traits is that they affect a character, and through that influence the plot, but they rarely dominate the plot unless the plot is specifically about that character trait.

To take a fantastical and therefore somewhat obvious example: Blake Belladonna, from the Web Show RWBY, has cat ears. This is A Very Big Deal, because fantasy racism and also because she’s good at hearing things. A big part of the plot is her saying “This is how my cat ears affect me, and how having cat ears affects my parents, and how I’m reacting.” But having cat ears is not her only trait--and in fact, they’re not her defining trait.

Blake enters the series having just escaped a psychologically abusive relationship. That affects how she acts around the strangers that will become her new friends, and how she’s afraid her parents will never love her again. She’s also quite well-read, which gives her an interesting conversation with character Ruby Rose at the start of the series about fairy tales and real life. She has a ninja-like combat skill and a samurai-like sense of honor, so in situations that involve protecting others she never gives up (even if she thinks she herself isn’t worthy of love at the start of the series, see abusive relationship). And she wants to make the world a better place for a number of reasons--she’s been hurt by it, she’s hurt the world herself, and it’s just the right thing to do.

All of this, and a few other factors, combine to affect how she acts and reacts to the plot of the series. When the Fantasy Racism comes up, yes, her cat ears are important--but they don’t just snap out of existence when Yang Xiao Long says “Okay, it’s time for me to talk about my abandonment issues!” or when Cinder Fall says “My bad guy contract says I have to be malevolent now.” Blake’s ears let her hear small details, and her treatment because of them has her cautious about who to trust--very, VERY important things to the plot that, nonetheless, aren’t specifically about Cat Ear Racism.

One big example I can think of is her confrontation with her abusive ex, who at this point has just gone straight up Yandere and is blaming her for everything. The scene is not about her having cat ears--in fact, the cat ears are not at all included in all the false accusations he throws out. But, because she can hear something he doesn’t, she’s able to reposition herself and let her partner join in, dramatically shifting the direction of the scene.

The character trait affects the character’s action, and through that influences the plot. It has weight, but it’s not the only trait the character has. This is true for any character trait, no matter how fantastical or realistic.

May Marigold, from the same series, is a transgender woman. And she’s not just there to say “I need my Estrogen pills!” every four hours, but neither is her being transgender just a Neat Factoid You Find In The Manual. It influences her character--pretty clearly in one scene, where she outright states her biological relatives are no longer family--but it doesn’t mean she’s just The Trans Character. And, actually, let’s take her big speech as an example of what I mean.

Weiss: People are dying here, too. Don’t you have family in Atlas?

May: No. Mantle needed me, and to the Marigolds, that meant I wasn’t their son anymore. And I made sure that everyone knew that I wasn’t their daughter. So forget ‘em. They’ve got Henry, yours have Whitley. You get what I’m saying.

Weiss: I don’t know about-

May angrily turns to face Weiss.

May: Which side are you on, anyway?

Blake: We’ve heard that before.

May steps toward Blake to confront her, but Ruby chimes in.

Ruby: There are no sides! We want to help everyone. We’re all facing Salem together. And together is the only way we’re going to get out of it.

May: (sighs) So, how exactly do we get out of it?

As the group ponders their situation, Whitley Schnee can be seen in the hallway eavesdropping on the conversation.

The point of this scene isn’t “May is trans.” It’s that she had a very bad relationship with her biological relatives, to the point where they don’t consider each other family--and that as a result of that, she associated Atlas with all that’s wrong with the world and thinks Weiss should too, since Weiss ostensibly has a similar background. Her being transgender very clearly influences her speech, but it’s not the driving aspect of the plot. In fact, Whitley overhearing this and being compared to Henry (previously established as pretty shallow and horrible) directly causes him to affect the plot by becoming as helpful as he can. This is entirely unrelated to her being transgender, and much more related to her biological relatives being horrible people.

May is, in fact, somewhat in the wrong here--but it’s in character for her to be in the wrong, as she’s basing her choices off her own experiences. That said, she’s also got a sort of ‘cool anger’ in her speech--she’s used to people not getting why she’d be insulted (since not many people would instantly get transgenderism) and so keeps her tone calm even when she’s glaring at Weiss. It’s not until Weiss begins to directly contradict her that she snaps--again, another factor of transgender life is too many people saying ‘You sure? You could be wrong.’ This is all behavior that makes sense for a transgender person, considering their likely experiences, but applied to a subject that is not explicitly about transgenderism--in this case, whether Atlas or Mantle is more important to save from big bad Salem.

Character traits affect the characters, and through them influence the plot. But the character is never just one trait, and the plot is rarely about just one thing. May is an excellent character--she’s snarky, but willing to guide the youngsters, loyal to those who care about others, encouraging and realistic, very much a person who got saddled with too much responsibility in way too short a time and is trying her best. And she’s transgender, and that affects how she acts, both when she’s being great and when she’s slipping up.

If you want to write representation, don’t write The Whatever Character. Write a character that happens to be whatever.

[priscilla9993]

Killian Jones and Alcoholism

This is mainly a summary of things relating Killian/Hook to alcohol/rum. It was done for a college paper and is very long, therefore it’s under the break. To warn you, it is going to be mainly Wish Hook based since I needed to narrow it down and it was easier to show how he handled alcohol as a recovering alcoholic. Enjoy!

The character in question for this case study is Killian Jones, well known by his more colorful moniker of Captain Hook, as portrayed from the ABC TV show Once Upon A Time. He lives in a region of a fantasy realm known as the Enchanted Forest. He used to be a Royal Navy Lieutenant with his older brother Liam, straight-laced on being good and not getting into trouble in any way, especially after getting somewhere in life and no longer subjected to being an indentured deckhand like when their father abandoned them as kids. During a daring quest to Neverland to find some medicine for the king, Peter Pan said they had been tricked to bring back a poisonous plant called Dreamshade, meant to be used as a weapon against unsuspecting enemies. Killian was wary, ready to denounce his service to the king, but his brother was willing to have faith in a noble king and country. With one swift motion of the plant’s prick hoping to prove otherwise, Liam began dying and realized his mistake. Recruiting the help of Pan and some magical water, Liam was cured but soon died in Killian’s arms on the voyage back to the king, the price of the magic being death if Liam ever left Neverland with the water running through his veins. His brother’s death made Killian vengeful at his king and country as his brother had been noble until the very end and everyone else was corrupt, playing noble, proving to him that the world was at fault. From that day on, he took over the ship and decided to be a pirate named Captain Jones, pursuing freedom, and throwing away all he’s ever known because being noble didn’t serve justice. This starts his life of thievery, promiscuity, and never-ending drinking. His coping solutions to deal with his emotional pain only gets worse when he loses his hand, first love of his life, Milah, and his honor after losing a duel against Rumplestiltskin, a coward turned into a powerful Dark One; which leads him on a path of revenge to kill the Rumplestiltskin, “the crocodile”, to avenge Milah and his pride. This leads him to makeshift a hook for a hand and him going by the nickname of Captain Hook, leaving the last piece of his past behind and never letting himself be vulnerable again.

Throughout the series, whenever he or someone in his vicinity is having a rough time, his solution is to pour out some alcohol and drink his feelings away, acting like an egotistical flirt rather than expressing himself and wallowing in misery. His choice of alcohol happens to be rum, a hard liquor. The acute symptoms he has in the show are the loss of judgment, a reddened face, confusion, potentially heightened sexual desire, and sometimes blackouts/unconsciousness. There are multiple times where he’s in a tavern, pouring doubloons into drinks for his crew, rum for himself, and flirting with women/barmaids to have a nightcap with. From here on, I will refer to him as Hook unless stated otherwise. On one occasion of his usual proclivities displaying or implying such symptoms, Hook tries to seduce a woman named Emma. She manages to use his habit of drinking to her advantage, making him jolly and willing to take her back to his ship for the said nightcap; her actual objective was being a distraction while his future self did recon for info on how to get back to their timeline in a Back to the Future sort of way. He continues heavily drinking on the way back with Emma without a care for his health. As soon as the plan goes awry with Hook seeing double, Emma not realizing Future Hook was still doing recon, he gets knocked out for good measure and partial jealousy. Future Hook justifies this, saying his past self was “asking to be knocked out, will wake up upset, and blame the rum.” The lines construe how frequent the drinking was for his future self to determine Hook’s ill-mannered disposition while drunk. 

Eventually, in a parallel way that stems from drunk Hook, is a feeble and spent pirate coined as “Wish Hook”. I have and will be focusing on this iteration for the whole of the paper, but what was written before was his younger self’s background. Wish Hook is the same guy as Hook, but years older down the line, differing paths from Future Hook as he never found love again with someone like Emma and had let his grief and alcohol from more recent negative events consume him. Wish Hook had lived out most of his lifespan, having been a sober father, but cursed to be poisoned any time he drew near his daughter after a witch encounter. Haunted by his regrets and somber circumstances, he turned back to an alcoholic, spending his days eased by rum. His body and actions in this form show the physical and mental effects of chronic alcohol consumption. About ten years or less had passed between his younger self and he had become an experienced middle-aged man with a complicated history, yet he looked far older than his years and decrepit. Without a doubt, by looking at him, people could assume he was an old drunk, his liver and heart having gotten fatty and overworked from the alcohol catching up to him. His belly was rotund, his hair disheveled and gray with streaks of white, his stance crumbling to nearly falling over with each step, and clothes dirtied with filth and old rum stains. Wish Hook still had a flirty and dramatic personality to cheer himself up and mask his turmoil, rum making him courageous and numb, while his actions told another story. He didn’t have sexual desires or try to provoke anyone by that point, just wanted to drown himself in alcohol. His words typically came out slurred, his movements sluggish and unrefined, and he had low problem-solving skills when it came to formulating a plan based on anything other than motive.

In the Enchanted Forest, alcohol like rum is not hard to come by as long as money is involved. Killian Jones/Captain Hook as a pirate drinking rum all the time did not affect him negatively socially or career-wise. If anything, it boosted his status and reputation. For him to be mingling in bars asking for expensive hard liquor and fine women to spend time with was a pleasantry. Bar owners got money, the crew got free alcohol, the women got paid, and he got to immerse himself in pleasure rather than thinking about trivial or serious things. Hook was the life of the party as a pirate captain, seen as a person with good tastes and great to have a fun time with when it came to alcohol. However, when it came to settling down and being a father later on in his life, Wish Hook reserved himself back to his more vulnerable side, caring about how his alcoholism could affect his parenting or child’s perspective. There are moments like that where he’s introspective and wants to do better by others that look up to him or who he cares about. In the show, when he is parenting, there is never a time where he has a bottle or flask of rum stashed nearby or is drinking. Wish Hook deems alcohol as the problem when it affects his judgment or his perceptions on how he could hurt the way people he loves view him. Love in any form brings him back to his core of being the best person he can be.

Killian Jones’s problem originates in nurture rather than nature because his alcohol problems started after he needed a reliable coping mechanism to lean on to deal with grief and anger. Although both nature and nurture influence him, for argument’s sake, nurture has the upper hand. Growing up, his father was a person he looked up to and wanted to be like, but that changed when he found out his father was a criminal who sold him and Liam to pay a route for a selfish escape. What little of his parents shown on-screen left betrayal or sadness in him, not the desire to drink. His parents weren’t clear on alcoholics or drug users as far as it goes. The only things he inherited from nature were probably his mischievous personality, temper, looks, and a high tolerance for alcohol. Living on a ship and being a poor deckhand, Killian didn’t seem to be the kind of guy to squander his savings on alcohol or other frivolous means. However, he would be on a ship constantly surrounded by adults who drank with a captain who cared more about money rather than morals, feeling squandered by his oppressed freedom and building resentment for authority. Without his brother steering him on track, Killian was no more than a young man with impulsive rebellious nature. When Liam went to get them navy papers to earn them their freedom from Captain Silver, it took Killian an offer of temptations from Silver, as much alcohol as he could drink and a bet on his money, for him to fall hook, line, and sinker; no pun intended. Alcohol and gambling meant a reprieve from thoughts, a chance at earning more than what he had before, and the same social standing as the other men aboard the ship. Perhaps, as much as he wanted to be strong as his brother, one good force cannot shield against all of the negative parts of society and adulthood. From Captain Silver, Killian got his first taste of alcohol and his desires did the rest, leaving him blackout drunk and penniless for Liam to find. As he grew older and slowly became Captain Hook, there was nothing about pirate life, being an adult, or people to keep him from drinking. He needed people to talk to, who supported him and he could feel vulnerable in front of, but the few people he trusted in his life were dead. As anyone knows, pirates steal treasure, so they’re not exactly the forgiving or down-to-earth types. Instead, rum became the solution to drown or fuel his emotions, being the substance of celebration and de-stressor.  

Hook’s rum/alcohol addiction would fall more on the dependence spectrum rather than abuse. What had started as a small reprieve to the woes of life became a daily saving grace when he was wracked with loneliness or anger. He depended on the rum to mask his disposition of physical pain from his missing limb as well as emotional pain having experienced love and loss. Abusing alcohol meant that it would put him into dangerous scenarios, have little to no commitment to change his habits to improve his health, and he’d put off important social aspects. If it was alcohol abuse, Hook wouldn’t try changing his habits when he sees it affects others or his relationship with those he loves. Sure, he spends most of his life binge drinking and making merry with the tides of life, but when given the chance and support to abstain from alcohol, he takes it in a heartbeat. For Wish Hook, the thought of being a father who abandons his child or messes up under hazy judgment didn’t add up to him. With the birth of his daughter, Alice, he made a vow to stay with her as long as he could and to be the person he thought she could be proud of. Nevertheless, when he had lost purpose in life by something he had no control over (via death, distance, or curse), his first reaction was to either turn back to alcohol or solve his problems. Sadly, after he had spent a couple of years looking for a cure for his poison heart curse, he gave up hope and chose to go from sobriety back to alcoholism, into a form of regrettable self-destruction. Hook knew that it was not the way to go about life but he felt he had no other choice and had nothing left to lose, leading him to further prioritize and depend on rum to continue living. He built a tolerance to it, needing a copious amount to get drunk, and potentially suffering withdrawals from it after getting in too deep. From the state he was in by the time he gets old and portly, being a nearly homeless drunkard, it can be assumed that he spent most of his days looking for money to acquire more alcohol so he could feel okay.  

Finally, by the end of the series, Killian Jones had managed to go through all the stages in the Stages of Change Model. He was in the Precontemplation stage as a pirate and Captain Hook as he didn’t see a problem in his daily rum and alcohol festivities, making no commitment to change his ways. By the time he gets to be Wish Hook and becomes a father, hesitant about settling down, he could be in the Contemplation stage. He’d want to do something about his alcohol problem and not be stuck relying on it but doesn’t know how to go about it or why he should, therefore staying stagnant to change. When he has his daughter, Alice, in his arms for the first time, we see him in the Preparation stage, planning to give up his ship, sea life, status, and most importantly, rum. Hook gives himself time to think of why he would do so and how he’d commit to it, eventually telling his crew the news. By the time he is taking care of her, he has already taken the actions needed to wean himself off alcohol and apply himself towards abstinence, taking him through the Action and Maintenance stages. There is a relapse back to the Contemplation stage in the paragraph before when he becomes poisoned and loses hope. Even so, the silver lining is that he had made the hard journey back into the Maintenance stage with the help of Ariel detoxing him and others giving him a magical second chance of bodily time renewal, sparking the hope to reunite with Alice and find a cure for his poisoned heart.  

Plans go awry on this end as we get to his final iteration as he is teleported and cursed into our modern day and age as Detective Rogers. Although his memories of what happened in the past as this persona are fuzzy, he is shown to stick to his renewed alcohol abstinence and maintains that in many ways, just like when he was Wish Hook. His habits become integrated as a function rather than a hindrance as part of the Maintenance stage. As Rogers, we can see him frequent bars such as Roni’s or Flynn’s Barcade when he is invited out with others. He is shown to let others know what to get him, as a regular or not, something non-alcoholic. This usually shows up as sparkling water or regular water with a lemon slice in it. His friends and work partner continue to support his sobriety through friendly acceptance and never forcing him to drink alcohol along with them. Rogers is tempted by alcohol again when he believes a missing girl from a cold case, one he was responsible for since he was drinking on the night she went missing, is dead. He sits on a park bench alone grieving, a full bottle of rum next to him, ready to drink. As Rogers gives it a whiff, he is disgusted at himself for getting back to this state again and slams the bottle down on the bench in frustration, not even having taken a sip. He came too far that doing so again would be meaningless and would get him nowhere. Even though he is in situations full of temptation, he makes huge strides to not relapse and maintain his sobriety, with the hopes that it will eventually lead him back on the right path of happiness and belonging. Fortunately, his actions have positive consequences that ring true when the curse breaks and he gets reunited with his daughter and has the strong support of friends and family. In conclusion, Hook is a flawed human being that is more complex and his struggle with alcohol/rum is just a part of him, one he will never lose but continues living with.