#that presents itself as universal. but is largely a matter of personal taste.

[themauvesoul]

Sometimes I feel like I am a guy trying to plug a hole in the Hoover dam with my pinky finger. Anyways. Here is what you actually need to know about paragraph length, sentence length, and the like:

Yes, the rule is TECHNICALLY that you’re supposed to start a new paragraph with each new action or thought. However. On a more basic level, a paragraph is just a group of sentences that are conveying the same idea, and there are one million ways to skin that cat. For instance, here is an excerpt from a personal essay I wrote a while back:

Here it is again:

And here it is again:

All of these are technically correct, but they read slightly different. The first one reads faster than the other two, and the ideas in the paragraph blend and bleed together a little more. The middle one is much more measured and even. And the last version reads very slowly and dramatically, with heavy emphasis on certain words and phrases. What makes these three passages read so differently is the length of the paragraphs. Readers tend to pick up the pace during long paragraphs, and slow down quite a bit when they get to shorter paragraphs. Additionally, you’ll notice that the two one-word paragraphs add a TON of emphasis to those words. This is because they’re so visually distinct AND extremely short.

The trick to formatting your paragraphs is NOT following an imprecise rule that is frequently difficult to apply to your own writing. The trick is to vary the length of your paragraphs.

This:

And this:

are both equally annoying. The version without any paragraph breaks goes on and on, and eventually you get tired of reading it. The version with TOO MANY paragraph breaks feels like it’s shouting at you, because every sentence is so important it deserves its own paragraph. Formatting paragraphs is, first and foremost, about including enough variation to keep people interested and paying attention.

And this exact same principle is true of sentence length. If you scroll back up and look at the pic where I put every sentence on its own line, you’ll notice very quickly that there’s a lot of variation there. Some sentences are one word, some are three lines long, and most fall somewhere in the middle. This is intentional. It keeps the reader engaged. If you look closely at this paragraph, you’ll see that I’m doing it in here, too.

The reason for this is identical to why varying your paragraph lengths is a good idea. Long sentences move quickly, short sentences slow the reader’s pace and add emphasis, and medium sentences keep the reader at a comfortable, easy pace. You can use long sentences to add urgency, a sense that time is moving quickly, or a level of confusion as the reader tries to decipher your six line sentence. Short sentences pack a punch. It’s the difference between a freeze frame and an establishing shot. You can use the rhythm and meter of spoken language to help out with this as well. Most people sort of instinctively vary their sentences in length, tone, and emphasis. Nobody irl is speaking to one another in a series of five-word sentences because it sounds robotic and disgusting. If you write in the natural cadence you use in spoken language, you will automatically vary your sentences enough to keep a reader interested.

One thing to note about this is that the emphasis sentence and paragraph lengths create, much like any other fun writing trick, is like cayenne pepper or salt. No emphasis is bland, but too much makes your writing inedible. Figuring out how to season your drafts is a process that you can only complete through experimentation.

This is why you patently SHOULD NOT listen to writing advice that is broad, basic, or positioned as universally applicable. Everybody has their own preferences wrt spice and salt! Two people can look at an identical work of art, and can very easily get into an argument online about whether it’s bland or over seasoned, because they fundamentally have different standards. The best way to improve your writing is to learn how and why the tools in your toolkit work, experiment with them, and show other people the results.

[stylishclutchbag]

The Art of Choosing the Perfect Navratri Gift Items

Navratri, a festival celebrated with immense fervor and enthusiasm in India, is a time for family, friends, and communities to come together. Gifting during Navratri is a tradition that adds an extra layer of joy to the festivities. Finding the ideal Navratri gift items can be a delightful yet challenging task. With so many options available, making the right choice can be overwhelming. In this guide, we'll explore the art of choosing the perfect Navratri gift items, ensuring your presents convey your love and best wishes effortlessly.

1. The Essence of Navratri Gift Items

When selecting Navratri gift items, it's essential to understand the significance of the festival. Navratri, which spans nine nights, is dedicated to the worship of Goddess Durga. These days symbolize the victory of good over evil and the embodiment of feminine divinity. Thus, your gift should align with the spiritual and festive essence of Navratri.

2. Personalization: The Key to Memorable Navratri Gifts

To truly express your feelings during Navratri, personalized gifts are a remarkable choice. Consider custom-made jewelry, like bracelets with religious symbols or a personalized puja thali with the recipient's name engraved. Personalization not only adds a unique touch but also shows your thoughtfulness.

3. Navratri Gift Items: Traditional vs. Modern

One dilemma that often arises when choosing Navratri gift items is whether to opt for traditional or modern presents. The choice largely depends on the recipient's preferences. Traditional gifts like idols of deities, diyas, or intricately designed clothes are perfect for those who appreciate the cultural aspect. On the other hand, modern gifts such as gadgets, fashion accessories, or spa vouchers may appeal to those with contemporary tastes.

4. The Impact of Colors in Navratri Gift Items

Each day of Navratri is associated with a specific color, which signifies a different form of Goddess Durga. Considering these colors can add a deeper layer of meaning to your gift. For example, you might choose a green scarf or a blue home decor item for the third day when Goddess Chandraghanta is worshiped. Aligning the gift's color with the corresponding day can make it even more meaningful.

5. Quality Over Quantity: A Thoughtful Approach

Rather than showering the recipient with numerous Navratri gift items, focus on the quality and thought behind your present. A single, well-thought-out gift can hold more significance than a plethora of random items. Remember, it's the sentiment that counts.

6. The Art of Presentation: Wrapping and Packaging

The presentation of your gift matters as much as the gift itself. A beautifully wrapped package can create anticipation and excitement. Consider using vibrant, Navratri-themed wrapping paper and adding a personal note. Aesthetic presentation showcases your commitment and adds a touch of class to your gift.

7. Navratri Gift Items for Kids

Navratri is a festival that excites children with its lively dances and colorful decorations. When choosing gifts for kids, opt for items that align with the spirit of Navratri. Toys in bright colors, traditional clothing, or even a set of musical instruments can make for fantastic choices. Remember, the gift should be both entertaining and culturally enriching.

8. The Versatility of Sweets and Dry Fruits

Sweets and dry fruits are a universal choice for Navratri gifting. These are not only delicious but also symbolize the sweetness of the festival. You can select a beautifully crafted box of assorted sweets or an elegant basket of premium dry fruits. These items can be appreciated by individuals of all ages.

9. Thoughtful Navratri Gifts for Elders

Elders in the family deserve special consideration when it comes to Navratri gift items. Traditional gifts like silk sarees, elegant jewelry, or spiritual books can be fitting choices. Navratri is a time for blessings and respect, and your gift should reflect that sentiment.

10. The Magic of Art and Handicrafts

Handcrafted items are not only unique but also help support local artisans. Consider gifting intricate pottery, handwoven textiles, or beautiful paintings that capture the essence of Navratri. These gifts reflect your appreciation for art and culture.

11. Eco-Friendly Navratri Gift Items

With the increasing focus on sustainability, eco-friendly Navratri gift items are gaining popularity. Bamboo utensils, jute bags, or potted plants can be both thoughtful and environmentally responsible choices. They showcase your commitment to a greener, healthier planet.

12. The Treasure of Jewelry

Navratri is also a time when women adorn themselves with beautiful jewelry. Gifting jewelry items like earrings, necklaces, or bangles can be an excellent choice. Opt for pieces that reflect the festive spirit with colorful gemstones or intricate designs.

13. The Joy of Charity: Navratri Gifts for the Needy

In the true spirit of Navratri, consider giving to those in need. Donating to charities, sponsoring meals for the less fortunate, or gifting clothes and essential items to the underprivileged can be a heartwarming way to celebrate the festival. Such acts of kindness embody the core values of Navratri.

Conclusion: The Art of Gifting in Navratri

Choosing the perfect Navratri gift items requires thoughtful consideration, aligning with the festival's spirit and the recipient's preferences. Whether you opt for traditional presents, modern delights, personalized tokens, or eco-friendly choices, what truly matters is the love and goodwill you convey through your gift. Remember, Navratri is a time for celebration, togetherness, and spreading joy, so let your gifts echo these sentiments. Make your gift-giving this Navratri a memorable and heartfelt experience.

Must Read: Accessorize Your Outfit with Stylish Party Wear Potli Bags

[reidswritings]

the three times that it was obvious

word count; 1.9k

warnings; nothing i think-- just fluff (and a lame ending and also probably some spelling errors haha)

authors note; this is like part 2.5 of times they were just too cute so read those is you want, but you dont have to cause it’ll make sense on its own,, anyways, as always, i hope you enjoy! [ part one and part two ]

bonus— times Spencer was just a little too in love with his girl

There was no one he loved more. That was a fact. Another fact was that everyone knew that. No one questioned his love for the Pretty Girl— well, no one except aforementioned Pretty Girl. That was usually on her bad days though, but on all of the other days, she knew it better than he did. There was many times that he proved it to himself— though, not that it was a competition or anything. 

It had just been so long since he was able to openly love someone as much as he loved His Girl. Growing up in the closet, he was never able to be open about who he loved— in fear of getting beat up, not that that saved him from any beatings. Then, when he was older, he fell in love with the beauty that was JJ. But she got pregnant and then fell in love with his best friend— Emily Prentiss. Not that he was questioning her taste in women— because Emily was probably the hottest one of the whole BAU Team. There was no competition on that one. 

And once he finally got over her, it was on to the beautiful Doctor Maeve Donavan— but that was over before it even began. Damn stalkers, damn unsubs, damn everything that came with the horrible situation. 

That one crushed him. Took away his spirit along with his belief in love. Took away his belief in anything that wasn’t himself. Well, maybe even took himself with it too. That was the one that left him with more trauma than he cared to admit. 

That was the one that he was afraid that he’d never heal from.

But then there was her. Then, he met the love of his life. Then was the moment he felt his heart begin to stitch itself back together. 

The moment the beauty walked through the huge glass doors was the moment he felt like he could breathe again. He was beyond grateful for the Pretty Girl. And he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to her, even if she was never actually his. 

Luckily though, the universe owed him one and she was head over heals for the scrawny agent. It didn’t take long for them to find each other, actually it only took a week of knowing each other (and Spencer following her around like a lost puppy), until he asked her out to coffee. He had learned from his mistakes before. He had learned not to wait— he had learned that nothing was guaranteed. Not even the next breath. 

He learned to go for what he wanted— even with his fear of rejection, it was better to know. 

Spencer Reid was not the best with words— ironic, considering he knew all of the words, even ones in different languages. The one thing he was good at, though, was showing her (and everyone) just how much he loved his Pretty Girl. He wasn’t aware of it at first— he just did the things. It was second nature to him. It was as easy as breathing for him.

The only reason he was fully aware now was because of his lovely friend, Derek Morgan. It was a normal day at the work place— bad guys doing bad things and innocent people dying because of it. 

His girl was being sent out to get said bad guys while he was forced to stay back and work on the geological profile (not that he was complaining, he loved doing it). The only down side of loving someone on The Team was watching them run into danger rather than from it. 

He never underestimated his girl— he knew she was a badass who could handle her own, but it was still nerve-racking, not knowing if he’d see her again (he was as dramatic as he was genius).  

So, with his heart thumping with anxiety, he had kissed her, like it would be their last time, just before she ran from the police station, and said, “We kiss before and we kiss again after, okay?”

She had agreed to this like it was nothing— because it made sense to her. She wanted that last kiss, just in case. 

Just in case. 

The dark-skinned hunk had witnessed the whole thing. The older man had snorted and muttered under his breath, “Smooth, Reid. Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

Derek never let him live it down. And Spencer let his friend poke fun, because that meant that he got another day with his Pretty Girl— he knew the day that Derek stopped teasing was the day that he no longer got to love Y/N. And that was a day he wasn’t willing to have. 

Another time he noticed it was again because of a BAU Team Member. It was yet another long night at the office— paperwork calling their names and sleep calling them even harder, stress headaches creeping into their skulls and necks aching from leaning over desks for so long. 

The Genius had watched his Pretty Girl yawn for the umpteenth time and he sighed, leaning back in his uncomfortable chair. It was routine, she’d groan in frustration, yawn, flex her shoulders and then get back to burning the midnight oil. He assumed that she was growing frustrated with the seemingly growing pile of folders on her desk— Spencer had made his way through his stack and was now finishing up his last. Not everyone had his special power of memorization and speed reading.

The young agent stood, cracking a few bones as he did so. Grabbing his now empty coffee mug, he stalked over to his girl’s desk. Upon reaching, he leaned against the large table, cup balancing on his folded leg. Y/N looked up at him, eyes tired and longing to be taken home. Though, she smiled at him and it warmed the boy’s heart. 

“Hey,” it was soft, only meant for her. He was smiling too, he was smiling the smile reserved only for Y/N. Emily, who still sat at her desk, looked over and welcomed the break from the gruesome paperwork on top her cluttered desk. 

“Hi,” it was no louder than Spencer’s words, but loud enough for Emily to hear. 

“You doin’ alright?” Spencer’s head was ducked down towards his girl. One of his large hands was still wrapped around his mug while the other one had found its way to the shoulder of one very tired Y/N. Her head was leaning on his hand, leaving a small kiss. She smiled at him like he was the only person in the world that mattered— and in her small world, he was. “You want me to take some off your plate?”

She sighed, leaning back in her chair now. Emily watched still, smiling. She was happy that the two had finally found happiness away from the horrible world they all had created for themselves. “No, it’s okay. Thank you though, Spence.”

He smiled. She continued, hands holding another empty mug. “You know what you could do, though?”

“Hmm?” The boy raised his eyebrows, mouth shrinking into the smirk that make Y/N weak in the knees. 

“Get me more?” She smiled, lips parting to show her teeth. Spencer blushed, ducking his head again. His hand moved to take the mug from her, standing. They had been dating for awhile now, but she still managed to make him breathless. Their fingers brushed and he felt his stomach erupt in excitement— he hoped that feeling never went away. He would give up forever with her just to keep feeling the way he did in that moment. 

“Anything for you, my love.” He bent down to her level, a kiss leaving itself behind on her forehead. Their eyes closed, savoring the moment— that is until the loud voice of Emily Prentiss rang out. 

“I could use some more, too!” The lovebirds looked over at their mutual friend. She was cheekily smiling, arm hanging in the air, fingers closed around her own empty mug. The Genius Boy straightened up, frown present on his once smiling lips. 

“What?” She laughed, red lips still stretched into her characteristic smile that she more often than not wore, “You’re going that way anyways!”

Spencer’s mouth opened to protest—probably— but Emily spoke again. “You’ll get Y/N some, but not me? After all I’ve done for you? My heart hurts.”

The boy snorted, “Yeah? Well, I’m in love with her, not you, Em.” 

The last time that proved that Spencer loved his girl more than anything was something that everyone in the office knew of. The lovebirds liked to pretend that it was their little secret, but in reality they both knew it was one shared with most everyone. 

It wasn’t a secret that Spencer and Y/N were hopelessly in love with each other— in fact it was very clear to anyone who walked through the BAU doors. Though in love, they were not the biggest fans of PDA. However, Spencer and his Pretty Girl were still very, very, lovey with one another at the workplace. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean they were making out against Spencer’s desk or having secret sex in the BAU bathroom— no, it means that they often shared glances from across the bullpen and small touches when the other is getting just a bit too frustrated and knowing smiles every other hour. 

It was the little things they did that kept them on their toes— kept them head over heals. It was special to them that they kept up the romance, no matter what was going on in their very hectic lives. 

For example, the two very often left small little notes for each other around the BAU. Nothing inappropriate or out of line, it was usually just something that would be sure to make the other smile. And it wasn’t anywhere that was obvious either, it was almost always in a spot that would only be discovered by Y/N or Spencer. 

And sometimes, just sometimes, another member of The Team would stumble across the colorful sticky notes stuck to the back of a chair or to the side of one of Spencer’s many, many, books or to the tip of a pen or even on a coffee mug in the cabinet— unfound by The Lovebirds yet. The Aforementioned Team Member would just smile like they were in on some little secret—because they were—and place the note back so it could be found by a Lovesick Agent later. 

They were sentimental people, keeping each and every note— which The Team so desperately wanted to poke fun at, but they let them have this. They let them stay in their little bubble just for a little while longer— as long as it made The lovebirds happy, it made The Team happy too. 

In fact, once JJ and Emily had stumbled across the small box that held each and every sticky note. They didn’t pry— well, they tried not to, but curiosity got the best of the two girls. They ended up reading each one, and they were so goddamn adorable, they just about cried. 

If there was one thing The Team could agree on, it would be that Spencer and Y/N were perfect for each other and that they all would rather die than let anything happen to the two. 

[katsukikitten]

Warnings College AU sexual and adult themes. Yall know the drill okay

Chapter 2

Bugzapper⚡💔: i have a proposition to make. 

Jiro flashes Mina her phone as she sips iced coffee in the blessed air conditioning of the cafe.

"That's never a good sign." She comments, moon bright eyes glued to the phone as she thinks. 

"What's not a good sign?" Uraraka asks from across the table, the two girls fill her in. 

"Oh." She racks her brain on what that could be, "Okay well I'm dying to know, now." 

🎵Music to my soul 🎶 : What do you want airhead? 

Jiro's text sent a surge of excitement through Kaminari. It was exactly what he needed after three hours of begging and bribing Bakugou to allow the sorority in or at least invite them. His fingers fly across the screen setting up a date and time for a "meeting over lunch" to discuss the proposition in further detail.  

Meanwhile across campus, you huff, eyes narrowed as a rare emotion is pulled from your fingertips in the form of deadly ice. Pulling the moisture from the air to freeze it or pulling any water towards you to keep your flank safe as your opponent rushes you at breakneck speeds. 

You hated this fucking guy, cocky, brash, so God damn arrogant in the way he held himself, in the way he spoke. It made you nauseous just thinking of him.Had you known he was the male star of this university you wouldn't have transferred, yet you still needed to transfer didn't you? Anything to get out from under the shadow of a certain Todoroki. 

No one cared to admit or to notice, that your quirk was different from Shoto's. You could manipulate water towards you to freeze, and manipulate whatever was already frozen. Your ice was denser and more durable than his and dare you say it colder than his too. Yet no one gave a shit, his was ice AND fire. You were just a one trick pony and a trick they already saw. Your opponent's taunting doesn't help matters much.

"I've already seen this before Ice Brat. Did ya forget where I fucking went to high school?" His hand heats the ice as he activates his quirk before three deafening blasts ring out. 

As you allow him to break down the ice you act on pure rage, securing some revenge from the first time he signed your hair. Pointed icicles lie in wait and once the wall is fully down you give him a nasty smirk before sending the straight his way. 

You're supposed to melt your weapons before they hit your opponent, neither of you are supposed to go all out per the professor's and college's strict rules in the athletics department but Bakugou always does. Somehow his big stupid mouth spews something that eggs you on. As if someone were shoving bamboo skewers beneath your skin, under your nails, sending you into an unheard of rage. 

Normally you were as your quirk, icy, unbothered by the world but Bakugou, God you could wring his neck. Freeze his hot blood as you watch him turn into slush beneath your feet. 

He expects you to abide by the rules, to splash him with glacier water but he realizes it too late. That you won't he let's off a quick blast, shattering two of the four deadly points. One grazes his cheek as he just barely dodges while the other lodges itself into his arm. 

You have half a mind to twist it. You pull at his blood bringing it into your arsenal. Blood red needles and bullets surround Bakugou. 

"I don't think you've seen this before.." You say darkly ready to release your hold and shred him into, give him a taste of his own medicine. Maybe he would see how bitter and nauseating he was. He smirks, opening his mouth to retort but you send your ice his way aiming for non vital spots although the ice creeps closer to your heart begging it to hit something vital. The inside of your ice palace begins to reek of burning sugar and spice, he plans to let out an explosion to bring this whole place down from the inside out. 

Just as he is about to detonate and just as the blood and ice are about to pierce skin the professor bursts into the gym.  

"I step out for five minutes and this is what happens?!"

The ice and blood return to liquid splashing across Bakugou as his skin pops. The professor takes in the damage from your ice and his explosions, still better controlled than most of his other students quirks. 

"I gotta stop pairing these two together." He murmurs to himself before dismissing class. With a flick of your wrist the ice fortress melts, returning to the reservoir below the gym floor, ignoring the molten glare that is sent your way.

"You're such a bitch." Bakugou growls as you pass, flinging blood from his fingers as he wipes at his face. You offer him a fake pitying smile before heading into the women's locker room. 

"Fucking asshole." You hiss, forcing the sight of his garnet gaze out of your mind. Instead turning your attention to your buzzing phone in your locker. It's a few missed calls and some texts in the girl's group chat. Briefly you wonder if you ever should have joined that stupid sorority, it was small, non toxic, and would look good should you need to transfer again. 

Not only did you somehow get elected the president but you also became friends with the three other ladies despite your best efforts not too. 

Mins: Prez we might have a way to save the sorority...lunch after you're done with training? 

IceQueen ❄: Hope it's good, the Dean already put the house up for sale. Let me get ready and I'll be there shortly. 

Mina presents her phone to the crowd around her, Kirishima, Denki, Sero, Jiro and Uraraka do a small celebration. Denki more so than anyone else, he knows the combined car washes will be more than enough to fix up the house, he also recently learned that you had the power of negotiation on your side. Having just listened to Mina retell the story of how you got free food for a month from a bar for yourself and your friends. And not from some sleaze who wanted to sleep with you either, no it was from the owner himself. 

Denki is hopeful and so are the ladies indicating that this may be his best idea yet. 

You arrive at the small bistro early, spying your party on the front patio. The three men had seen you in person before, they knew you were easy on the eyes but up close you were breathtaking. Manicured nails but nothing gaudy, normally nude or soft shades, light makeup, mascara at most as far as they could tell and your outfit was well put together. You were what the world called plus size but everyone else called thiccc. Your confidence oozing in your light blouse tucked into your black skinny jeans, uncaring that you had a pouch. 

You needed that extra fat to keep from freezing by your own quirk. The only thing you needed society to worry about was your intelligence and your power. 

Both were SSR ranked so what did you fucking care that your body was ranked lower. They were stupid in thinking you'd skimp power in the name of vanity. 

You recognize everyone at the table and internalize the dread you're feeling. Scheming is afoot and you're the last to arrive. You can tell by their half finished drinks and picked over appetizer, still you sit and act unaware. Denki goes to hold out his hand first for a formal introduction causing a sly cat smile to settle over your glossy lips. 

"No need, I'm aware of who the three of you are. Sero we share our lingual class, Denki, our chemistry class, and Kirishima we share two classes, world studies and villain hero theory. Truly a pleasure." You tell then your name before ordering something to drink from the lingering waitress. Sitting stick straight with your shoulders backs has the men mirroring you. 

"Well ladies I take it the plan to save the sorority involves these fine gentlemen." You ask coolly and they nod. After a moment of silence Mina and Denki go to speak. Awkwardly encouraging the other to speak until Minai clears her throat. 

"As you know they are a newly formed frat with Sero as their president. They moved into their house about a month ago and they say it is quite large. So they have invited us to move in." 

"How do you propose we ask the college to have a co-ed house? What does this fraternity home even look like?" They knew you would be quick to ask questions Mina answers the first while Denki provides the answer to the second. 

"Union and Diversity. Forming close relationships now to carry over into our hero careers." 

"The house needs some work but looks a lot better than what it did." Denki shows you before and after pictures as you gesture for his phone. He passes you his electric yellow case with nervous hope tingling beneath his skin. You swipe through the photos. 

"You boys did a great job on the outside. Inside needs a lot of work. Hardwoods will be easy to fix, they are original but don't seen to be damaged, a good scrub will spruce them up. Wait, are those?" You zoom in on the photo of the living room, "Are those foldable camping chairs and a VHS tv?" 

They gulp loudly as they nod, your purse your lips in disapproval. 

"I can fix that." You pass Denki back his phone, assuming that all the roommates will be present, "I see the main focus was the kitchen but some of the appliances seem to be on their last legs. I can fix that as well." 

"Soooo….So it's a yes?" Jiro asks, feeling relief for the first time in months since they received the letter of eviction. 

"Gotta get the college to agree first." You think on it a moment, "But I'm sure we can arrange that. Uraraka can you draft an email to the Dean requesting an official meeting regarding our sorority? Be sure to explain in detail our situation, how we are being forced to disband by their account and the solution we have. Make sure it's an afternoon meeting too. The dean hates to miss golf with our rival university's dean." 

With the plan set in motion all of you return to your evening classes. Jiro nudges Denki in the ribs, listening to his heart race from their closeness. 

"When are we going to tell her about Bakugou?" She throws her almost lover a look that he seems to wither beneath. His jaw tics before he retorts. 

"I think we should wait to see if this even works first." 

After a week the important meeting arrives and as you thought the Dean is already exhibiting signs of impatience. He is more than ready to wrap this up and you already know his answer is going to be no. Already trying to get it out before the four of you can even have a seat. 

Still you weren't the Ice Queen on campus for nothing. You saunter into the room, mineola folder filled with your copies of counterpoints pressed firmly to your chest, you can already see he doesn't have the copies you sent him. You place the folder down and open it, leafing through the pages as you speak. 

"This request is going to be approved and here are the reasons why. An example of sexism could be made that a new fraternity was approved housing, new housing, after a decades old sorority was deemed "too small" both parties are similar in count. Second funding and donations are easily influenced with letters to alumni and especially by attendees to this university. My transfer from YAU has brought in revenue of roughly 2.6 million dollars, increasing your diversity for women when this is normally a male dominated school. I am aware that my transfer had even encouraged other students from YAU to transfer here. Which I'm sure is one of your favorite bragging points to tell Dean Fraunk during your weekly golf trips isn't it? So it would truly be a shame if these points would come to light in the investigation of my return to YUA just months before the university sports festival. I do look amazing in Ice Blue you know. Matches my quirk a lot better than Maroon." You put the ball in his court, he is visibly upset, eyes flying to the facts that you've presented. All important, viable facts. You were right MMU was known to be a male dominated school and the media would have a field day if they uncovered a mistake he happened to look over. Not to mention you were his main bragging point, Dean Yuzi always talked about how he had stolen you, the female star of rising heroes, from YUA.  The silence in the room is amplified by the ticking of the clock, seconds accumulating into minutes as it counts down his T time with his old college buddy and rival. He gulps nervously, knowing what he has to do in order to keep both his bragging rights and a law suit under wraps. He looks up to you as you wear your stone cold face, making him think of a loan shark who hasn't been getting their payments on time. He is fearful for your future boss.  

"I believe I have no choice but to approve." 

"Correct." You respond, "Now we have a bit more to discuss. I noticed that classrooms 456 and 215 are being remodeled. Those gently used flat screens will be given to our house since it is technically college property. Common space 3 and 1 are being renovated in dorms A and B. We will accept the leather arm chairs as they are in good shape but we demand a new couch. I know it is in the budget as I help plan the budget. I also believe it is time for an allowance for our hybrid house." The Dean shrinks away from your tenacity, nodding as that is all he can do.  

"Well this is a generous offer and should cover most of the basic necessities such as a new fridge and mattress. The aesthetic we will be raising funds for. Kindly spread the word, we don't want to take up more of your time and be late with your 'meeting' with Dean Fraunk." You place a flyer on his desk as you turn on your heel. The rest of the sorority, mouth agape following suit. Yuzi looks down at the flyer, head hung in a mixture of disbelief and shame as he reads over the neon paper advertising a co-ed car wash. 

He just hopes you and Bakugou are worth the trouble. 

[coeurdastronaute]

The Story, Ch. 1

I am going to tell a story. 

It is not a marvelous story, nor is it very heroic, nor ghastly, nor mysterious, nor epic by any Ovidian means. It’s much more simply just a real story, perhaps a true story in that it could very much happen, but hasn’t, exactly, to the best of my knowledge. 

I’d rather like to use the word true in the sense that it is universal, innate, honest to very idea that all humanity is capable of experiencing it. It’s true and honest and real, and that might not sound like magic, but if we’re being honest, as most storytellers are known to be, the most magic that can be found is in the moments we can’t tell about-- the moments stricken from pages for being mundane, superfluous from the plot, as if it’s possible to decide so easily what matters, and what doesn’t, as if memory and life are easy enough to foresee to know that a single moment won’t resonate indiscriminately through time and space, etching deep ridges and valleys and canyons into a person’s heart. 

I am going to tell a story that is superfluous from the plot, that’s not very heroic nor ghastly nor mysterious nor epic, and yet one that is full of bravery and ghosts and fear and perseverance. 

No one will tell you what I want to tell you, that it is impossible to truly understand that depth of the pain that life will haphazardly, and often lazily, often with abandon, toss upon you. I need you to understand this, because once you do, you can survive it, and if you survive it, you can fill in the spaces, the inbetween, the pauses and inhalations and dark, dark, deep and dangerous moments with perhaps a dash of love. 

I am going to tell a story that is true and honest, I am going to trip over my words because I believe in being exact, and perhaps precision is muddled by searching for perfection. I will not tell you what I hope you take from it, for that would defeat the need to finish it, but rather I shall tell you the how. I hope you read this and forget the words, or at least think you have until one day when you understand them more than you do when you read it. 

This tale has no more ghosts than the normal amount. It has no more pain, no more love, no more jealousy, nor anguish, nor magic than the average truth would. This is the warning. 

I am going to tell a story, now. 

XXXXXXXXXX

In the summer of her twelfth year, the fair came to town. She remembered it especially because it was not the same as the festivals that came with such regularity it was practically ingrained in her DNA, and much like sparrows, the town just went to work of returning to every year. No, the fair that came to town was different. It was not of them, but for them. 

To be honest, she hadn’t thought of it much since it happened, as time wiped away the newness of it, replacing it with the present and the not-too-distant. 

Later, she would come to remember that as the year before the end of it all. With the perfect hindsight she realized had she just listened, she might have heard it, as an adult she could practically hear the knowledge that something was indeed almost over, the knowledge that hummed, faint and lazy below the noises of the house and the town and the summer evening, the sound Jamie heard when she tossed and turned in the stale, sticky heat of her bed when the breeze was no where to be found. 

Gawky and just becoming aware of her body, she remembered the look she gave herself in the fun house mirrors. The one that stretched her legs, all knees and knobby, the whole way up to her chin. The one that made her hips jut out and when she bent over, that made her chin and nose and ears disproportional, or more so than she already knew them to be. But her little brother didn’t mind at all, laughing at how ridiculous he looked, and then at her until she punched him in the arm, earning a wail of pain. 

With change scrounged and stolen from pockets, she bought their first taste of cotton candy. They snuck onto the rides and rode until they threw up behind the animal tent. For hours and hours and hours, for what felt like days, they roamed the fair in a type of delirium, removed from the ordinary, escaping, as it were. 

But that night was forever tinged a different hue than pink cotton candy and a burning sky where the sun refused to set. It wasn’t even stained black like her father’s hands, nor did it reek of gin or shine on her mother’s breath. 

Alone and indignant, she wandered through the tents and shoddy booths after rinsing her mouth with water from a bucket hanging near the horses. Her brothers were done, tapped out of money and eager to hold onto anything left in their stomachs, but Jamie didn’t want to leave. She never wanted to go home again. 

Forgotten was the looks she gave herself, unable to table the mess of frizz on her head, unable to comprehend the knobby knees and perpetual layer of dirt accumulated on her clothes and cheeks. Forgotten was the music of her brother’s laughter, shrieks, and crying accompanied by the splashing of guts against the compacted dirt mixed with the smell of the animals. Lost to time were those moments unless they were dug for, rooted up and yanked back into tangibility with a great deal of effort. 

What remained of that night was the sheer terror of the tent with the black curtains. The tent on the edge of the fair, that Jamie stumbled upon, as young women stumbled out of, afraid and clutching different bundles of herbs or totems. The tent under the smooth-leafed elm near the broken fence, list solely by candles and a fire that never seemed to grow higher than flickering. 

What Jamie remembered was the large velvet chair and the ancient lace that covered the tables. She could smell, from time to time, the old, moldy dried herbs and flowers that were packed and chopped right there. 

And for some inexplicable reason, she slid across her last five pence piece and waited for the woman to take it. And when she presented her palm, dirty, with moon shaped divots where her fingernails had dug into to find some steel against the appraising eyes, she clenched her jaw, almost defiant, and waited. 

Kindly, the woman smiled, prepared to believe in her own magic for a moment for this brave little girl. While she made her money selling potions to unhappy wives and bundles of herbs and totems for pregnancy and wealth, she refused to use her gifts unless called upon. As inexplicable as it was to Jamie, so too did this woman not understand what made her cradle the small palm in her hand for a tenth of her normal fee. 

Occasionally, as if a slowly moving echo, Jamie would hear her words, or rather bursts of them, phrases really, bouncing back to her from that moment. The older she got, the less she listened enough to hear them, though they kept moving forward toward her at a steady pace. 

With kind eyes, she remembered, a softening of features, the woman across the table tenderly traced the lines in her palm, something Jamie would do from time to time in the years to come, as if she, too, could see something important. 

With a heavy heart, the palm-reader shook her head and kissed Jamie’s palm. I am so sorry, my love. It is not fair. 

As much as she wanted to snatch her hand back, Jamie remained still and listened to the entirety of the woman’s words. She allowed her to rub an oil onto them, to write with burnt twigs, tiny symbols on her wrist, to hum a tune and press the coin back into her hand. 

Only much later would Jamie realize it was a kindness, to understand someone’s future and be unable to do anything about it, but to try anyway. 

But the great pain, the great sadness, the great joy, the great everything that the woman promised, Jamie refused to acknowledge ever again. She avoided those echoes and she didn’t stop running. That was how she was going to survive it. 

And as the woman pulled out a knife and sliced a gash in Jamie’s palm, as she muttered the words, as Jamie recoiled in pain, pushing back the chair and frantically looking for the exit, she saw the flames growing higher, she felt the woman corner her as she scuttled across the floor, the dirt and the discarded stems of her herbs searing the cut, leaving a trail of blood there. She fled beneath the tent flap, crawling and tripping over herself until she was home, safely in her room behind a closed door. 

She pressed the gash on her palm to her chest as blood warmed her shirt. 

She never spoke of it again.

For some reason, the fair that came to town the summer she turned twelve came alive in her mind once again, the moment she walked into the kitchen and saw a new face at the table. It was instantaneous, the appearance of that memory. All-encompassing were the noises and smells and terror in her heart. 

In a move that would look, to anyone else, as if she were merely wiping the dirt from her hands, fighting against a stubborn smudge, she ran her thumb along the perfectly straight but raised scar through the middle of her palm. 

But she washed her hands and ignored the momentary echo before sitting down at the table, forgetting it all once again. 

XXXXXXXXX

With a great start, the new au pair’s eyes burst open as she inhaled a shaky breath, as if she’d been holding it for hours and was finally able to defeat whatever had been sitting on her chest, choking her through the night. 

It took a full minute for her sense to come back, for her to understand where she was, to chase away the remnants of the dream that seemed to repeat itself nightly despite her best efforts to escape it. 

Slowly, and with great effort, Dani focused on the sound of the birds just outside her window in the copper beeches that towered alongside the manor. Outside, the waking of the manor and the grounds were becoming regular and soothing, reminding her in their foreignness that she was not home anymore.

It was still early as she climbed out of bed, the thin fabric of her sleeping gown clung to her skin as the heat and her dreams had won against the coolness of the lovely breeze during the night. She stood by the large window with the heavy, ancient glass and peered out onto the lawn as the haze did its best to burn itself away in the rising of the day. 

Three weeks ago, she’d answered the ad that took her out of London and deep into the countryside so that even in an atlas, she was somewhat unsure of how to get back if she were have the need to escape, which was simultaneously terrifying and freeing. 

Even after a full week of waking in a lovely English manor, Dani hadn’t grown too used to the feeling of peace she experienced despite the dreams, as if waking was a better time than sleeping, as if she was living a dream, even, and her dreams were the reality she resigned herself to at night, forever haunted. 

Before the children could wake, Dani washed and dressed, taking a little bit of time every morning to explore the expansive house and grounds. The tragedy of the entire home softened slightly in the beauty it still had, and the hope the children still, despite all else, seemed to cling to against all odds. 

Walking helped clear her head, helped to shed away the old skin, like a snake rubbing against rocks, wiggling out of old skin that it’d outgrown, though she felt it was more forced than that for her, that perhaps the skin she was in wasn’t ready to be shed, and despite her best clawing and scratching and wiggling and rubbing was struggling to pull it off. The past was a sweater that shrunk in the wash and now she couldn’t escape it despite contorting herself into all different positions and yanking. 

So instead, Dani walked in the morning. 

Sometimes she beat Owen, who arrived early with arms full of fresh things to cook for the day. Sometimes she would slip out through the back and he wouldn’t have arrived yet, or she would hear the sound of his tires on the gravel as she turned the corner away from the house. 

A few times, she even beat Hannah, up before the housekeeper had made it to the kitchen, though Dani suspected Hannah rarely slept, and was instead simply elsewhere. 

Only twice had Dani seen the gardener, and with grounds that she was still discovering, she doubted their orbits would often overlap. They’d never formally met, but it seemed only a matter of time with such few options for adult conversation in the manor. 

On her walks, Dani didn’t let her mind wonder too far from the course of action for the day, plotting how to keep two active and unpredictable children busy taking up much of her energy and leaving her exhausted every night in a way that made her hopeful for rest. She thought slowly, taking her time, careful not to let those thoughts drift, steering the ship purposefully. 

More and more, she was allowing herself to relax at the manor, to shirk off some of the guilt and the pain of her previous life that existed just a few months ago. There was a healing that could be found in a departure. There was a kind of reward in giving up. A ghost still followed her, still reminded her. How simple the act of forgetting seemed to be, except when it truly mattered. It baffled her, that she couldn’t remember what Eddie’s particular brand of toothpaste was called, but a random whiff of something close to his cologne strangled her entirely. 

Memory was cruel in that way, stealing away anything good, and leaving the worst of it. Those dark thoughts stained the countertops of her mind, the ring of week-old coffee that refused to be wiped clean and seemed to dismiss all notions of fading. 

The loss was too much to hold, sometimes. He followed her around everywhere despite her departure from the routine 

Maybe if she stayed here, stayed at Bly and got used to it, the familiarity would wipe away the dust and dark. Dani was determined to start new, to begin again. That was the only thing to do after such a thing. 

“Oi, watch where you’re walking!” 

The voice startled the absent au pair as she jumped away from whatever she’d apparently been walking on. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-- I don’t see where I…”

“You almost went knee-deep into my fertilizer, and my Delphiniums have been quite eager for that. I’d hate to make them cross so early in the summer.” 

The lilt of her tone bordered on teasing, but Dani was almost certain there was some honesty there, as if the gardener really did worry about the moods of her plants and of the garden as a whole.She quite liked the pleasing way the gardener’s mouth moved, cocked up at one corner in an oddly shy grin, and she quite liked the pleasing way the hardness of consonants were mulled over and softened. 

In just that moment, Dani realized she was missing some gentleness, and how shocking it was to find it in the sticky heat of the countryside morning. 

“I’m sorry,” Dani offered weakly, looking around and finally seeing the pile of compost and fertilizer waiting to be dispersed throughout the day. “I hadn’t-- I was a little lost there, I guess.” 

“Try not to get too lost, Poppins. We need someone to wrangle those two heathens, and I have my hands full.” 

“Delphiniums are notoriously ornery.” 

They shared a smile and Dani looked over the gardener, mud already appearing on her bare shoulder while her overalls had pockets full and gloves hung near her hip and a patch sewed on one side of a thigh. The messy mop of curls was somewhat tamed in a bandana, and even without make up, her lips seemed impossibly red, like strawberries. 

“If you think they’re bad, you should hear how my peonies have been acting out. Don’t even get me started on my deutzias, who are normally so well-behaved.” 

As she rambled, Dani thought about how nice it was, to hear someone talk about something that they clearly loved. She couldn’t help but smile, which made the gardener slow down and end her explanation earlier than either would have liked. 

“I should let you get back to your walk. You looked like you were going somewhere important, with purpose.”

“Oh, yeah, I was… not really. Just clearing my head.” 

“That can be tricky,” Jamie nodded. 

“Thank you for saving me.” 

“It’s my pleasure. I kind of prowl about all day waiting to save beautiful damsels. It’s part of my charm.” 

“I’d work on the delivery,” Dani teased, taking a few steps back as she realized it was late enough for the manor to be waking. 

“Never been my strong suit,” Jamie shrugged it off. “How was the follow through?” 

“I’d give it a solid B-.”

“Tough marker, you are. I feel for those little ones already.” 

“Practice makes perfect, Ms. Hawthorne.Can’t disappoint those damsels.” 

“I’d never want to do that.” 

With a rakish grin, Jamie nodded a farewell to the au pair, and Dani returned it with a small wave over her shoulder. 

The realization that the gardener had called the au pair beautiful was met simultaneously by both members of the previous conversation. Dani was nearly rounding the corner as she replayed it all in her head, stopping suddenly at that detail while Jamie was furrowed and pulling on her gloves, meeting at the same point. Both looked up at each other when it happened and from across the lawn, looked away quickly. 

As swift as her legs would carry her, Dani retreated into the routine of the day, refusing to think of gardeners or Delphiniums. 

NEXT

[fst-critique]

Peter Do Spring 2022 Ready to Wear

New York Fashion Week loves a debut show. Anyone and everyone from press offices to marketers greet the occasion with a flurry of attention in hopes to capture what may be a defining moment in modern history. For Peter Do and his team, their debut offering for their New York-based label reflected on the celebratory relationship of their immigrant status and the place they call home- New York City. Well, at least that is what they hoped to show. Each founding member of the brand has an Asian heritage where China, Korea, and Vietnam are represented with pride. Per the collections show notes, the team wanted to ensure viewers realize that despite the event marking their runway debut, this endeavor was indeed their 7th ensemble to date. Given this, the 46-look’s presented took on a format similar to Charles Dicken’s novel A Christmas Carol. Concepts marking the past, present, and eventual future work were explored in hopes of reflecting on and furthering the early legacy of the city's hottest label. “Lighter and Fluid” are the defining characteristics outlined by the team and epitomize a look that intensifies formalities for those obsessed with the pristine and kept. In short, Do’s outing was an aesthetically pleasing montage of chic clothing that renders itself to a clientele focused on an architectural wardrobe. Though, the result had many a reference to a past not entirely established by Do. They say the greatest form of flattery is copying, but when viewers are unaware of historical references, perceptions will trickle down into a dangerously falsified version of reality no matter how progressive it appears on the surface.

New York City indefinitely has the most magnificent skyline to accompany its picturesque views. Set in Green Point Brooklyn and facing the West Side of Manhattan, a clear September evening painted an image of peacefulness and absolute beauty for the stage. The collection opened on familiar territory. Lean overcoats cut to the calf resemble a style now synonymous with "The Do" silhouette. These classic lines, representative of a reflection of the past, included variations of functional vents. Formed through slits placed on the back and along the side, the pieces allow for an appropriate seasonal functionality as the weather begins to warm. Oversized suiting was an option all but present in former collections. Missing out an opportunity to showcase involved tailoring, the option to include the XL fit felt a little too close to a style exercised by Helmut Lang in the early 2000s. The cracks in the showcase began here. Unbeknownst to the viewer, the display began to take on a second act of the Helmut Lang universe. Wide jackets and two-toned or combo trousers made an appearance, yet the shape again felt too related and tried. Look 7- a white blouse with a decorative pocket- revisited a method of applying straps of fabric to support the garment on the body- another direct reference all too familiar to a style imposed by the Austrian turned Long Islander. A transparent knit dress in white styled over a pair of trousers also felt inspired by Lang, as did look 15’s leather pant and trench combination. Back cutouts found in the outerwear take shape in a circular motion. Curios but edgy in detail, the placement, and surprise of such a pattern unveil's interest, yet upon the realization Lang did it first, the style is anything but original and fails to appeal once again. It is easy to access a tone of disapproval for the striking similarities. Much of what Do provides has been done and seen before. American fashion is built on sportswear and a style that craves function and utility. By tapping into this look for the season, viewers feel a jolt of pride and understanding knowing such an aesthetic is profoundly relevant and would be praised for its minimal response to life’s current challenges. But not here. What has been done in the past is history. Realizing this and failing to acknowledge the former work of someone as influential as Helmut leaves a poor taste in the mouths of fashion enthusiasts who do not deserve such blatant, forced association.

For the present timeframe, a mealy of oversized t-shirts with dropped shoulders breathed something fresh and contributed to the simplistic, fluid direction of the proposed thesis. More inclusive of the brand’s trademarks was an asymmetrical pleated wrap skirt extended to the ankle and a finely tailored jumpsuit that pooled to the floor- the latter being a proposal unfamiliar to the label. Finishing the collection on a high note was important. What started as a scene all too familiar concluded on an uplifting key. The future looks offered a detailed oriented and more personal feel- an element largely missing at this time in fashion. The last ten or so looks granted viewers an ultimatum of direction. A minimal past or a decorated future? The answer proved to be the latter. Through decorative embroideries and finishes, a luxurious undertone swept away any lost hope that change was out of the coming equation. Embroidered into overcoats, fitted blazers, and on the side of a bias cut evening dress, large and colorful floral motifs point to a more decorative era in the house of Peter Do. Newness is always good, and when the addition of accouterments relates to a narrative- the result borders on the terrific.

In a slight twist of irony, the revival of the label Helmut Lang took place just days after this runway presentation. The unfortunate actuality is that Peter did Lang better than the label that bears his name had. Given the hype placed on this debut and the resulting work, one may hope the label would have strived for an actionable approach that is current and pertains to the present. T-shirts are not enough. The flashback to seasons past seemed unimportant as fashion is at a critical juncture. Anticipating an authentic voice to stir the waters of change and representation, this letdown resulted from Do failing to seize this moment and deliver upon the notion that he is the voice of the next generation. Although, the conclusion of the show did prove he has more to offer. Here is to hoping he will find his voice and be back on track come next season. New York fashion desperately needs it.

[razieltwelve]

The Best Present (RWBY AU Snippet)

Death sat in her temple and brooded. It wasn’t often that she brooded. She was normally more cheerful, and it was a good thing too. A depressed and broody Death usually meant a dead everything else. That said, she felt she was entitled to a bit of gloom and doom this time of year. In her lap, Zwei made a comforting sound and nudged her with his head.

“Hmm... I wish my temple was this grand and magnificent.”

Death turned her attention to the large man in red and white clothing who had strode through the doors of her temple. “Santa...”

Santa gave her a fond smile and gestured vaguely at the rest of the temple. “It’s a little bit dour don’t you think?”

Death chuckled. “Well... I am Death.” Her temple’s interior decor usually favoured red more than black, but this time of year was an exception. None of her clergy were old enough to remember when she’d first made the change, but they knew better than to question one of her few direct edicts. “Is this a business call?”

The jolly spirit of Christmas shook his head. “Not really, just a visit to an old friend.”

Old was an appropriate term. Of all the beings associated with civilisation, Santa was one of the oldest. He had existed ever since the first gift had been given while Death had existed since before the concept of time itself. To say that they were old friends was something of an understatement. After all, they were two of the most powerful cookie-loving entities in existence, and Death had been mistaken for him one more than one occasion due to her ability to seemingly go wherever she wanted and know whether or not people had been good or bad.

“I thought you’d be busy, you know, since it is Christmas Eve and all.”

Santa pulled two glasses of milk out of thin air along with two plates of cookies. He handed one glass to Death along with one of the plates of cookies. “We both know that I can be everywhere at once if I have to, maybe not all the time, but on this night, at least.”

Death dipped one of the cookies into the milk and took a bite. As expected of Santa, it tasted perfect. “So...?”

“It occurs to me,” Santa said. “That you’ve been a very good girl for a very, very, very long time, but you’ve never gotten a gift from me.”

Death chuckled. “You’re only supposed to give gifts to mortals.”

“True, but I am also supposed to bring Christmas cheer to all, so you can see my conundrum. You, one of my oldest and best friends, get sad every Christmas, which really won’t do.” Santa dipped one of his own cookies. “So I thought to myself, why not get Death a gift? True, I’m not as powerful as you are, but I’m not bound by the same restrictions either since my power isn’t truly mine in the way yours is yours.”

Death nodded. “The gifts you give people are determined by how good they’ve been. It’s such a part of your legend that it’s become a restriction of sorts.”

“A bothersome one at times,” Santa admitted. “But not in this case. And, as I’ve said, you’ve been a very good girl for aeons and aeons, so you’re due for something special.” Santa’s eyes crinkled. “Now, I can't make any promises, but you’ve built up a lot of credit, so to speak. Would you like to cash it in?”

Death raised one eyebrow. “Cash it in?”

“There’s not a lot I can give you with only one year’s worth of being good, but if you count all of the Christmases in the past where you’ve been good and never gotten anything... well, I might be able to get you something you’ve always wanted although I can’t make any promises.” Santa’s smile was warm and kind. “So... want to give it a try?”

“I suppose I could.” Death chuckled. “It’s not like I’ve got any other use for the ‘credit’ I’ve built up.”

“Even so, I need to hear you say it.” Santa grinned. “Restrictions and rules and all that.”

Death shrugged. “All right. Very well. I, Death, formally announce that I wish to use all of my accumulated Christmas credit to get the best gift ever. Will that do?”

“It just might.” Santa gave Death the rest of his cookies. He’d only eaten one. “I know that this time of year might make you sad, but on Boxing Day, take a walk around. You’ll be surprised by the happiness you find.”

X    X     X

Death walked around disguised as a mortal. Zwei was with her, disguised as a mortal dog. The pair of them were walking through one of the busier entertainment districts. It was Boxing Day, so there were actually quite a few people out and about. Most of them were families eager to watch a movie or have a Boxing Day lunch with their extended family at a restaurant.

Her lips twitched. She wondered what Weiss would think about movies and modern restaurants and all the rest of it. The queen had been quite amazed when Death had told her about some of the things the future would bring, and she’d never been entirely sure if Death had been joking or serious. Ah. It had been so fun to tease Weiss.

Idly, she wondered what Santa would give her. After all, she was Death. There was very little she couldn’t simply get herself if she was so inclined. Of course, the one thing she wanted was one of the very few things she couldn’t get. For reasons that were now obvious to her, she was forbidden from interfering with the great Cycle that governed the death and rebirth of mortal souls. In a way it was a good thing. Otherwise, there was no end to the tampering she’d do to ensure Weiss came back to her.

Death sighed. She’d promised Weiss that she would wait for her. What was a thousand years to a god like her? What was ten thousand? But she hadn’t counted on how much she’d changed. Those years with Weiss... she’d stopped marking time the way gods did and started thinking about it in more mortal terms. And to a mortal a century was a long, long time, to say nothing of how long millennia felt.

Still, there was something nice about being out here. The families bustling back and forth, the people eager to enjoy a Boxing Day sale or two... it all had an atmosphere that was difficult for the fest of the year to match and -

Someone ran into her. It spoke volumes about how lost Death was in her thoughts that she hadn’t move out of the way. It wasn’t like anyone could hurt her, but she would normally have avoided a collision simply to avoid the hassle that often came when mortals bumped into one another. And the last thing she needed was for people to realise that a god walked amongst them. She got enough veneration at her temple. She didn’t need anymore here.

But all of those thoughts ceased to matter the moment she laid eyes on the person who’d bumped into her.

It was a young woman, one wearing an Atlas University sweater to help with the winter chill. And Death would have known her and her soul anywhere. 

Weiss.

“I am so sorry!” Weiss cried as she reached into her pockets for a handkerchief. “I got coffee all over you!”

Death belatedly noticed that Weiss had indeed spilled coffee all over her. Wait... coffee was normally hot enough to hurt mortals. “Um... ouch.”

Weiss blinked and stopped dabbing at the coffee on Death’s coat. “Um... ouch?” She winced as the very obvious stain on Death’s coat refused to lighten despite her efforts. “I think I’ve ruined your coat.”

“It’s fine.” Death was smiling like an idiot, but she didn’t care. Weiss was here. She was here. Unbidden, Santa’s words came back to her. He wasn’t bound by the same rules as she was, and his power, although fleeting, could be truly incredible given the right circumstances... like when giving a gift to someone with aeons of good behaviour saved up.

Weiss bit her lip. “It looks like an expensive coat though.” She looked about furtively, and Death fought the urge to kiss the frown off her face. Death didn’t give a crap about the coat. It was something she’d created with her power as part of her disguise. “Look... I feel bad about ruining your coat, and I do have some gift vouchers for the coffee shop over there.” She pointed. “Can I make it up to you?”

Coffee with Weiss? Death grinned. “I suppose you could.” At her feet, Zwei gave a happy bark. “Oh, and this is my dog.”

“He’s adorable!” Weiss bent down, and Zwei licked her hand. “Wow. It’s like he already knows me.”

“You’d be surprised.” Death’s grin widened. “So... tell me about yourself.”

X    X     X

Zwei watched as his mistress and Weiss talked over coffee. It had been a long time since he’d seen Death smile so much. He had suspected that this would be Santa’s gift. It was the only thing his mistress wanted that she could not get for herself despite her awesome powers... which was why he’d sought out Santa not long after his meeting with Death.

Even if Santa could somehow arrange a meeting between Death and Weiss, that still left them with a problem. At some point, Weiss would die again. If Death had to wait so long to see her again, well, it might be even worse this time than the last time.

But maybe there was a way to fix that...

And Zwei wasn’t called the best dog in Creation for nothing.

“So... you want to trade in all of your Christmas credit as well?” Santa had asked him.

Zwei had nodded. He would gladly trade in all his Christmases if it meant getting Weiss back more easily from now on. If Santa really could affect the Cycle, then maybe he could guarantee a more regular rebirth schedule for Weiss as well. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d be getting nothing out of it. It was Weiss. He loved having her around, and he was sure to get plenty of naps in her lap, belly rubs, and treats to compensate him for his trouble.

“You really are a good boy, aren’t you?” Santa nodded. “Very well. I’ll do what I can. With all the credit you’ve saved up, it should be enough.” He scratched Zwei behind the ears. “And maybe pay a visit to the North Pole soon. It’s been ages since you and Rudolph got to hang out.”

X    X     X

Author’s Notes

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

[tawakkull]

ISLAM 101: Spirituality in Islam: Part 83

Faith: A particular perspective

The word “faith,” “iman” in Arabic, in the framework of descriptions or from the point of view of science and epistemology, comes from the root “emn ü eman,” which means to be safe from fears, to believe, to promise, to trust, to procure the safety of others. It is a word that has the meaning of being safe and sturdy. Believing in God, attesting to His existence, making a confession in the conscience and making a proclamation from the heart, these are some of the meanings that are conferred upon this word from the point of view of linguistic tradition.

A person who puts faith in God is called a “mumin.” A mumin is the attester and representative par excellence of all the characteristics that we have seen above—here we could also talk about the issue of the relationship of deeds and faith, and whether deeds are included within the description of faith, but for the moment we shall not dwell on these topics. Mumins are indeed heroes of attestation, proclamation and representation with their common sense, their ability to see and perceive, their pure intellect that has been enlightened by revelations, their vast and objective comprehension, their strong and encompassing vision, their fastidiousness and sensitivity in matters of responsibility, their determination and resolution against evil, their pursuit of greatness throughout their entire life and the safeguarding of these high ideals, the ability to keep alive their feelings, awareness and will, their curiosity that leads to the penetration of the essential meaning of things and their deep understanding in interpreting phenomena, their believing and trusting in God and being known among people as people of trust, their attestation to the existence of the Just One and their ability to always stay true to Him, their being known as people who can be trusted with anything and being remembered as people of credibility to whom one can turn at all times, their being remembered thus and being accepted by the all as thus, their being the means for the remembrance of God and also being understood as people who direct those who around them toward Him. They are heroes of attestation, proclamation, and representation, in the true sense of the word.

Even if every believing person is not a hero of faith and Islam to the same degree, it is clear how significant the feeling of belief is for each individual. For a start, this feeling is of the highest value in the nature of humanity, with regards to creation. Even though those who do not believe try to be fulfilled, satisfied, or more precisely, try to find distraction, they feel themselves to be in a vacuum. All time and space is a vacuum for them, today and tomorrow are all the same. Such people feel this vacuum deep down in their soul, they voice the smothering feelings that turn to senseless ravings thus:

All is emptiness; the ground is a void, the skies are a void, the heart, the conscience is a void; I want to hold on, but there is no where in sight to hang on. 

And a believing soul, giving expression to the chilling nature of the denial of truth and any attempt to conceal it, yet at the same time, expressing the peace that faith promises, simply calls out thus:

A rusted heart which has no faith is a burden for the breast. 

A votary of the heart who is determined to dissolve the corrosion of these rusted hearts, on the other hand, will say: “Genuine pleasure, enjoyment without pain, happiness with no sorrow is possible only within the sphere of faith and its truths,” so “those who want to enjoy the pleasures of life should enliven it with faith, adorn it with the deeds that God has prescribed for humanity and protect it by avoiding deeds that He has told us not to commit,” for “when one manages to direct oneself toward the path of eternal life, however miserable and troublesome one’s life may be, as one considers this world to be the waiting lounge for Heaven, one accepts everything contentedly and gives thanks” (paraphrased from Bediüzzaman). Such people would enlighten our horizons with their healing words and cause our hearts to feel the magic of faith.

With regards to its content and essence, faith is a fruit which has been picked from the realm of life and presented to our souls; it is the heavenly river of Kawthar, from which our hearts have been made to drink, a meaning soaked in by the lips of our hearts, a monument of divine light in our hearts, shaped by the ruler and compass of meaning, feeling, conscience and understanding. Heroes of faith who repair and restore their hearts and feelings with faith and understanding have already discovered the secret of turning their world of the mind into the heavens; they have entered the route of eternal happiness and have been freed from all other quests. Since “there is always the existence of a spiritual heaven in faith, and a spiritual hell in blasphemy and sins … then indeed, just as faith carries the spiritual seed of the Tree of Heaven, so too does blasphemy store the spiritual seed of Hell” 

In fact, if a soul has taken wings by means of faith, it will not loiter in any other doorway, nor will it stoop so low as to beg from another; a person with such a soul will not bow their head before anyone else; they will act bravely in the face of everything, to the degree of the strength of their faith. Indeed, “faith is both light and power. Those who attain true faith can challenge the universe and, in proportion to their faith’s strength, be relieved of the pressures of events.”[1] This is because “faith leads to testifying to God’s uniqueness, this testimony leads to submission, submission leads to putting oneself in God’s hands, and this last leads to happiness here and in the hereafter.” Such monuments of faith use their hearts like spiral staircases that lead to the realms beyond the heavens and with this, they beat their wings in the direction of the angelic heights where angels and spirits[2] meet. At times, the angels and spirits whisper things in the ears of these people, and at times they present the spirits with garlands of comprehension and become people of distinction in that realm. And if such people have been able to deepen their faith with learning and have adorned that learning with spiritual tastes, then, indeed, it is then that they start to fly to horizons that even angels yearn for; they are always on the look out for destinations that Lord would approve of … spending their time with those deserving in Heaven and dreaming of the “highest Heaven.” To be of a value great enough to be lifted to the highest Heaven with the light of faith and to attain a value befitting Heaven is the destiny of those who have faith; to stoop down to the level of dark denial and to become one of the people of Hell is the unfortunate end of the blasphemer; the latter is a topic unto itself, but it would take too many pages to make this analysis here.

Those who can see people of faith with their particular depths, remember God through them. Those who feel their breath find life as if they have been visited by Messiah and those who listen to the voices coming from their heart become intoxicated on the wine of the words, as if they have reached the company of the Sultan of Eloquence. Indeed, a soul which has completed its garments with faith and what faith promises is no longer in need of anything else. Through being elevated toward God, such a person is still powerful in weakness with the will of God, rich through His wealth in their poverty, and despite being small, is one of greats. This is due to the fact that such people depend on the eternal will of their Master when their powers of choosing and will are not sufficient. They trust in His will upon matters which surpass their abilities; when shaken in matters of this life, they take refuge in the orchards and gardens of life eternal. When the anxiety of death envelops their horizon, they throw themselves onto the open climate of eternal life. Faced with matters which they cannot resolve with their intellect and understanding, they resort to the glowing climate of the Qur’an, which finalizes the solution. They never experience despair, never feel emptiness; they never come face to face with everlasting darkness. Their experiences and lives are like a song of pleasure and they turn their face toward the Creator with thanks, just like bountiful ears of corn.

Perfect people with faith are not dependant solely on their own consistency or personal states; such people open up to everyone with a prophetlike resolve, embracing everyone and binding their life to the earthly and otherworldly happiness of others to such a degree that they will neglect themselves and live like a friend of the Prophet; scattering light onto their surroundings with the internal light that is like a candle, and maintaining a route which at times may be contrary to personal benefit…indeed, such people always look for places that are dark, like the night. They fight with darkness and oppression, always burning, as they burn, they feel the pain inside, and while their heads may be bowed, neither the continuous glow of their flame, nor the gradual expiration of the flame prevents such people from enlightening others.

Devotees of faith who have managed to raise their flags at the entrance to the way of faith tread the whole world in one bound. They reach the heavens, hold conversations with the stars … they are in contact with the sun … they befriend the moon … and they walk through large stretches of space, toward the “Perfect Companion.” As they walk, their faces are always looking at the ground in humbleness and their breath is that of humility. Indeed, it is as if they have donned feathers taken from the wings of angels, they soar at inconceivable heights; but neither the dizziness of such heights, nor the fact that they are on a par with spiritual ones confuses their thoughts—the purest of the pure. Their heads are always inclined toward their breast, with the feelings of Prophet Adam, with a neverending sigh and hope on their lips, they are like a red rose of the deepest hue. And they glow with varying colors when they turn toward the Just One, as if they are looking toward the sun; when they feel His majesty; they sweat like dewladen leaves of the morning. It is as if they have heard the sounding of the Sur,[3] the fanfare of the Judgment Day.

Those who watch such people find a window through which to gaze upon All-Clement in all His actions, to turn toward eternity and to transform their worlds into nests of love. They display a variety of lights in the darkest night, in those nights where one awaits the dawn and in gardens swept by autumn. They present bunches of roses and flowers to those around them gathered from the emotions in their breasts.

Such people sometimes shape their feelings with majesty and benevolence, they sometimes cool their scorched breasts with tears; their tears flow as if to make the path more welcoming to their wishes and expectations, and they experience approaching happiness with the hope and faith that these aspirations will soon come true. They are always ready to go beyond distances, in accordance with the vastness of their faith. They keep time with the rhythm of their heart, making wings for their reason with feathers from the wings of their heart; they overcome in one step the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in which reason and earthly comprehension are embroiled, and they reach the apex of the world of meaning.

The adherents of truth are always at peace, even when they are surrounded by motifs of grief and sorrow. They do not suffer long from grief, nor are they familiar with unending sorrow. With their bond to God and their intimacy with Him they are able to break the grip of grief with ease; they smother sorrow in its own sorrowfulness and if they have troubles, they adorn them with “sacred sobriety” and watch the pink hues of the spiritual beauty without distress, binding anguish to pleasure, and pain to the glory that is promised by trouble. They are able to transform the groans of pain to joyful sighs, and even when they are most distressed they are able to recite poems of happiness to those around them with the language of their hearts. When they capture the essence of this way and thus sanctify their first breath, with their second breath they bind their hearts to their minds, making their intellect speak with the tongue of the heart and making their voices heard even on the remotest stars and beyond, thus making all the spiritual ones listen to these calls to prayer, a song not heard before. Even believers can hear and enjoy them; as long as the believers keep their horizons free from the stain of sin.

[1] Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said, The Words, Twentythird Word. [2] Martyrs and the ones who are believed to live in a different dimension. [3] Israfil, one of the Archangels, will sound Sur, the trumpet at the Day of Resurrection.

[arcticdementor]

When Machiavelli wrote, “in order to know Moses’ virtue it was necessary that the people of Israel be slaves in Egypt …,” he was pointing to the truth that knowing what one is up against is a powerful incentive for dealing with it intelligently. Genesis tells us that only in Moses’ time did the Egyptians make clear how harsh was the alternative to the Exodus by deciding to kill their longtime slaves’ baby boys.

Today, the oligarchy that controls American society’s commanding heights leaves those who are neither its members nor its clients little choice but to marshal their forces for their own exodus. The federal government, the governments of states and localities run by the Democratic Party, along with the major corporations, the educational establishment, and the news media set strict but movable boundaries about what they may or may not say—on pain of being cast out, isolated from society’s mainstream. Using an ever-shifting variety of urgent excuses, which range from the coronavirus, to the threat of domestic terrorism, to catastrophic climate change, to the evils of racism, they issue edicts that they enforce through anti-democratic means—from social pressure and threats, to corporate censorship of digital platforms, to bureaucratic fiat. Nobody voted for this.

What forces can and can’t this oligarchy bring to bear? We have a hint from Time magazine’s Feb. 4, 2021, valedictory of “a vast, cross-partisan campaign” by leaders of business, labor, and the media, in cooperation with the Democratic Party, that “got states to change voting systems and laws” for the 2020 presidential election in contravention of black-letter constitutional law. Rulings by judges in Michigan and Virginia that changes to those states’ absentee ballot laws were blatantly illegal matters not one whit.

Why not? Because the coalition of masters controls the levers of the state and the press. As Time reveals, they “helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.” Because these elites realized that “engaging with toxic content only made it worse,” they decided on “removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place.” Instead of answering facts and arguments with which they disagreed, they would ignore their substance and smear whoever voiced them.

The boldness and novelty of these as well as of unmentioned tactics delivered the desired electoral result, and power heretofore unimaginable: Americans in 2021 are being fired or “canceled” from society for whatever anyone connected with the oligarchy finds objectionable—even for asking for evidence of the oligarchy’s assertions. Yet Time tells us that because the process of defeating Donald Trump’s voters angered them further, these oligarchs worry that they gained only “a respite.” Hence the united oligarchy must seek, as The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie put it, permanent “national political dominance.”

Though that dominance seems at hand, the general population’s compliance with it is not. That is because isolating and alienating anybody, let alone half the country, is the proverbial two-edged sword. Anytime you isolate and alienate someone else, you do the same to yourself. The boundaries that the oligarchs have drawn, are drawing, separate them from the American people’s vast majority, whose consciousness of powerlessness and defenselessness clarifies their choice between utter subjection and doing whatever it might take to exit a system that no longer seems to allow for the prospect of republican self-government.

…

By this century’s second decade, the oligarchs who occupy the commanding heights of American life had ceased trying to persuade. Self-government has declined as corporations have wielded public powers with private discretion. America’s ruling class—bipartisan, public and private—grew to disdain the rest of America’s religiosity, patriotism, and tastes. But until our own time, most Americans either had not noticed their loss of status as citizens or assumed that they could vote to regain it. But the rulers inspired no confidence and ruled by pulling rank.

…

Hate-as-identity was key to the ruling class’s victory in the 2020 election. For the elites, indulging sentiments of moral superiority, promoting hate, and rubbing “deplorable” faces in the dirt is a means to secure and mobilize supporters, which itself is incidental to securing the material benefits of power. For those who deliver the votes, indulging hate is affirmation of identity.

Ruling people by insulting and harming them is problematic, and not reversible. The use that the oligarchy made of the COVID epidemic added to insult and injury, as well as to its power, in a manner previously unimaginable. Boldly dismissing without argument the fact that viral infections cannot be stopped from running their course once they have taken root in a population, they asserted that acquiescing to indefinite cessation of social and economic activities they deemed to be nonessential would stop the disease’s progression. The ensuing lockdowns, mask mandates, and other measures made life for most Americans worse in every way. But these strictures also crippled the sectors of American society independent of and resistant to the oligarchy—religious institutions and small businesses. They isolated people and limited what they could hear from and say to each other, leaving them prey to one-way propaganda narratives backed by nightly threats of mob violence.

Correctly, however, the American oligarchy, which resides these days in the Democratic Party, feared that the weaponized, mutually validating narratives with which it had bombarded the population could not guarantee that the American people would vote differently in 2020 than they did in 2016, widespread public dislike for Donald Trump notwithstanding. Not a few suspected that the COVID heavy-handedness had increased resentment among people who had learned to be suspicious of pollsters, reporters, and opinion-samplers.

Ordinary credulity was never enough for swallowing the narrative that universal vote by mail, coupled with drop boxes for ballots and ballot harvesting by self-proclaimed civic groups, plus the reduction or elimination of verification of signatures, would do anything other than transfer electoral power from those who cast votes to those who count them—that is, to the oligarchy and its party. Even so, the ruling class’s victory depended on tens of thousands of votes out of 156 million, in some of the most corrupt counties in the land. In Pennsylvania, the vast majority of all mailed ballots were for Biden. The oligarchy sealed the victory as brazenly as they gained it: by meeting demands for transparency with ad hominem accusations backed by threats of social ostracism and enforced by control, which itself was attained in part by issuing naked threats backed by legislative and bureaucratic power—all over partisan, monopoly digital platforms which eventually participated in censorship.

The oligarchy’s power over American institutions public and private, however, does not change the fact that it rests on near universal voluntary compliance. The irrevocable alienation of and from at least half of Americans has canceled much of the oligarchs’ moral legitimacy and left them obliged to rule by further alienating and punishing—to rule a house that they divided against itself. Hence, the unprecedented power it gathered will prove less significant than the manner in which it did the gathering.

…

The deplorables plainly stand no chance of dismantling the new American system. Corporate executives, not legislatures, governors, or presidents are the ones who decide what happens to the trillions of dollars created jointly by the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. They are the ones who regulate speech and attitudes, who for the most part decide who rises and who does not. And they are the part of the oligarchy most insulated from republican institutions.

…

In our time, millions of people have grown up or been educated no longer to want or be able to live as citizens of what had been the American republic. Partisans in mind, heart, and habit, their support of the oligarchy’s partisan rule has left the United States with two peoples of opposing character, aspirations, and tastes within its national borders. The government bureaucracies are led by persons selected and habituated against the deplorables. The same can be said of the educational establishment and corporate boardrooms. What sort of dictatorial power would it take to purge them? Were the deplorables to struggle for the partisan power to oppress the others, they would guarantee dysfunction at best, war at worst. That is why it makes most sense for them to assert their own freedom.

Some sort of mostly peaceful exodus is within our powers to achieve. A very bad imitation of Mr. Smith was able to convince 75 million to rise against dangers that were still largely theoretical in 2016. Better imitators can lead many more to act against present ones, and to live within institutions of their own making. We can withdraw our compliance, go our own way, and build anew.

…

Our American exodus won’t be led by a Moses. The Republican Party, with the exception of a few national-level personages, may be as useless as ever. But politics is a collective activity, and the lack of top-down leadership notwithstanding, our exodus is already in progress, thanks to Americans’ legal structures and traditions of state and local autonomy, as well as our Tocquevillian taste for organizing ourselves into ad hoc groups for the common benefit.

…

What to do about the media’s banning or restricting the circulation of ideas with which it disagrees, including the distribution of books and movies, is a major issue of national politics. Without shame, medically unqualified “fact checkers” censor the writings of physicians on medical matters, while defining their own beliefs about gender and race as “science.” Letting such pretenses stand also ratifies the negation of the First Amendment. Overcoming them requires ending the exercise of what amount to governmental powers, indeed of police powers, by nongovernmental persons and entities.

Not so long ago, government power was the only threat to the First Amendment. But oligarchy’s essence is precisely the blurring and blending of public and private power in a partisan manner. Hence, media malpractice must be dealt with as part of a bigger political problem, namely expanding the Bill of Rights’ coverage to ostensibly private entities.

What is to be done about private companies that subject employees to training aimed at convincing them that there is something wrong with being white—or at least pretending to convince them? Or that they must abide by the oligarchy’s preferences? To be sure, state governments may outlaw such training within their borders, as part of their general police power. But big employers may object to such laws as contrary to their own freedom of speech, while asserting that the employees’ attendance at those sessions is voluntary. Even if courts back them up, governors and mayors don’t have to listen and can impose their penalties. Public figures, or brave employees, can organize many if not most employees to stay away and to explain just how wrong it is to racially stereotype. Management can’t fire them all. Yet republican self-government can return to at least some Americans only if and when a bloc of major states puts itself in the position of dictating what will and will not happen within their borders.

…

Until recently, graduation from highly selective colleges seemed to certify their graduates as better for having been admitted, and doubly so for having learned more than students at lesser schools. But for a generation, the Ivy League, Stanford, and others have made a point of admitting many students with lower scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test rather than students with higher ones. In general, and with the exception of physics, chemistry, and pure math, the more highly rated the college, the less work it expects from its students. And since learning is inherently proportionate to studying, graduates of these academic peaks often know less than kids out of Podunk State. Yet they give their students something of supposedly greater practical value than knowledge: prestige, pretentiousness, and access to enviable careers.

Which leads one to ask why the nation’s most powerful consulting groups, private equity firms, and big banks hire Ivy League types and pay them so much. They are not necessarily all that bright or knowledgeable. Why then are they so valuable? Not because of what they know, but who they are: junior members of the oligarchy, identically chosen, trained, and confirmed to defend its interests, to communicate its priorities, and preserve its hierarchy. How come the public-private oligarchy was able to use the COVID challenge to crush independent business, thus transferring massive wealth to itself? Because its various parts are staffed by interconnected people who, whatever their differences, instinctively trump the Smiths’ priorities with those of their own class.

…

The oligarchy’s cancellation of most ordinary people out of its desired America leaves the latter with the choice between helotry and exodus. But since submission to inconstant, inept masters is impossible, common sense suggests counter-canceling: limiting involvement with the oligarchy to minimizing its interference on individuals who don’t share its aims and preferences.

The oligarchy’s cancellation of ordinary working people—of those who actively participate in forms of organized religion, and are otherwise attached to the common norms and values that prevailed in America and shaped the civilization in and by which most of us live—signals an alienation deeper than that between citizens of different but friendly nations. Asking how this cultural chasm has come to be detracts from the hard task of understanding its depth and making the best of it. Like married couples who have lost or given up what had united them, trying to work through irreconcilable differences only drives Americans’ domestic quarrels toward more violence.

[grupaok]

EXHIBITION OF FORCE

In 2016 Arden Sherman and Julian Myers-Szupinska published “Exhibition of Force,” a review of the reopened SFMOMA, on the blog of The Exhibitionist, a journal about exhibition making, which was taken offline in 2017. We are retrieving that review here, as it speaks to the longer history of the current crisis at that museum.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been closed for major renovations for the last three years. Designed by the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta, the new building, a hybrid of the 1995 building designed by Mario Botta and the white wavy tower designed by the Scandinavian architects, opens to the public this weekend.

The impetus for this renovation can be credited, in large part, to the donations of Doris and Donald Fisher, the progenitors of Gap Inc. The fortune accumulated from their clothing empire allowed the couple to become philanthropists, art collectors, and SFMOMA board members. After a long-bruited (but eventually abandoned) plan for the Fishers to build their own museum in San Francisco’s Presidio, the family negotiated a hundred-year “loan” of their vaunted collection to the museum, as well as a massive donation to a capital campaign that would allow for a $305 million building expansion to accommodate it. The museum subsequently raised a comparable amount to bolster its endowment and operating costs. The revamped institution held a sequence of opening events in April and May — press and member previews, a glitzy gala — that culminates with its May 14, 2016, reopening to the general public.

Bay Area institutions keyed a number of events to SFMOMA’s reopening to take advantage of increased visibility and visitors, among them the Parking Lot Art Fair at Fort Mason, various gallery openings and performances, and the Open Engagement conference at the Oakland Museum of California. That last, an annual conference of socially engaged artists and activists, took “power” as its theme. This was partly an homage to the history of organizers and radicals in the Bay Area (e.g., Black Power) but perhaps also a pointed riposte to the current tech boom in San Francisco (i.e., “money power”), which has occasioned skyrocketing rents and a massive reorganization of the city’s social ecology over the last several years.

The lens of “power” is a useful way to think about the new SFMOMA’s elaborate and overwhelming opening gambit. Take, for example, the architecture. When Mario Botta designed SFMOMA’s downtown San Francisco building in 1995, he took seriously the task of making a space where people were not intimidated and where art would be the star — even if the stately black marble of the Botta atrium and staircase was ultimately a peculiar way to enter (the new museum keeps the Botta marble but replaces his staircase with a lighter zigzag). The Snøhetta addition, too, focuses on the art, but does so at a massively enlarged scale: the new SFMOMA is two and a half times its former size and has more square footage than the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a city ten times the size of San Francisco. The result is something like a sprawling, seven-story, two-building mega-mansion: a huge feat, but one that feels endless rather than bountiful.

This building squares with the city’s new ambitions for itself. The two buildings hitched together, the somber Botta and the sleek Snøhetta, signal a sort of timetable of the city’s own history, and track an extreme influx of money in recent years. Such an architectural “twofer” confesses San Francisco’s specific brand of preservationism while also trumpeting its will to international and institutional power — and precisely in a neighborhood historically referred to as “skid row.”

The contents of this building, the expanded collection, signal a different sort of power. Museum collections are of course vital ways for regular viewers to see historically important works of art, and better that they are available to the public than squirreled away in collectors’ homes. And of course a museum’s holdings become a fundament of the institution’s identity. But this issue is complicated in the new SFMOMA by the branding of the works to particular donors — especially the two floors allotted for the Fishers’ collection and the one for Peter and Mimi Haas. Interestingly, the Haas works represent another fortune derived from jeans: Peter Haas was president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. from 1976 until his death in 2005. This means that pretty much anyone with a pair of pants in their closet has something like an investor’s share in the museum’s collections.

These galleries retain the blue-chip outlines of their moneyed collectors. For the Fishers, this means postwar American and German abstraction, almost universally by white men, barring a single room of paintings by Agnes Martin. And for the Haases, it means rambunctious pop by a somewhat more diverse cohort of artists — a collection that feels rather more familiar for an “international museum.” And like the architecture, these collections too exhibit a certain divided personality: given pride of place in the new galleries, they nevertheless reproduce the tastes and purchasing strategies of their CEO collectors, whose predilections may not always align with the museum’s own “objective” priorities — though at SFMOMA the two priorities have now become hard to disentangle.

This is especially true with the Fisher collection. If their unambitious love of Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol is vindicated by the history of art, it is vitiated by redundancies among big sign-value works throughout the museum, both within each floor and among the various “exhibitions” in which these artists make repeat appearances. The works become hard to distinguish from one another; each one signals the same sign-value, of importance plus ownership. Making one’s way through the museum one is constantly struck with déjà vu. In which room, or floor, did I see the blue Kelly painting? Did I already see that Warhol? What should we gather from these recurrences? That is, except for the co-presence of all these treasures.

The works from SFMOMA’s permanent collection, many installed in the same spot as before the renovation, are varied in comparison, and feel distinct from the Fisher trove, not least because they have a greater number of works by artists of color, and by women. The galleries devoted to photography are excellent, too, and include works by younger and more experimental artists. And the works on view from the museum’s Campaign for Art initiative — assembled since 2009 by a wider range of donors, and including three thousand works to date — incorporate more pieces by living artists and artists from California, some of whom donated their own works to the collection.

Such works have a reason to be here. More so, at least, than those resulting from the Fishers’ proclivity for Germans, which, in a perplexing turn, gives SFMOMA particularly strong holdings in postwar German artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Anselm Kiefer. But why exactly do major stores of these artists belong in San Francisco, aside from the Fishers’ fascination with them? Kiefer in particular is poorly served by being so abstracted from the German history in which his Wagnerian dramatism has ambiguous force. In San Francisco, and presented without mediation as such, they read as merely apocalyptic decor. One can only wonder why corporate CEOs have an affinity for this stuff.

Two more aspects of power come to mind. One is that of audience: Just which public does this new museum address? With admission set at a steep $25 and tightly timed timeslots for gallery access, will this institution appeal to a local audience, or largely to tourists for whom this sticker shock won’t matter so much? Major expansions at other institutions have not reliably led to expanded audiences, local or touristic, and it is not sure what will happen in this case, either. SFMOMA’s free admission for those under eighteen is a salutary countermove. Even better is an ongoing collaboration between the education and curatorial departments under the rubric of Public Dialogue, which aims to build partnerships with community galleries and public libraries. Such programs promise to continue the vision of the museum’s founders, which hoped to make the museum a vital part of the cultural life of city residents. But this is a long game, and it is hard to tell just how much it will engage Bay Area audiences on a deep and meaningful level.

And this affirmation of “city residents” rests on an anxious precipice in today’s San Francisco, where citizenship and residency are increasingly attenuated. Perhaps, given the extreme dislocations that characterize the city today, with warehouse districts now serving as tent cities for homeless post-residents, the museum ought to hold a “displaced residents day?” One has to wonder what they, or we, should think about when looking at a work like Charles Ray’s Sleeping Woman (2012) — which, as the wall text helpfully explains, speaks to how homeless people are frequently ignored or invisible in society. Ray’s work calls to mind another “gap,” that between rich and poor, between those included in San Francisco’s current boom and those ejected from it. This disparity is hardly invisible in San Francisco these days, but rather is a harsh and inescapable part of daily life.

Furthermore, moments of strategic generosity as described above are balanced uneasily against the power of money in the museum as it stands (the value of the expanded collection has been estimated at a billion dollars). One must nevertheless mark a circular logic to this extraordinary concentration of value: the Fishers and others gave SFMOMA money to expand, while the very reason the museum needed to expand was to house the Fishers’ “loan.” And so SFMOMA is the channel through which this money coursed, while accumulating comparatively little capital, intellectual or otherwise, of its own, independent of its lenders. In some weird sense, therefore, the power of money in this case may be more marginal than it appears. Perhaps the best we can hope, then, is that this perpetual motion machine now locked onto the old museum might spin off more programs like Public Dialogue, and worthwhile exhibitions off the main, collector-driven concourse — and that there is still a local audience in San Francisco interested in seeing them.

__

Arden Sherman is Curator at Hunter East Harlem Gallery, a multi-disciplinary space for art exhibitions and socially-minded projects located in Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work in New York City. Julian Myers-Szupinska was senior editor of The Exhibitionist, and is a member of grupa o.k. Photo: Charles Ray, Sleeping Woman, 2012, installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photograph by Julian Myers-Szupinska.

[smuttymess]

bts astro soulmate reading | for vanessa

sign: taurus sun | leo moon | virgo rising

lover: min yoongi | soulmate: kim taehyung

Those born with their Sun in Taurus are known for their reliability and fortitude: they know the power of making a plan, staying the course and seeing it through to the end. People initially experience you as a thoughtful, diligent, and strong-willed individual who can be trusted to make key decisions not lose their cool under pressure, establishing you as a valuable figure both in the workplace and in positions of power but also in your personal relationships. Your Virgo rising, or how you present to others, only furthers your presence as a matter-of-fact, hard working person who values perfection and purposefulness in everything that you do no matter how seemingly small and unimportant. Beneath this stoic, occasionally cold exterior is fiery Leo Moon, which brims with a boundless energy that comprises your internal state of emotions and reactions. Leo is driven by ego and being seen, meaning you derive great value from being appreciated from all of your hard work, and you're not afraid to ask for it. When the elements come together, you are likely to experience profound clashes between your outgoing, showy and prideful Leo Moon and the patient, balanced nature of your Taurus Sun. Your specific placements make you one of the most opinionated and brazen signs in the zodiac, meaning you are highly respected but not always liked. Let's face it: not everyone is ready for your level of honesty! And while this can sometimes leave you feeling misunderstood (Leo loves to be loved), the strength of your Taurus Sun affords you heightened sense of self and the world around you alongside a keen understanding that not everyone is for you. Once the bruises on your ego have healed, you're more than happy to pour your signature loyalty, compassion and dedication into the many people that do adore you, creating lifelong relationships that are of the most importance to you.

A Moon in Leo means you have a deep confidence gained from your vast life experience, and your Taurus Sun knows how to use this knowledge to move you forward towards your best self. This inner security allows you to speak candidly, something that others deeply admire about you and undoubtedly has contributed to your success in career and relationships. In being able to very frankly admit to your strengths and weaknesses, you are able to advance ahead of others who are still unsure of their place in the universe and focus on achieving the greatness you know you are capable of reaching, going for nothing less than perfection. It is no surprise that you are selective with your relationships, naturally gravitating towards people who match you level of intellectualism and curiosity. It is Min Yoongi, the sensitive, creative Pisces, that strikes your interest at a large dinner party hosted by a shared acquaintance within your high-rolling social circle from various industries. Preferring to lay back on the sidelines, Yoongi takes in the room, his eyes becoming fixate on you as you light up the room with your Leo fire while deeply immersed in raucous conversation about current events. A Virgo Moon, Yoongi immediately connects with your very logical and perceptive mind, but his lively Aries Venus is both amused and turned on by the evident passion underlying your words as you so expertly articulate your point of view. It is towards the end of the night after countless passing stares when Yoongi finally approaches you, the low, seductive hum of his voice sending you into a daze as his dark eyes pierce into you. It's not everyday you hear people speak their mind in this way - your authenticity is refreshing. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts. Sit with me? This combination of praise and immediate appreciation for your inner self is almost foreplay in and of itself, which only intensifies with the natural flow of the conversation that follows. Not one to waste time, you tell Yoongi to call you when he's free to meet again while he's in town, and it's through the long, winding exchanges in the days and weeks that follow which sets this love affair into motion.

Pisces and Taurus are two signs that connect on a highly emotional level, falling for each other's minds before even thinking of moving to the physical. Underneath your strong, Virgo exterior lies a highly empathetic, good-hearted soul that senses a similar kindness in Yoongi - a quality that you sometimes overlook Though softs spoken at first, you enjoy seeing him open up about his passion for music and artistic pursuits which are much different from your own career path. While you don't enjoy too much leisure in your daily life (there's so much to do!) you find yourself spending hours in bed with Yoongi with whom time simply stands still. His innate passion extends into sex, which you two take your time getting to but inevitably erupts in something very intense and romantic. You are both extremely sensual signs representing the art of pleasure, and nowhere does it become clearer than when Yoongi's lips are on yours, devouring every inch of you while one hand rests behind your neck and the other is free to explore the rest of your body. He is soft but commanding in his presence, his eyes laser-focused on yours as his fingers slide your panties to the side to enter your core, expertly curving inside you and driving a loud moan from your lips. Yoongi is the type to make you fall in love with his sensitivity but also his genuine care for your orgasm, his movements sending shivers throughout your spine as he draws you closer and closer to your edge and stopping only when you are trembling and thrusting against his fingers to ride out your high. A Pisces gets lost in your pleasure, wanting to satisfy you to the fullest extent. You're so fucking beautiful, I can't wait to taste you.

Though highly compatible in bed, this is not a forever duo due to the conflicting nature of your placements. The classic Taurus/Pisces dilemma lies their innately different expectations and life values: while you are both money-motivated, you work in entirely different ways to achieve your goals. You deeply crave the stability that comes with financial independence, while Yoongi's Pisces, makes him much more interested in the freedom that wealth offers. He is the free-flowing fish, who often spends a great deal of time alone inside his fantasy world where he is able to bring his artistic visions to life, neglecting you in the process. You prefer to live with two feet firmly on the ground, and while his Virgo Moon makes him driven, he does not match your level of intensity in this way. His laid-back demeanor, while initially endearing to you, over time this becomes frustrating as it does not align with your need to be doted on and truly adored on a daily basis. It soon becomes clear that your visions of the future are not in sync, and it is the decisive Taurus that ultimately cuts ties in pursuits of someone that is a better fit.

However hurt you are when one relationship prospect ends, your pride does not let you stay down for long - after all, you are all about improving and moving forward. Your sign is likely to immerse themselves in work projects or helping friends and family when they need a distraction and something to get lost in. A Virgo rising has an innate love of learning that knows no limit, and you are likely to enjoy travel that involves a historical/educational component. It is while on a solo adventure through Rome that you meet a fellow wanderer - his dark brown, curly hair falling across his face as his eyes come to meet yours, revealing perhaps the most gorgeous face you've ever seen. I'm Taehyung, pleasure to meet you.

You are dual in nature, and you need someone to appreciate that in full - quirks and all. Enter Kim Taehyung, the enigmatic Capricorn whose varied emotional complexity matches your own and effortlessly clicks. Immediately you come to admire each others shared levels of honesty and ambition, traits you explore over walks through the city streets and subsequently over long-distance phone calls once you return home. From the start these two earth signs are like magnets to each other, and the chemistry's pull is undeniable. Your impatient Leo spirit has likely landed you in trouble by rushing into things romantically, and the Capricorn man is more than happy to take things move at your pace - in fact, he enjoys nothing more than a slow build. While hours-long conversations floating from topic to topic may be a waste of time, with Taehyung it is easy to get lost in the sultriness of his voice, but also the way he romantically views the world around him - the charm emanating from his Aries Moon is infectious and speaks to your soul that also wants to achieve but cares deeply about people. He is also exceptionally lighthearted, knowing exactly when to shift from the pragmatic, hard-working idol to laid-back and silly friend that just wants to make you laugh with a random meme or nonsensical text. Traditional at heart, you're more than happy to be wooed, allowing Tae someone to plan a date and show you an excellent time by curating according to your fine tastes. A Leo Moon knows the value of themselves and their company so doesn't settle for anything half-assed, your Virgo rising makes you prone to criticism, while your Taurus means you are particularly averse to anything that is careless or superficial. You prefer grand gestures to be thoughtful in nature, and you are pleasantly surprised makes you feel appreciated from afar, repeatedly surprising you with gifts delivered that perfectly match your style. Thought this would suit you nicely. Show me on video, I can't wait to see you in it... By the time you are back together in person, it's almost as if reuniting with a long lost friend who you also can't wait to ride.

After several weeks of foreplay over the phone, you two waste no time when you find yourself standing at the entryway of his hotel suite. The intuitive Capricorn male can easily recognize a bit of a praise kink within you, one that his very task-oriented side is happy to experiment with and execute in in the bedroom. His Aquarius in Venus is creative and loves to play, excited to explore dominant/submissive behavior you've expressed interest in and very much wanting to be the one that allows you to relinquish the control you have on all areas of your life. It is truly unnerving how dual he is in nature, his eyes darkening to expose his dominant side that senses your anticipation at the appearance of a small toy, the tension steadily building between your thighs as you imagine how it will feel against you. A true tease, Tae lights you on fire with ease as he moves to close the gap between your bodies, his fingers gently tracing your jaw and neck as his lips graze your trembling lips. Patience, my love. It's going to be a long evening. Tae's Capricorn/Aquarius combo alongside your Taurus/Leo means that there is an unpredictability in the dynamic, resulting in many sexual possibilities. You're both more than capable of switching roles, your Taurus takes the lead as Taehyung stares up at you in awe, his lips falling apart as you press your breasts against his strong chest. You enjoy coaxing praises from his lips as you straddle him, grinding down onto his length slowly as a desperate moan escapes his lips and he bucks his hips, aching to fill you up. You've teased me all this time, let's see how you like being toyed with. There is something so deeply satisfying about his deep voice groaning and telling you how perfect you are as you bounce on his cock, stopping strategically to to edge him and hear him beg with those beautiful lips of his. This is a pairing that is as good at long-drawn out passionate sessions as they are with to-the-point quickies, learning with ease how to make the other come undone in a matter of minutes. It is not unusual for a 20 min break in the day to turn into you and Tae on the couch, your leg over his shoulder with his finger rubbing your clit as his strokes feverishly into you and smiling as he sets a new record. While sex between these two can be extremely gentle, especially after days apart, there is a natural bit of a competition here: who can make the other come the hardest? Either way, you both win.

Together, a Capricorn and Taurus build a life of comfort, stability, and trust that could only be created by two earth signs. Above all else, you need the emotional stability that comes from being with a like-minded soul who is as strong, independent and decisive as you are - someone who will let you shine brightly while confidently pursuing their own goals. But at the end of a long day, your partner also needs to be able to consistently shower you with the love and affection you crave - almost as if it were their second job. While you certainly get off on being admired by many, at a deep level you truly desire one lifelong love who only has eyes for you. You find this in Capricorn Tae, a highly disciplined, hardworking spirit who also enjoys surprising you with his quirky, unconventional nature that brings out your inner child and proves to be a life partner in all ways. With a shared love for learning and individual perfectionism, this is a duo that will likely achieve greatness in very different fields but find a way to make them mesh well - Taehyung in music and art and you in whatever path you choose - while providing a level of understanding to each other that few others can. This combination enjoys a very stable and established home base in each others hearts given a high importance placed on wealth and comfort, but not extravagance or over-indulgence. This is a pairing that likely has an apartment in the heart of the city for business matters, but prefers the coziness of their primary residence outside of the city. It is in this home that you are able to fully decompress from a day of leading and producing to simply be your unique selves, the space serving as a sanctuary for you to get lost in pure domestic bliss. Possessing a complimentary balance of temperaments and desires, Capricorn and Taurus is a match for the ages, one that is long-lasting and rooted in family, loyalty and prosperity.

[daresplaining]

what does daredevil mean to you? what made you gravitate to the character?

    I’m a fairly recent Daredevil fan, all things considered. I was introduced to DD in February 2013, in the midst of the Waid era. The first issue I read was actually Volume 2 #500, the final issue of Brubaker’s run– which, even though I had no idea what was going on, piqued my interest enough to prompt me to seek out more. I went to the comic shop, grabbed the first issue of Waid’s run, and slammed face-first into this awesome page: 

[ID: A page from Waid’s Daredevil run. Matt Murdock is standing on a rooftop in his civvies. He is talking on a cellphone while he reconfigures his cane into a grapple hook. He starts unbuttoning his shirt and then backflips off the edge of the building, still talking on the phone. The grapple hook catches the roof edge. A red-gloved hand tosses Matt’s civvies in through a window.]

    Daredevil Volume 3-4 was– to me– an excellent introductory run and an excellent run in general because it managed, again and again, to get at the core of what makes Matt Murdock such a great character. It distilled everything cool about him and put it on full display, both textually and visually. The above image, of the blind lawyer in the business suit casually backflipping off a building while talking on the phone, lodged itself in my brain and would not leave. It built a foundation around which my love for Matt and his world grew. Here was someone who was confident and dashing and reckless and far, far more than he appeared, while at the same time still being mostly human. Those traits hooked me. I know this was a character I wanted to follow around, if only to see all the trouble such a person would inevitably get into. 

    And the more I read, the more layers I uncovered and the more fascinating Matt became to me. The intricacies of his powers invite endless speculation about his perception of the world, his daily experiences, his strengths and weaknesses (The concept of a superhero whose powers frequently act as weaknesses is really compelling to me). I love that he is blind, not only because disabled superheroes are so few and far between, but also because of the extra layer of complication this adds to every aspect of his life, particularly when addressed by writers who are not afraid to embrace that part of his identity. Matt is always wearing some mask or other– acting sighted as Daredevil, acting mild-mannered as Matt Murdock, acting non-powered in both identities, always grappling with who he is, who he wants to be, and how much of himself he feels comfortable sharing with the world. I love the contradictions in his backstory– the nerd with an athletic streak whose boxer father loved him dearly but kept him stifled through overprotectiveness. The mother who left and then came back later when he needed a friend. The fact that Matt’s decision to become a superhero was tied up in so many factors– a response to years of bullying, an effort to avenge his father while also directly disobeying him, an act of empowerment that may have been more self-serving than heroic. I love his name; “Daredevil” is one of the coolest superhero monikers out there, and the Netflix show writers can meet me in the hallway for refusing to acknowledge that. I love that on a very real and significant level, no matter how much pain he goes through in every area of his life, being a superhero brings Matt happiness. I love his dynamic with Foggy, which is one of the strongest and longest-running friendships in the Marvel Universe. I love his tumultuous, painful, horrible love life, though I do wish it didn’t have such a large body count. I love the richness of Matt’s character– his cockiness, his adrenaline junkie-ness, his stubbornness, his intense devotion and capacity for love, all of the blemishes and ugliness that come out when things start going poorly for him, and his ability to push his way through all of the garbage and pain and misery the world pours on him and manage, somehow, to survive it. Matt embodies a perfect balance of gritty realism (he is not a perfect person, and sometimes you can’t help hating him) and hopeful optimism; he is a character who has successfully existed at both ends of the superhero tonal range, and is written best when those two sides of his personality are both present and balanced. I love that he is flawed enough to be relatable and heroic enough to be inspiring. Karl Kesel gave him a great line in Volume 1 #353: “I’m an endless contradiction that’d never stand up to cross-examination. Always thought that was part of my charm.” And he was right. 

    On a more practical level, the quality of Daredevil comics has, for the most part, been extremely high. Read through all 55 years’ worth of material and you will end up with a collection of mostly excellent, compelling stories with beautiful art. Daredevil has been lucky in this way. For every run I don’t like, there are at least five that I do. And on another practical level, there is also a love that comes from familiarity, which is why I think superhero comics fans tend to get so intensely passionate about their favorite characters. My initial fascination with the premise of Daredevil prompted me to read a lot of it, and then, at a certain point, there was no turning back. After you’ve spent several hundred issues with a character, they start to feel like a friend– if an occasionally frustrating friend who needs to stop faking his death please. This is also one of the dangers of this sort of media. That familiarity can morph into a sense of ownership, and I have to keep reminding myself that any writer who depicts Matt in a way that doesn’t match my understanding of his character is not, in fact, a bad writer. It’s just that they connect with Matt in a different way than I do. I think, for instance, that Joe Quesada’s tastes are very different than mine, but the guy clearly loves Daredevil. I’m sure that if every DD fan were asked this same question, there would be a huge amount of variety based on their introductory run, their favorite stories, their personal experiences and values, etc., and that richness and diversity of interpretation is another reason why I think Daredevil is so special. 

[ourownsideimagines]

Strange Things Lurk In the Dark (Aziraphale x Sorcerer!Reader x Crowley Pre-Relationship)

Characters: Crowley, Sorcerer!Reader, Aziraphale

Requested: Yes 

Requested by: Anon

Point of View: Third Person Reader

Summary: Heaven finds a prophecy, believing it to be the impending doom of Crowley and Aziraphale. Little do they know, it’s just the opposite.

Warnings: poorly written combat, minimal editing.

Words: 1395

A/N: I modified the prophecy the anon sent into me and tried my best to write it in the 1600’s “I spelle however I want to spelle” way. Also, for the sake of the story, let’s say that Aziraphale kept the flaming sword. I’m not really satisfied with this ugh.

---

There was one prophecy of Anges Nutter’s that Heaven had managed to get it’s grubby little hands on. It had been retrieved by an angel shortly after armegeddon, in the front yard of Jasmine Cottage. A small, damp note card with smudged scribbles of notes and a perfect prediction in black typewriter ink.

It read as follows:

“One mortyl to sep’rate them, one mortyl to bynde them, one mortyl to destroy the Angel Azerafel and the Deville Crowly, or one to combyne them.”

Heaven was overjoyed, to say the least. A human to tear those idiots apart? What more could they wish for? After the absolute failure that was trying to destroy them, Aziraphale and Crowley were finally going to get what they deserved.

Or, at least, they hoped so. The prophecy was vague, to say the least, but all they cared about was the idea of ‘destroy’. They could get with the idea of them being destroyed. A few lower ranking Angels had attempted to point out the added ‘or combine them’, only to get dismissed.

Oh, if only they had listened.

---

It wasn’t a very stormy night - but it was a very dark night, that was for sure. The only thing that illuminated the dark Soho alleyway behind A.Z. Fell and Co. Bookshop was the glowing pendant (name) held up to their face. It was a very old pendent, from a time long past, hand made by ancestors whose names (name) could not remember let alone pronounce.

(Name) had been going over some rituals recently when the feeling of dread struck - something was passing through the veil, something nasty, and they weren’t sure if they would be able to stop it. At least not alone.

They had thought about calling up an old family friend, Mrs. Device, but knew this wasn’t exactly their area of expertise. After all, being a sorcerer and being a witch were two completely different things and (name) wasn’t even certain that Mrs. Device would understand what was going on.

They would have called up their mother, whom had taught them all that they knew, but their mother ‘doesn’t do that kind of thing’ anymore and ‘it’s up to you to defend us’.

Thanks, mom.

(Name) swung the pendant gently, and it tugged them forward like a magnet, and they allowed it to guide them deeper into the Soho alleyway. They did not live on Soho, and thank goodness, because if their calculations were correct, and if they couldn’t stop this force themself, Soho wouldn’t be around much longer. When the pendant began pulling itself towards the ground, (name) allowed it to slip from her fingers. When it connected with the ground, the light changed from a soft green to a blazing red.

Danger.

(Name) wouldn’t be able to evacuate much of anyone. Those who would open their doors this late at night wouldn’t listen to them anyway. They were alone, certain of their own death, and absolutely terrified. (Name) found themself cursing whoever had made this their task in the universe, and they began pulling things from their bag. First, they pulled out some chalk. Then, the small vials they’d wrapped in old newspaper, and finally, a small ceramic bowl.

 They began to draw sigils on the ground as quickly and as neatly as they could. There were no signs of anything beginning, but their hands still shook. Once they had finished the sigil work, they began pouring the contents of the vial into the bowl. (Name) was about half way through the ritual when the back door of the bookshop opened. Their head snapped up, surprised, squinting through the sudden light to see who it was.

In the doorway stood what appeared to be a man with blond hair, dressed in a tan suit with a blue button up and tartan bow tie. Behind him was, from what (name) could tell, another man with auburn hair, dressed in all black, and wearing sunglasses. They were both staring at (name) (from what they could tell, the man in the sunglasses was indeed looking at them), and all (name) could do was stare back.

“My dear,” The blond man spoke up. “What in Heaven’s name are you doing?”

“Nothing heavenly,” The red head spoke up. “You can taste it in the air.” (Name) opened their mouth to speak, but quickly caught onto what the man was saying. They grimaced, standing back to full height.

“You need to get back inside,” She rushed out. “Now, before it’s too late.”

“Whatever it is you’re doing, you must stop,�� The blond man insisted. “We cannot allow you to bring such… evil unto this world.” (Name) gaped at him, realizing suddenly that these men thought they were bringing the evil.

“Oh, god, oh god no!” They said. “I’m not bring the, uh, evil,” They looked desperately back over to their stuff, and yeah, this was not looking good for them. “Please, you need to get inside, I don’t know what’s about to happen and-” They were thrown off balance, suddenly, as the ground began to shake.

The two men stumbled, grabbing the doorway to regain their footing.

“Shit,” (Name) cursed. “Shit, shit, shit!” They turned quickly, and dove for the bowl. The air before them began to tear open, a gust of bone chilling air almost sweeping them off their feet. They didn’t have much time at all. They began to mutter an incantation, grabbing the last vial and popping off the cork. To their surprise, the two men took place between her and the rift. She started at them in awe, but quickly snapped out of it and poured the vial contents into the bowl.

As the last words spilled from their lips, they shoved themself between the two men and thrust the concoction through the portal. It sizzled as it made contact with the large, grotesque creature that was crawling out of the void.

(Name) rummaged through their messenger bag, cursing profusely while the men gawked. They cried out in relief when they found their dagger, which they promptly stabbed into the ground. A crack began to form, spreading quickly towards the open portal. The earth began to split, a green glow illuminating the alley way. (Name) removed their dagger from the ground, and began running along the opening of the crack. They focused on staying above it, and beneath their feet small disks began to form. They hadn’t practiced air-walking in a long while, but no time like the present they supposed.

The beast lifted a long, inky black tendril towards them, and made to swat at them. (Name) thrust the dagger forward, yelping in surprise when it became stuck in whatever sludge this creature was made of. The tendril slammed them into a nearby wall, and (name) cried out in shock as they fell to the ground.

As (name)began to push themself up from the ground, their eyes widened in surprise as the red headed man flung a fireball at the creature, and the blond man followed with a blow from a sword (name) didn’t remember him having before.

(Name) must have hit their head, they assumed, because part of them swore they saw the outline of wings in the men’s shadows. They stood quickly, brushing themselves off before jumping back in, leaping towards the creature from behind and plunging the dagger into its shoulder. The ground had begun to close beneath them, limiting what little light they had.

(Name) yanked the dagger downward, causing a spill of inky blood to splash onto them as they fell back to the ground, this time landing on their feet.

The blond man snapped his fingers suddenly, and light appeared from above. (Name) gaped, about to ask how he’d done that when the creature let out an ear-splitting whale of pain. They shook off their initial shock, and jumped back into the fight.

What they had estimated would leave the city devastated was over in a matter of minutes, and had left them feeling broken and bruised, drenched in inky blood, and with two strange men.

“So,” They said, catching the men’s attention. They too were covered almost from head to toe in the ink, and (name) tried to ignore the fact that the red head’s glasses had fallen off, revealing a pair of yellow eyes. “Should I explain first?”

[ngame989]

Starco Fic Recs

Disclaimer: This list is largely curated to my own personal preferences (minimal feelings angst, minimal AUs, character development >>> plot) and has a fairly high bar for quality in characterization, etc. There will likely be many popular/beloved fics that I really don’t think highly of at all and therefore don’t make the cut. Feel free to DM me things you think I should consider adding, but I make no promises.

And of course I’d be flattered if you gave my own works a chance - stop by my About Me section for links! Thus far I’m particularly proud of the post-canon series I just started in collaboration with an awesome team, The Greatest Gift.

(Updated 9/26 - I decided to redo the list since people might appreciate seeing it in the tags again. To anyone whose own work is featured here that I haven’t personally responded to - I’m a tough critic with a lot of strong personal preferences so PLEASE do not take my gripes as condemnations of your skills - if they make the list at all, I think they’re worth a read!)

See below for the very thorough list!

Bolded titles indicate must-read.

Italicized titles indicate work is incomplete (in the case of continuous stories).

Asterisks indicate new additions from last update (3 for brand new, 1 for status update).

I’ve VERY loosely organized the categories by personal priority order this time around, but read the descriptions and decide for yourself!

Must-Reads

Forevermore - A Starco wedding story (with a bit of Jantom as well). Simply one of the best fics I’ve read in the fandom. I have no meaningful criticism to give it, and that’s the highest praise I can possibly give something.

Monarchs of Mewni (+ Traditionally Lovingly Yours) - A series of chronologically disconnected oneshots set years after the show. The backstory is very dated given how long ago it started (Jarco was kinda serious for a few years, Tomstar v2 never happened, etc) but overall it’s lovely. Has a bit of plot, a bit of Jantom, a lot of other character interactions, and a boatload of Starco - plus a Starco kid who is a decently developed character but also doesn’t just take over and crowd out Star and Marco themselves! That alone deserves merit.

Ruined - Aftermath of a hypothetical return of Monster Arm. Angst with a happy ending (and one of the few angsty fics that gets my seal of approval), so read this extra early if that’s more your schtick than mine.

study buddies - Y’know what, fuck it, I’m putting this here. It’s a short ball of Starco fluff but it’s one of the sweetest and fluffiest fluffballs I’ve seen in a long time and it’s very emotionally immersive and y’all needa read it.

*When Two Worlds Collide - One of my favorite postcanon series thus far. I admit I’m really not big on “magic returns!” plots in postcanon (which this has), and the sections that focus on that are hit or miss for me, but overall it has some of the funnest and cutest characterization and gags I’ve seen in any SVTFOE fic, ever. Absolutely worth following (and it has a fair amount of art to go along with it!)

***Star Chef - Oneshot (two chapters, so twoshot technically?) set in the same universe as Starlight Justiciar (see below) and is just a day in the life of Star and Marco. Goes absolutely above and beyond at emotional immersion and little nuances and details to bring the world and characters to life, which elevates it to something special to me.

Light of the Sun and Stars - (Promoted to Must-Read!) One of the few heavily divergent AU fics I care for. Marco is an orphan raised by monsters, and meets Star after running away. Just finished its “first season” and I've loved the recent chapters, am very excited to see where it goes.

*Don’t You Let Me Go - Wonderfully fluffy post-Cleaved Starco, one of my favorite oneshot “epilogues”.

i want to tell you (but i don’t know how) - Post season 3 fic detailing the growth of Star and Marco’s relationship. It’s spectacular writing and shows off a lot of the true depth of Starco beyond just being cute.

Adult - NSFW warning, non-explicit (aged-up characters). It’s a story about the journey towards Star and Marco’s first step into adulthood together -  it’s not graphic and way more focused on the emotions involved, but it still is definitely more explicit than your average FFnet rated-T fic. If sexual themes ain’t your thing, I totally respect that, but this is a charming and funny piece of writing.

Lawchan’s various oneshots - There isn’t a great compilation for them right now so the best I can do is give you her tag for it and you can comb through it yourself. I like some more than others here, but they’re all very well-written - my only gripes with some of them are my own tastes in subject matter, so have fun perusing this on your own.

I Will Always Be There For You - A really pure and wholesome Starco oneshot. Very well-written.

Post-Canon Series to Follow

I figured with the show being over, and so many people starting their own series, I should include a lot of them here even if I’m personally not the biggest fan just to help gather them up so people can decide for themselves. Little bit looser on judgment here.

*Life on Earthni A to Z - Non-chronological postcanon slice of life oneshots, Starco and some Globclipsa and Jantom. Overall really good so far, one of my favorites in terms of direction.

*When Dimensions Cleave (sequel - Unforgettable Getaway) - Another postcanon series hellbent on bringing back magic queen lore, but it has some solid Starco fluff still. Credit where it’s due, the “Star constantly freaking out over what a horrible person she was” bit that I called preachy in the prior rec post gets somewhat less preachy and does end up actually going somewhere as part of character development, but I’m left scratching my head at how they all act sometimes. The good parts are certainly good, though, and in terms of quantity of lovey dovey Starco, it really can’t be beat (especially the sequel) and that’s worth something by itself. 

We’re a Miracle - Extra adorkable postcanon fluff. Lighter on the “but ACKSHUALLY MAGIC IS BACK” stuff compared to the others, but it’s there, like almost every postcanon fic in existence.

Star vs the Sands of Time - Heavy politic/lore postcanon fic, not my fav but if that’s more your thing then great. Has some casual Starco too.

Goodbye Isn’t Forever - More POV dives into Cleaved.

Fake Proposal - Some decent jokey but cute fluff

The Stars Above - Some exploration of Earthni

New World - A bit over-the-top meta, but fun fluff

The Starlight Justiciar - Four years after canon, some social change plot stuff and some decent Starco. Not the biggest fan of some of the plot stuff but check it out for yourself!

Starco vs the Forces of Evil - Another collab fic/art thing. Fair warning, I really am not personally a huge fan of a lot of the characterization and plot decisions here (see my notes on Sign of the Moon waaaay down below) but decide for yourself, don’t let my pickiness dictate your own preferences!

Ready For The Future - Technically a oneshot (with some Starco) but sets up some Mina plot, if you’re interested in more give it a follow/review.

Worlds Together - Some Starco and exploration of Earthni.

Epilogue -  Some Starco and exploration of Earthni.

***A Dark Horse - Has a few really nice lovey dovey Starco bits but also lots of superdrama with politics stuff. There’s a lot of fics here that I honestly just windowshop the scene I like for a quick fix of dopamine every now and then and skim at most otherwise, and this is one.

Revolution - end of canon AU where Moon is as anti-monster as Mina, dark as fuck. Only putting it here cuz some of y’all angstlords might like it.

Shorter Works/Oneshot Collections

I’ll Carry Your World - Big ole’ ball of wonderful Starco fluff with an important moment between them (written before end of show so a bit divergent).

***LoveIsTheStrongestKindOfMagic - Very short and basic fluff.

Starco Week 5 (Hugs Included) - Some of it is postcanon Earthni oneshots and others are from the Light of the Sun and Stars AU (see above). Great author, fun as hell writing style.

Fragile - Star worries about keeping her boyfriend Marco safe.

Complete - An older Star reflects on her past and present. Short and sweet.

Knighthood - Simple fluff piece on if Star and Marco got together after Storm the Castle.

Too Hot to Move - Star and Marco try to survive a heat wave on Earthni. Also funny fluff.

Marco Make-out Mayhem - Star really likes kissing Marco. Funny fluff.

Cleaved Together - NSFW warning, non-explicit (aged up) - Star and Marco’s first time. Very very overly focused on the whole purity/sacredness of first time thing, but still pretty cute.

Like Us - Really nice, sweet casual reflection on her life with Marco from a future Star’s POV.Toothpaste Kisses - Short fluff about its title.

A Friend’s Memento - Starco fluff with some reflection on the results of destroying magic

Plum Pie - Some goofy antics and hurt/comfort.

Not Losing You - A little dive into Marco’s POV at the end of Cleaved. Also adds a kiss.

We Belong Together - More speculative slightly angsty comfort/fluff.

Enough - A nice study of the emotions and thoughts during the last scenes of Cleaved, adds some depth to it.

Heartless - A bit of angst over magic going away with some sweet Starco comfort.

Together - Post-Cleaved Starco megafluff.

My Prince - Starco fluff set in a world where they were together before Cornonation.

Dancing with a Star - Starco fluff from alt S4.

Love in the Time of Pancakes - Written hours after my last update of the list, another little ditty based on the pancake promo.

Pancakes - Fluffy S4-promo-based little oneshot.

Hers - Hurt/comfort/confession-y fic, has some really nice moments and shows off a lot of how much they care about each other. Nice to see after such a drought.

Someone to Stay - Another hurt/comfort fic, nice and simple.

A Viola, a Violin, and a Butterfly’s Sword - some nonlinear oneshots about Starco. Some kinda weird directions gone in with the “plot” but it’s pretty good overall.

Falling - One of many, many fics from throughout the fandom’s history about Star and Marco getting together. Short and sweet.

forget about white horses & once upon a time - Drabble collection of various moments scattered throughout Star and Marco’s lives. Cute fluff.

The One Where I Thought I Lost You - Post-BFM fic where Marco realizes his feelings for Star earlier. Very wholesome.

christmases when you were mine - Established relationship fluff.

lightning in your veins, thunder in your heart - Post-season 3 established relationship fluff (slightly divergent, written before 3B).

once upon a december - Established relationship fluff.

Flags - Alternate rendition of the episode “Flags” with Starco.

Spells and Hot Chocolate - Wintry fluff.

5 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’ - Post BFM with some events in Star and Marco’s lives.

You’re My Wish Come True - This is just indulgent Starco trash. I won’t even argue for the characterization/writing quality, this is just a straight-up guilty pleasure.

Wands and Nachos - ^

The Princess and the Safe Kid - ^

A Day in the Life of Starco - ^

A very Starco Xmas - ^

Could It Be -^

All the times Star wore Marco’s hoodie - ^

Protect Me, Squire - ^

Crushed - Star and Marco both get turned down by their respective crushes and find comfort in each other.

Stay - Cuddly fluff. There’s another Stay out there which I frankly can’t stand with will-they-won’t-they melodrama out the wazoo, so don’t get confused.

Longer Series

*The Inescapable Us - Really tropey miscommunication will-they-won’t-they type of thing. Not my fav, especially now that the show is over and finished that leg of Star and Marco’s story once and for all (I’m personally WAY less interested in things that redo something canon already did). However, where it’s at now has some really good Starco moments. Fully admitted that I hella skimmed most of it until the parts I enjoyed, but And if you’re more fine with that type of thing then you’ll probably really like it, it’s well-written otherwise.

Together We Fall - Throwback S2 AU fic where Star and Marco go to the dance together instead and Toffee makes moves earlier. Gets kinda dark but has a lot of nice Starco along the way.

Safer, Sorrier - A recent rewrite of an older fic, Better Safe Than Sorry, where Star has to leave early to become queen and Marco is alone for a few months before they reunite. A very dated premise (post season 1 ish) but quite good.

Sugar and Spice - NSFW warning, non-explicit (NOT aged-up characters). In this fic, Star and Marco have gotten together after BFM, and a spell gone wrong leads to Mewberty relapses with obvious consequences. This fic has adorable Starco moments, but what I love this for above all is the other character interactions (especially Glossaryck and Star’s parents). This is probably a controversial add-on to the list, but I stick by my decision - if the subject matter isn’t your thing, then by all means avoid it.

Beyond Dimensions - Plotfic + established Starco where some ancient sorceress has to trap Star to escape and try to take over Mewni. Maybe y'all are more into plot stuff than me but the Starco that’s there is quite good regardless.

Starfall - NSFW warning, explicit (aged-up characters). Probably the most popular one to make the cut. Star and Marco are forced apart and have to find their way back together. Very old fic, lot of dated stuff here, and the narration and plot itself can get kinda questionable sometimes, but it has a lot of good Starco and some interesting plot elements that make it, in my opinion, worth a read despite a lot of flaws. A few epilogue chapters contain rather explicit sexual content, so be wary of that (and the epilogue itself after Ep 6 kinda transitions into a nextgenverse, so maybe just skip that entirely).

The Star Butterfly Effect - The sole fic on the list that is purely plot-based, with very little actual Starco development whatsoever. I can’t even really explain it, just give it a shot and see what you think; I was rather engrossed by the plot, and that’s rare for me.

The Princess and her Knight, Return of the Empire The former fic in this series is way more character-based, while the latter is very heavy plot stuff. Pretty decent character writing with some fluff. There’s a third that I honestly can’t recommend because I completely dropped it because it was just a nonstop war story.

Experimental - REALLY heavy, dark AU where Star and Marco are tortured and corrupted. It’s pretty decent.

Blood Moon Blitz - Alt BFM fic of Marco going to fight Toffee with Star. unfortunately dropped without completing, but what’s there is pretty solid.

Read at Your Own Risk…

The Sign of the Moon, The Dance of the Stars - Starts post-3A, involves the growth of Star and Marco’s relationship as they take on foes in and out of the castle and learn more about the Blood Moon. This series is rather… melodramatic, and there were some chapters and character interactions I flat out did not enjoy reading. But some people aren’t as strict on character interpretations as I am and would love such a long plot-based Starco fic, so overall I still will at least list it and let you decide for yourself. There might be a third entry in this series now, but I dropped it before then.

Photos - I hesitate to include this one here because the “Tom is a perfect angel who must sacrifice his love for Star” thing pisses me off. But just skip all that (and ignore the random “a part of me will always love Tom” line) and it’s a really nice post-s3 confession fic.

[dialux]

you are the universe in ecstatic motion

I’ve had this in my drafts for a very long time- ever since I watched Padmaavat and fell in love with Mehrunisa. I was so curious about her! Her pain; her fears; her courage. It makes for a very fascinating background, this quiet character who speaks out when she finds it necessary and doesn’t often find it necessary- who, ultimately, betrays her husband almost totally.

This story assumes a couple things, imo:  a) we’ve never met her mother and don’t know anything about her; b) we don’t actually know anything about her after she’s imprisoned by Alauddin c) when Alauddin dies, he’s succeeded by Malik Kafur for a month before Mubarak (Alauddin’s eldest son) overthrows him, and we’re calling Mubarak Mehrunisa’s son in this story

Hope y’all enjoy!

Mehrunisa’s first memory of Alauddin occurs when she is too young to know anything of him more than his name. 

It is early morning, and she is a small girl, young enough to have a nurse set aside for her personally; foolish enough to slip out of bed while still dark and go wandering. She cannot walk in the corridors plainly for there are too many guards there, still patrolling, so she slips through the small crenellations to avoid them.

Once, twice, thrice- it works.

The fourth time, she misjudges the size of the gap and finds herself caught. She’s stuck between two curved stones, one elbow jammed into her knee, neck twisting terribly, shoulder strained. An interminable amount of time later, she hears footsteps around the corner.

“Help,” she says, breathlessly. “Help me, please, oh-”

A moment later, she feels someone shove at her from the back. 

She slides down, bruising her knees on the marble floor. Tears spring to her eyes. Through them, she looks up and sees a boy with short-cropped hair and bright eyes stare at her. 

This is Mehrunisa’s earliest memory of the man she will one day call husband and king: helping her, and bruising her, all at once.

...

They do not know each other.

All Mehrunisa knows of him is his name: Ali, the syllables slippery on her tongue, the name common enough in the palace. But Ali himself is not common; he is deliberately uncommon- he distinguishes himself with his sharp tongue and his even sharper sword, and there are whispers in the palace of his wrath and his valor.

They do not love each other. Mehrunisa is Jalalludin’s eldest daughter, first daughter of his first wife, and her life is to be spent in the comfort of her father’s zenana before she goes to her husband’s. Ali is her father’s ward; he is meant to die on a battlefield, as the wards with fine military acumen tend to do, in the process of furthering Jalalludin’s glory, Jalalludin’s sons’ glories. There is no overlap in their lives, for all that they live in the same palace.

(When he raids Bhilsa and returns, Ali is wounded- a slash over his calf, and an arrow in his shoulder. Mehrunisa’s brother is wounded as well, though far less dearly; and though Ali won the battle, though Ali is wounded the worse, it is Qadr whom her parents embrace.

Mehrunisa sends two of her own maids to serve Ali that night.

They return, and none of them speak on it after. It takes Mehrunisa years to recognize their silent flinches, for the weeks after; it takes her even longer to find the words to apologize to them for it. 

For a long time, however, Mehrunisa only looks at Ali and sees a boy cast in darkness, never given light enough to shine.)

He is Alauddin when they wed, a man grown and proven. Mehrunisa refuses to call him anything other than Ali for those first years, though, not even when he razes Devagiri: she cannot care for the man who would lay with another woman hours before he laid with her, but she can care for the boy who’d once helped her return to her rooms when the rest of the world felt all too large.

It takes her a long time to understand that Alauddin has been given light to shine, light brilliant as a sunrise, for years and years and years- but he is no moon to reflect it, nor a sun to make his own.

Alauddin is as the spaces between the stars, heavy and dank, those patches of darkness that swallow the light and never give any back for the rest of the world.

That blackness which never apologizes for itself.

...

It is not love between them, not as anyone else would name it.

She has been compared to many flowers: a lotus, a rose, the delicate petals of jasmine. But never before has Mehrunisa felt the kinship she feels when running her fingers over the thick-leafed, deep green plant that one of the vendors in the city offers her- it will blossom in darkness, the vendor promises her; it needs nothing from you, my lady, not even space, not even sunlight.

Their love of each other is like this plant, she thinks, and stores a cut of the jade plant in the folds of her gown. 

Twisted and strange, thick as the plant’s leaves, awkward but present. Something that no one ever looks for, but exists nonetheless.

...

He killed him, Mahru tells her, hands trembling. I am so sorry, Nisa, but he just-

It is her wedding day, and Ali is late, and Mehrunisa is hopeful, is terrified, is slowly turning angry. Mahru is her favored lady, tall and fine-boned and pretty; Mehrunisa wonders what Ali saw in her that he could not see in Mehrunisa, and then she chokes off her unkind thoughts at the root.

Her mother guides Mahru away, gently, and Mehrunisa turns to Ali, who appears in the middle of the dance floor, golden and beautiful. There’s a man’s body cooling not a corridor away. Her husband dances, and he is beautiful, he is powerful, he has dried streaks of blood on his palms.

It is not love she feels then.

It is not hatred either, however, and she does not know what that says about her.

...

The night Ali kills her father, he comes to her bed. He does not touch her- he is careful, always, to never strike her, to never mark the skin that is his only claim to the throne apart from the edge of his sword. But he lies beside her. 

When she wakes the next morning he is gone, and there are dried streaks on the sheets, as if he’d wiped at his hands, as if in the depths of the night he’d twisted desperately away from his actions.

Mehrunisa cannot believe that explanation, not even in the most hidden, most hopeful parts of her heart, not for all the love she owes her husband. She does not flinch from it, however; she is not the kind of woman to flinch, nor to weep.

(She is Jalalludin’s daughter, yes, but her mother’s more- the woman named malika, named empress of the world before even her own name, a woman who has never loved Mehrunisa as much as she’s loved the view from the curtain rising up behind her husband’s throne, from her seat that sits higher than even the king’s.)

Ali calls them to the throne room that night, and Mehrunisa goes, and she cannot help the whitening of her knuckles as she stares at her father’s head. She does not know when she returns to her rooms, nor how, only that one moment she is watching blood drip over the marble her father had once lain on, only that the next moment, she is in her rooms.

“Malika,” says one of her ladies, hesitantly, and Mehrunisa feels every muscle in her lower back seize up.

That is not my name, she wants to scream, rage and grief twining together in her throat, that is my mother’s name! Call her empress, not me, never me-

But she is empress now. Empress of the world, Malika-e-Jahan, the jewel of her husband’s crown. Her ladies cannot call her anything less without it being an insult.

“You,” says Mehrunisa, pointing to the woman who’d spoken- a small, waifish thing, better suited for gutters than palace hallways- and dismisses the rest with a flick of her wrist. “Find-” she does not know her own mother’s name, knows it only to be malika. “Find my mother,” she says instead, nails biting into her palms. “It should not be so difficult- news will have traveled to her, of my father’s death, even if she is in Debal.” Mehrunisa stares at the girl, unblinking. “When you do, you shall tell her to flee. Both of you shall flee, to Ghazni or Nishapur- do not tell me, do not decide it even, not until you are on the boat.”

The girl blinks at Mehrunisa, eyes even wider than before. Mehrunisa swallows and unwinds the chains she uses to tie off her braids. 

These are old chains. 

They are older than her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, made in a time when wild horsemen rode in on the wind and stole people away to sell them to demons- the chains of a girl who survived by her wits, a girl who lived a life Mehrunisa cannot even imagine; a girl who had a daughter, and that daughter had a daughter, and that daughter had a daughter, through the deserts of Persia and through the mountains of Afghanistan and through the rivers of India- these chains have quietly passed hands from mother to daughter, a constant of the women that Mehrunisa does not even know the name of.

“Take these,” Mehrunisa orders, and the girl flinches. “Leave. Tonight, tomorrow, it matters not. Leave, and do not look behind you.” She reaches out and catches the girl’s chin. “You’ve a mother, a father?”

Slowly, the girl nods.

Mehrunisa straightens further, painfully stiff, and whispers, “I shall take care of them. Dowries for any unmarried sisters. Armor for any brothers. Burial ground for your parents, as necessary. A life of ease-”

“And all I have to do is go to Debal?”

Just a few weeks ago, Mehrunisa had visited the market in Devagiri. The day had been hot, sweat sticking to the silk along her neck; she’d felt dizzy with it and paused in shade for just a moment. She saw, there, a man playing a flute and a serpent just inches before him- swaying, slowly, as carefully as a knife through gauze. The world had felt encompassed by that motion, the pitch of the flute, the red stamped across the man’s forehead like a brand.

She feels like a snake now.

“Yes,” whispers Mehrunisa, and all but tastes the girl’s blood against her own fangs.

Then Mehrunisa turns to her balcony and flings the doors open, taking up a paring knife on the table beside her as she does- she does not look behind her, does not see what the girl does now; she considers, briefly, taking the knife to her wrists, to her throat, and then she discards it and keeps on moving. She will not give Ali the satisfaction of her death. Mehrunisa shall not give him the satisfaction of killing anyone else in her family. If he wishes to forget all traces of her father’s legacy, then he will have to take a sword to her himself.

She leans down instead, and presses the knife against the thick stem of the jade plant. It’s grown in the years since she’s wed, large and furred and ugly against the backdrop of delicate blossoms of the rest of the garden- but she’s refused to let it be touched by hands other than her own, cared for it with a deliberate, silent love she’s reserved for little else in the world.

One breath, and then two, and then Mehrunisa slashes down.

It is a death that she mourns, in the silent mulch of her garden. A death of her father, and the death of her innocence, and the death of the jade, but above all else: the death of Ali.

(“Call me your king,” he orders her, that night, dark eyes mad with lust and power, “kneel to me, wife, and bend your proud, proud head.”

Mehrunisa kisses his hand, rises to her feet and lets her lips brush the cold stone of a ring stained with her father’s blood. 

“King Alauddin,” she whispers. It is enough for him. 

He doesn’t notice the dirt caked under her nails, nor the tears she’s still holding back. He does not wonder that there is a knife in easy reach on the table, nor the brooch pinning her nightgown together that requires only two shrugs of her shoulder to undo, that’s sharp enough to lay open a man’s throat without much more than the flick of a wrist.

He puts a crown on her head instead.

Mehrunisa wonders if Alauddin knows that she will never forget that moment. Her nose is bruised, and her pride is bruised even further, but her father’s crown is on her head and its weight is headier than she’d ever expected.)

...

Her mother survives.

Nobody knows what an accomplishment that is, of course. Nishapur is far enough from Delhi for Alauddin to have bigger problems, and Mehrunisa never tells anyone what she has done to protect her mother.

The assassins return from Debal empty-handed, and Mehrunisa does not smile, does not smile, does not smile.

...

When Alauddin returns from his siege of Chittoor, they all- his wives, his concubines, the women of the palace- crowd against the battlements to watch. Mahru stands beside Mehrunisa, Alauddin’s second wife beside his first, as if her new quarters and new jewels will make Mehrunisa any more likely to treat her kindlier.

“He is safe,” says Mahru, in that fashion she has, where it sounds like a whisper but carries well enough for everyone to hear. “Look at him- Nisa- he’s riding his own horse-” She grabs Mehrunisa’s hand, as if the relief has robbed her of all propriety along with sense. “Oh, it is such a-”

“A relief indeed,” Mehrunisa murmurs, before letting herself lean forwards, the veils around her side whipping in the chill wind over her mouth, over the muscles that others might see move. 

(A year since her father’s death. Her mother is alive, but in exile. Her brothers are imprisoned, but alive. Mehrunisa is the last of her father’s get not thrown in chains, and she is still under suspicion every moment of her life. 

Mehrunisa is alive, but for how long-

She catches the thought before it grows. Some things are too dangerous to even think.)

Malik Kafur knows how dangerous she is. Of Alauddin’s three wives, Mehrunisa is the only one whose family is royalty without Alauddin. Mehrunisa is the only one of his wives with political power of her own- Mahru is ambitionless outside of the zenana, and Jhatyapali is the daughter of a man who was once king, who is now nothing but a vassal, and that shame sits heavy on the princess.

And so Mehrunisa is careful.

But she is still angry, and so she swallows, and she tips her head back, and she says, softer than the shine of sunset off a sharpened sword, “He has never given anything up in his life, and Chittoor still stands. This war is not over.”

The war is never over, Mehrunisa thinks, and wants to sob, wants to scream, with the boundless depths of her fury. The people she has paid to Alauddin’s war- they are countless, and unnecessary, and terrible. The war is never over, and I am never triumphant.

The only victor in Alauddin’s story is himself.

...

Here is another victim of this war: Ratan Singh, the sun-shouldered heir of the Raghu dynasty. Mehrunisa has never known him at the height of his glory, but she can imagine it well enough, as a lion thrown in chains yet recalls the majesty of his first hunt. Sometimes this feels like the entirety of Mehrunisa’s life: never knowing the heights of a being’s life, only the darkest, dimmest parts. 

Only things to be ashamed of. 

But she enters the dungeons anyhow, and when the guards hesitate she lifts her chin proudly. I am a queen, she doesn’t need to say. Malika-e-Jahan. Refuse me at your peril.

Within, Ratan Singh is chained, arms pulled up and back at an angle that looks painful. Mehrunisa steps forwards swiftly and unlocks the doors. Then she hesitates, because she does not have water, because she is not foolish enough to unleash a lion on herself without bars to hold it back.

The question now, is that of whether Ratan Singh is a lion or not.

The question now, is how much treason Mehrunisa is willing to bring down on her head.

“Maharawal Ratan Singh,” she says, for sheer lack of anything else, just loud enough to be heard by him and not by the guards she’s dismissed to the entrance. 

His head lifts. 

He is a handsome enough man, with clear features and bright eyes- but Mehrunisa has known many handsome men in her life, and there is something different in Ratan Singh’s eyes than any other. Kindness, perhaps; kindness, and sadness, and pride, an amalgam that leaves her throat tight against her grief.

“Begum,” he says. There is no anger in his voice, and it is that which makes her swallow. 

“I wished to see,” she says, haltingly, feeling a girl once more rather than the sole woman left of a king’s entire family, “-I’ve heard tales, Maharawal, and they all name you- honorable. Beyond all means.”

"I’ve striven for that,” says Ratan Singh, slowly. 

Mehrunisa swallows. “They also name you trusting.”

“Is that a fault?”

She averts her face. Oh, in another life- in another court, wedded to another man- Mehrunisa might have a different answer. But she is Alauddin Khilji’s first wife, the Delhi princess who became queen, empress of the world, and there is only one way for her to answer truthfully.

She turns on her heel and leaves instead.

...

She returns the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, too. It aches in her- he is so good, it shines from him even in this dusty, dank dungeon; and Mehrunisa is not. But she is as a moth to the lamp: caught, wings aflame, and still straining closer, still burning alive.

...

The best love stories are tragedies. 

The brightest lives are the shortest.

Mehrunisa mourns, for every day that she speaks to Maharawal Ratan Singh, and she doesn’t even know why. 

...

(Mehrunisa knows. Of all the wives of Delhi sultans, of all those who held the title malika, of every woman caught between her blood and her love- Mehrunisa knows this pain, this quiet, flaming sureness. Death circles all those that she admires. Death circles, and its name is Khilji.)

...

It is for this knowledge that Mehrunisa welcomes Padmavati. That she remains calm. And Padmavati is beautiful- Mehrunisa can see why kings would battle for her, why Alauddin would rather ruin his own kingdom than let her remain wed to another. But she is beautiful in the fashion of a wild thing. 

Not an animal.

Nothing so simple.

Padmavati is lovely like the bladed curve of a sunrise before battle. Like a rainstorm, so heavy it drowns everything, carves canyons, shatters cities. Like something whirling and scraping and furious. 

Mehrunisa tasted the bruises of a crown when her father died. She let Alauddin taunt her; she’s watched him kill her family one by one, and she’s remained silent. She’s remained a specter. She has accepted it, because she will survive it. Because she must.

But if Alauddin dares to touch Padmavati after taking Ratan Singh from her- if he even manages it- Mehrunisa thinks the heavens themselves will carve him open. 

(No. Not the heavens. Just the rage of an earthly woman, who has never known not to be sharper than a honed edge.)

...

“Take me to him,” says Ratan Singh, bruised, bloodied, dirt smeared across his chest, anger still thrumming in him. “Take me to your husband.”

If he kills him-

Widows hold little power, thinks Mehrunisa. Widows hold so little power. She is the daughter of kings; how will she survive that life? 

But she has seen how the lotus shines when blood lands on it. Mehrunisa has seen how the leaf will wash off the blood at the first rains, and still unfurl the morning after with dogged determination. A lotus exists for nothing but its own survival and its own beauty. 

Widows hold little power in her country, but they hold control over their own lives. 

“Follow me,” she says, and commits to this, the last in a very long line of treachery stringing back to the night of her wedding.

...

Alauddin sentences her to the dungeons which is a better ending than she had hoped for in the darkest depths of her musings; but it isn’t as if she’s fooling herself: he is going to Chittoor, and he will either find Padmavati or he will return empty-handed or he will die.

Mehrunisa cannot hope for his death. She cannot. She is hollowed out inside; she is cored and scored and slashed apart for her love of him. But she cannot sit there in that darkness and hope for her husband’s death, no matter if he deserves it. She has cursed him, too, now, for the first time in all their marriage, and there is a power in the words of a faithful wife. 

(And she is faithful, has always been so, even terrified, even horrified, even shattered with all these years of pain and grief and rage.)

So he will not find Padmavati.

If he returns to Chittoor without her, he will kill Mehrunisa.

His rage will not be in control then, and it will have the benefit of the long march back from Chittoor to Delhi to simmer and gain a name. She is doubly certain that Malik Kafur will aim and sharpen that rage in her name. 

Mehrunisa kneels on the cold stone of the dungeon she’d once been on the other side of, knees aching. Her wrists tremble and shake, but she holds them in front of her. Breathes out into cupped palms. She is alive. She is alive, and when she dies she will die with her head held high, with the dignity of her forefathers.

She does not pray for a lease on life. She does not pray for Alauddin’s safe return. She does not pray for anything but for the throbbing ache of her mind, for the all-consuming need in every limb, in every organ, in every inch of her twisted-up convoluted veins.

Mehrunisa kneels in darkness, and she prays for deliverance.

...

It comes in the form of the girl Mehrunisa had sent to her mother. The girl’s grown her hair out; it sways behind her like a thick, coiled snake. Mehrunisa blinks, weaving, and she says, through the metallic clink of a key, “Empress,” with enough fierceness that Mehrunisa straightens almost automatically, reaches out, catches her hands.

“My mother,” she whispers.

“She is fine,” says the girl. “But you- oh, Malika, your mother had a premonition months ago. She said you would need me. But not like this! Never, not in my wildest dreams, did I imagine they would dare to imprison you like this-”

“What are you doing?” 

The girl blinks at you, as if startled, but she is doing something. Her fingers have unlocked the first set of chains, and are halfway through the second. 

“Rescuing you,” she says.

“I do not need rescuing,” says Mehrunisa sharply. 

“Your mother wishes you saved,” says the girl, and she looks like she wishes she didn’t have to be the obstinate one- but then, oh, Mehrunisa’s mother has sent her to save Mehrunisa, and for all that Mehrunisa has been in her life, for all that she has done and had, she has never commanded the loyalties of people with the ease of her mother. 

“We will not manage,” Mehrunisa tells her, but she allows the girl to undo the chains around her ankles anyhow. “The guards-”

“The guards will not notice two women going to the market,” says the girl. She smiles, suddenly, transforming her face into something unrecognizable. “They never do.”

Mehrunisa takes the black cloth she’s offered and weaves it around her hair, covers the scant jewelry Alauddin’s left her with so she looks like just another washer-woman disappearing to the city. The cloth is heavy on her skin. Yet another disguise.

(Sometimes she thinks- under all of her masks and fears and duties, what is she? Who has she become?)

“My son?” asks Mehrunisa instead.

The girl frowns. “Will he need help as well?”

But Mehrunisa’s son is grown, and if she takes him with her, she’ll make him an enemy just as much as she’s made herself Alauddin’s enemy. Better to leave him here, in a viper’s nest, unremarkable as the stone on which a viper will sleep during the day. 

“No,” says Mehrunisa. “No.” She turns, though, and unwinds a bell from her hair, and leaves it in the middle of her cell for him- Mubarak will know it, if he sees it. Then she returns to the girl. Breathes out, and exhales all her fears with it. “Let’s go, then.”

...

“Mehrunisa!” cries her mother, running down the courtyard, arms outstretched.

Mehrunisa, startled, almost topples over, straight into her arms. But she manages to get her feet under her as she slips off the camel, and the hot sun above her feels like a shawl around her shoulders, and when she embraces her mother, she feels something soften and bend within her ribcage that she hasn’t ever felt soften before.

“Oh, darling girl,” whispers her mother, smoothing the hair away from her face and drawing Mehrunisa into her home. “How I’ve missed you.”

Mehrunisa breathes deep. She’s the last surviving daughter of her mother and her father; the last surviving child. She’s done her duty. She’s always done that. But the shame of leaving her husband- of abandoning him, of treachery-

“We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of,” her mother says. Tips her chin up, so Mehrunisa can look into dark, gleaming eyes. Once, years and years ago, her mother’s seat had stood higher than even the king’s. Mehrunisa knows no name for her other than Malika, the title she’s taken herself. “But you survived, little one, sweet love. And that matters. That means that you can change things. Make things better.”

“I left Mubarak behind. Alone.”

“As I left you,” says her mother. Her fingers are gentle, now, here; after the end of their world, when before she’d never been soft, as if to be soft were to be weak. “But we empresses- we must save ourselves, because there is nobody who shall help us. You understand that now, I think, Mehrunisa.”

Mehrunisa closes her eyes, swallows. “Yes,” she murmurs. “I do.”

...

The years pass quietly, peacefully. Mehrunisa learns to weave to pass the time, and though she is not good enough to sell anything, she enjoys decorating her rooms with heavy woolen tapestries like she’s a princess once more, demanding luxury and decadence. With her mother, she goes to some poetry-reading concerts; she reads her mother’s correspondence, averts her face when she hears about Alauddin’s exploits and Malik Kafur’s ascendancy in court, helps some sheep herders fight their tax case against their provincial lord. It’s a simple life; it’s a busy life. Mehrunisa enjoys it, even if she hadn’t ever considered it for herself before.

...

When she hears of Alauddin’s extended convalescency, Mehrunisa tells her mother. It takes some time, of course, to build an army; to gather a group of loyal men. But she knows, down deep in her bones, that this will be different. That this will be successful.

(So many years she has been with Alauddin, tied together like the fur of a jade plant, like a vine on a tree. Through the love and the hate, she’s tied herself to him, and she knows: he will not survive this time.)

Alauddin has killed her father and her brothers. He has tried to kill her mother. He has humiliated Mehrunisa, time and time and time again. 

Now, at the end of it all, she will have her vengeance: for Mubarak will need help to survive Malik Kafur. 

Mehrunisa will give it to him. She will ensure that justice is done, and with that justice she will have her vengeance: Alauddin’s eldest son, her son, will sit on the throne. Her father’s blood will again rule Delhi, the blood that Alauddin so desperately tried to stamp out.

...

It is not a large army she gathers, but a small one; a loyal one. They are in the desert, and she is asleep when something wakes her. There is a warmth across from her- at the other end of the tent- not comforting but sharp, like an open flame too close to her palm. Wakefulness steals across her heart, twined, inseparable, from grief.

Mehrunisa stumbles out of the tent. Drops to her knees in the sand, eyes streaming, and prostrates herself to Allah, who has given her what she never asked.

“My lady,” calls a commander, approaching. He is pale-faced, and holds a crumpled scroll in one fist. “There is news from Delhi.”

“Yes,” says Mehrunisa, eyes closing. “I know.”

Alauddin is dead. For the first night, the stars she sees will not be seen by her husband. Alauddin is dead, and Mehrunisa loves him still, and she lets that knowledge tear her open. Alauddin is dead, and Mehrunisa’s son still lives, and she lets that knowledge sew her together once more. She is not just Alauddin’s wife.

She is an empress, Malika-i-Jahan, and she has a son to save.

“Tell the men,” she says, drawing herself up. “We ride at dawn. We have a new emperor to crown.”

[littleeyesofpallas]

Kabuki-mono

So there’s this thing Japan does a lot in their history where, because they utilize an ideographic written language in which some characters can be read and pronounced different ways, when certain words kind of become obsolete or taboo subcultures will make up a kind of homonym that retains the spoken word but changes the written characters and thus the meaning while sort of carrying on the spirit of the thing.  One of these is the word Kabuki[歌舞���] which is written with the characters for “Song”+”Dance”+”Skill.”  But is derived in part from Kabuki-mono[傾奇者] written as “Strange”+”Trend/Inclined/Leaning”+”Person.”

The Kabuki-mono are often described as a “gang” but that is a somewhat disingenuous phrase as it carries with it a lot of implications that I don’t think reflect accurately what they really were...  Even a popular Japanese-English online dictionary defines the term as:

dandy;

peacock;

early-17th-century equivalent of present-day yakuza;

Edo-period eccentric who attracted public attention with their eye-catching clothes, peculiar hairstyle, and weird behavior

And while these are all fairly accurate in their own ways, I don’t think it paints a particularly complete picture.  So, allow me to try and add some context...

The Kabuki-mono have been recorded as a trend during the mid-late 1500s (the tail end of the period of Japan’s first major unification under Nobunaga Oda and his direct successor, Hideyoshi Toyotomi; of note is that the unification had ended the preceding Sengoku Jidai/Warring States era) into the turn of the 1600s.(Around which time the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate brought with it strict social rules that quashed a number of different social customs and trends, the Kabuki-mono among them.)

What this means is that for nearly 200 years Japan had been in a state of constant war; this same time period is where the romantic images of the cultural myths of the samurai were cultivated.  For nearly 200 years Japanese society had built itself around the inevitability of war: profit and loss came from raiding and conquering of territory, the warrior caste earned its social value according to its very real measures of worth in battle, and the dynamic of courtly politics was sustained by the privileged ruling class propped up on their military power and holdings.  For 200 years and all the generations that were born raised and died in it amassing soldiers, training for war, and winning social status and wealth in battle were a way of life.  And then peace came.

(So jarring in fact was the shift towards peace that the need to justify a bloated military force even pushed Japan to try and invade the Asian mainland, just to give their restless and disenfranchised soldiers something to do.)

But the awkward shift in life styles meant that while the highest echelons of Japanese society adapted to more peaceful politics, the middling ranks of aristocracy found themselves without wars to fight, without real political influence, and without roles in society: Many families found their heirs provided for, spoiled even, but aimless.  Herein came the ronin and wandering samurai that would become the beloved trope of samurai fiction for centuries to follow.

But among these disenfranchised yet financially well off (and very frequently well educated and cultured) soldiers were some who took to posturing their status, very probably as a direct result of their losing real power in courtly affairs as practices skewed toward the nuance of peacetime politics.  So, as if to announce their wealth and culture they would being to dress lavishly to show off their money, both to one another and to the peasantry.  Their tastes leaned into the gaudy, favoring bright colors, elaborate patterns, and exotic fabrics like leathers, animal furs, and light catching materials.  They also adorned themselves in beaded charms, metals, and even decorated their swords and sword sheathes.  Also popular became the almost comically large swords, again commissioned as a matter of social posturing; often depictions of Kabuki-mono will show them leaning on their swords while standing upright, using them as walking sticks, or slung over their shoulder to bare the heavy load.

From this M.O. there came a fairly logical development in style; many of these fashionable ex-samurai began to collect women’s clothing, because of the available clothes women’s possessed all the traits they found desirable.  For some this amounted to cross dressing, but because women’s clothes were often too small for the men to wear properly, they would drape them as capes, or fashion them into sashes.  This in turn lead to layering many articles of clothing over one another, as it allowed for a maximum of patterns and fabrics to be incorporated into a single ensemble.  But for those who were able to wear women’s clothes comfortably, or who had women’s styles fashioned in their own sizes, the fuller feminine aesthetic carried over with, and accessories also came into vogue for the Kabuki-mono.  Moreover, many would also wear their hair down (but not cut, as the length was still indicative of status, but the topknot itself being explicitly masculine) rather than in the traditional topknot, which had the effect of also evoking a more feminine style.

In practice these boastful and again financially frivolous groups of eccentric fashionistas would spend their time wandering lively urban areas to show off their visible wealth, or spending their time smoking* and drinking together in taverns where they were frequently known to skip bills. (it’s entirely likely many of them didn’t even have real money left to their name after the benefits of the war economy subsided)

Keeping in mind that this was an era in which their samurai status, however impractical in courtly politics, did still technically afford them a kind of diplomatic immunity and power over peasantry.  So when I say they “skip  their bills” it wasn’t so much a tricky dine and dash as it was a bold and arrogant saunter out the door with the utmost confidence that if a pub owner were to try and stop them, they could beat the commoner even to death with relative impunity.

In this same vein they were known to get quite readily into drunken brawls and wrestle in the streets with other “gangs.”  But of course “wrestling” here is actually the jujutsu that had commonly been part of a samurai’s military training.

And in this way common hang outs for different groups of displaced soldiers would become centers of what were basically gang turf, and these casually belligerent interactions and retaliations to them would begin to carry with them larger consequences.

A small aside that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else here: Another accessory to their aesthetic were large custom made Kiseru (a kind of Japanese smoking pipe with metal mouth piece and bowl) like their swords, crafted comically large as to make a loud statement.  Some accounts of fights between gangs actually describe pipes so large and with such prominent metal components that they could be used as weapons to fend off an unexpected attack, even from a sword or dagger. (ironically this trope has developed in one of two ways over the years, either exaggerating the size of the pipe further, or downplaying its size to that of a regular pipe to create a kind of dissonance where a skilled fighter can wield even a small inconspicuous object as a weapon.)

As these kinds of gangs grew in size, activity, and influence they did eventually attract the attention and ire of their superiors.  By the time the Tokugawa shogunate took over, they were on a short list of black listed groups targeted by legal reforms that outlawed, not the groups themselves, but much of their behavior and practices, affording the shongunate the impetus to act on arrests, that would do away with key leaders, until the gangs eventually dissipated on their own.

But there was another set of eyes that had been following the kabuki-mono activity, even in its waning years: one Izumo no Ikuni.  The woman who would go on to found Kabuki theatre while the memory of the Kabuki-mono was still in the public mind even as they vanished from the bars and streets.  It is from the kabuki-mono that Kabuki theatre would develop its audacious costume and distinctly pronounced mannerisms and even characterization of samurai.  It is also the alluring androgyny of the Kabuki-mono’s fashionable men that led Izumo no Ikuni and her all female troupe to so readily and confidently assume the masculine roles. (Ikuni herself was known to address her audiences directly, with no formal traditions of a 4th wall, and flirt with women while in character to great if often notorious effect.)

A curious side effect of this passing of the torch is that the strong associations with theatre fashion actually caused a lot of other media to distance themselves from various associations with theatre by effectively relegating the kabuki-mono fashion to the domain of theatre almost exclusively.  So stories about poor and disenfranchised samurai in the years following the Warring States period adopted a kind of universal trope of the plain clothes samurai, in rough and worn kimonos, or else distinguished formal wear befitting the status of the higher rungs, but nearly eradicating the image of the Kabuki-mono from any fiction that didn’t specifically feature them.

I guess my point is just that it's super cool to me that there was this whole brief era where a bunch of war hardened, genderbending, fashionista thugs were just kicking around Kyoto picking fights and showing off. And its a damn shame that circumstances as they are have kind of erased them. Also they so very much embody and legit pioneered the spirit of Bad Suit Energy that sustains me.