#the whole self hatred and grieving the time war thing has also been going on since the 90s so

[claratwelve]

yeah no okay i just finished s13 and i loved it, that was some good cinema

[kerra-and-company]

Kerra's Playlist: Analysis

Hello folks! Welcome to something I put probably way too much thought into—aka me talking about the playlist I made for Kerra 😊

(also, tagging @i-mybrunettelady and @king-there0f, since you guys said you were specifically interested in seeing this <3)

Warnings for content below: assorted spoilers for the entire GW2 storyline, suicidal thoughts, grief

So, some things about Kerra's playlist that give me Emotions when I listen to it:

The first song on Kerra’s playlist is instrumental, and it’s called Valiant—Kerra’s first-ever title, and one that she has claim to as soon as she awakens.

Broken Heart of Gold is the seventh song. It’s early in this playlist and early in Kerra’s life; she’s about a month and a half old here at most. And the chorus is this:

Sometimes I just wanna quit Tell my life I'm done with it When it feels too painful Sometimes I just wanna say I love myself but not today When it feels too painful I smash my broken heart of gold

Kerra is grieving and she is angry. She had to kill Tiachren. It was her fault and it wasn’t; she could have made another choice but she wouldn’t have; it’s a death that teaches her that guided destinies don’t come casualty-free. This song is mostly about the grief and self-hatred that comes out of this incident, but she’s angry at others as well, and a big part of that anger is directed at the Nightmare Court. When Faolain visits Briarthorn, Kerra (there undercover at the time, working with Alarin) seriously considers killing her, both out of a generalized anger towards the Court and a very personal anger towards Faolain with her (at this point still limited) knowledge of what Faolain did to Caithe.

What I’m Here For (number 10) is meant to be a sweet song but has always been kinda bittersweet for me, and that translates to the role it has in Kerra’s playlist. She, sincerely and truly at this point, thinks her value is in what she can do for other people. (Also, based on where it’s located on the playlist, it’s technically a little before she joins the Order of Whispers, but the line “I’ll be the brightest shadow you’ve ever had” is very tied to her and the Order.)

Angel With A Shotgun is...just a very Kerra song. The whole thing fits her, to be honest, but especially this:

They say before you start a war You better know what you're fighting for Well baby, you are all that I adore If love is what you need, a soldier I will be

For Kerra, this isn't meant to be interpreted in an explicitly romantic sense. You could read it as platonic love/romantic love/just how much she cares about the world in general, and she could be talking about/to many different people. There's also something to be said about this bit:

If love's a fight, then I shall die With my heart on a trigger

Considering that she does, in fact, during PoF.

No One Stands Alone is Kerra's becoming-the-Commander song (think end of level 60 PS and retaking Claw Island):

No one's falling No one will be forgotten No one's going on their own

We find light Through the smoke No one stands alone

Through the fire We find hope No one stands alone

It's good and also very painful--"no one else is dying if I can help it, I will never forget those we lost, I'll stand beside you even if no one else will"--but it's also very much her acknowledging that she's a leader. Where she goes, people will follow, and that's important even if it's hard. And there's the bridge, which is also worth noting:

I won’t let you leave we just started My heart’s on my sleeve, it’s unguarded They might come for me a new target They need a new target My heart is unguarded

Both another instance of her being self-sacrificing and one of her saying that she's going to keep loving anyways, regardless of whether it hurts her or not.

Also, to add one more point--it's an echo of something Tybalt says during the level 40 PS: "When you stand with the Order of Whispers, you never stand alone."

May I is (in this playlist) meant to be Kerra talking to the fledgling Dragon's Watch during LWS1:

May I hold you As you fall to sleep When the world is closing in And you can't breathe May I love you May I be your shield When no one can be found May I lay you down

"Can I protect you, can I love you, are you happy to have me here and as your friend? Because I'm really happy to be yours, and I want to keep this thing we've built, if I can."

Ready or Not is Kerra and Scarlet going back and forth during Clockwork Chaos:

You thought nothing could surprise you You thought you'd seen everything But you never saw me coming All eyes on me Ready or not

Some of the lines are more Kerra, and some of them are more Scarlet, but you could take the song as coming from either one of them alone and it'd be equally valid.

Breathe is Kerra's Tower of Nightmares song--hallucinations, doubt, just have to get through this:

I know right now you're not strong enough But breathe

Strange Sight is technically from one of the Tinkerbell movies, I think? But I first heard it entirely divorced from that context, so it's not particularly relevant xD As far as the new context I'm giving it, this is Kerra's catching-romantic-feelings song:

You're reckless and distant But I'll be persistent I will understand you Strange How I'm drawn to the danger I'll reach out my hand to you

You are a strange sight Some new kind of wonder

There's a light that you shine There's a love, I see it in your eyes

It's not a perfect match in all respects, but those few segments really hit home. Kerra's friendship (and eventual romantic relationship) with Nisha and Canach is based on a) seeing things she understands in both of them, and notably somewhat darker things (Nisha's grief, Canach's anger), and b) being willing to reach out and connect because she thought they were worth connecting to. And they reached back to her, too.

Echo is Kerra right after the Shadow of the Dragon attacks the Summit--she knows her Wyld Hunt now, but so many other things have been thrown into question, and she feels incredibly off-kilter and afraid in a way she's really never been before:

I can't get a grip, but I can't let go There wasn't anything to hold onto, though

The trembling fear Is more than I can take When I'm up against The echo in the mirror

Brittle, on the other hand, is Kerra after she learns the truth about the origin of sylvari, thanks to both the memory seeds and Nisha. It's anger at her mother and Caithe, anger at her situation, anger at herself for not being stronger, and anger at Mordremoth (and those distrustful of sylvari) as we bleed over from the end of LWS2 into HoT and the Pact fleet's destruction. I think the segment of this song that best fits Kerra here is this:

If I get defensive Don't say I'm oversensitive Maybe I have a tendency to snap on people telling me "You fit inside this box we built, we know you better than yourself" They're lying, they're lying, they're lying

Dear Shadow comes at the end of HoT, but it's reflective of Kerra and her Wyld Hunt and her emotions surrounding it since she awakened. She's talking to her Hunt, the voice in the back of her mind telling her to kill the dragon, like it's an entity all its own:

The first day that we met I saw you out of the corner Of my eye, I was 5 You're still the thumb that I'm under

Oh, I hid you away Pushing you down You left me caught between a light and a dark place

On the wall I was 10, you were more than a feeling By my side, unwanted The sun would see you come creeping Made of fear I was strong There's no shame to have you here Where you belong

I've been lonely Keeping you back there behind me Got this swollen feeling We could make amends I see it's only me needing You back there behind me In my soul I feel like Maybe we'll be friends But you're holding me back Yeah, you're holding me back And I just want to run

In order of segment, it's referencing: sapling times, post-Zhaitan, LWS2, the final battle with Mordremoth (where the Hunt is finally completed). This is maybe one of my favorite songs on this whole playlist.

Brother gives me emotions about Kerra and Trahearne, and them supporting each other as they build the Pact, and the huge risk that she takes to save him at the end of HoT--she's the one to bring him home:

Ramblers in the wilderness We can't find what we need We get a little restless from the searching Get a little worn down in between Like a bull chasing the matador Is the man left to his own schemes Everybody needs someone beside 'em Shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Brother, let me be your shelter Never leave you all alone I can be the one you call When you're low Brother, let me be your fortress When the night winds are driving on Be the one to light the way Bring you home

Now You Believe In You is instrumental, but the title alone says why it's important. Kerra post!HoT is free from her Wyld Hunt. She still carries losses on her shoulders and always will, but she truly believes in her capability going forward and in herself, now, in a way that was thrown a little off course for a while during LWS2. It's also that feeling that gives her the last push she needs to confess to Canach and Nisha.

And Rather Be is her confession song:

If you gave me a chance, I would take it It's a shot in the dark, but I'll make it Know with all of your heart, you can't shame me When I am with you, there's no place I'd rather be

"I want to be with you, if you want that too. I choose this, I choose you. Both of you are so absolutely worth the love I have for you."

Also worth noting a couple more lines:

It's easy being with you Sacred simplicity

In a lot of ways, this isn't actually that true. Kerra's the Commander, Nisha takes on the Marshal position a few months after this point, Canach's billet is still held by Anise, and they have literally no idea what form the world is going to take going forward. So it's not so much the situation that's simple, but the being-with-them, and the choice itself. Of course she'd choose them.

We're different and the same

Always been important, always will, even if it's a statement that'd be true about any set of strangers you met on the street.

As long as I am with you My heart continues to beat

And last but not least, I continue to be mean about seeing foreshadowing here--they're not with her when she fights Balthazar.

Never Look Away is one of my favorite songs for the three of them (Nisha/Kerra/Canach), in part because of its tendency to list things out in threes. (Also because there's literally the line "We're gonna photosynthesize and drink up the sunrise" in it, which is excellent.) I bolded a couple bits to highlight the triplets, but I wanted to show you all of these lyrics because they fit really really well:

So do they ever shut up because you said so or Do you overthink 'em all Somebody ought to corrupt you on the dance floor And take you home Show you all your daemons and desires and dark sides All of your colonies and continental divides

Let me uncover the silver in your dark hair The weight of your bones I want to witness the beauty of your repair The shape you've grown For you are made of nebulas and novas and night sky You're made of memories you bury or live by

So if you're out there in the cold I'll cover you in moonlight If you're a stranger to your soul I'll bring you to your birthright I want the storm inside you awoken now I want your warm bright eyes To never look away

Sunlight (yes, the Hozier one) is a song that could really go in a lot of places on this playlist--it's very Kerra, but not a specific time of Kerra doing things. For the purposes of the playlist timeline, though, it's during LWS3. All the lyrics fit in some way, but to avoid quoting all of them, I'll just give you this:

All the tales the same Told before and told again A soul that's born in cold and rain Knows sunlight, sunlight, sunlight And at last can grant a name To a buried and a burning flame As love and its decisive pain Oh, my sunlight, sunlight, sunlight

Dirt Around The Tree is a song that's so Kerra (in terms of both her entire timeline and specifically right after she comes back from being dead in PoF) that my brain visualized an entire animatic for it that I'm not able to draw--I won't write about it here, but I am absolutely going to reblog that post so you can see. It's also in my fics tag if anyone's reading this and decides they want to go find it :)

Paper Dragon gives me Kerra vibes post-PoF specifically, but it's also just a good song for Kerra looking into the faces of Elder Dragons and a god and saying, "Still standing." For a few segments:

Well, you try to stamp me out But I'll come to life You try to burn me up But I'll never die

Sticky tape me, re-arrange me, throw me out, start again Re-use me, confuse me, shred me up-up into little pieces You say I make no sense

Oh, you don't own me I don't think you're fair Try to destroy me I don't care

All I Know So Far is one of my favorite songs for Kerra and her kids (Aurene, Rhi, Tev and Ia). It's also specifically a parenting song for Kerra and her partners, if you choose to listen to it for the three of them rather than just for her:

I wish someone would have told me that this life is ours to choose No one's handing you the keys or a book with all the rules The little that I know I'll tell to you When they dress you up in lies and you're left naked with the truth

This verse in particular (above) is very Kerra, but the chorus that it segues into (below) has elements of her and Nisha and Canach:

You throw your head back, and you spit in the wind Let the walls crack, 'cause it lets the light in Let 'em drag you through hell They can't tell you to change who you are That's all I know so far And when the storm's out, you run in the rain Put your sword down, dive right into the pain Stay unfiltered and loud, you'll be proud of that skin full of scars That's all I know so far

And the rest of the song is like that, too; I'm just not going to put all of it here for the sake of both space and my brain xD :)

Run is another one I wrote an animatic "script" for--will reblog that shortly, but please check out my fics tag and you'll find it there!

And last but not least for individual songs, I have to mention Hell or High Water because it's a very Kerra-during-EoD song, struggling against both the Void and Ankka (as well as all the other complications going on). It's also related to water, which, considering Soo-Won, is very fitting:

We are running out of time Meet me at the water line No one here is safe We are running out of time Don't forget your promises It's only fear inside your head We won't be replaced No one here is safe

When the river's running red And we begin to falter We'll hang on to the edge Come hell or high water

There's a few song parallels in here also--three of note are:

1) Weight of the World (during the Zhaitan campaign/level 80 PS) and Featherweight (when Kerra steps down as Commander after EoD), and

2) Go for Gold (the first instance where a song has "champion" in the lyrics, which for Kerra is both being a champion for herself and her new friends during LWS1) and Champions ("champions aren't born, they're built"--after returning from the Domain of the Lost).

3) Angel With a Shotgun comes back later, in a sped-up version, during the early part of EoD--Kerra is willing to sacrifice herself to save Rhi and Gorrik when they're all crashing into the shores of Cantha, and it's why she's as injured as she is (and why she needs almost a month to recover).

And...I shall stop there! But if you actually read this far, thanks so much for being interested, and I hope you had a good time. My brain has so many Kerra thoughts in it at all times and a bunch of those manifest in her playlist, so it was really nice to write this down.

:) <3

[violentdelighstviolentends]

(  Burak Cerek  .  Cis Male.  He/Him  . 33 )  Adam  from  Beauty and the Beast  has found  themselves  trapped in  grimsby.  though here  they  go by  Cenk Bay .   they  reside in  Sumner Heights,  and have  been  passing time  working  as independently wealthy.  according to  the  people around  town,  they’re often  seen READING and  they’ve  also mentioned  that  they’re just  as   self-destructive & temperamental,  but as   kind & loyal as ever.   Rose petals, distorted self-portraits, thunder over hills always  seems  to remind  people  of them.  i  wonder how  well  they’ll do  around  here.

Before the Curse

It had been clear to everyone that when the princess Emira married the prince Tamraz, it hadn’t been for love. For he was as cruel as she was kind, but as time progressed, she seemed to have softened his heart a little. Especially when they went on to bring Adam into the world.

For a while, it had been a happy childhood. His mother taught him to be kind and just and for a long time he was a well liked, happy little boy. But they had all missed the hatred that was growing within the now-King Tamraz’s heart. It was an illness that killed the Queen, that was the general consensus, only a few recognised the signs of poison. No one dared to call it out, and no one stopped him as he did whatever he wanted to his son, making him become more like a younger version of himself than the sweet boy who had been there before.

So Adam grew up, vain, selfish and unkind, much like his father. Then war broke out and his father left to fight in it. The young prince was left behind, after all there was no point in the whole royal line dying out should it go wrong. Then the news came that the King had died. He could play the part of grieving son perfectly, but in truth that day was the happiest in his life, realising his father’s torture was over.

But despite the King’s death, Adam didn’t change. He didn’t see a need to if he was honest about it. The truth of it was, as cruel as he was to everyone else, he was far crueller to himself. That was until the Enchantress came. Vanity, and a love of beauty took over, and in that moment a terrible decision was made, one that left him cursed. He had thought he knew pain from his father, but the transformation from man to beast was excruciating. But his decision had not only cursed him, but had cursed all in the castle at the time. Everyone else forgot, as if he had never existed in the first place. The only solution was to love someone and earn their love in return before the last petal fell off an enchanted rose.

As the years passed, despair took over. That was until a stranger came to the castle. He’d been aware the whole time, but it wasn’t until the man dared steal a rose he acted. His father had raised him to believe there was no excuse for theft, but in this case the punishment didn’t fit the crime. Anything else and maybe it would, but it had to be a rose. Well he had been granted eternal damnation for one, why shouldn’t someone else? But the man had a daughter, and she wasn’t willing to let her father die in a place like this, instead offering to take his place. He could have been kind and let them both leave, but the words of the curse had haunted him for a decade by then, and instead he agreed, forcing her to give up her freedom and stay.

But she wasn’t like the women his father used to parade around. He gave her freedom within the castle, and yet when he did make orders, she still refused. It all led to an incident involving wolves. It was the moment something changed within Adam, and the voice of his mother started to take over. It wasn’t an easy journey, but the kindness he’d once had started to become evident again.

Eventually he realised he had to do the right thing, and with her worry for her father growing, he let her go. An act of true love, but the curse had always been clear that she had to love him in return. Realising that they were all out of time, the guilt that he had dragged everyone into this and could do nothing was overwhelming. Despair had fully taken over, when the mob arrived. He had all but given up, expecting that night to be the night he died. It almost came true, until the curse was broken, and after all those years he was finally transformed back into a man.

But all of it was short-lived, as soon another curse came through.

After the Curse

Cenk Bey was a young man who was known for breath-taking anger issues. So much so that when his parents were caught in a house fire, and he was the only survivor, many people believed he was the one who had started it. In truth he had been asleep at the time, and had only just managed to wake up and get out in time. He knew he could try and fight against it, but it just became easier to give up. The house, now blackened from the flames had been left to him, and so he mostly just stayed indoors, leaving only early in the morning to do various shopping.

That was the life that Adam woke up into. His first thought was to find the people he loved but… memories of the previous curse came back to him. He had hurt all of them so much already, and Belle he had kept a prisoner. It seemed kinder to simply keep to himself. After all, there weren’t really that many people who had seem him as an adult anyway. He had further cause when he realised who the Sheriff was, and given the last time he had seen the man he’d been trying to kill him, it was probably better to not give him any reason to hate him. Even though he had to hope that he wouldn’t reconigse him now he was human and not a beast.

Time passed, though the situation never really changed. He was able to somehow come to terms with both sets of memories and try and live a happy, if not lonely life. The one thing he could do without is the blasted rose garden behind the house. He can appreciate the irony, he’d still rather it wasn’t there. He doesn’t want to bring any more pain to the people he loves and so instead has imprisoned himself.

Pinterest

Spotify

[five-rivers]

Now i would like to see prompts of a curious benevolent eldritch being coming to visit Amity Park and coo at the baby eldritch (Danny) and tech him how to access his eldritch powers.

I know this is probably supposed to be about some more traditional and tentacle-y eldritch abomination, but this is essentially what I’m writing Grandfather Clocks as (not to mention assorted other oneshots and everything happening in Mortified).  I’m too invested in Lost Time to clearly imagine anyone but Clockwork in the Adult Eldritch Abomination role...  at least from a more general prompt like this one.  

... on the other hand I now have Vague Ideas (tm) about a full AU where Danny has eldritch abomination powers instead of ghost powers and all the eldritch abominations he’s ‘fighting’ are just coming to play with the baby.

WARNING this is for real written as horror, since it’s from Danny’s perspective.

.

Time seemed to congeal as the shadow in Danny’s soul stretched backwards.  This one had a name.  It skittered between the dark and the part of Danny’s mind that still resembled a human’s.  He breathed in, slowly, then out, tasting it on his tongue.  Once, it had been two.  

Finally, it coalesced into something he could actually speak.  “Skultech,” he said.  

“Relative of Skulker?” asked Tucker.  “Or Technus?”  He didn’t look at them or at Danny.  He had protections, but they weren’t perfect, and he’d already taken a step away from the light.  

“Yes,” said Danny, internally translating the vibrations of air into something with meaning and weight.  

Skulker.  The hunter, fleshless and tireless.  A pursuer of the mind more than the body.  Almost sporting in his own way.  The library with all its labyrinthine but immaterial paths was the best place to lose him.  

Technus.  A horror that lurked in the depths of the internet, luring in deep-web users and more than a few unluckly click-bait and phishing victims.  Technus didn’t kill them, did very little to them, really, but there was a reason there wasn’t a computer club at Casper High anymore.  

They had been two.  Now they were one.  Part of Danny was fascinated.  Another was thrilled, happy, as it always was when these dark things manifested themselves in Amity Park.  

His shadow stretched, whispering over his features.  He could feel curl over the texture of the ground beneath him, grasping at grass and bark and soil as if it were possessed of a thousand thousand tiny fingers.  It wanted to open up and play.

(’It,’ Danny said, as if it weren’t him, an extension of himself.)

“What do we do?” asked Sam.  She, unlike Tucker, looked directly at him, even half-shrouded in shadow as he was.  She always did, even if she averted her gaze from the likes of Skulker and Technus.  

Near the beginning, Sam had made the connection between the others, especially ones like Ember, who were as beautiful as the were dark, and cults.  She had started a joke about making one for Danny.  Over time, it had become less of a joke.  

Danny tried to ignore the pleasant buzz of his skin as he imagined a cult attempting to do something as sweet as bind him to their will.  

Because, really, he shouldn’t be thinking of something like that as ‘sweet’ at all.  

“It’s still Skulker and Technus,” said Danny, even if he had never seen them like this.  “I think... the same type of thing should probably work.  I distract, Sam gets people out of the way, Tuck, you get the computers at the library ready and tell me when to lead them there?”

“Do you think it’ll really work when it’s both of them?” mumbled Tucker.  “I don’t know if I can even do both of the things at once...”

“The alternative is not doing anything,” said Sam, “and considering that they seem to be after Danny...”

Tucker made a face, the glow from his PDA reflecting from his glasses.  “Yeah, I know,” he said.  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try.”

“Remember,” said Danny, “don’t give me the go-ahead until you and everyone else is out.”

“Yeah, I remember, I remember,” he said.

“Go do your thing,” said Sam.  

Danny nodded and left the shelter of their hiding place.  He did not stand up, or walk, or move.  He simply stopped being there and started being in front of Skultech.  

From a distance, he probably still looked human.  

They fought.  

It was hard to describe how they fought, exactly, in human terms, but they did.  Right up until one of Skultech’s three-fingered hands wrapped around Danny’s ankle and his shadow vanished.

He, breathing hard and falling, remembered what it was to be human.  To be vulnerable.  His shadow came back to him, flickering.  He came back to himself.  

There was a darkness that was himself, and he was so relieved.  Why?  How often had he wanted this gone?  But he was whole, and like that he was half, and-

He’d gotten distracted.  

Skultech had surrounded him, a hunting ground strobed with lightning.  This kind of fight was an oddity to both Skulker and Technus, this kind of movement, this kind of strategy.  Danny began to doubt that his earlier plan would work.  

What was a library but another kind of forest?

With only enough warning for his self to wrap around him protectively, Skultech yanked him down into the Dream.  The pale seaweed threads of human consciousness gave way to the dark and the other.  He fell to the floor of a midnight palace and rolled to his back, coughing up not-water from the idea of his lungs.

Here, said Skultech, in something that wasn’t quite language.  The True Voice.  Danny had seen people fall to their knees when the others used that.  Had seen sane men turn into blind faith worshippers.  Had heard lies that became true in the speaking, or near enough that it didn’t matter.  

He had never quite managed to speak that way himself, no matter Sam’s cajoling.  

Danny managed to open his eyes.  He did not come to the Dream often, no matter how much it called to him.  Both his halves agreed, here, where every place was also a person, it was dangerous even in the shallows.  

The ceiling was covered in layers upon layers of spiderwebs, and he did not like what that meant.  Skultech was nowhere to be seen.  

He pulled himself up and got to his feet.  

The floor beneath him was glass.  Beneath that was clockwork, but the gears were galaxies and solar systems, the springs were entropy and enthalpy, and the chains were the laws of physics themselves.  Clockwork.  It was...  It would do, as a name.  

The distant sense of amusement was disturbing.  

Danny looked around.  He needed a way out, a way back up, to where he could leave the Dream.  

Why did Skultech bring him here?

Spiderwebs and gears.  Symbols of control, of interconnectedness, of carefully laid plans.  Was he stuck in a web he couldn’t see?

He spun, slowly, trying to see if he could see any doors or other openings.  Something flashing, moving, in the distance caught his eye.  His first instinct was to move away, but...

But it was like he was being drawn in.  Like he couldn’t turn away.  It was a mirror.  A window.  

It showed him himself.  At first, a hundred paces away, just himself, as he was, but then at pace ninety-nine it changed.  Mirrors did that, in the Dream.  Everything did that, in the dream.  

Time sped up.  The mirror reflected not just light, but sound and feeling.  He could see himself, his shadow, and-

He felt it when all the little Loves that kept him tethered to his humanity snapped, the lives they were anchored to burning up as they met their deaths.  He screamed and heard it echoed back to him a thousand times over.  

He could not stop walking.  He could not stop watching.  Ninety steps away.  

His shadow in the mirror was wild.  Unbound and grieving.  Flesh and blood and bone existed, but his two part mind was unbalanced and divided from itself.  He sought aid from the only other like himself and received a knife, received Hate to replace love and at seventy-five steps he watched as what he had once been embraced Vlad and devoured him whole, eating and becoming everything that made him him.  

The shadow unfurled, hungry and seeking.  The memory Love it once had and the Love it had desired for so long driving it onward and outward, the center pulsing like a diseased star.  Seventy steps.  It had eyes like constellations.  

The mirror showed the Dream, now.  Veins of sickness wound through the garden of human thought, through the tangled vines and twisted paths.  What it found did not satisfy, and it sought more, and more, delving deeper.  Sixty steps, then fifty.  

It ate at the best of people, of others.  The singers fell silent.  The doctors could no longer heal.  The kind became cruel.  

Darkness fell.  Then war.  The shadow ruled all from its misery.  

It was not enough.  

Forty steps.  It’s eyes met Danny’s.  It knew he was here, knew he was watching.  It began to speak in its True Voice, and Danny could not cover his ears to keep it out.  

It spoke of the things it had done, of the things it would do.  Danny watched as it carried out its plans, and even more.  It spoke of how it, he, was Danny, and all this destruction, all this suffering was wrought by his own hands.  It spoke of Love Danny did not cherish sufficiently, of fragility, of how it was determined to Be rather than Be Not even though its every moment was loneliness and Hatred to the point of agony.  

Danny’s ears were bleeding.

Thirty steps.

It spoke of how it would hurt Danny, in particular.  How it would rend his shadow, wound so there was no hope for him to escape his fate, even with foreknowledge of it.  It spoke of how, with Danny watching, the mirror was a window, was a door it could reach through and Danny saw it reaching.  

Saw it reaching out and in and towards now and those that he Loved, those that he cherished and Danny would have pushed himself to run but he couldn’t stop walking.

Twenty steps.  It could make itself look like Danny, and even though it was wrong, Danny was wrong too, he was so, so, so, wrong and his wrongness was going to get them killed.  It was going to get everyone killed.  

They were looking at it, not him, speaking with it, not him.  His darkness was covered.  With it, these things were like staring at the sun.

It tore away the protections he had so painstakingly layered over those he Loved.  

Ten steps.

He saw his parents with a bomb made by their own hands, one that would devastate the Dream for miles around, killing anything that dared to imagine, the culmination of their work.  Nine steps.  He saw Mr. Lancer writing lesson plans with his own blood, each sentence less English than the last.  Eight steps.  He saw Sam with the ritual knife, her smile full of blood and sacrifice.  Seven steps.  He saw Tucker clawing out his eyes, surrounded by computer screens flaring with symbols humans were never meant to use.  Six steps.  He saw Jazz-

He saw Jazz notice.  

Five steps.

He could have wept.  

She armed herself with stories and legends and saltwater and truths that made Danny seize and the fact that this thing was not her brother.  Four steps.  

He watched her confront it.  

Three steps.   

He watched it toy with her, her machinations only delaying her doom.  

Two steps.

He watched it k-

One step.  

No!

For the first time, he screamed in his True Voice.  His fist snapped out, striking the mirror dead center.  It shattered.  

Was that enough?  Was he in time?  He- He couldn’t feel them.  He couldn’t-  They couldn’t be dead.  They couldn’t be gone.  

He dropped to his knees.  The shards of the mirror glittered up at him, calling him.  His hand shook as he reached out and picked one up.  Slowly, he raised it to his lips.  He opened his lips and as soon as the shard was even with his teeth, he bit down, the glass crunching like thunder.  

Already, he was reaching for another piece.  He swallowed.  His hands went out, nails scrabbling along the floor in his hurry.  Mirror shard after mirror shard was shoved into his mouth and choked down.  

There was something around his neck.  With one of his many hands he reached up, feeling up his chest to throat.  There was a collar there.  It felt like control, like ownership, like Love.  

Something liquid dripped from his eye.  

Even as he gagged on glass, two of his hands, his human hands, explored the circumference of the metal piece.  There were delicate fractal patterns on the surface that had double on the interior.  As his fingers pressed down on them, they in turn pressed on the skin of his neck, sending pleasant curls of thought down his limbs.  

His questing fingers found the collar’s lead.  It was at the same time, like the spider silk above and the clockwork chains below.  Flexible.  Strong.  Indelible.  It was as inevitable as gravity that he should Be Loved and Love in return.  

He licked the last powdery pieces of mirror off his fingers and his extra arms slowly evaporated back into the Dream as if they never were.  

Who would Love him like this?  Love him to the point that it manifested in the Dream like this?  The answer was all around him, was inside him, as his heart echoed back the Love as best it was able, but he could hardly believe it.  

The sound of footsteps on the hard floor jolted him out of his reverie.  He looked up and met the red eyes of Clockwork’s avatar.  

It had the appearance of a blue-skinned man wearing a cloak and festooned with symbols of time.  A few long white hairs peeked from beneath its hood, and a painful-looking scar laid over its eye.  

For a moment, Danny was stunned, because this was a true avatar, an extension of Clockwork himself, not a human hollowed out for use as a vessel.  For someone as powerful as Clockwork had to be to be so vast in the Dream to bestow such attention on Danny-

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the only thing that rolled off his tongue was blood.  Shame crept up his cheeks.  He didn’t know if it was his use of his True Voice when destroying the mirror, or consuming all those shards afterwards, but his normal voice was gone.

Shh, soothed Clockwork’s avatar, gloved hands cupping Danny’s cheeks and forcing his lips closed.  You need not speak, child.  Those who love you will know your intent.

Danny nodded slowly, beginning to feel dazed.  He remembered the scenes in the mirror.  Remembered what the shadow-him had done.  His fingers bent around the lead- it was almost as thick as his wrist- and looked up at Clockwork’s avatar.  

Clockwork could strike him down, now, could destroy him so completely that even the merest memory of him was gone, and he would not care, because he would know it was done out of Love.  

The lead shivered against his palms and grew.  

No need, said Clockwork’s avatar.  You have devoured your destiny and become free of it.  

That sounded reasonable.  The avatar brushed a thumb across Danny’s lips and smiled.  

You have given yourself fangs.

Danny blushed again.  He hadn’t meant to.  

The avatar released Danny’s cheeks to reach for his hands, arranging them in Danny’s lap and rubbing circles into his palms.  Then the avatar gently brought Danny’s attention to the door in its chest.  

The door was glass.  Beyond the glass laid an approximation of a heart made of the same elements as what laid beneath the floor.  A metaphor for Clockwork’s heart, Danny guessed, though what laid in the avatar’s chest couldn’t be anywhere near as grand as the real thing.  

The avatar nodded, and then leveled a gloved finger at Danny’s own chest.  He looked down.  

There was a door, there, too.  

His breath caught in his throat and he tried to scramble away, some still-human part of him objecting strenuously to whatever was going to happen.  

All at once, the whole of Clockwork’s attention turned in on him, and for an infinite moment of time he was held in a perfect embrace.  His thought from earlier returned.  Anything, and he would not object, because it was done out of Love.  

His edges, usually so sharply defined, even in the Dream, went fuzzy, almost blending with his surroundings, those surroundings being Clockwork.  

The avatar reached for Danny’s door and opened it.  It hurt, but not as much as he thought it would.  Within, laid his heart. 

The surface, the shape, of it looked human enough.  The veins and arteries were all in the right places.  The atria and chambers all looked to be the proper sizes.  It beat an even rhythm.  

But inside it was as black as night and something like a star twinkled in its depth.  

It was... odd, how closely it resembled Clockwork’s galaxies while being at the same time so different.  

Clockwork’s avatar opened the door to its own chest, pinning it to his cloak, then he reached into Danny’s chest.  

There was the pain he had been expecting, radiating from his core to the very tips of his fingers and toes.  If he were not held immobile by the sheer force of Clockwork’s regard, he would have arched backwards and screamed.

Methodically, the avatar cut and tied off every one of arteries, veins, and nerves that led from the rest of Danny’s body to his heart.  Finally, the heart excised and cradled in its hands, it drew back.  

Danny should be dead.  The Dream did not follow the same rules as the reality he had been born into, but his mind would not let go of the fact that he had no heart.  He should be dead.  

The avatar inserted Danny’s heart into its chest, next to its own, and closed its door.  Slowly, the image of Danny’s heart faded into metaphor as it sunk down into the deeps to nestle next to Clockwork’s true heart.  

Danny understood, then, that from this moment on, Clockwork would decide the direction of his heart, would determine who he Loved and who he Hated.  If he should Love or Hate.  Danny rather doubted Clockwork would let Danny do anything so damaging as Hate.  

I shall keep it safe for you, said the avatar, something more profound behind its words that might have been Clockwork himself, until you are old enough to protect it on your own.

Danny understood, too, that although this promise was not a lie, he would never be old enough to reclaim his heart, no matter how much time passed or how powerful he grew.  Clockwork’s Love and protection would keep both him and it safe, young, fragile.  How could it do otherwise, when time itself would flow around him?  When Love would keep him anchored to one form?

Clockwork’s attention relaxed, then, and Danny could move again, curling around the gaping hole in his chest.  The avatar ruffled his hair and, with his other hand, held something out to Danny.  

Six paired sets of life and death glimmered against the lavender of the avatar’s glove.  Danny recognized them.  They belonged to the people he Loved.  He had not realized he Loved Mr. Lancer, but he could see now that it was true.  

Moving slowly, as if underwater, Danny held his cupped hands beneath the avatar’s.  His breath caught as the avatar tipped the lives and deaths into his hands.  

So precious.  He brought them down to his lap and, with painstaking care, began to peal the deaths away from the lives.  Each death he ate, consuming it and breaking it down into nothing.  Each life he placed in the hollow that had once housed his heart.  

Like this, they would not die, they would not leave him.  They would be with him, always, just as he would always Love them.  

Exhaustion hit him all at once, and he slumped forward to rest his head on the Avatar’s shoulder.  It laughed, lightly, and helped him close the door in his chest.  Then, it took a heart-shaped padlock from within its cloak and threaded it into the latch of Danny’s door.  The click as the padlock closed echoed off the floor and distant walls.  

With a kind of detached curiosity, Danny watched as the edges of the door, latch, padlock and all, melded into his skin and vanished as if they had never been there at all.  He knew that he would not be able to find the door again without help, and that, even then, to open the door he would need the padlock’s key.  A key he had not yet seen.

But what reason did he have to open his chest?  Others might have cause, those who wanted to hurt him, or those that he Loved.  This was another protection, another way to keep him safe.  

This time you devoured your destiny, said the avatar, petting him.  The sick futures have been cut away.  Next, we shall remove the presents where you Are Not.  After that...  The sentence trailed away in a buzz that made Danny’s thoughts go quiet.  

The avatar began to do something that could only be described as singing even though neither voice nor sound were involved.  It was a lullaby, and Danny felt himself become even heavier and softer than before.  He curled into the avatar’s side, feeling small.  The pain of his missing heart eased itself into something more bearable.  The threads of love that kept him from becoming a monster wound tighter around his limbs and sewed themselves deeper into his skin.  

His eyes drifted closed.  

When he woke, he was in his bed, in Fentonworks.  He blinked several times at his ceiling, and leapt to his feet only to be waylaid by dizziness and static across his eyes.  He brought a hand up to his neck, half expecting to feel metal.  

He didn’t.  

He shifted, pressing two fingers against an artery.  No pulse.  He switched his grip to his wrist.  Nothing.  

Right.  No heart.  

No heart but six lives and-

He stumbled out of his room and started banging wildly on her door.  Jazz threw it open and froze.  

“It’s really you?” she asked, voice quivering.  

Danny opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out.  It didn’t seem like Jazz really needed a verbal response, because she threw herself at him, enveloping him in a hug.  

“I was so scared,” she whispered.  “The- the not-you-” She sucked in a shuddering breath.  “Everyone was dying, and then- and then it was just-  It was like a dream.  Like it didn’t happen.  But you were gone.”

Danny nodded, even though she couldn’t see him.  

“I’m so glad it’s you,” she said.  “I’m so glad it’s you.”

Her love, so tenuous and slender compared to Clockwork’s, but no less genuine, wound around his wrist.  He hugged her back.  

If he had been able to speak, he would have said, Me, too.  

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts Recs: Angst

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 remember me by hupsoonheng Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  31082 Tags: Amnesia, Temporary Amnesia, Obliviation, Established Relationship, Established Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Legilimency, Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst, Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Reformed Draco Malfoy, POV Draco Malfoy, Good Draco Malfoy, Gardens & Gardening, Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, POV Harry Potter Summary:  On a chilly day in October, Draco kisses Harry goodbye before he goes on yet another dangerous, undercover mission with the Aurors. And then Harry doesn't come back. Only Draco believes that Harry isn't dead, and pours himself into finding his husband despite his friends' pleas to move on and grieve properly. What he finds at the end of that work, though, is not at all what he wanted. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 you've got the antidote for me by Kandakicksass Rated:  Mature Words:  20730 Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soul Bond, Red String of Fate, Heavy Angst, Terminal Illnesses, Major Illness, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary:  When Harry Potter unintentionally severs their soulbond before it can fully form, Draco Malfoy resigns himself to a slow death and decides not to burden Harry with a soulmate he's made it very clear he doesn't want. He's never been selfless before, but for Harry, he can try. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Every Breath You Take by hephaestiions Rated:  Mature Words:  19252 Tags: Major Character Death, Death (Harry Potter), Suicide, Child Death, Miscommunication, Angst, Angst and Tragedy Summary:  It starts and ends with Death. Scorpius was just caught in between. Like always. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Between Myth and Man by slytherco Rated:  Explicit Words:  16242 Tags: Veritaserum, Truth Serum, Mundane, London, Falling In Love, Lies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, This whole story is just Draco angsting really, Sexual Content, keeping secrets, Smoking, Bad Weather, References to Drugs, Making Out, One (1) Scared Little Sparrow, And also lots of texting Summary:  Draco, lost and a little broken, navigates post-war reality convinced that people like him should not be allowed to make their own choices. To solve the problem of his self-sabotaging tendencies, he starts taking a few drops of Veritaserum every morning. A story about the complexity of choices, repressed desires that come to the surface when we least expect them, and the utter hopelessness of truths built on a foundation of lies. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Three Boxes and a Scrapbook by dracogotgame Rated:  Mature Words:  30493 Tags: mention of divorce, flangst, Bill is a bro Summary:  One year after being accidentally bonded to each other, Harry and Draco are free to move on with their lives. But perhaps, what they needed was here all along. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Intertwined by bluefay Rated:  Explicit Words:  25086 Tags: Memory Loss, Memory Alteration, Accidental Bonding, Magic Gone Wrong, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Malfoy Manor, Self-Harm, Dark Mark (Harry Potter), Serious Injuries, But they're not very graphic so don't fret!, Self-Hatred, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Sort Of, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Hate Sex, Childhood Trauma ,Flashbacks, St Mungo's Hospital, Sharing a Bed, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Time, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020 Summary:  On May 3rd, 1998, Draco Malfoy wakes up with no memory of Voldemort, the war, or Harry Potter, his supposed boyfriend. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 I Am Not Who I Became by mab_di Rated:  Explicit Words:  93189 Tags: H/D Fan Fair 2019, Secondary Theme: Travel Fair, Secondary Theme: Book Fair, Commercial Fisherman Draco Malfoy, Failed Writer Harry Potter, Depressed Harry Potter, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Muscular Draco Malfoy, Recluse Harry Potter, Angst, Smut, Drama & Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Wandless Magic, Boats and Ships, Finland (Country), Fishing, Redemption, School Reunion, Minor Draco Malfoy/Original Male Character(s), Anal Sex, Rough Sex, Sex Magic, Suicidal Thoughts, Near Death Experiences, Magical Theory, POV Alternating Summary:  Draco left England after the trials and has travelled the world meeting wizards and Muggles from different cultures and with vastly different relationships to magic, each other, and the natural world. Now he's a fisherman in Finland on commercial vessels. Harry has been struggling since the war and has become a recluse while trying to write his autobiography. An invitation to the Hogwarts class of 1998's 15th reunion isn't welcomed by either of them, but neither could predict how the night, and their reunion, will upend their lives. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 When I Put My Eyes On You by Zzzara Rated:  Explicit Words:  31160 Tags: Blindness, Blind Character, Blind Harry Potter, Disability, Physical Disability, Disabled Character, Slow Burn, Falling In Love, Love, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Dorks in Love, Friendship/Love, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Requited Unrequited Love, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Amortentia, Potions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Emotions, Emotional, Emotional Roller Coaster, Pining, Pining Harry Potter, Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Developing Friendships, Romantic Friendship, Best Friends, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter Friendship, POV Harry Potter, Patronus, Spells & Enchantments, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Jealousy, Jealous Harry Potter, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Spin the Bottle, Halloween, Party, Party Games, Mistletoe, Kissing, Surprise Kissing, Boys Kissing, Rough Kissing, Drunken Kissing, Gentle Kissing, Boys In Love, Drinking, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunkenness, First Time, Explicit Sexual Content, Sex, Gay Sex, Hand Jobs, Emotional Sex, Awkward First Times, Sleeping Together, Literal Sleeping Together, Dancing, Showers, Masturbation in Shower, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Resolved Sexual Tension, Dreams, Fantasizing, Desire, Self-Esteem Issues, Substance Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Lights Camera Drarry 2020, Lights Camera Drarry, LCDrarry, LCD - Freeform, The Way he looks, film inspired, Self-Prompt, Healing Summary:  When a hero defeats a villain, there's supposed to be a happily-ever-after... but when did anything ever happen to Harry Potter the way it was supposed to? Having sacrificed himself to the greater good, Harry is left alone in the darkness, blindly groping for the shreds of the life he knew. When the enemies meet, how is the story supposed to go, once they learn there's more to it than the eye can see? A story of pain, hope and things we discover, once we stop looking for them with our eyes. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 You open always (petal by petal) by birdsofshore Rated:  Explicit Words:  65214 Tags: Post War, Rent Boy!Draco, Down-And-Out!Draco, Grimmauld Place, House magic, Portraits, First Times, Antagonism, Hurt/Comfort, Coming Out, Pining, Angst, UST, Kissing, Frotting, Blow Jobs, Rimming, Intergluteal Sex, Anal Sex, Homophobic Slurs And Attitudes, Internalised Homophobia, Derogatory Attitudes To Sex Workers, Some Mentions Of Sadistic Violence, Brief Thoughts Of Sexual Activity With A Sleeping Partner, Rough Sex, Brief Mention Of Harry With A Woman (Past Relationship), Mentions Of Dubious Consent In Connection With Sex Work, Community: hd_erised, Inexperienced Harry, Top Harry Potter, House Elves, Masturbation Summary:  Harry’s not the kind of person who pays for sex. He really isn’t. Until he is. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Solder by Oakstone730 Rated:  Explicit Words:  34547 Tags: potion/alcohol addiction, Recovery, Nipple Play, Rimming, Dirty Talk, Angst, PiningUST, Reconciliation, LoveForgiveness, Cursebreaker!Draco, Artist!Harry Summary:  Seven years ago, Harry disappeared out of Draco and Scorpius's life without a trace after Harry's addictions destroyed his and Draco's marriage. Now, Harry’s back, and Draco wants to believe he’s changed. But Harry isn’t the only one haunted by the past. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Three Months, Eleven Days and Nine Hours by sassy_cissa Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  sassy_cissa Tags: H/D Food Fair 2018, Angst, Romance, Paroled Draco Malfoy, Rebuilding Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy/, Harry Potter Friendship, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Food Forager Draco Malfoy, Soup Kitchens, Happy Ending, Post-Hogwarts, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hungry Draco Malfoy Summary:  Broke and living in a one room hovel in Knockturn Alley, Draco hunts in rubbish bins for food. Nothing could be more humiliating, right? Unless you're Draco Malfoy... ❤️ Read on AO3

Texting You by ununquadius Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  6005 Tags: Major Character Death, text fic, draco is dead, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, or maybe hurt/no comfort, Everyday Life, Pets, Asexual Harry Potter, Indian Harry Potter, one penis drawing, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Loneliness, Drinking, Terminal Illnesses, blink and you missed them suicidal thoughts Summary:  After Draco's death, Harry can't let go so he keeps texting their private chat, updating him on his life and rambling about everything and anything until it almost feels like there's a possibility that, one day, a reply will come. Read on AO3

📜 Wake Up In The Night by p1013 Rated:  Explicit Words:  10483 Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, Face-Fucking, Public Sex, Blow Jobs, Versatile Draco Malfoy, Versatile Harry Potter, Anal Sex, Rimming, Anal Fingering, Dirty Talk, Facials, 69 (Sex Position), Coming Untouched, Love Confessions, Curses, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Drinking, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, POV Draco Malfoy, Voyeurism, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, Emotional Manipulation Summary:  In the days after the War ended, there were a great many things that were changed or changing, a great many things that somehow slipped beneath the notice of Ministry officials and healers from St. Mungo's and Aurors that were tasked with capturing fleeing Death Eaters. It was, after all, the end of the War, and much like war itself, the clean up was heartbreaking. Lives had been lost. The world as they knew it had been changed irrevocably. In the grand scheme of things, there were more important things to worry about than Draco Malfoy's sudden, inexplicable inability to feel love. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Coated in Rust and Blood by crazyparakiss Rated:  Mature Words:  2429 Tags: Mpreg, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy, Break Up, Post-Break Up, Angst, Violent Sex, Self-Hatred, Grief/Mourning, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020 Summary:  No one escapes the nightmares. That’s what his headshrinker tells Harry every time he tries to unpack the baggage he was handed from infancy. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Here Without You by  gracerene Rated:  Explicit Words:  26869 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, War, Canon-Typical Violence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Death, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Background Het, Non-Linear Narrative, Flashbacks, Epistolary, Love Letters, Dirty Letters, An Ode to Draco's Bum, Bottom Draco Malfoy, Top Harry Potter, Implied Switching, Auror Harry Potter, Healer Draco Malfoy, Explosions, Harry Potter & Parvati Patil Friendship, Loneliness, Denial, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020 Summary:  It's been seven years since the end of the Second Wizarding War with Voldemort, and a new Dark Lady has taken over in nearby Ireland. Harry feels compelled to volunteer to fight on the front lines, but war is never safe, and Harry has a lot—including his blissfully happy relationship with Draco—to lose. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Orion in the Sky by space_wingding Rated:  Explicit Words:  30709 Tags: Bookshop Owner Draco Malfoy, Coffee, Village life, Slow Burn, Pining, Denial, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Jigsaw Puzzles, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Post-Hogwarts, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Harry Potter, Fatal Curse, Serious Injuries, Suicidal Thoughts, Hospitalization, Death, Character Death, Unhappy Ending, St Mungo's Hospital, Grief, mentions of anal sex, Chronic or Terminal Illness, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020 Summary:  Draco Malfoy owns a bookshop in the Lake District. He’s also cursed. Enter: Harry Potter. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Forgot to remember you by Andithiel Rated:  Mature Words:  1753 Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Auror Partners, Magical Accidents, Memory Loss, Partial Memory Loss, Getting Together, DreamsPining, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drarropoly 2.0 - A Drarry Game/Fest, Rated M for language, There's not any real stuff going on Summary:  Harry was hit with a spell that made him forget the week before he was hurt. Most of his memories have come back, but he has a niggling suspicion that he did something wrong. Why else would his Auror partner (and the object of his desires) go from friendly to hostile? ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 On the Last Day by trishjames Rated:  Explicit Words:  53481 Tags: Mystery, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Unreliable Narrator, Drama, Dramatic Irony, Flashbacks, Non-Linear Flashbacks, Memory Loss, Horror Elements, Suicidal Ideation, Depression, Occlumency (Harry Potter), Occlumency as a Coping Mechanism, Panic Attacks, Discussion and Depiction of Mini Seizures, mention of overdoses, Revenge, Repression, Science, Neurology & Neuroscience, Neurological damage, Medicine, Potions, Original Characters - Freeform, Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Somewhat Bond!Fic, Strong Friendships, Strong Women, Maternal love, Department of Mysteries, Unspeakables (Harry Potter), The Love Chamber, The Death Chamber, Death Potion, Amortentia, The Veil, Near Death Experiences, Souls, Major character death - Freeform, Death, forced drugging, Mind Control (Imperio), Murder, Vomit, Medical Procedures, Consent, Amoral Behaviour, Unethical Behaviour, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Possession, Ghost Sex, True Love Conquers All, ghost!harry, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Auror Harry Potter, Unspeakable/Scientist Hermione Granger, Unspeakable/Scientist Draco Malfoy, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, Psst...angst with a happy ending.. Summary:  Draco is still mourning the recent loss of his mother when the Wizarding World is struck with the tragic news of Harry Potter’s untimely death. It’s just his luck that Potter not only comes back as a ghost, but seems intent on haunting Draco as he’s the only one that can see him. It’s a race against time to retrace the last few days of Potter’s life in order to find his body before he’s lost to the living or spiritual realm forever. On their journey, they’ll uncover secrets, betrayals, and a horrific truth that will disrupt both the living and the dead. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Poland | A Faint Glow of Hope by EvAEleanor Rated:  Mature Words:  6123 Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Summer Solstice, Solstice, Curses, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Ron Weasley, Healer Hermione Granger, Herbology Professor Neville Longbottom, Angst, Flowers, Slavic mythology, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mythology References. Folklore, poland - Freeform, POV Draco Malfoy, Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, Community: Seven Shades of Drarry Summary:  On Draco’s 25th birthday, somebody attempts to curse him, but Harry Potter jumps between them and is hit instead, with unexpected consequences. Potter is running out of time, and they both embark on a race against time to find the only cure that could save Harry. Little do they know they will need to face a myriad of magical creatures and their own feelings on the way. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Grounds for Divorce by Tepre Rated:  Explicit Words:  122217 Tags: Slow Burn, Pining, UST, Anal Sex, brief but all the same enthusiastic rimming, One (1) lemon tree, Accidental Bonding, And I mean like U! S! T!, Jealousy, Deals with Trauma, They both top at some point, ron is a good friend, Draco is a Good Cook, Dubious Consent due to the Accidental Bonding, The actual SLOWEST burn, Hurt/Comfort, Have I mentioned UST? Cannot overstate this it's like A LOT, First there's frottage, And then there's more sex, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, and just a lot of sex, sex on a bed, sex in the shower, sex on the floor, Sex on a settee, In other news they go to Egypt, Teddy is a Small Bean, There is one (1) cat, and one (1) happy ending Summary:  Malfoy finds a coin. Harry finds a letter. A story about histories, a story about families. A story about a lemon tree somewhere in Upper Egypt. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 At Evening's End by manixzen Rated:  Explicit Words:  31055 Tags: Pre-Relationship, Angst, Azkaban, Hurt/Comfort, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Slow Burn, Post-Hogwarts, Friendship, Past Child Abuse, Enemies to Friends, Auror Harry Potter, Inmate Draco Malfoy, Prison, Auror Ron Weasley Summary:  When the dementors are removed from Azkaban, a compromise has to be made for the prison to remain secure and wizard-kind to feel safe. Harry and Ron find themselves assigned to a rotation as guards during their first year as Junior Aurors as a part of the new system. Harry finds his values challenged in the harsh environment, but an unexpected friendship may carry him through this difficult year. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 all you ever did was wreck me by SailorChibi Rated:  Mature Words:  10807 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, draco has PTSD, Harry has PTSDN, ightmares, Animagus, Harry is an animagus, prison break - Freeform, Touch-Starved, affection starved, Fear of Death, fear of touch, touch repulsed, Trauma, Aftermath of Torture, harry doesn't want anyone else to die, harry is very angry at the world, Protective Harry, harry had to grow up too soon, Possessive Harry, harry wants to protect draco, house arrest, Ministry of Magic, ministry of magic has gone power hungry, Fear of Magic, draco is scared of magic, it's been used for too much evil, Draco Malfoy Feels, Sad Draco Malfoy, Protective Draco Malfoy, Sharing a Bed, platonically sharing a bed, First Kiss, Hugging, Cuddling, Platonic Cuddling, Harry Potter is a Good Friend, death is scary, Happy Ending, Angst with a Happy Endingh, appyish ending, might be a little bittersweet, but it will be ok I swear Summary:  After the war, the Ministry decides to make a clean go of it and sentences all Death Eaters to death. After a year spent imprisoned beneath the Ministry, with his mother safely in France, his father dead and only the Aurors who hate him for "company", Draco is waiting for his time to die. Harry gets to him first. ❤️ Read on AO3

[jewish-privilege]

The deadliest attack on Jews in American history appears to have triggered a spike in anti-Semitic searches on Google, exclusive research by CNN shows.

In the hours and days after 11 people were slaughtered inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh last October, so many people typed hateful language into Google that it produced the most anti-Semitic searches seen in the last 12 months.

Our analysis did not include benign searches for information about the news but users seeking material for "Jews must die," "kill Jews," and "I hate Jews," among others, all of which were searched at alarmingly higher rates than normal.

An increase in anti-Semitic Google searches was also found after the Passover shooting in Poway, California in April.

And as might be expected, postings on sites like 4chan and 8chan that have largely been co-opted by those with far-right views, also saw plenty of discussion about the attacks, though the content was more surprising as well as disturbing.

CNN commissioned the analysis from advocacy group HOPE Not Hate. They researched a sample of mainstream and fringe responses online for a year from May 2018 to last week to better understand how anti-Semitic views are shared and spread online, especially in the wake of the two synagogue attacks that struck fear into the hearts of American Jews. The findings come days after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said anti-Semitic incidents in America rose for the third year in a row, hitting near-historic highs. There were 1,879 documented attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions across the country in 2018.

Searching for "kill Jews" on Google yields stories about the Holocaust, but also specifics on how Nazis killed the Jews, and a plethora of stories of people who have made threats against Jews.

A search for the term "Jews must die" brings up stories about the Pittsburgh shooter, who allegedly shouted that before the shooting. But Googling "I hate Jews" takes you to a variety of pages ranging from a Wikipedia entry about self-hating Jews to an article about a Vice co-founder, who left the company more than a decade ago, launching into a rant about Jews in a post titled "10 things I Hate About Jews." Among the articles also are comments from President Donald Trump telling Republican donors that Democrats "hate Jewish people."

As you dive deeper into the search results of Google, the articles become less mainstream and more offensive. More rants and anti-Semitic vitriol from white supremacist sites come up.

Google searches for "kill Jews" were also atypically high, reaching levels not seen since the Pittsburgh aftermath, in the wake of the Passover shooting that killed one woman and injured the rabbi and others, our research shows.

The massive interest in anti-Semitism after so many Jews were killed in cold blood terrifies Carly Pildis in every fiber of her being.

As a Jewish woman living in Washington, DC, who takes her two-year-old daughter to synagogue and writes for the Jewish news and culture Tablet magazine, the increasing violence is alarming and is impacting real life.

"It is a serious life or death threat for American Jews," Pildis says. "I feel a sense of loss, for what it used to be like for Jews here."

The loss turns to outright fury, when she learns more about the searches after the twin attacks on her community."It makes my blood run cold," she says. "It is literally chilling me to the core."

These searches feel like attacks too. That people are openly hunting online for ways to hurt the Jewish community after they have suffered devastating losses.

It is personal, for her, like other Jews who feel under threat. She says each assault on a Jew or vandalism of property with a swastika impacts her. And the massacres, well, they feel like a death in the family.

On the day of the attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue, she laid sick in bed. Then she got a call from a friend apologizing profusely. She didn't know what they were sorry for. Turn on the TV now, she was told. When she did, she saw the deadliest attack on American Jews unfolding. It was the moment she had feared most since watching Neo-Nazis march on the streets of Charlottesville in 2017 chanting "Jews will not replace us!"

Seeing someone try to wipe out Jews in a synagogue gutted her.

Pildis sat on the bathroom floor, writing opinion pieces about what it all meant, trying to come to grips with it."I don't think I slept for days. It was heartbreaking. It was terrifying. It was soul crushing," she explains.

While Pildis grieved the loss of Jewish lives in her home, in the darker, though freely available, corners of the internet, people celebrated.

On sites like 4chan and 8chan, levels of extreme and violent anti-Semitism are often found daily. But that amount of hatred soared even higher, with spikes in the number of anti-Jewish posts on 8chan's /pol/ board observed directly following the Tree of Life attack, our research found.

Many posts lamented "how few" Jews were killed in both Pittsburgh and Poway, reducing human lives to a "score."...

A commenter on 8chan however called the Poway shooter a "f*****g underachiever."

"Can you imagine your son throwing his whole life away for a high score of 1? It's just embarrassing," a post read.

There was also a large amount of general white supremacist posts, such as "KILL THEM ALL."

But most common was a declaration by many posters that it was actually Jewish people who carried out the attacks on other Jews to gain support in society and provide cover for other alleged nefarious activity. It mimics a long, false, conspiratorial theory repeated among anti-Semites, including those who falsely claim the Holocaust specifically was faked.

The concern among experts studying radicalization is how many people can begin by searching anti-Semitic phrases on a mainstream site like Google but end up being drawn into places like 4chan and 8chan and other forums where white supremacists lurk, spewing hate.

And once you engage, hatred seems to grow...

But the impact of the forums and hate sites remains clear. On 8chan, a poster believed to be [the Poway shooter] called alleged Pittsburgh shooter...a direct inspiration. [The Poway shooter] is thought to have made frequent anti-Semitic comments alongside xenophobic content on Gab, another home to far-right extremists.

Joanna Mendelson, a senior researcher for the ADL's Center on Extremism, calls 4chan and 8chan the "lion's den of hate." "White supremacists are weaponizing hate," Mendelson, says. "They are using the internet to broadcast their message to global audiences. They are arming legions of trolls to push their message out across the internet, to the darkest corners and even mainstream platforms," she says.

...Others who have been radicalized online have said they find that within one to three months their views have changed completely and they have fallen prey to the brainwashing. They simply don't believe they've been taken advantage of at the time. That the repeated use of memes, which are meant to act as jokes but sow seeds of hate, is working, those who have escaped the cycle of hate tell CNN.

And the fear is that, if more people may become consumed by hate on 4chan or 8chan, some may take their hate from the forums to the streets.

...Even the seasoned hate-speech researchers commissioned by CNN were shocked at the depravity they found after the two synagogue attacks.

"I say we go all in and start the war, I am ready" one poster writes.

"Hitler did nothing wrong. Soon the entire world will hate the Jews," writes another.

...Another post specifically begins to write the names of the murderers in a numbered list ending with an ellipsis, signifying the desire for more to come.

He or she suggests more attacks until everyday Americans "will accept mosque and synagogue killings as a normal thing."

...Social media giants like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are being forced to reckon with the power their platforms have in both size and how they amplify hate speech while working to balance free speech.

But more fringe sites, where little if any moderation occurs, seem to present an even larger danger.

And more troubling, perhaps, is the lack of suggestion of what to do about it from the intelligence and law enforcement community.

In a House hearing last week on domestic terrorism, top law enforcement officials couldn't provide an answer as to how to handle websites like 8chan and what legislation could do. CNN has sought comment in the past but their largely unmoderated and unmanaged platforms make it difficult.

That hate spreads online, at the rates CNN found, is unfathomable to Jews like Pildis. She fears the attacks are only beginning, and more will come.

"It makes me unbearably sad, so sad I can barely breathe, to see this rise of hate, extremism and violence," she says. "But they will never take away my hope or my pride in being a Jew - and an American."

Pildis wants those spreading hate to know there is a path out, but if they choose to continue to spew hate against Jews or attack them, the community will never cower.

"Whatever void you are hoping to fill will not be filled with the barrel of a gun," Pildis says. "The Jewish people have survived over 5,000 years of oppression and violence. Our very existence is an act of resistance. We aren't going anywhere."

[ma1eficar]

i’m gonna write a little bit about my da characters since they’ll pop up from time to time on this blog

Nihil Lavellan | Age 27 at the start of Inquisition | bisexual | Dalish | Dual-wield Assassin

Nihil is my “canon” inquisitor. He has an air of confidence about him and seems laid-back. He’s quite a flirt, though he’s much less experienced in relationships than he likes to let on. He has a taste for mischief and a rather inappropriate sense of humor. 

He is charming and charismatic when he wants to be, but has no taste for the game or diplomacy and is a bit of a hot head. He tends to speak his mind despite the consequences. 

He is proud of being elven and Dalish, and has no tolerance for those who mistreat elves (be they Dalish or City elves.) He also aims to be an ally to mages. He does not shy away from employing more violent means to accomplish his goals. 

LI: Dorian or Iron Bull (can’t decide)

Best friend in the Inquistion: Sera

Does not get along well with: Cassandra or Cullen

Ayris Lavellan | Age 24 at the start of Inquisition | pansexual | Dalish | Rift Mage

Ayris and Nihil are actually siblings. In the timeline where Nihil is inquisitor, Ayris stays with Clan Lavellan (and vice-versa.) Though she does try her best to be friendly, she can’t quite shake her shyness at first. She often feels overwhelmed by the different culture she’s found herself in, but she also has a deep sense of curiosity and is enjoying learning new things.

She is deeply compassionate, even idealistic, and prefers to avoid violence when possible, though as Inquisition progresses she comes to accept that diplomacy isn’t always possible. She becomes a bit more cynical as time goes on, and learns to stand up for herself more.

Like her brother, she is deeply critical of the Chantry, the Templars, and nobility, but she is more willing to try and find diplomatic solutions. But when those fail, she learns to do what needs to be done.

LI: Solas 

Best friend(s) in the Inquisition: Cole and Sera

Does not get along with: She gets along okay with all of them, but never warms up to Cullen

Kata Adaar | Age 28 at the start of Inquisition | pansexual | Tal-Vashoth | Knight-Enchanter

Kata is a former Saarebas who left the Qun after being sent to Seheron to fight. he met another former Saarebas who took her on as a sort of apprentice and helped her adjust to her new life. Her mentor was part of a mercenary band, who also adopted Kata as their own.

Kata is proud and confident, and prefers to hide any insecurities even when it’s to the detriment of her mental health. She has a warm, but confident, demeanor, and a laid-back sense of humor. She knows how to inspire confidence and has proven herself a natural leader. Privately, she still deals with trauma and often questions her role as inquisitor. She is self-conscious about the scars around her mouth. 

She gets along with most people easily as long as there’s mutual respect and prefers diplomatic solutions, which is good, because she’s not the kind of enemy anyone wants. When she does have to resort to violence, she is swift, efficient, and fierce.

She is pro-mage, and while she doesn’t support abolishing Circles entirely, she favors the idea of mages being in charge of Circles and providing options to mages who don’t want to be part of the circle. 

LI: Sera

Best friend in the Inquisition: Vivienne

Doesn’t get along with: Iron Bull at first, but they become friends after Demands of the Qun

Asher Hawke | Age 28 at the start of DA2 | Gay | Force/elemental mage

Asher Hawke is just tired and gay. He is a true purple Hawke, using humor as a coping mechanism even when it’s not entirely appropriate. He is more introverted than people expect him to be, preferring to keep to himself and his close friends.

He actually hates being made a noble and taking the title of Champion, but accepts it because he hopes he can use the power and wealth to help Fereldan refugees in Kirkwall.  He doesn’t shy away from criminal activities, especially if it’s to undermine the templars and nobles. 

He whole-heartedly supports the rebel mages, and though he wishes Anders had done things differently, Asher still defends and considers him a friend. Hawke’s support of the rebel mages did cause somewhat of a rift between him and his husband Fenris, but after the events of Here Lies the Abyss, they reunite and are working things out.

LI: Fenris

Closest friends: Fairly close to most of his companions, but especially Varric, Isabella, and Anders

Doesn't get along with: Aveline

Lyssa Cousland | Age 24 at the start of Origins | Bisexual | Reaver/beserker 

Lyssa was a bit of a wild child growing up, and her parents allowed her to train as a warrior to give her an outlet for her seemingly endless energy. She’s boisterous and upbeat, and though losing her family and going through the Blight sobers her considerably, she maintains a more positive outlook.

She’s very much the epitome of “chaotic good” and likes to help people, but completely disregards laws and social norms while she does it. Her methods can be harsh. 

After the Blight, she chooses to rule Fereldan along with Alistair. 

LI: Alistair

Closest friends: Morrigan and Zevran

Doesn’t get along with: Sten or Wynne

Lexien Maeris | Age 24 at the time of Inquisition | Gay | Circle Elf | Blood Mage

Lexien is a Dragon Age roleplay character. If I had to pick my “main” Dragon Age character, it would be him or Nihil. I played him as a Warden once, but it wasn’t “cannon” because he would have been 14 and living in Kirkwall during the Blight. 

Lexien was raised from a young age in the Kirkwall Circle. At first he was a shy but gentle child, but as he grew up, he experienced abuses in the Circle that hardened him. He developed serious anxiety and anger issues. Every year he was there, his hatred of the Templars and the Chantry grew.

He learned blood magic from a spirit he met during his Harrowing, one that continued to visit in his dreams. He was already a talented mage thanks to his love of reading and studying, but blood magic awakened even more potential in him. He was planning to use blood magic to escape or die trying, but before he could, the Chantry explosion sparked the rebellion.

He immediately joined the mages fighting templars in Kirkwall, and left a trail of blood and ashes behind him. He fought with the rebels for a long time, but he split off from them when the Tevinter Magister entered the picture, saying he hadn’t escaped from imprisonment just to submit to slavery.

Lexien is prickly, antisocial, and deeply mistrustful of strangers. On the other hand, he is deeply lonely, still grieves the friends he lost to the war and the rite of Tranquility, and deep down just wants a place to belong. He violently opposes any attempts to re-establish Circles, and remains wary of any sort of authority figures. He has a slight phobia of being touched, and would only enjoy physical contact with a deeply trusted friend.

[dustybunny]

ramble bramble

So I know people have already said this before and stuff but I kinda wanted to put in my quarter and see what happens lol

OH before you keep reading, I’m on mobile as I write this and cannot add a read more break so!! IF YOU HAVENT PLAYED/ARE DODGING SPOILERS FOR EPISODE IGNIS IM SO SORRY I CANT HIDE THEM AT THE MOMENT////

I’ll be tagging this as well so please don’t get mad at me ; ~ ;

So here we go!

After thinking about it and comparing the bros dlcs it’s more then blatantly obvious that Gladio got jipped. Ok yea fighting and beating a giant one armed samurai dude to prove your worth was pretty cool, but it feels like there should’ve been more.

Prompto was able to not only come to terms with being a clone, but also start becoming independent and not so needing of the others just to prove himself.

Ignis bends over backwards to save the one person he cares about the most, not because it’s his job, but because he’s his brother. And not only that, but insuring he won’t lose him to some shitty god logic.

But then there’s Gladio— undergoing a trial to prove his worthiness of being a Shield despite facing death as the moderately high likely outcome if he fails. That’s it.

With the other two bro dlcs, they’re structured around the respective bro, with both also being a way to work on something in the future. Kinda like a emotional bankrupting gaming experience of a Dr Phil episode, but somehow worse. (I’m still crying please send help)

So with that in mind, Episode Gladio is seemingly out of place and not quite the same quality as the others. You could argue the later dlcs were merely buffed up in an attempt to win back the players and fan base.

But what if that’s exactly how it was supposed to be...?

Quickly, I re-evaluated Gladio’s character— strong, intelligent resourceful guy who is a survivalist and is pretty headstrong. He tends to analyze, and seeming to be lacking in empathy in certain events (cue the train scene) Moreover, he is the King’s sworn Shield, a job he trained for his whole life and takes very seriously.

And that last part makes his episode make that much more sense. While temporarily, he leaves the group to prove himself after being ragdolled by Ravus. Not only does he succeed, but also is able to retrieve the sword Cor lost when he attempted the trials.

It makes sense... but still feels off.

Let’s fast forward a bit.

During Episode Ignis, if you play along with Ardyn and risk your life to defeat him, the trash man leaves, thanking his immortality and lovingly telling Ignis he’s gonna die while Noctis finds him. Thankfully the group does and just in time, but one thing about the scene just ripped my heart out.

Gladio, in an attempt to hold back tears, watching over a tired and fading Ignis, gives a ferocious, emotional roar, “What were you thinking?!!”

Granted I was already sobbing my eyes out and was also exhausted from trying to make Swiss cheese out of the resident garbage lord numerous times, I seriously cannot tell you how badly that one line wrecked me.

And then it suddenly got me thinking.

Just how often does Gladio allow himself to be himself?

To review, Gladio spent his whole life training to protect a future king. He descends from a heavily militarized background, and for gods sake his own father fought in a war alongside his king to help bring peace. He’s got a pair of ginormous shoes he has to fill.

So when the bros are faced with difficult decisions, what does Gladio do?

Exactly what he tells Noctis on the way to commune with Titan.

His job. There’s not much else he knows.

It’s that one line during Episode Ignis that solidified it for me—

Gladiolus Amicitia, sworn Shield to Chosen King Noctis, is shit for luck at his own emotional control.

During the whole game, Gladio doesn’t break. Won’t even allow himself to. He’s constantly working, putting all his years of training into overdrive, trying to do what he spent his entire life on.

Everyone else in the group breaks at least a little. Even Ignis, when he has to tell Noctis what’s happened to Insomnia at the beginning of the game, is clearly heartbroken and not his normal sturdy self.

But Gladio doesn’t. Not in the way everyone else does.

His breaks are seldom, and sometimes really hard to pick up on when you aren’t looking for them.

His general hatred toward Niflheim, his snaps at Noctis during the Titan climb and on the train, his sudden distress when separated from the prince in the keep after defeating the daemon that ambushed him and his recently blinded friend. His line when he finds a nearly dead Ignis.

The only thing he seems to do for selfish reason is fighting. Hunting and taking down daemons, MTs, whatever. It’s the only way for him to release his emotions, turning it all into rage to destroy whatever he’s in front of that’s trying to kill him or his king.

It’s his only way to cope with what the fuck is going on.

His dad is murdered, his home destroyed, everything he knew turned on its head. And he doesn’t even flinch. Just keeps going, pushing onwards, focusing on being a worthy Shield. Analyzing and tactically moving forward. It’s what he knows. Buries everything else, even his own emotions to march on.

It what he has to do. It’s what he was trained for.

Gladio reacting to Noctis grieving Luna’s death was a mix of trying to do the thinking for the prince and himself. He couldn’t let his own building pain beat him. So he did his job. Keep moving forward. It’s when he lashes out that he breaks, and quickly tries to catch himself, choking down his feelings to keep going.

Keep. Fucking. Going.

That’s why Episode Gladiolus is so different. Instead of conquering some inner demon, he’s focused on the trial. To prove himself as a Shield. Swallowing down and shoving away his emotions, refusing to let them even touch the surface. It’s not that he couldn’t win, but rather forces himself to bury it away. Focus on the job. The only thing he’s known his whole life.

As much as I love all the boys, Gladio is by far the one I worry about the most. In future dlcs, I’m scared to see what’ll happen to him. If one focuses on him again, what are we gonna see? If it’s in the ten year skip, will we finally see him snap? All that time, bottling up everything, will he finally let it burst?

Ughh as much as I love this game it makes me think so much about all the poor kids involved in it # ~ #

And tbh I just want gladio to be happy. Lemme spoil me good boi, god damn it. There’s a very good reason I have an embarrassing surplus of ramen on my game and it’s so I can at least make my poor tol a little happy.

Hhhhh but that’s all my thoughts ;w;

Hopefully it makes sense. Mobile app is making it dangerously hard to revise and review //orz

And if you got this far, thank you for reading !! ;w;<33

hope you have a lovely day !! <33

[dinonid123]

Dino Talks: Character Flaws and their relation to Toriel and Asgore’s relationship.

Note: This is a long ramble I wrote a few weeks ago. Enjoy.

Ok, I was having a standard fair argument about Asgoriel when something clicked with me about media as a whole, and that is about character flaws.

Character flaws are one of the main ways to write believability into your characters– people aren’t perfect, so why should you characters be? In protagonists (notably in Greek Mythology) this is usually a fatal flaw– some flaw that leads directly to the hero’s downfall. The most typical is hubris, extreme pride that often ends up getting knocked down by some higher power. As I see it, there are two types of character flaws, active and passive. Active flaws are more related to anger and are things like hubris, stubbornness, or holding grudges. They manifest when the character interacts with others and directly cause external problems. Passive flaws are more related to sadness and are things like anxiety, depression, or self-hatred. These are internal, often being conflicts in the character’s mind that indirectly cause problems. These manifest when the character is with themselves, and are increasingly becomes the standard in modern media as awareness of mental health problems increases. Now, these flaws can vary between these two groups (ex., someone’s self doubt results in them overcompensating and being a jerk) but in general, there is a divide between these two groups.

Now, why did I think about this when talking about Asgore and Toriel? Well, interestingly, the Dreemurr couple has opposing flaws- Toriel has the active flaw of stubbornness while Asgore has the passive flaws of self doubt and self hate. Toriel is sure that she is right, and doesn’t want to change her mind, causing her to run away in frustration when monsterkind chooses to go with Asgore’s plan of killing the humans as they fall (she also seemingly has some attachment issues with the humans that fell down, a passive flaw that is less integral to her character but still interesting). Asgore, on the other hand, is seen as a clearly broken man, full of hate for himself for what he’d done, and grieving the loss of his children and his wife. In certain neutral endings, he

commits suicide willingly so Frisk can go through the barrier. The two clearly have well thought out flaws, and yet these are scarcely recognized by people who dislike Asgore/Asgoriel. They often perceive Toriel as some flawless (while also unforgiving) mother figure, while they perceive Asgore as a heartless murderer who, I guess, was doing it out of pure hatred and not out of responsibility. This is especially a problem with Asgore, as his actual problems are covered up by this misconception that he was an evil murderer who hated children. Now, this requires a bit of imagination, so bare with me.

Imagine that you, a king, were living happily with your wife (the queen), son, and recently adopted child. This child comes from a rival group that imprisoned you and your kingdom in a small area of land. You cannot leave as a whole until you sacrifice 7 of the rival group. One of you can leave if you sacrifice 1 of the rivals. Now, you don’t want to do this. You’re a pacifist who only fought for self defense in the war where the rival group imprisoned you. So when a lost child wanders into your enclosed kingdom, you take them in as one of your own. They become best friends with your son, and your kingdom is hopeful that perhaps a peace can occur between the two factions. Now imagine that child gets sick. Deathly sick. When they die, your son takes them away, disappearing across the border. When he comes back, he is dying, still holding his best friend’s body. He then dies in front of you, a painful death as a young boy. Understandably, you are angry at the rivals for taking away your son. You can’t think about anything but him and your child, your grief intensifying your anger. You decide to declare war again, saying that if any more of the rivals come down, they will be killed to begin the process of freeing your people. The kingdom agrees, regaining the hope they lost from the prince and sibling’s deaths. Your wife however, disagrees. She says you should sacrifice one and then go sacrifice the six others. When you and your people disagree, saying that is how your son died, she calls you a coward, abdicates her queenship in frustration and leaves to a cave at the edge of the kingdom, away from everyone else, to take care of any humans who pass through. She ultimately lets all of them through, and you kill each one of them. After calming from your anger, you no longer want to kill, but it is the only way to give your people hope. You hate yourself more with every child you kill, and you miss your family more then anything. What are you?

You are Asgore. This is what his life was like. Being told in this scenario, with a linear timeline and less mystery, you immediately feel for this protagonist and see their plight. You see that they had no choice but to do horrible things, and that this doesn’t make them a horrible person. Yet, people don’t feel this way about Asgore. Why? Personally, I think it might have been a result of two things: Undertale’s story telling and the intense popularity of the game. Undertale tells its story in a very non-linear way, the player doesn’t even know the backstory of the Dreemurrs until the end of the game, and only soon after do they meet Asgore and see what he’s like. He spends most of the game as a figure– starting with Toriel saying how bad he is, followed by everyone else saying how great be is. Apparently, the people playing the game to see why it was so popular, playing less to understand the overall story and power of the game and its characters, only listened to Toriel and thus got a sour taste in their mouth about Asgore.

“But wait!” You cry. “If Toriel is the only character to directly criticize Asgore, who do you think she would forgive him?” Simple. Time. Toriel is, as previously mentioned, quite stubborn and thus probably never thought to rethink why Asgore did the things he did. After the game’s events, I’m sure that someone could EXPLAIN to her why Asgore did what he did, and that she’d realize her mistakes and forgive him, reuniting and continuing their (as far as I can tell) centuries-long, adorable romance. Toriel could help Asgore forgive himself while forgiving him, maybe. He could help he learn to be more fluid. The two compliment each other. They would be happiest together.

Also they were actually, literally made for each other, so...

[pudgy-puk]

What's your beef with Hraesvelgr? I'm not trying to call you out; I'm just curious.

oh boy this will probably get long (and as i said in the previous post, this is not prescriptive to anyone else, just descriptive of what i think about the character and why)

the thing with hraesvelgr is that he’s a Bad Elf.

by which i mean, hraesvelgr has all the traits of the kind of high fantasy elves that people utterly despise, presented in that same infuriating “they’re the Best and you can’t disagree with them” way. he is a character who is and who must be so perfect, perfectly tragic and perfectly beautiful, that he distorts the characterization of anyone and anything who gets too close to him in order to preserve how perfect, tragic, beautiful, noble and right he is.

he distorts other characters from his first mention, in fact—when ysayle explains that she will take the protagonist party (at that point consisting of the warrior of light, estinien, and alphinaud) to see hraesvelgr, to treat with hraesvelgr, and gives us the story of hraesvelgr and saint shiva as background. including the detail that hraesvelgr ate shiva, and this was regarded as an event that brought peace between discontented men and dragons before thordan et al. fucked it up again with ratatoskr. she says this at our literal first meeting on guardedly-friendly terms. there is no physical evidence, textual evidence, to support her claim. we are still in coerthas and have yet to see even dravania, let alone the churning mists. it has been established previously that militant heretics are willing to lie and lie quite well (cf. the one who killed and stole the identity of an inquisitor in order to kill people in 2.0 msq). the only reason to choose to believe her is to CHOOSE to. and alphinaud, who at the time recently had been badly burned by choosing to trust the wrong people (ilberd, lolorito), and who even through present content, through 4.0 and 4.1, continues to be deeply affected by that betrayal, chooses to believe her with little skepticism, even the part about dragon-eats-gf-is-a-moral-good. estinien chooses to accept her story with very little challenge—estinien, azure dragoon of ishgard, whose root motivation is “everything and everyone he ever knew was personally flambéed by nidhogg twenty-ish years ago,” expresses no skepticism or concern regarding nidhogg’s brood-brother assuring pretty elezen women that he is totally safe and noble by talking about how he ate his last pretty elezen girlfriend. to be fair, no one over the course of the entire goddamned xpac ever voices any sign that this troubles or even surprises them, but this is the starkest example: even when the reasons to be skeptical are highest, hraesvelgr’s version of himself as repeated by ysayle is considered to be the full truth and fully virtuous.

even though it’s true that hraesvelgr is not honest. when he tells the protagonist party what he presents as the truth about the origins of the dragonsong war in ratatoskr’s murder by thordan and his knights, he leaves out the role he played in it. we find out via the echo that the dragonsong war would not have happened without his consent—nidhogg, who laid dying, asked hraesvelgr for the strength of one of his eyes, to save his life and empower him to wipe ishgard off the face of the planet, every man, woman, and child, even if it takes him a thousand years. hraesvelgr granted that request. he is not challenged for being nidhogg’s accomplice, willing and knowing, in this—he’s never even acknowledged as having been dishonest. because we have to consider hraesvelgr to be the good, tragic, noble dragon, his misery and anger over his sister’s foul and most unnatural murder must justify his complicity and inaction.

never mind that his other sister, tiamat, is also suffering horribly, tortured and torturing herself in azys lla, for millennia without cease, without comfort, and he apparently doesn’t care about that. it is very difficult to see hraesvelgr as some kind of moral arbiter based on his actions in the game, but the story tries very hard to still present him as such, to the detriment of pretty much every character even associated with him. for example—a great deal was made of how team protagonist of ishgard must, in 3.3, trek to the churning mists and beg and plead for hraesvelgr’s aid and approval, must prove ourselves Worthy in his trials in sohr khai in order for him to consent to move against nidhogg. the trouble with this is that for it to work as intended, it requires the players to forget 3.2—to not think about the end of 3.2, about how nidhogg almost succeeded in murdering hraesvelgr’s daughter vidofnir—to not realize that if hraesvelgr still has to be arduously persuaded into stopping nidhogg after that, then he didn’t value his own daughter now and her welfare now as much as he does a thousand-year-old grudge. but he is the moral arbiter to whom the people who have been actually trying to change things and working to save lives must submit for judgment and be grateful for his approval.

narratively, hraesvelgr is presented as Good and Noble, but his actions do not at all back that up. The story, though, is completely unwilling to grapple with this; it makes excuses for him in order to present his strong preference for brooding inaction as at worst neutral. he is still furious/grieving even though the events were a thousand years ago, but it’s okay because dragons are immortal godlike beings who don’t experience time the way mortals do! fine, so what happens the next time some limited mortal being manages to hurt him or betray him deeply again? do we do something like this again and subject thousands and thousands of people to possible death and misery because it takes at least a thousand years for great wyrms to process grief?

and it doesn’t end with nidhogg’s death, even—the harm caused by hraesvelgr’s inaction regarding nidhogg. the 4.0 dragoon questline has established that nidhogg used the power of his great wyrm voice, his dragon’s song, to override the free will of the dragons of his brood and force them to wage war on ishgard even if they don’t want to—and that this power is almost completely irresistible, and it hasn’t stopped even with nidhogg’s death. the dragon we rescue as part of this quest was still lost to the song and the hatred even as far away as the azim steppe, and the only thing that was able to drive out nidhogg’s lingering song was the voices of dragons of hraesvelgr’s brood. this suggests that among the surviving dragons of nidhogg’s brood, populating the forelands and the mists, there are those who never wished to fight or straight up never had a choice (remember all those hostile dragonets? the baby dragons? y e a h), but none of the allegedly “good” dragons can lift their voices to help them (they can’t. then all the mobs in these zones would be gone. and then there wouldn’t be a game). but they’re still the good dragons because they said they are. (remember, this whole genocidal war business started because one dragon was murdered. just one. one dragon was murdered, therefore all of nidhogg’s brood—encompassing who knows how many dragons by this point—must be compelled to go to war against ishgard and if they die, then they die. god, the only way this makes sense is if nidhogg is totally off his rocker, consumed by monomaniacal hatred to complete irrationality for a thousand years. which hraesvelgr didn’t fucking care enough about to actually do anything meaningful, despite being an immortal great wyrm of demigod-like power himself. what a noble creature).

it’s not that hraesvelgr is highly fucked up that makes me hate him so much, it’s that he is so fucked up and is still treated as the Great Good Angelic Dragon. he’s not. he’s really, really not. like—fine, maybe his motivation for complete inaction is because the last time he ever did anything, everything went horrifically wrong, that’s what he thinks—that could be a good way to have such a character. but it’s not what we have, which is a story demanding the deference and respect due to a moral authority actually be given to a self-serving, indifferent, indolent liar.

and that, briefly put, is my beef with hraesvelgr.

[bthenoise]

Track By Track: Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Wolves At The Gate’s Powerful LP ‘Eclipse’

For nearly ten years now, Ohio post-hardcore outfit Wolves At The Gate have been providing some of the most consistent and thought-provoking heavy music around. From 2012′s scorching debut Captors to today’s fierce eye-opener Eclipse, Wolves At The Gate continue to churn out melodic yet hard-hitting records that make you want to both sing and scream along to.

Take the band’s latest LP, for example. For 13 straight songs, the Solid State signees are able to give listeners a wide range of emotions embodying the perfect balance of heavy and soft. Talking about the motivation behind blending these two contrasting styles together, vocalist/guitarist Stephen Cobucci says it all ties into the album’s name. 

“We named the record Eclipse because of how well it encapsulated the relationship the light and the dark can have,” he says. “An eclipse tells you that it's dark, but it takes truth and faith to know that the sun is still shining. All of this revolves around my walk of faith in believing the truths of the gospel message, seeking to help others find hope and peace in the love of God, as well as how to come to grips with various social/political/personal issues.”   

Giving fans an even further look into the brilliant work of art that is Eclipse, Cobucci sat down with The Noise to explain the meanings behind each and every song on the album. To check out the singer’s honest and open track by track rundown, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to pick up a copy of Eclipse here.   

The Cure

We're excited that this is the first track people hear on the new record because it truly captures the wide dynamics sonically and lyrically that we wanted to deliver. Both musically and lyrically it's a roller coaster of darkness, tension, and release. The whole album revolves around the idea of the light being obscured by the darkness and creating a “different reality.” This song is about how when that darkness comes, it creates a different reality that seems so real but is just a lie. This song cries out for help and grace in times of doubt and fear.

Face To Face

“Face To Face” probably went through the most changes to its structure. It was rewritten more times than I can remember. Our guitarist Joey believed in it from the first day he heard it and worked hard to help it get to its final stages. Regardless of all of those changes, the lyrical content remained the same. We so often fear having our weaknesses and flaws revealed, going to great lengths to ensure they are hidden from everyone to see. ... This song is about how I was forced to come to grips with many of my sins and weaknesses in order for me to see that there is forgiveness in the love of God. Even though accepting my own guilt seemed like death to me, it was the very thing that led me to trusting and resting in God's grace.

A Voice In The Violence

This song carries a lot of weight and emotion in it for us as a band. It's so easy to identify with feeling the burden of darkness in our hearts and minds as we wrestle with the sins and addictions that plague us. The lyrics carry a dialogue that goes back and forth between thoughts of falling into despair and then hearing the voice of truth calling me away from running headlong into the things that are killing and destroying me. We so often entertain this love affair with the sins, addictions, and vices that ruin us whether it be mentally, physically, or spiritually. These pursuits are always irrational and cause us to drown out the voice of God. The voice of truth. A voice that carries messages of hope, grace, and mercy. Yet the beauty in all of this comes in the fact that there is no hell too deep for God to pull us out of. It is in these darkest of times that God shows even more grace and love.

Drifter

Songs like this one are so important to us as a band because they've come from real heart-to-heart conversations. We're brothers. We bear each other's burdens. A lot of the time when you just bury away the pain, the hurt, the lies, the emotion, it tears you apart on the inside until it eventually begins to manifest on the outside. As an outsider looking in, I could see how Nick was being torn apart and was stuck spirally down the same road. Numerous songs throughout our career have come from these sorts of situations where Nick just spilled his heart and we were able to build him up in the truth reminding him of the greater love he has in Christ and how all his failure and sin was erased at the cross.

Enemy

We tend to think that the great enemies in our lives are “out there” while ignoring a certain truth that we ourselves tend to be our greatest enemies. The song begins with an arrogant and misguided fight against the "enemy" that is soon realized to be myself. This has been a humbling experience that I have been through many times in my life. I figured it was about time that I cataloged how this progression tends to go for myself and ultimately how my hope of escape from this is in the power of God.

Evil Are The Kings

This was the first song that came out when I started writing for this record and helped set the tone for quality and level I wanted all the other songs to be on. Our guitarist Joey played a big role in helping this song come together in the way that it did. He helped me restructure it in a way that really took advantage of the strengths of the song. In writing this song, I immediately knew what I wanted it to be about. As a society, we have amassed a world of knowledge, but it hasn't moved mankind one step further to making peace, stopping wars, curing racism, etc. If “knowledge is the power” then we are to be considered evil kings. Politics haven't moved the needle of solving any of these issues and all that has been revealed is that while there may be shifts in power and policy the greatest need we all have is for our hearts to be changed.

Eclipse

The music of this song was something I had written a long time ago but was never able to put all the pieces together. While on tour last year I was finally able to get all the pieces to fall together. Our drummer Abishai was critical in helping me structure the format of the song in its early stages. When I sat down to title all of these songs, I realized that an eclipse was the imagery that best encompassed the heart of this song. As I continued to think about this imagery and concept, I realized how it touched all of these songs in one way or another. Songs like this are very personal for me as I use them as outlets to be vulnerable with myself and with our fans for them to be encouraged by the fact that I often have the same doubts and fears that they may have. Yet while also having these same doubts and fears, there are still certain truths that we all can rest upon for peace and comfort.

Response

This song is a response to the Ghandi quote, "I like your Christ, not your Christians." The truth of this statement is not lost on me and to be honest, it grieves me. I can understand why people's view of “American Christianity” puts a bad taste in their mouth and am sadden by the fact that the name of Christ gets dragged through the mud and applied to people and organizations that do not represent what true faith is. When people hear that we are a Christian band, it immediately conjures up all sorts of thoughts, generally negative ones, yet I can understand why. I can see how it is really difficult for some people to separate emotional pain and damage caused by some wearing the name “Christian” from the one they claim to follow, namely Jesus. I say that in the lyrics of the song, “You find a lot of fault in me - I find it hard to disagree with you - I’ll own my crimes - My guilt has shut my mouth.” I'm not here to talk about myself, there isn't much good to say. But I believe in a good Savior. This strikes at the very heart of what we want people to see in our lyrics. Christianity is not about a person's ability to be perfect, but imperfect people trusting in a perfect Savior. Our guitarist Joey summarized the song well by saying, “The presence of hypocrisy does not equal the absence of God.” This song is a call to take your eyes off of messed up people and to take a look for yourself at who Jesus is.

History

I wrote “History” in light of all of the racial tension I see within our culture. I have dear friends that have been on the receiving end of this prejudice [and] it's sad that even after all this time and all we know this still is very present in the heart of our society. It is because we have tended to turn a blind eye to our past that we are ignorant [of] the present issues. Our culture does not have a healthy relationship with this issue and therefore it causes serious strife and conflict. Everyone is fighting for their side of the argument and in that fight there will only be victims. It's a wake-up call that identifying with political parties, the color of your skin, etc. puts you further into bondage and perpetuates this cycle of hatred and violence.

The Sea In Between

This song is an imagery of my salvation. I knew God existed and I knew I was separated from Him. I was on a shore and an endless sea separated us. The sea was a metaphor for my sin and my attempts to live self-righteously. I tried to live a perfect life and make up for all my failure and sin. Every time I navigated those seas, I failed, was destroyed, and was washed back to shore left with nothing. Yet in the goodness of God, Christ came and saved me, trudging through the sea that separated me from Him by dying the death I deserved.

Alone

I remember writing this song really late one night in my studio and how it all came together so quickly. Sometimes a song just seems to fall into place all in one sitting and that was the case for this song. Every piece of it came together that night including the vocals, but to no surprise, I struggled to figure out what to write about. It wasn't until many months after that I was thinking about the idea of how differently we all view this journey of life. For some, it is a terror. For some, joy. And I thought about the fact that however you view the destination of the journey affects how you experience it. If all you have to look forward to [is the] temporal aspects of life, then that can be incredibly bleak for many. And to others it may not seem like that big a deal but nothing we have here can be kept forever. If I can quote one of our older songs called “Morning Star”: I know this is a voyage, it's not my destination. My hope is not in what I can gain out of this life regarding physical things, but that in the fact that all good things I enjoy here are just a shadow of the joy it will be to know God and see Him face to face.

Counterfeit

There are a lot of voices out there vying for our attention. Voices that don't have our best interests in mind. Voices in the media, politics, and sometimes even our own minds that push an agenda based upon lies. This track was written as a sort of fight song against those things to give a voice back to those that desire to push back against those lies. I love how the pace and rhythm of this song perfectly fits the content. Hopefully this song can help give the listener a voice and words to say [and] combat these lies.

Blessings & Curses

It was actually our drummer Abishai who created the core of this song. He wrote a drum groove that he was really into and so he put a simple chord progression down to go with it. He showed it to me while we were on tour and it just clicked with me. As soon as I heard it I knew it needed to be one of our songs and we started working on it right then and there on tour. It has a crazy time signature and then at the end the time signature bounces back and forth, but you'd never know it, which is really cool. This is a song about betrayal, namely my betrayal. It puts me in awe of the fact that all I ever offered God was my betrayal and my curse and yet in return He gives me the blessing of His forgiveness and love.

[problemstarchild]

also i’ve been talking abt this to a friend but. i feel like ash gets dealt a pretty shitty hand by fandom. a lot of people get rid of her on virmire bc she’s xenophobic, but the first contact war was only 26 years ago, and her whole family’s been blacklisted in the military because her grandfather made the choice that saved civilians

she spends her whole life living with this idea that she has to be better than the best to even get off the ground. she’s spent her whole life trying to be accepted by other humans, and it’s because of aliens that she even faces that difficulty.

of course, it’s not actually their fault. it’s the fault of the alliance (and especially her father, though i sincerely doubt he meant to) for putting that pressure on her.

i only feel like this is wild because she’s just more directly vocal about being xenophobic than garrus. garrus in me1? sucks. i mean, i love him as a character; he’s very reactive to your moral advice in me1, but as soon as you take him on an elevator, he proves his ignorance and turian racism. he chides tali for her people’s involvement in creating the geth, defends the genophage - he doesn’t even know that quarians have to be suited (making a comment about how she should get armor without a helmet, though tali’s response to that has several character variants so they might have just needed him to say something to reuse tali’s audio for a conversation? but it’s also in there and canon), pretty blatantly insults krogans in general with one of those “you’re different from them” comments to wrex. garrus gets all preachy in an elevator convo w/ kaidan, “humanity will be judged by the sacrifices it’s willing to make”, saying the turians would have kept the L2 implants (that have led to horrific physiological issues for human biotics - there are at least 2 missions in me1 that have to do w/ angry biotic groups killing politicians and military alike because they feel that they’ve been abandoned by humanity).

if someone asks him about going up against saren, he’s fixated on “restoring the good name of turians everywhere”.

i mean like... he’s a cop. so... it’s kind of a “duh, he’s a xenophobe” moment, i guess? the only aliens he doesn’t seem to insult in me1 are the asari.

ashley insults aliens in general, but only to your face, iirc. she hates cerberus as much as anyone else, and is actively hostile toward a representative of the xenophobic terra firma party. she only kills wrex if you signal her to, or if you’re not persuasive enough to change his mind on virmire - and if wrex HAD shot shepard? there’s no way everyone else wouldn’t have retliated. in her elevator conversations, she’s nowhere near the bar garrus set for xenophobia (servantofclio’s transcript of elevator dialogue can be accessed here, if you need a refresher): she asks a few personal questions, talks a little about sexism. if she’s the one who talks to tali regarding the dialogue about treated like a beggar or thief, she admits she’s heard things about quarians and suggests that people don’t get to know them because they don’t stay in one place for long. i think that’s the worst thing she says to an alien, and most of her grievances about the council are out of a hatred for politics. she’s jumpy around aliens, period, when you’d probably assume that her family’s background would make her specifically wary of turians. despite that, all of her elevator conversations with garrus are polite. she’s also the only person that garrus doesn’t racially insult (though he does comment on having noticed that most alliance women serve support roles rather than frontline roles).

so i feel like most of the fandom’s widespread love for garrus and dislike for ashley stems from the fact that ashley’s me1 xenophobia is general and to your face, where you can confront it, whereas garrus’ xenophobia is specifically targeted to "background characters” - inescapable elevator rides where he regurgitates common racial stereotypes and galactic history. as me1 is the first entry in the series, typically, the player reads it as worldbuilding. they’re focused on the information they just heard, not the implications of that information.

honestly, i’m only bringing it up because a friend and i have been replaying recently and it’s astonishing once you know the series pretty well to listen to him talk to your other squadmates the way he does in me1. his crew on omega in me2 was diverse, and he tells you they’d all lost someone to the asteroid’s extensive underbelly - his experience on the normandy turns him into someone who can look at a batarian and see a real, actual person who loves and grieves like anyone else... and then do that a couple more times until the message sticks.

ashley’s effectively written out of mass effect 2 (or the end of mass effect 1 if you don’t save her on virmire), so she doesn’t get any immediate character development the way garrus does, aside from throwing away her previous deference to shepard aside on horizon to (rightly) criticize their apparent new loyalties. even then, it doesn’t show until me3, where she’s willing to shoot you to protect the council (which, of course, contains a human now, too, but if she were as bad as some people think she is, wouldn’t he just let her in on it? leaving out the cerberus part, of course).

she spends a good chunk of mass effect 3 just sitting in a hospital bed... idk. again. i ADORE garrus, but he got way more opportunity for character development than ashley did - coming from systemic privilege, holding a position that gave him significant power over civilians (he admits to roughing up a suspect in interrogation until he started bleeding when he’s telling you about dr. saleon!), and then starting a new life on omega where all of those unsavory non-council species gather and having to actually interact with them on a daily basis.

ashley just doesn’t get the same narrative chance to redeem herself that garrus did, even though i feel like garrus’ initial xenophobia is way worse. narratively, shepard can tell ashley she’s out of line for her comments, and she won’t make them anymore. narratively, shepard just stands by and listens to garrus make snippy little condescending comments to their other allies on long elevator rides without saying or doing anything about it, no matter what side of the paragade spectrum they fall on.

tl;dr if you love garrus vakarian or even just like him, and/or don’t see a problem with his me1 self re: his elevator conversations in me1, you have a duty to extend the same courtesy to ashley, whose potential for character development suffered badly from artificial scarcity in both me2 and a solid chunk of me3.

[rivetandroot]

Stay in the Saddle of our Sorrows

Yesterday I listened to a podcast with Stephen Jenkinson of Orphan Wisdom.

There was a lot about the podcast that went over my head, and some of it I distinctly disagreed with, but I also found myself haunted and shaken by a lot of what he said.

Some notable quotes and my thoughts on them:

“It has consequence but no presence” -- on the self-hatred so pervasive in our culture. I think this is true of so many of the structures we unquestioningly follow also.

We are, “Invited to learn the poverty of our time” -- much of his teaching is about grief. He works with dying people, and has a keen sense of the “homelessness” of our time -- how we aren’t rooted in place, in community, and the internal and communal starvation that that causes. But he has a different solution than others. Instead of trying to find a place, to fill that hole, (which he says causes us to basically steal from others in many ways: cultural appropriation and exploitation of our natural resources being just a few of them), we are to “Learn that you are ...from somewhere...and they are not waiting for you to come back.” To grieve. To lean into the sorrow. Stop. Get hurt.” (as distinguished from VICTIMIZED he says). To “stay in the saddle of our sorrows.”

That is so. heavy.

I cried when I heard it and I am crying right now.

“Real sorrow is not a personal thing. Real grief is a phantom limb of culture. You have a sense but not a memory of a time that must have been otherwise.

All I have to say is that this is heavy on my heart every. single. day. Why? I don’t know! I don’t! I think it has something to do with the piece of God’s soul I have -- the image of him I reflect. I think he gave me a part of his soul that is communal and rooted in the earth he designed. It’s a tear in my soul that I HAVE been trying to fix, but after listening to this am rethinking.

With the belief in a new heaven and new earth, God’s restoration of all things, it gives me hope -- but maybe I am rooting too much of that hope in today.

I don’t know. I really really don’t.

He continues, “If you’re not willing to think that thought, that you stand a distinct possibility of becoming a white supremacist.”

So, this blog isn’t trying at all to be the “hip” blog talking about all of the latest issues. But this is one that I have been learning a bit about...I honestly don’t have a good grasp of it all yet. But I do have a few pieces of truth that have stuck with me, and when he said that my understanding was expanded a bit:

1) about “whiteness” -- I think what he was saying (and would be similar to what I have discussed with others) is that saying “white” is a way to both destroy your own culture (think of the “white people” who were Germans, Dutch, French Candian, etc etc etc with distinct traditions, heritage, etc. who came to America and are now lumped together as “white” -- heritage-less, in a way. Maybe part of that “self hatred” he was talking about?) And it also creates a “superior” culture -- “white” against  “Not white” --the latter of which is broken up in to all the actual ethnicities. Which is a root igniter for systemic racism and all kinds of exploitation as well. So why do we insist on the idea that our “white” culture is best? When it has all of these consequences? A totally new idea for me. Still chewing on that one.  

Back to the main thoughts.

While I listened I was reminded of a book of African poetry I bought for my trip to Mozambique back in 2010. It was full of beautiful poetry, but pervaded by a sense of grief and loss. It was the first time I got a tiny sense of the culture of Africa as a whole. Suffering was a part of the picture -- almost part of the cultural identity. It was a collective grief, and it came through the words of all of their poets.

“Our sapless roots have fed the wind-swept seedlings of another age”

-a line from a the poem, Homecoming by Lenrie Peters of Gambia.

Is this age in the Western world have an entirely different grief? In our quest for life to be easier, faster, richer...we find ourselves overwhelmed, harried, and carrying around a deep, wordless loneliness. Without a cultural identity, without a system of community that fills us up. Without traditions that fill us up. Without rituals that fill us up. We’re grasping at straws -- looking for traditions from others -- yoga, meditation, etc, and trying to come up with new ways to be a culture -- life groups, bowling clubs, adventure races, idk!? -- instead of looking our grief in the face:

This is who we are now. We let go of our history and heritage and way of doing community. We let screens replace faces. Flickering stories on a screen instead of stories told around the fire. Watching other men play games simulating war rather than passing down rites of passage into the world of masculinity. ad nauseum.

We’re like Doctor Who’s Amy Pond in season 5, who has a deep unspoken grief for losing Rory, but she can’t even remember that she can’t remember him. All she senses is a wordless, trackless loss.

-The word “belonging” (according to Jenkinson) means TO BE SET UPON BY LONGING.” 

K. I’m going off in all directions here now. But this quote about Vincent Van Gogh (Also from Dr. Who) is pointing me in the right direction:

"To me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. ... He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world-! No one had ever done it before.”

So I’m going to grieve. And write. And still try to feel connected in a world that is so fractured - while acknowledging that the loss is a part of who we are too.