#there's also always something very satisfying about when he turns people down in takeovers

[egg-emperor]

Eggman not even caring to remember Starline's name even after everything with him being the one to bring him back to his real self and the way he was the death of him is very juicy. especially after some deep Staregg/Eggline thinking the other day and was gonna post soon hehehe

[milos-fanfics]

The Evils Within - Chapter 11

The vast desert ran quickly beneath them. Mr. L sat in an oversized clown car, previously owned by Bowser. A battalion of minions follows behind, separated and sorted by rows based on species. Columns of fly guys carrying bob-ombs, followed by columns of paratroopas then paragoombas,

Originally, Mr. L's plan was to go straight to the Mushroom Kingdom after Bowser's defeat yesterday, but the rush of adrenaline he got from it made him want more. The one place he would know would satisfy his thirst for power was Sarasaland. Not only for their next time no defenses, but Sarasaland was made of not one, but four kingdoms, and all four ruled by one person to boot. This should be easy, he thought.

In the horizon, the group of kingdoms faded into view. This was when Mr. L sent out the rows of fly guys to drop bob-ombs across the cities to grab the Sarasaland princess’s attention. He grinned maniacally at the sight.

~~~~~

Luigi opened his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. Another nightmare. He found himself lying on the couch in the living room. On the opposite side of the room, Mario sat in a chair, reading a book.

Hearing a rustle from the couch, Mario looked up from his book. Relieved that his brother wasn't subject to be trapped in another abnormally long dreamstate, he placed the book on the arm of the chair and stood up, walking over to the couch. Luigi instinctively sat up, thinking his brother would sit with him. He did not.

“Hey bro,” Mario spoke, “Glad you're up. I talked to Peach earlier and we are very worried about you. She wants us to meet up with her so we can find out a way to help you,” He explained.

“Oh no, you got it all wrong. Like I keep saying, nothing is wrong with me,” Luigi lied, knowing full well he was only digging himself in a deeper hole.

“Luigi, you know you're lying, I know you're lying, we all know you're lying. Please, just admit that something is wrong.”

Luigi only shut up. Mario was on to him. He had no excuses, but he also has no explanation on what was going on with him.

Mario walked to the front door, before turning back to Luigi. “Come on, me and Peach want to talk to you,” he told him.

~~~~~

Daisy walked outside her castle, escorted by two toad guards, to the war zone that stood outside it. It had been years since someone had tried to take over yet the kingdoms were still not prepared for such a thing.

It had always been assumed that Sarasaland had some kind of defenses, that's why no one's bothered to try and take over in ages. That and the fact it was practically in the middle of nowhere. Not many people knew Sarasaland’s exact location or the fact that it was practically defenseless. The person behind this clearly knew this, but the only people she knows that know this were close friends.

She braced to inevitably be stabbed in the back.

A figure neared the castle, presumably the one behind all this. Daisy squinted her eyes at the mystery intruder before they widened in shock. Of all people, this one person would be the last one she’d expect.

They approached the foot of the castle and greeted Daisy with a smile, “Hello, princess.”

“L-Luigi? What are- What's with the getup?“ Was her first question. Yes, she did find it odd that Luigi, of all people, would be a part of some sort of invasion, but with the strange outfit, something struck her as definitely wrong with him.  “Oh, this? Just a change of attire, but that's not important,” Luigi, or rather, Mr. L, jumpsuit a light tug before shrugging.

Daisy gave him a befuddled look. “What's the meaning of this?” she asked. “I just came to stop by, say ‘hello’, and take over your kingdom, it's nothing much,” he responded quickly, glossing over his last point.

Her eyes widened in shock once more, but she laughed it off, “What? Are you serious? ‘Cause, if I'm honest, you're kind of the last person I'd ever expect a ‘takeover’ from.” She said to him. His maniacal, yet simultaneously innocent, grin was all she needed to know that he wasn't kidding. “But, if you are serious, I can't just give you my kingdoms. They've been entrusted into my hands and I'm not going to hand them out like candy.” Daisy was beginning to get agitated.

Mr. L simply shrugged, “Figured as much. I know you would never give me your kingdom if I asked. So I'm going to demand it.” Upon finishing his sentence, the two toad guards secured a grip on their weapons. They felt that something was about to go wrong. 

“N-no! Luigi, what has gotten into you? I am not giving you these kingdoms!” She exclaimed, her agitation now rising to anger.

“I'm not going to fight you for this… yet... I see no reason to...” Mr. L was surprisingly calm. Usually, people who visibly anger the Sarasaland princess, back down in fear of her rage, but Mr. L showed no change in emotion. “...but, I would recommend you should start to show me some respect soon, because to me... “ He took a step closer, plucking Daisy’s crown from her head, “...you are nothing more than a peasant,” He practically spits in her face.

This absolutely pissed her off. Before her guards could do anything about this, she pushed them out of the way and right-hooked Mr. L in the face.

Mr. L stumbled backward, rubbing his now bruised cheek. He turned back to Daisy. The cheeky smile he had on his face was now replaced with an infuriated look. Sparks flew from not only his now balled-up fists but throughout his entire body. He disappointedly shook his head to her

The guards backed down. This was a next-level threat. Daisy's anger was now fear. She was immediately filled with regret.

~~~~~

Chapter 10 - Chapter 12 Cover

[thegeminisage]

i have deep and conflicting thots about the gilli episode (3.11)

they’re long (they’re LONG!!!) so here’s a cut. you’re welcome

good things:

this is the ANTITHESIS to everything i was complaining about last night. this is what i was CRAVING. this show did me so good (and yet, so bad - more on that in a sec)

there was a touch of outside pov here (my weakness) since we got to see who merlin was from gilli’s point of view

and when i say we got to see who merlin was i mean we really for real got to SEE WHO HE WAS oh babey

something gilli said in this episode was that merlin has been pretending so long he forgot who he was and i think similarly he pretends so well that we the audience (me anyway) also kind of forget who he is because we see it SO rarely

but we saw it here! in this episode merlin was SMART?? those aren’t two words i’d normally use in the same sentence without sticking a “is not” between them but he WAS - he cottoned on right away that gilli was using magic, he confronted him immediately and in a way that didn’t invoke hostility (and what a nice little flip, what a TREAT to see someone else freaking out and covering their ass while merlin is keeping his cool), (some of) his normal little jabs at arthur were a tad wryer/slyer on the delivery, and he figured out, ON HIS OWN, how to save both gilli and uther, and used his magic in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE without getting caught

and speaking of that, merlin being like “he’s braver than me, using magic in front of all those people” and gaisu going “brave or stupid” like... ok, at first my reaction was: come on, merlin uses magic in front of people ALL THE TIME...but when i think about it, my very own self was complaining just yesterday that he was keeping his shit buttoned up way too tightly. and i did notice merlin himself waiting until backs were turned more often, incantating aloud less often...he ACTUALLY HAS gotten less stupid, JUST a smidgen. i didn’t even realize

merlin seemed more grown-up and serious in this episode than he has in the entire series. maybe it’s the fact that he had someone younger and dumber to play off of (and i don’t think gilli was a strong enough character to carry an episode, but maybe it was enough to give us an excuse to develop merlin so much) but he did in fact seem WISE, and he seemed TIRED, which is a thing grownups usually are... the way he talked to the other characters seemed different too - he spoke to the dragon as an equal (last dragon & last dragonlord), not as some dumbass in over his head asking for help (very nice also that he didn’t go to gaius for advice but someone more on “his level”). he gave arthur clear and frank advice on how to go about fighting his dad, he STUCK UP FOR GILLI AGAINST GAIUS (backbone! compassion!) and then STUCK UP FOR HIMSELF against gilli!!!!!

(i like a slightly more serious merlin because while quirky dumbass country hick merlin IS charming and endearing that charm can only carry him so far without more meat involved, especially after some of the terrible things we’ve seen him suffer through and all the experiences he’s had to grow and change)

i have mixed feelings about merlin showing his magic to this particular person at this particular time, but i do also like that he was willing to open up about WHO HE IS if it could potentially save a life. that shows backbone. and it shows integrity. two things i was sorely missing from merlin before now

speaking of merlin’s integrity, we finally got to cover why he keeps saving uther, who he should hate and despise and want dead, which i have been DYING for

merlin and gilli have a sort of professor x/magneto stance about uther, by which i mean one of them argues that they should change things from within the system to court goodwill and avoid violence because acting violently would just make their detractors’ point for them, and the other argues that the system should be destroyed entirely through any means necessary because violence is the only language the oppressor understands

on a rewatch what really stands out to me is merlin chastising gilli at the end by saying “you’re better than that.” it makes me think of season 1 when merlin had the chance to let morgana’s allies assassinate uther and he asks gwen what he should do - gwen, who also has every reason to hate and despise uther, tells merlin that to allow him to die through inaction would be just as bad as murdering him directly, and that that would make merlin as bad uther is

i don’t want to give the people who fucked morgana over so thoroughly too much credit but it makes me wonder if that wasn’t when merlin decided that he was going to be the bigger man

he says it himself in this episode, near tears - it is LONELY, being what he is, and doing what he does. he could kill a man with a thought and he spends all his time mucking stables and polishing armor and when he gets a break from that it’s to save someone’s life without endangering his own. it is dangerous, tireless work for which he believes he will NEVER get any thanks. and what i was so frustrated about before was not understanding WHY - did he care THAT much about arthur’s feelings, that he couldn’t stand to watch arthur lose a father? was he just THAT afraid of uther and what uther would do to him if he found out?

but i get it now - it’s because he CHOOSES to. not to protect arthur or to protect himself but because he wholly believes that he’s playing the long game and he’s on the correct path to seeing a future where what he is is no longer outlawed - god, his FACE when he says “when that day arrives, we WILL be free” 

again not to overcredit the writers bc i DON’T think they were smart enough to do this on purpose but like in my heart he decided all the way back in season 1 that he wasn’t going to take the easy way out and just let uther die because THAT’S NOT WHAT MAGIC IS FOR. he’s stronger than everyone else around him and HE CHOOSES to keep his head down and wait it out because in his OWN WORDS “magic is not meant to bring you glory.” even gilli agrees - when used for personal gain, it is very easy for the power of the magic to corrupt. i thought merlin was weak, to have saved uther’s life so many times - but to resist that kind of temptation and corruption over and over, he’s actually the opposite. he doesn’t try so hard to protect the monarchy because he lacks self-respect or integrity, he protects the monarchy BECAUSE OF his self-respect and integrity. all along, he’s been fighting for a better future too - just in his way, not the way gilli or morgana would

and speaking of morgana...here’s the bad:

i. am. LIVID!!!!!

that merlin would tell this boy he BARELY KNOWS his secret in order to maybe possibly save this kid’s life and NOT TELL MORGANA in her worst hour of need when she most needed a friend

merlin got a whole lot more respect from me today but the fact remains that he’s a LYING LIAR WHO LIES and he has tried to kill morgana two and a half times (the poison, the bump on the head, knocking her off her horse) and as of the end of season 3 also MURDERED HER SISTER THAT IS APPARENTLY ALSO LOWKEY HER GIRLFRIEND (i know)

which really clashes with his whole deal that i just described above, of using his magic for good and not evil purposes, for trying to win over hearts instead of win battles. and it’s funny that it’s ONLY morgana that merlin acts out of character for...i think it’s because! and this is a crazy concept! the writers hate morgana!

morgana in season 1 and most of season 2 was a kind and loving person. she was a true ally to gwen and often used her status as the king’s ward to stand up for gwen when gwen was in trouble. the first time she tried to have uther killed it was because of what happened to gwen’s father. she was more than capable of feeling love and knowing right from wrong and doing what she believed was right at any cost as evidenced by her helping to sneak the little druid kid out of the castle at risk to herself

morgana in season 3 does nothing but smirk evilly. and while it’s a good look on her and she’s MORE than valid in wanting to fuck up merlin and uther and maybe even arthur too from a certain viewpoint her aggression against gwen is ENTIRELY unwarranted

even trying my BEST to be sympathetic towards her and remember what she’s gone through and that her bad characterization is the fault of the writers and not morgana herself it is VERY hard not to hate her when you see her delighting in gwen’s misery and watching her PANIC about gwen’s future as the queen was FAR more satisfying than it should have been because i was then delighting in MORGANA’S misery and that is NOT a feeling im comfy with

in fact! im furious! the fact that this gilli kid got a more sympathetic portrayal than morgana ever will makes me SEE RED!!! imagine if the professor x/magneto vibe had been played out with merlin and morgana throughout the entirety of season 3! imagine morgana still had feelings other than ~edgy evulz~ and kept trying to kill uther BECAUSE SHE BELIEVED IT WAS RIGHT but had no quarrel with people like gwen who had always loved her! imagine her being conflicted when there was every chance that gwen would die during the takeover! imagine how her feelings could have become even more complicated when she found out she had living family - a father and brother, one of whom she is plotting to kill! imagine her NOT wanting harm to come to gwen or arthur and trying to persuade them to her side with good yet flawed arguments! imagine uther having to face the fact that the daughter he dotes on is also the thing he hates! people talk about arthur’s conflict if he realizes merlin is magic, but he’s known merlin a lot less time than he’s known morgana and merlin’s not his sister, imagine arthur had to deal with that conflict of interests! we could have HAD IT ALL in season 3 and instead season 3 MOSTLY SUCKS

what if morgana had remembered how fucked up arthur was about learning about the true circumstances of his birth? what if she had persuaded him that uther’s stance against magic was wrong? what if she knew merlin had magic but she hated him so she blackmailed him with it? he could have told her and then spent the ENTIRETY of season 3 shitting himself about it and it would have TOTALLY JUSTIFIED how shifty he got later after gaius taught him how to lie.what if he had SEEN what choosing to hurt other people had wrought in morgana and truly felt remorse and it informed his character for the rest of the show and that’s why he’s always choosing the moral high ground! there were SO MANY possibilities that could have opened up by having morgana be even just a little bit 3-dimensional!!!

which brings me to my next complaint: as good as this episode was, as much as i loved it, as glad as i am to finally understand merlin or at the very least have an interpretation of him i’m happy with, i should not have had to wait ALL SEASON to get there. i know what kind of show this is but they could have slipped some of this stuff in WAY EARLIER so i didn’t have to spent the entirety of season 3 and quite a lot of season 2 thinking merlin was just some spineless fuckup

also i will say it again, gilli was NOT strong enough to have carried this episode. the work on merlin’s character was INCREDIBLE and it was fun enough to see gilli mirror who he was in early season 1 but imagine how much better it could have been if he’d gotten to play off of someone like morgana - gilli’s a one-off character, and he has to tell us about his history and struggles, but morgana’s struggle is something we’ve witnessed firsthand. when she makes her own arguments about how hard it is to be magic under uther’s rule it comes from a place of deep pain that could have and should have resonated with merlin just as deeply as gilli’s.

morgana works MUCH better as a foil to merlin because all the way back in season 1 when they were both angry on gwen’s behalf and both wanted uther to pay for what he’d done so that no more innocent people would die it was MORGANA who chose the magneto route and merlin who decided to go professor x. they had the potential to make something REALLY COOL out of that AND THEY DIDN’T and what makes me so mad about this episode is that the sheer CONCEPT of this was good enough to have carried the entire season and yet they crammed it into a single 45-minute block

here end my thots i guess, in conclusion morgana deserved better

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘Web Development’ (S04E03) Analysis

A spooky Web in the web, and a return to anything but normal.  Something tells me that the journey of the Archival staff is going to be a long one from here, and none of them are in a good place.  Come on in to hear what I have to say about ‘Web Development’.

So we got a little more context for what’s happened in the six months Jon’s been in a coma.  It seems that, given that the Beholding has NEVER taken a shot at a ritual (really?), and may be one of the few that hasn’t at least made the effort, every other power sat up and took notice. Which meant that the Archives specifically, and the Magnus Institute in general has been under siege.  The Flesh at least has made one attempt on the Archives, largely defeated by Melanie.

And Melanie really isn’t doing well at all.  She’s unstable, furious, disbelieving that Jon could possibly be himself, and seemed to barely keep from killing him outright.  Her fall to the Slaughter seems to be progressing very fast indeed, likely egged on by the necessity that she do any monster headed their way violence. Losing Tim and Daisy also hit her hard, and she’s jealously guarding the few people she has left.  And it seems like she views Jon as a threat as well.

And Melanie isn’t the only one giving themselves over to another power in order to keep the Archives safe.  I would imagine that even the ‘safety’ they’re afforded now is being bought by Martin’s continued work with Peter Lukas, who has extended the Lonely’s protection over the staff of the Institute in Elias’ absence.  

But in turn, not only are the various departments being put into less and less contact with one another—effectively isolating the Archival staff even more—but Martin himself is being taken away.  He’s the only direct emissary to Peter, and all other communication is done through email. It’s interesting that, when we recall Peter’s appearances in the show thus far, they have been exclusively around Elias or Martin.  I think Peter marked Martin out as an easy target well before his takeover, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin wasn’t part of the arrangement between himself and Elias.  

Martin might not even know Jon is back yet, or could know, but may have been instructed to stay away from him lest dire consequences happen.  It’s good to know that Basira, at least, doesn’t blame Martin for what’s happening, and even seems to understand that he and Melanie are doing very similar things to keep her and Jon safe, albeit in very different ways.

And speaking of Basira, it was worrisome exactly HOW detached she really seems to be.  It may be the grief of Melanie’s death or the shock of so much horror happening at once, but her equanimity is setting off alarm bells in my head.  The fact that she doesn’t know what to do about Melanie, and isn’t bothering to try, that she’s essentially holed herself up in the Archives and seems willing to let whatever horrific things might play out to those around her proceed without interference is also worrisome.

She’s been around the Beholding for a while, with a natural affinity for the power.  And I worry that Basira, like the others, is succumbing to a Power, but hers is the Beholding.  It’s urging dispassion, observation, standing back and letting things play out with as much emotional involvement as a scientist watching bacteria grow and die on a plate.  I don’t even know if she realizes that’s what’s happening to her, but I’m almost 100% convinced that it is.  Because she’s always been self-contained, but this detachment?  It reminds me of Gertrude.

Jon, at least, seems fully emotionally engaged, which is a relief after last week.  His consternation that Melanie would be angry at him for a six-month coma, his shock that she would hate him so much she would threaten him physically (something even Tim never did), and the growling anger that Martin seems to be voluntarily working with Peter Lukas all do speak to emotional engagement, albeit that very specific, very selfish engagement that is Jon all over.

After my worries last week that the Archivist is stronger in him now, this is at least somewhat comforting. His jealousy over Martin’s current predicament might still also be influenced by the Archivist, and the Beholding’s possessive attitude toward Martin.  Because while Jon certainly seems concerned about Melanie’s state of mind, he doesn’t seem jealous that she’s being stolen by the Slaughter.  The jealousy seems far more related to Martin. Maybe that’s because the Beholding’s had Martin for a decade, while it never really had its hooks into Melanie properly.  Maybe it’s because Jon is just realizing he has more of a personal connection with Martin than he thought he did, and Melanie he just doesn’t know as well.  I think it’s mostly likely a bit of both. Jon and the Archivist are blended in a way they weren’t previously, so much so that its influence on him will be insidious.  Change him in subtle ways rather than obvious ones.  

But Melanie knows he’s different.  Georgie knew it too.  This is Jon, but it’s Jon with new bits tacked on, and for those people who either knew Jon before or who are primed to sniff out the differences, this man who’s come back is pinging all of their alarms.

We’ll have to see how everything plays out, because it seems that the team is stuck together for the long haul.  If these attacks on the Archives are as common as Basira implies, they won’t be going home often.  Jon and Melanie’s conflict can’t possibly be dealt with so easily, if only because they can’t help but remain in proximity.  And if Basira isn’t interested in helping them sort things out, it may be down to Jon to be diplomatic and empathetic.

Because that’s not guaranteed to end in disaster.

As for the statement itself, it’s classic web, though it’s interesting that it seems to also be a bit of technology too.  The notion that the next fear will be technological isn’t confirmed by any means, but I still thought of it, given the context.  

But this is almost certainly the Web, given the secretive website that moves around with gibberish in its code, its demand for stories to be spun and given to it in exchange for killing someone—and apparently those who fail to satisfy whatever entity receives the stories will mete out a cruel fate to those who wrote the story.  At least, that is if the thing that Angie and Greg encountered under the street lamp, filled to brimming with spiders and screaming in pain, is any indication.  It also very much sounded like the person who hired Greg may have been Annabel Caine.  

And of course, Carlos Vittery, he of the spider that wouldn’t go away, is back in the story, as his name appeared on the list.  It’s very possible that he died because someone submitted his name and a story that met with the approval of the ‘story-spinner’.  

And much like previous victims of the Web, once snared Greg couldn’t help but go deeper and deeper, his own passivity lending him excuses, but the compulsion to serve also still there. This almost-hypnosis is very much another hallmark of the Web.

But what really interested me was the demand for stories.  This doesn’t feel like a Web thing so much as a Beholding thing.  That got me wondering if the spiders don’t live in the tunnels under the Institute because they also feed on stories, albeit in a very different way.  For one thing, it doesn’t sound like the Web requires a story to be true to feed on it. In fact, given the Web’s nature, I would wonder if the ‘discredited’ stories that we don’t hear on the podcast are actually what are feeding the web.  All those lies and half-truths and delusions are feeding it.  It makes the Web a bit of a scavenger, which I think also fits its tendency to play all other Powers off and against one another.

Of another interesting note, I tried looking up Calisari, but the best I could find online was Călușari, a Romanian secret society that performed a dance called the căluș which involved the impression that they could fly.  This was to imply the flight of fairies, and their leader was called the Queen of the Fairies.  Despite this name, the group was apparently male-only, and often thought of as disturbed. I’m not sure if this ties into the name or not, but that’s what I found.  I couldn’t find information during my brief Wikipedia foray on their beliefs or reasons for being a secret society.  Just that they were dancers who liked to imitate flight.

What this has to do with the Web, if anything, is a mystery to me.

Conclusions

“I wish I could talk it through with Martin … or Tim, or Sasha.  But we never really did that, did we?  Everything’s changed.  Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.”

And in one line, I was destroyed.  Thanks Jonny, I didn’t need those feels anyway.  

While the statement was a solid bit of spooky fiction, Jon’s reality seems more and more desolate. Everyone he used to rely on isn’t available now.  Georgie’s stepped back, Basira seems to only want to interact with him at a great emotional distance, Melanie wants to hurt him if he’s in the same room as she is, and Martin’s just … gone.  I would say that last one is Jon’s best hope for reestablishing a connection, but we don’t know what the Lonely has done to Martin at this point.

But he is the person Jon keeps mentioning first.  He’s the one that Jon shows real anger about losing, even moreso than Tim or Daisy. The reasons for this are probably tangled up in the Archivist, but a part of it is also clearly that Martin is the last speck of Jon’s life before the horror he’s got left.  Martin, who was always sweet and considerate, who brought him tea and sandwiches.  Martin, who Jon must know by now was in love with him.  May still be in love with him.

And as for Jon’s feelings on the matter, I doubt he knows.  As much as Jon knows his wants and needs, he’s almost at the same remove from his emotions as Basira is to everyone else’s.  But he does dwell, and so I would think that would be the relationship he wants to start with rebuilding.  Tracking down Martin is likely not to be easy, but given Jon’s depression and isolation, I think it’s necessary.  After that, trying to break through to Basira and Melanie might be easier with two people working at it.

[istgimamess]

Label: JYP entertainment

Stage name: Song Ha Rin [Ha means great or talented, Rin means unicorn; so yeah, I picked this name for you because you're a great, talented unicorn and you should be protected at all cost, duhh]

Debut year: 2016 (3 years active)

Debut concept: electric pop, upbeat, cute and girly, sassy girl power, dance and vocal heavy

Number of members: 5

Group name: HolyElectric

Fandom name: Sparks

Position: main dancer, vocal line, the mom of the group [because you're super protective, patient and caring]

Male bestie: Choi Minho (SHINee)

How you meet: he's your protector but also your tormentor, if you're being honest! Your first meeting was a bit of a shit show, one minute you're practicing some basic dance moves for a live broadcast and the next you're hanging off the side of the stage in a mess of limbs and covered in water. His necklace tangled in your hair, your heel caught in his belt loop; the both of you soaked beyond repair, an empty water pitcher laying hazardously at the bottom of the stairs. "Umm, you think you can tell your pants to let go of my shoe!?" "Yeah, as soon as your hair releases my necklace.." He pushes at your forehead, palm covering your face completely, nothing happens. You knee at his torso and hip, nothing happens; you both try again. "Ouch! Watch yourself, King Kong! I cant breath!" "Okay, let's not panic! It'll just leave me pantsless and you bald!" After that it was like you were inseparable, quickly becoming friends through the shared experience of that tragic, embarrassing event. Turns out you have a lot in common, personality wise! You're both really sarcastic and just plain goofy; (you have this game, always competing to see who can make the funniest, goofiest faces) so, obviously, you make eachother laugh alot but you're also very protective over one another. "Hey, Minho! HolyElectric's Harin is your best friend, right?" "Yeah, she is! Why?" "Shall we send her a little video!? Quickly do something to make her laugh!" "Harin, I miss you!...(^ gif ^)..."

Female bestie: Tiffany Young (SNSD)

How you meet: you take singing very serious! You're always working on your vocals, trying out new techniques, experimenting with your range; you're very hardworking and your dedication to getting better is something everyone seems to notice about you, right off the bat. So you're always down for vocal classes and one on one's with your vocal coach, always excited to learn something new! And that's how you meet Tiffany, through a friend of a friend of a friend of your vocal coach! You were doing your warm ups, waiting on your teacher to arrive when Tiffany stuck her head in the room to compliment you on your vibrato! You tend to come off as a bit rude, because of how shy you are, so at first it didn't really go well! "Wow, you sound so good! Those runs were amazing!" "Umm, I know..no, I-..I mean, it's not like I think I'm super good or anything..I-..sorry." She ended up laughing your response off and joining you in the room! You quickly became really good friends, constantly listening to music and practicing together; going out for lunch and meeting up on the weekends for some quality shopping time! "Who would you say your best friend is?!" "Oh, she is also a singer! Her name is Harin and she's in the girl group HolyElectric! We hang out together probably every week!" "Oh really!? What are your favorite things to do together!?" "We are both shopoholics, so we're constantly shopping! And afterwards I always drag her out for ice cream because..(^gif^).." Your friendship is so cute!

Group bestie: NCT

How you meet: this is probably the most unconventional way you've ever made a group of friends but it worked, whether you wanted it to or not. There are probably a hand full of things that you absolutely hate in life: people who lie, crabs and bugs are just a few! When faced with any of these, more specifically crabs and/or bugs, you tend to run the opposite way, screaming at the top of your lungs, arms flailing! It's your natural reaction! So when you find yourself being used as a human shield between a grown ass man-child and bugzilla, you're forced to square up and save the man child! "OH MY GOD SAVE ME IT'S GOING TO EAT ME AHHHH EOMMA!!" You're being pulled close, your body picked up and thrown around by the trembling boy! You feel like you might actually vomit but also, oddly enough, you feel really protective; the mom in you suddenly coming out: throwing your fists up in a fighting manner, kicking your feet and swatting the sky in defense. "NOT TODAY, SATAN!!" Eventually the bug gives up on it's hostile takeover, there are about 3 seconds worth of calm and suddenly you're surrounded. "Taeyong! What happened!?" "Yeah, we heard screaming!" "I was attacked!! I thought I was going to die!" "What!? What happened!? Attacked by who!? Are you o-" "Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but are we going to actually sit here and pretend like we don't see the girl Taeyong-hyung is holding up off of the ground like a teddy bear?! We just ignoring that!?" "Haechan, dont be rude!" "How am I being rude!?" "You're always-" "Sorry, can you put me down, my legs are going numb.." And it was all down hill from there! They wouldn't leave you alone, following you around like a group of sassy, over-dramatic puppies! But you don't really mind! They're your biggest supporters, always streaming your music and cheering you on during award season! They also send you little video messages to congratulate you on your wins! "...(^gif^)..." "Wait, are you recording?!" "Yeah, Harin is about to perform so we need to send the message fast!" "But not everybody's here yet!" "Well, tell them to hurry!" They're truly adorable!

Boyfriend: Shin Hoseok/Wonho (Monsta X)

Ship name(s): Ha-Ho, Wonha, Ho-Rin

How you meet: you love, love, love traveling and you get the opportunity to travel a lot, with your job; but that's really not enough to satisfy you! So, whenever you have a day off, you like to travel! Nowhere too far, since you only really have the one day, usually to Japan, or China, any place near by! That's where you meet Wonho, in the airport; one second you're grabbing your baggage, minding your own business and the next you're face-full of chest! "Oooff, I'm so sorry-" "It's okay! It's not everyday cute girls use their face to assault my chest!" He's very sure of himself, very honest and openly flirty and it doesn't take long before his assertiveness pulls you out of your shy shell! You spend the day together, grab some coffee and then hit up the local ramen shop! It doesn't take long for you to become official: redcheeks and sweaty palms, shy confessions underneath the bus station hanger. He's the best boyfriend you could ask for, he's practically whipped! And his group members never let him live it down! "Hey, Wonho! Harin stayed the night last night, didnt she!? But you guys were soooo quiet, in your room! What were you doing!? Quickly, tell the camera!" "...(^gif^)..." They make him suffer, you find it hilarious!

Your biggest fan: Kim Yeri (Red Velvet) is probably your biggest fan! She is constantly making dance covers to your songs, streaming your music and watching your v-lives! "I'm a huge fan of HolyElectric! My favorite is Harin! She's such a good dancer and her vocals are always on point!" She's very vocal about how much she loves you and your music; so much, that even her fans are trying to make it so that she has the opportunity to meet you! "Yeri-unnie! Harin-unnie is your girl crush, right!?" " Yes~...(^gif^)..." "Hopefully you can meet her soon!" It's ridiculously cute!

Scandle: you're a dancer, that's what you truly want to be known as! You've been dancing since you could stand up straight and you've been like a spunge ever since; always trying to gain as much knowledge over the art, as you can! You take extra classes, make covers, mimic other great dancers, you're constantly in the practice room! So, yeah, you dance more than you breathe, this is not a secret! You've also known EXO's Kim Jongin for years, again, not a secret! He was one of the only idols to really reach out and interact with you in your trainee days; always offering to answer any "idol" questions you may have, offering to practice with you, teaching you new dance moves, critiquing your performances before every evaluation! He quickly ended up becoming your greatest teacher, an even greater friend, almost like a brother! So it's no shocker you're photographed together, a lot: Jongin entering your apartment building, Jongin picking you up and taking you out for dinner, you entering Jongin's apartment building etc. What is a bit shocking? The headlines that come with those photos, when Dispatch drops them. 'Neitizens get a HolyElectric shock when EXO's Kai takes new girl friend!' and 'HolyElectric's Harin sparks new dating rumors! Could EXO's Kim Jongin be the one?!' It was a bit confusing! "What the?! 'Could EXO's Kim Jongin be the one?!' What Disney movie is this!?" "The good kind, one with a great soundtrack and a beautiful dance number! You should feel lucky!" "I just threw up a little bit.." It's really cruel how much Jongin's enjoying your discomfort!

Other activities: obviously you're a great dancer, singer and all around performer but sometimes you really just want to be challenged! So when you're management team signs you up for a spot in 'The King of Mask Singer' singing competition, you're both super excited and super nervous! It ends up going well and you gain a ton of new friends and even more fans from the experience! "It was so fun! I didnt know singing could be so exhilarating!" "So what?! You want to give up dance and become the next Mariah Carey?! Good choice! Less competition for me~" "Jongin, I will cut you.." What a massive dork!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@bbwonho here is your private idol life ship! I hope you like it~ Let me know what you think! 😌

[icequeenoriginal]

Protection (Dante x Lady Fanfic) Part 1

Crap. That’s all that Lady could think of at this very moment. This wasn’t at all how this night supposed to go. What the hell even happened?

Lady’s night actually began promising. Dante had asked her to go to dinner. They had been dating for a while now so it wasn’t much of a shock but she’d be lying if she say she didn’t have butterflies in her stomach. He had this effect on her. He made her laugh, smile and feeling all warm and fuzzy. That was the last thing she expected him of all people to be able to do. What can she say? She fell for him. Hard.

They were halfway out the door when the phone began to ring. Dante rolled his eyes and picked it up. There was a woman on the other line, begging that Dante clear her husband’s warehouse infested with demons. Dante sighed and reluctantly agreed before slamming the phone down..

“Dammit. I’m sorry babe. Gives me an hour tops. I’ll have the whole place cleared and we can…what are you doing?”

By the time he turned around, Lady had replaced her purse with her guns. “What does it look like? Getting ready for the mission.”

“Lady…”

“It’ll be done faster if there’s two of us.” Dante knew better than to argue with her. Besides, she was right. So they headed out together on Dante’s bike aka how they showed the world they were together. They weren’t public with affection. They never kissed in front of others, only behind closed door. They weren’t ashamed, far from it. It was something special between them. No one else needed to have input in their relationship. That was the only reason.

As far as Lady knew.

Lady wrapped her arms around Dante’s waist and smiled. She loved holding him. This is the closeness they both desire, deserved. Any moment she got to hold him made her so happy. The ride to jobs always seemed so short nowadays.

They walked into the warehouse. There were demons alright. Running around the warehouse, slowly growing. No doubt they had the intention of wrecking havoc through the city. They all froze and turned to face the two newcomers. This made Dante smirk. “Oh, you were expecting us. Sorry to keep you waiting”

The demons immediately reacted and jumped on the two devil hunters. They fired as fast as they could. To their horror, the demons changed form. Their bullets began to go through the demons. Dante switch to his Rebellion and Lady used the back of Kalina Ann. This worked temporarily until the demons changed again. The demon managed to separate the two hunters. Dante turned into his devil trigger form to slash through the demons to get to Lady. He turned so quickly that the demons did not have time to process the sudden change and he was able to kill some of the,, However, when he got her, he saw a sight that was his downfall.

Lady had tried her best to keep the demons off of her but her weapons became useless against them so quickly for her liking. Her grenades did kill a few but she had quickly ran out of them for she underestimated how difficult this job was going to be. Luckily the demons adapted for the grenades so she got a few with her guns but as quickly as the victory came, the demons changed back. With no opinions left, Lady decided to used her athletic ability to get away from the demons. Her plan was to use Kalina Anna’s grapple to get to the open elevated platform in warehouse, fire a few missiles to buy herself some time to find Dante. She figured the demons needed them apart so they could transform more easily. Sadly, as she began to be pull up by the grapple, one of the demons grabbed her leg, broke it and pulled her down. She unleashed her scream second Dante had gotten close to her. To make matters worse, the demon that had Lady was largest demon in the warehouse. Lady and Dante looked at each other for a split second before the demon lifted Lady up again and slammed her into the ground. “LADY!” She didn’t respond, she didn’t move, she didn’t even seem to be breathing.

This completely broke Dante. Every time, every time…anytime he cares for someone, some demon takes them away. Not this time…he wasn’t going to lose her…

He felt himself changing, his eyes were burning from how red they had turned. He didn’t care. He knew the consequences, he was ready. Lady was able to weakly open her eyes t see Dante transform.

It wasn’t like his normal Devil Trigger form. This…thing…had no resemblance to his human form, the real Dante. The Dante she…

Dante smirked evilly as he slowly placed Rebellion on his back. He roared as he grew a pair of wings and four horns. Rebellion became a tail. A dark aura covered his entire body, turning it into a huge dark demon. It took his beautiful face last. The only part that remotely resembled Dante were red cracks that broke through the dark shell. As if the real Dante was trying to break free from this hold. This was what Trish had warned her about, the Perfect Devil Trigger.

Dante quickly disconnected the demon’s limp that had been holding her off from the rest of it and put her in a corner, as far away from danger as he could before going back to slaughter ever demon in the warehouse.

Lady had to stay awake, she had to stop this. She decided to remember the conversation she and Trish had had a few days prior. If she concentrated on the memory, her mind would stay awake and she could possibly figure out how to get Dante back.

Lady, Dante and Trish had returned to Devil May Cry in silence. A demon had gotten a little too close to Lady and Dante quickly killed it and the rest of the hive that had been infesting the farmhouse. Lady commented that she could handled it, she meant it more as a joke but she was also letting him know. Normally Dante would joke back at her, at most he’d gently punch her in the shoulder. This time was different. Dante turned, slowly changing back to normal. His eyes however stayed red. He stared at her, it felt wrong to her. He growled at her and walked to his bike. This pissed off Lady more and it made Trish confused. When he sat on his bike, his eyes returned to their ocean blue. He shook his head and turned to Lady to apologize.

She still kicks herself for riding off before he had a chance to explain. They ignored each other for the rest of the night, he sulking in his chair and her sulking on her bed. Trish rolled her eyes at them. She was supposed to be young, immature one. She first went to Dante and simply told him that she was going to talk to Lady. Dante pretended to not hear her and continued to sip his drink.

Trish wondered if the myth that if you roll your eyes too much caused them to get stuck was actually turn when she rolled her eyes again at Dante. She put her guns away and walked to Lady’s room. She knocked twice before speaking. “Hey L? Can I come in?”

Lady reasoned in her head that she had no reason not to let Trish in. “Door’s open.”

Trish walked over to her and sat next to her on the bed. “Look, about the earlier…”

“You don’t have to apologize for him, Trish.”

“I’m not.” Lady looked at her confused. Trish was glad she was because then Lady would listen to her. She had to listen to her about this. “Look Lady, you know how Dante struggles with his inner demon.” Lady nodded in response, indicating she wants Trish to continue.

“Well, his demon like to use Dante’s human emotions against him. To the point if he’s sad enough or angry enough, the demon will easily breakthrough and take over.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because—” Trish stopped herself, this wasn’t something she could tell Lady. That was up to Dante, though she highly doubted he would ever have the balls to do so. “Because you have to watch him. We all do.” She added that last part to distract Lady from her pause moments before.

“What do you mean?” Lady was now concerned, there was something wrong with Dante and she has to help him. She just had to.

To be perfectly honest, Trish wasn’t exactly sure either. She just had a feeling, a feeling something bad was going to happen. She paused to gather her thoughts before continuing “He choose to be human but his inner demon can also choose to takeover to the point where his humanity is gone. He will be so far that you have to get him out of it.” If she wasn’t worried, she would have questioned why Trish said you. She nodded in agreement with Trish, which satisfied her enough to leave, and laid awake on her bed. She didn’t sleep that night.

Lady slapped her own face hard to keep herself awake. She watch Dante stand over the carnage. She watched him crawl around the room, looking for more prey. She forced herself into her bad leg which caused her to wince in pain and for him to turn around. He seemed to instantly appear next to her. He growled at her, ready to attack. Lady frowned at him and grabbed his face tightly. Dante grabbed her arms and his claws dug into her. She muffled her scream and focused on his face. She searched for his eyes, only finding glowing dots. She hoped he could see her through the blinding light. “Dante! Snap out of it!”

He roared at her, trying to frighten her away. The real Dante was battling his demon, he doesn’t know what he would do if he hurt Lady. Lady wasn’t one to run. “Come on Dante! I know you’re in there!”

The demon paused and let go of her arms. He stared at her and growled put her name. She smiled, he was coming back to her. “Yea, it’s me. Now turn back to normal. The world doesn’t need another rampaging demon. They need you. The real you. I need you…come back to me.” She saw a flash of blue and in an instant, the real Dante was holding her waist and hugging her. “Hey baby…”

She hugged him back, to feel him. To make sure he was back. “I thought I lost you…” Normally she would never be this vulnerable with him but it felt right. They both needed it.

“Well, you did what you do best. You found me.” It was his turn to breathed her in, he needed to know that they were both okay. He swore to himself he would never turn into that again.

After a few moments of just silently holding one another, Dante lifted her up into his arms. “Let’s get you home”

“Dante…”

“Sorry about tonight…I know you hate hospitals so I’ll patch you up and order some takeout.”

“Dante.”

“I’ll take over missions from now on.” He weakly chuckles to himself. “I’m sure you can make money somewhere in this city. And then—”

“DANTE!” Finally, he hears her through his millions of thoughts and pauses to give her his full attention.

“I am tired of this!”

“Of what?”

“Of you treating me like a baby!” This made him angry, is that what she really thought that is what this is?

“I am not!”

“Yes you are!”

“I already apologized for before Lady!”

“I’m not just talking about that! On every mission recently you barely let me fight any demons. Also do you think I don’t notice that you try to take every missions alone now!” Dante didn’t say anything to explain himself which only made her angrier. “I can take care of myself Dante! I have been for a long time!”

“I know that Lady!”

“Then why are you doing this?”

[wrestlinghasmelike-blog]

NXT Takeover: Brooklyn/Summerslam Recap and Feelings- August 18th-19th, 2018

What a weekend for wrestling, huh? And what a fantastic one at that!

This weekend we got both Takeover: Brooklyn and SummerSlam events, and I think they both delivered so well. There were a couple things that weren’t great, but overall, I think both events were phenomenal. I’m gonna give a couple of brief comments on what I think should be mentioned, but if I missed something you wanted to know about, let me know!

Thanks for checking out this post! Please give it a like and a reblog, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or reply with how you thought the shows were! I’d love to hear from you. Thanks!

Let’s start with Takeover...

Wow, another fantastic NXT pay per view. I’ve been so behind on watching NXT, but I made sure to catch myself up with some of the storylines coming into this weekend. I think the ones I was most involved in were the Ricochet/Adam Cole and the Velveteen/EC3 stories. Those guys are so great at telling stories, ESPECIALLY VELVETEEN. I also thought those two matches were the best on the card! Granted, the whole card delivered, but these were the two that really took me away.

Undisputed Era def. Moustache Mountain to retain the titles

-this was a really fun match to watch. Kyle O'Reilly is so expressive; when that guy sells a bump, he fucking sells it. I’m really impressed with him and Roddy and what they can do. I think joining this team has really helped Roddy along in NXT. He wasn’t doing much after Drew got injured and Bobby Roode was called up, but now he’s one-half of the tag champs and living large.

Moustache Mountain are also phenomenal athletes. Tyler Bate is so young, buT SO GOOD RIGHT?! That guy is my age and he’s killing the game. I hope they get another chance to fight in the near future.

Shayna Baszler lost her title to Kairi Sane

In a rematch from the Mae Young Classic last year, Kairi and Shayna took each other to the limit in this emotional bout. Shayna has been wanting people to forget about her loss to Kairi last year, calling it a fluke, and saying that Kairi cannot do it again.

Surprisingly, Shayna was actually putting on a good match! She hasn’t really been the best in NXT, but it looks like she’s been putting in a lot of work on her ring skills and it shows. She was pretty okay when she first debuted in NXT, and she was leaps and bounds ahead of Ronda when she came to WWE, so there’s that.

Kairi is the only women’s champion in WWE that I care about right now...

Tomasso Ciampa def. Johnny Gargano in a Last Man Standing 

This was another great match, and these guys could tell a million stories and have a million matches and I bet you people wouldn’t get tired of it.

...except me.

I already am not a fan of Gargano. He’s just too over-hyped for me, and I don’t see why to be honest. The guy has some great in-ring ability and can really tell a story with his body, but something misses the mark for me. 

Tomasso, on the other hand, is one of the best characters WWE has right now. That guy is so hated and I love him for it. He’s the ultimate heel. I hope he has a long title run.

Overall...

Takeover was great. Whoever’s doing the booking and storyline work for these guys should be the one for Raw and Smackdown. Of course, there were a few misses, but really another great show in Brooklyn. 

SummerSlam

I think that this was the best pay per view of the year for the main brand. I also think this was the first weekend that I thought both shows were on par with each other. Usually, NXT out does the main brand by miles, but I thought they were shoulder to shoulder at least. There were a few matches that I didn’t care for at all. But again, this was the first double pay per view weekend that I thought one show didn’t outdo the other.

Both Tag Division Need Work

Both the B-Team and the Bludgeon Brothers defended and retained their titles at SummerSlam. I thought both matches were just mediocre and not worth being on the pay per view.

It’s always the same for the B Team; they get a lucky win and everyone goes nuts. It’s fun seeing these guys be goofy and being the underdogs, but can we see some real competition again?

The same goes for the Bludgeon Brothers. All we see is them just beat and barrage their opponents, and then the match is over? The New Day, while old and stale, should’ve won at SummerSlam. WWE needs to stop making the bigger guys this unstoppable force. It’s boring, and frankly, it’s unfair.

The Return of the Demon King

OK SO LIKE THIS MATCH WASN’T VERY LONG BUT HOLY FUCK HE’S BACK HE’S BACK

The Demon King returned to Brooklyn last night to take on Baron Corbin, and while the match was only like, 95 seconds (?), this was the right way to utilize the Demon. He needs to be this supernatural force that no one can take down, and that’s what he did on Sunday. 

And you can bet your ass that my ass was crying at his return. I almost snapped on my brother’s girlfriend for getting mad and making fun of me. Fam, don’t ever let anyone make you feel bad for getting emotional over something that you care about. You have a right to be excited or happy or sad for something you care about, it’s why you care about it, right?!

Becky Lynch SNAPPED

OH FUCKING FINALLY

Becky, Carmella, and Charlotte Flair all competed in a triple threat match for the Smackdown Women’s title, and everyone had a feeling going in that Charlotte would once again win the title. And she did. 

BUT THEN BECKY SNAPPED

Becky, after hugging and congratulating her once best friend, slapped her in the face and threw her around the ring and over one of the announce tables.

God, that was a good song. Play it on repeat for me.

Becky should’ve won the title this weekend, but this “heel turn” was almost as satisfying.

I really don’t want to talk about the Ronda match, but like I said earlier, Kairi is the only women’s champion in WWE right now...

...someone get that transphobic, racist woman away from that title please and thank you.

Samoa Joe could be my daddy??

Reviving their old TNA rivalries, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles put on a clinic on Sunday. This turned personal a few weeks ago when Joe brought AJ’s family into the mix, which is a feature that I love and hate. When it’s done right, I love it, but when it’s done out of context and too harshly, then I hate it. Joe did it right, and he incorporated it all throughout the match. 

HE CALLED HIMSELF DADDY AND I STARTED SWEATING

AJ retained the title in the end, but Joe walked away with a look in his eye that told me this story isn’t over. Thank god for a good Joe program.

Roman brings it home

We finally have the Universal Title back home, which means we can finally get some good storylines and matches again.

I was convinced that Braun would’ve cashed in his money in the bank contract, but he didn’t! I really don’t care who won, as long as it wasn’t Brock. 

There wasn’t much to say about this match, but at least Brock didn’t win.

Overall...

I really liked SummerSlam. I think it was the main brand’s best pay per view of the year so far. With only a few blunders (ronda winning and the tag matches) I really thought this was a great show! I’m excited to see what the fall term brings us in WWE. We have the demon king back, and the title is back home.

Thanks for reading! Please give this a reblog and spread it around! Thanks!

[tanyawrites]

Kidnapped

**I know this isn’t another update to The Virus, but just something to keep things running smoothly. I was somewhat amused at myself, but it could have just been because it was late at night. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully, I can post a new update for The Virus soon. 

**I used a word prompt I found on Pinterest, “I’ve been kidnapped three times now. And frankly, it’s getting kind of old” I don’t have the link, but when i can remember my Pinterest info, I can link it to you guys. 

Alright, so being a princess kind of sucked. From the etiquette lessons, to the dress fittings, to the piano playing, it was boring and ridiculously tedious. All I wanted to do was sit in my bedroom or the library or in the garden and read my books. But being a princess, I had certain obligations that had to be met. For example, tonight, my family was hosting a ball in honor of a few of the neighboring princesses and princes coming of age. I was supposed to be there because it was my kingdom and I had to represent and practice being in charge. I had already done the “coming of age” ball. I had to stamp down my introverted side and bring out the fake smiles and fake laughs. Or so I’d hoped. As I thought about it, that stuff wasn’t even the worst part about being a princess.

           Being kidnapped was the worst part.

           As a princess, it wasn’t easy to keep everyone happy. In fact, it was rare that every single person was satisfied with what the royals do with the kingdom. And there’s always that one person who takes his or her anger too far. I sighed as I leaned against the wall from the cold hard floor. I wish I could say this was the first time, but by this point, I was getting used to it. It’s a wonder that I wasn’t locked in my room for safety nowadays, but my family always found the best in people. Who knew what he was trying to change? Usually they end up with a purse full of payment and a vow of silence on the matter instead, which tends to change their ways. This time, I didn’t think just money was going to work.

           The door opened a few moments later, letting in the soft lights of the torches from the hallway. The man in question was standing in silhouette with his arms crossed, watching me.

           “Can I go now?” I asked, annoyed at him and the situation. “I’ve been kidnapped three times now. And frankly, it’s getting kind of old.”

           “You can go, when I get what’s owed to me.” He said, matter-of-factly. “See, your family has power. And that power will help me to achieve what’s rightfully mine. And with Princess Lucille in my possession, I have all the power I need.”

           I rolled my eyes. “’And your family is going to get me what I want. I’ll get the ransom. Mwahahah!’” I mocked. “I’ve heard it all before. Just hurry it up. It’s cold in this room.”

           He glared at me through the darkness, though he did produce a small blanket from outside the door. He threw it at me and I covered myself with it. “You laugh, but with you here, I will get what I want, what I deserve.”

           I yawned. “And what would that be, oh great and powerful one?” I wasn’t sure how far I could push my luck, but I was willing to test the boundaries.

           I saw him stiffen before he answered. “My place of glory and honor, back in the king’s royal army.”

           My eyes widened. “That’s all? Really?” Most people wanted lower taxes, or new farm land, or higher wages. No one kidnapped me because they’d wanted to be a guard or a knight. Usually they just went to the king himself and asked him.

           “Well, I could have gotten you that!” I said, exasperated. “Let me go and I’ll have a talk with my father!” I tugged at the ropes that bound my hands to a grate on the wall.

           He chuckled and shook his head. “That won’t do anything. Aren’t you going to ask why I was taken out?”

           “Uh… Why were you taken out?”

           He seemed to stiffen even more. “I was wrongfully accused of treason. I’d caught one of the men spouting about his plan to usurp the throne from your parents. Before I could call them out in front of the king, someone else had done it first, but used my name instead of the real traitors’. But there wasn’t enough proof to really try me. So instead, I was thrown out, my title taken away, half my land sold to the man who ‘turned me in.’” He started pacing. “I had everything taken from me. All because one of your men is a traitor to the crown. That’s really why I kidnapped you. I thought you could help me find the real traitors.”

           I was shocked. Who would want to hurt us? For real, I mean, of course people found kidnapping me a useful tool for their gain, but no one was really going to hurt me, per say. Who was this man that was supposedly ready to take the throne right out from under our noses? Was he going to try and kill us to do it? I felt myself go cold at the thought of someone murdering us for the sake of political gain. I shook my head. Why was I believing this man to begin with? He could be lying, he could be trying to get close to my family to knock them right off the throne and claim the title of royalty for their own. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

           He shrugged. “You don’t. You’d have to trust me. But remember, trusting me is the only way that you’re going to get out of here. So, if you decide you can’t trust me, then I hope you aren’t afraid of the dark.”

           I thought for a moment. This man very well could be telling me the truth about the whole thing. But then again, on the other hand, he could be the real traitor looking for a way back in. I remember a few years ago hearing of the incident, but my father refused to tell me in greater detail what was happening, as he didn’t want to scare anyone. Then, after this man had been thrown out, we hadn’t heard anything again about being hurt or killed. Until now, that is. I could trust this man and get out of here and go home. However, if he’s lying, I could be bringing unsuspected danger to my family and if something bad were to happen, then I’d be at fault and I’d never get over it.

           After a moment or two more, I finally had made my decision. “Ok. Fine. On one condition: If you in anyway, even jokingly, say something about being ‘large and in charge’ of the kingdom, I will end you. I might be just a princess, but I do have ways of getting what I want.”

           He nodded, then took out a knife. He bent down and cut the rope on my hands. “Deal.”

           I rubbed my wrists where the rope cut into them and shot another glare at the man. “You know, I could have just talked to you.”

           He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve always been a little dramatic and I figured once you heard my story, you’d turn me in. I needed the ultimatum.”

           I nodded my head in understanding. He had a point. I wouldn’t have helped him, had he told me the story first. I needed motivation. But now that I was free, I didn’t feel the need to go running and alerting the town about this turn of events. I felt like I needed to trust this man, that I should help him. “Ok, so what do we do first? Go to my father?”

           The man shook his head. “No, not without proof. We need to find the men who were, and probably still are, planning on a hostile takeover. Otherwise, I’ll look like a loon and probably be thrown in prison, while your credibility will be destroyed, and I don’t want either of those things to happen. So, once we find the men responsible, we can work out a way to get your father to believe us.”

           “How do we find the men? Do you know who they were?” I asked as we walked out the door. “And another thing: Do you have a name?”

           “Vince. And yes. Have some names.”

           That name sounded familiar. I felt like I should know that name. Have we met before? If we did, maybe he didn’t want me to remember. If he did, he’d have mentioned it before. Maybe I’d let it go this time, but I was going to figure out if and when we’ve met in the past “Ok, lets head back home and see if I can find a list of names from the army in my father’s archives.”

           “Lead the way.”

****

We made it back into the palace a couple of hours later. I, unfortunately, had to sneak Vince into the palace, as he was still under the watchful eye of the guards. Even though there was no proof of treason, no one was going to let him just waltz back into the palace willy-nilly. As we walked up to the archive room, I began to think back, trying to remember this man standing next to me. I was afraid to ask. There had to be a reason that I didn’t remember, and it didn’t seem that he was about to divulge that information willingly.

Little snippets seem to be coming back to me. A cave. Laughing voices. The sounds of coins falling out of a bag. But that wasn’t much to go on. That could have been a dream for all I knew. Somehow, though, I knew those snippets rang true. But what did they have to do with Vince? I shook my head to clear it. We were just arriving at the archive room and I had to have my mind on that and not on some useless memories.

I pulled the key from around my neck and opened the door. I’d taken it from my mother’s nightstand, while she was on her daily walk through the arboretum. After making sure the coast was clear, I waved Vince into the room, locking the door behind me. I hadn’t been in this room in a long time, not since I was young and would play hide and seek with the maid and her children. After being caught in here by my parents, I was forbidden from ever entering again under the fear of messing up the already disorganized room.

For a room that was only used for records, there were certainly a lot of pictures around the walls. Mostly pictures of me and my parents around the room, but also some of another teenager with us, someone I didn’t quite recognize until the man in question stepped next to it. All of the memories came screaming back. The first kidnapping when I was just a little girl, the scuffle, Vince getting hurt, I remembered it all.

I walked over to Vince and stood next to him as he trifled through some papers. “Vince, before we start looking, can I see your arm? Your left arm.” He looked confused then seemed to understand. On his left arm was a very noticeable scar from what had to have been an arrow.

He glanced between me and the scar, before speaking. “Look, I know what you’re thinking and what must be strange for you, but can we talk about this after we find the names? I’ll answer questions, but we need to make sure your family is safe first.” He continued to trifle through papers, looking for the right papers. I grabbed papers off of another table, trying to find the list of foot soldiers and guards that my parents keep.

“Eureka!” I yelled, finding the list from the last ten years. Vince came over and read over the list of names quickly.

“Aha! Those three. Right there.” He pointed to the three names, one after the other, a couple of high ranking officials. “Yes! Those sorry traitors won’t know what hit them!”

**Other than the prompt, this story is mine and mine alone, my own imagination

[creationshortstory]

Part 4- The Deeper Text

A quick recap. I am writing a short story, and have decided to try to write some of my thoughts of how I go about writing whilst creating it.

What’s New?

A more polished draft is done, and you can see it below this post. Overall this is one of those stories that quickly turned into something that felt bigger than I had originally anticipated. As a result, I am satisfied with the end result though I do feel as though it could be improved in some places. One thing I think could be improved is the antagonist name. I think Mother is too generic, and is, at the moment, seems to be a go to name when it comes to stories where a group by some kind of massive brain like entity which this very much falls into the category of. At the same time, I have no idea what else to call it, and it would also require a title change. Any suggestions, don’t be shy to voice them.

This is one of the main reasons I do post my stories, because I feel like they need opinions from other people in order to improve. So, don’t be shy if you think something is wrong, and could be improved.

However, now it is time to talk about a certain element that makes people groan. What is the deeper message of the text.

The bad rep from school

I’m sure all of you remember this scenario from school, or still do if you are that young. The English teacher brings out a bunch of books, and you swiftly realise that you are going to have to write an essay interpreting the deeper message that the book is trying to bring across. Yes, it is time to talk about the deeper messages of the text, and one very interesting thing that they don’t tell you during this period of school. The writer often didn’t write the story with the intention of making those points your writing about in the essay. I know this sounds weird especially when during said essay you had write how it author intent form the start, but it’s true trust me as I will now explain with the one I just wrote.

When I started Mother’s Town my only goal was to write a story about a town being mind-controlled by an alien plant that was growing underneath it. This was the case until half way through I threw in a metaphor that made me realise oh that’s what it’s saying. The metaphor in question is the one where I compare the town to a fictional television set where everything is perfect, and as such feels like it is taking place in a bizarre land that is fake. Doing some more thought it’s reflecting my view on the worlds obsession with living the perfect life. Everybody wants to create the illusion that their life is perfect especially on social media. However, it doesn’t take much to knock that mask off, and reveal the true rotten core that lies beneath. Mother is even a root. The root of the problem. Verity is somebody new experiencing this strange habit for the first time. An outsider’s perspective if you will. That’s my read though yours might be different, and I don’t care. Everyone is different, and as such what you will get out of it is up to you not me.

Once this was realised I decided that the best course of action was to run with this revelation rather than avoid it. Let’s call it a happy accident.

Now I know that there is the old saying that art, and politics should not mix. They’re right, but there is something that all writers need to take into account.

How we view society is going to work its way in regardless

When creating anything that can be classified as having artistic merit it has always come from an individual who has their own unique view of the world. As such the thing they create is going to in some way reflect this individual’s view of the world whether they like it to or not. A story might start of about good guys fighting evil villains who have to come to blow up the earth. On the surface there is nothing wrong until you look closer and you see that the good characters all exhibit certain traits in a positive light, and the bad guys exhibit other traits that the story shows as being negative qualities. Then you realise that the author, whether they want to or not, is telling you what they consider a good person, and what they consider to be a bad person. This is another reason why I don’t like binary good vs binary evil.

What does this mean for writing?

You may be a little confused when I mentioned the statement of politics and art not mixing, and yet I just said it is inevitable. Well here’s the thing with writing you should never start with the intent of writing something political start a basic idea, and let it come in by itself. If it’s a story that you like then the message that enters the story should be one that you agree with.

Dredging up After Earth again, in that movie they kept bringing up Moby Dick throughout the story in a way that brought the entire plot screeching to halt. This is something you shouldn’t do because as said it brings the plot to a standstill. This is something the audience should come to themselves, and it ultimately gives the illusion to talking down to your audience. Nobody likes being talked down to.

A good example is, funnily enough, Moby Dick. It’s a story that can be read with many different subtexts. Humanity battling against nature. A cautionary tale against letting revenge, and anger blind you. On the base level it is a story about a man travelling on a whaling ship captained by a crazy man who wants revenge on a white sperm whale, and that’s all it has to be if you want.

You shouldn’t be afraid if a message does appear in your text, and people start to question it. Don’t be like the people who made the video game The Division 2. For those of you who don’t know during the build up the release of Division 2 one of the creators was in an interview where he laughably tried to weasel out of admitting that the story said anything political despite it being about a terrorist takeover of Washington D.C. with you taking on the role of task force member who has to go into the city to retake it establishing the white house as your base of operations.

With that said this ends these posts. The story is done, and I don’t really have anything else to say. However, as said earlier in this post if you have any suggestions for improvement then I graciously welcome it.

All images used are not owned by me. I obtained them from Google Images.

[heyymonkey2]

First Night Back in Fuuga Ch 38: The Generals Meeting

A03 link to Chapter 38

Summary: Yona has some convincing to do

“Princess… are you pregnant?”

Yona’s heart begins to race.

She and Min-Soo are standing outside the great room for the Generals Meeting -- she was just about to go in before Min-Soo caught up with urgent news. He was able to decipher the code on the parchment Yona’d given him this morning. It’s just… he doesn’t understand it.

“It said that?” Yona tries to keep steady.

Min-Soo watches her face continue to pale as he nods. They leave the truth left unsaid between them, but it’s understood.

“Anything else?”

Min-Soo shifts in discomfort, not wanting to answer.

“Would you rather tell Hak?”

Min-Soo’s face flashes fear, “Princess… the message asked for the next move. About the pregnancy.”

“Hhh…,” Yona can’t help it as a single tear slides down her cheek. About the baby… she feels wildly protective. And beyond vulnerable.

To see this and now understand the threat of that message, Min-Soo’s heart aches. It couldn’t be…?

Yona’s voice is almost a whisper, “Let me... tell Hak.”

Joo-Doh. Geun-Tae. Tae-Woo. Kyo-Ga.

Kouka’s remaining four generals sit around the table in anticipation of Princess Yona’s arrival.

Hak sits slightly off to the side with Mundok. Today he’s still tribeless wanderer Hak, technically not anything more than the last royal of this kingdom’s lover. Even their marriage has yet to be officially recognized.

Jae-Ha and Shin-Ah sit slightly off to the opposite side, by Yona’s invitation, with a very nervous Lily next to Jae-Ha.

The green dragon whispers, “Isn’t your dream guy in here?”

“Shhhh!” Lili is mortified.

Jae-Ha smiles, looking forward, “Just picture him with nothing on. It does wonders for nerves.”

Lili’s face is bright red now -- she growls, “I’ve never seen a man with his clothes off so I’d have no idea what to picture…”

Jae-Ha glances down in fascination, “Really?”

“Shhhh!”

THUD. The great door opens and there she is -- Princess Yona. A small figure confidently moving forward. Thanks to Yun, she looks every inch the radiant royal figure she is -- you’d have no idea what her morning activities had included.

Everyone in the room rises and watches in wonder. She smiles at them in a way that sets hearts at ease, then takes her seat. They all follow suit.

There’s no chair next to Yona at the head of the table and she feels that missing piece like a vast empty chasm. She wants Hak at her side. To the point it’s distracting.

So Yona glances over at the Thunder Beast. When he smiles encouragingly back at her as though they were the only ones in that room, she lets out a great breath of relief and her heart slows down. As always, even if he’s not beside her, that boy’s always got her back.

Yona turns her attention to the room, “Thank you for your journeys. I’m grateful we’ve all come to this moment, though with regret for the losses that brought us here. My heart goes out to the Water Tribe for our loss of General Joon-Gi,” Yona gives a heartfelt look toward Lili, “and to Kouka for yet another sudden transition of leadership at the highest level. I am here today because of my royal blood. As the last blood royal in my family’s line, I understand it is my duty now to accept or decline the throne.”

“The law is written as she says,” Kyo-Ga confirms.

Joo-Doh nods acceptance.

“From my journeys across each tribe’s lands this past year, I feel more compelled than ever to accept the role of queen. I wish to serve our people more than anything else. And I'm also coming to accept it as my fate.”

“I don’t really…,” Geun-Tae searches for the words, “buy into prophecies.”

“But in this case--” Kyo-Ga begins.

“--but I can’t explain what I saw on the battlefield against Kai either,” Geun-Tae finishes as he nods toward the dragon warriors, “I might believe about anything anymore.”

Joo-Doh nods in agreement, “Generals, does anyone here doubt Princess Yona should be queen?”

“You have the Fire Tribe’s support,” Kyo-Ga offers encouragingly to Yona.

“We’re behind you,” Tae-Woo confirms with a hint of pride as he glances over toward Hak.

“I like what I’ve seen,” Geun-Tae commits as he leans back.

“Then that much is settled,” Joo-Doh establishes as he looks at Princess Yona directly with a promise, “I will serve you without hesitation.”

“Next,” Kyo-Ga begins, “is setting the coronation.”

“No, before that, another piece of business,” Joo-Doh corrects, “Princess Yona has taken a husband.”

“We knew that already…” Tae-Woo is confused.

“When King Il was murdered, it was reported that the princess’ attendant was guilty of both killing the king and kidnapping her. This is the very man who sits behind us and is the proposed new king.”

Tae-Woo scowls at Joo-Doh for being so callous in bringing this up here.

Yona looks toward Hak. There on the side, Mundok has placed a calming hand on his grandson’s shoulder. Hak lets out an “of course” huff of air, but otherwise pretty much keeps his poker face.

Yona wants to scream -- slander hurts terribly when it’s against you, but when it’s of the person most precious to you in the world, it’s unbearable.

“That story was fabricated as a cover up. Hak risked his life to save mine that night… and every day since. To protect me, he gave up his generalship, tribe affiliation, even his family name,” Yona is trying to keep calm, but her speech is quick, “Former Wind General Son Hak is the most loyal, self-sacrificing, and talented warrior I have ever known. Tell me, what can I do to satisfy you so that you can support him as fervently as I do as king at my side?” then, “We’re already married, which should not be overlooked…” And I’m carrying his child! Yona wishes she could reveal as evidence of the depth of her commitment.

“That is… in the history of royals, when marriages of love have come into conflict with political interests,” Joo-Doh begins--

“--You can’t possibly be insinuating--” Tae-Woo rises.

“I’m not. Calm down,” Joo-Doh clarifies, “I’m just explaining why we’re talking about this at all. We need to do this properly. There are tons of missing details.”

“Ask me,” Yona demands.

“Were there witnesses at the wedding?” Joo-Doh asks.

“I was there,” Mundok rises, nodding to Joo-Doh.

“So were we,” Jae-Ha offers, standing alongside Shin-Ah. Ao gives a little squeak.

“Where was my invitation?” Geun-Tae lightens the tense mood.

“It was a little complicated,” Yona calms down with a little laugh, then looks with apology toward Tae-Woo.

“Good,” Joo-Doh brings everyone back to task, “that should be enough to stop any nobles trying to force a different match for their support. But... the support of the people is another matter. We need to know what happened -- if the Thunder Beast didn’t kill King Il… who did?”

Yona stares into empty space. She’s been avoiding this. To tell the truth… will be the truth. However, it will also put Soo-Won’s life at risk if he’s still alive. And on the one hand, yes, justice will be served. Yet… she can’t help but believe there’s still more to this story…

But Hak. If Hak is the one to suffer because she’s protecting Soo-Won, that’s not something she can live with. She can bear any amount of suffering she chooses because of Soo-Won. But she will never ask that of Hak. There is only one way forward now…

“Soo-Won murdered my father. I watched him do it with my own eyes,” Yona takes a breath before continuing, bringing that terrible night back into memory, “He had long plotted the regicide for the night of my sixteenth birthday party. And when I accidentally saw him do it… the Sky Tribe soldiers who’d taken his side tried to kill me, too. If it weren’t for Hak taking on dozens of men on his own to stop them, even fighting Soo-Won that night, I’d be in a grave next to my father right now.”

No one wants to speak. Those who didn’t outright already know had at least wondered. And they all, somewhere deep inside, already knew the truth.

“Were there any witnesses,” finally Joo-Doh gets back to business.

“I was there,” Min-Soo, who entered with Yona, steps forward from the back of the room, “There are wounds on my back as evidence. If you investigate, you’ll find the rate which they have healed lines up perfectly with the night in question.”

Joo-Doh sighs in frustration at the disturbing evidence, “Even this morning… I witnessed Sky Tribe soldiers raise a sword to the princess.”

“What?!” Kyo-Ga turns in shock.

“Yona…” Jae-Ha looks her way in concern.

“There’s no question now -- Soo-Won’s takeover was hostile and some of his people are still here,” Joo-Doh concedes.

“Well then,” Tae-Woo suggests, “instead of questioning Lord Hak’s honor, we should be praising him for saving the princess.”

“That boy,” Geun-Tae shoots a feral smile Hak’s way, “is a good man. And a terrifying warrior. I have no qualms following him as our king.”

“I trust Princess Yona’s judgment,” Kyo-Ga bows his head in full support.

“Then we have one final role to decide on,” Joo-Doh announces.

“Ah, yes,” Yona brightens, “the matter of Water Tribe Chief and General. There’s someone I would like to nominate,” Yona glances over at Lili encouragingly, “Late General Joon-Gi’s daughter An Lili. Please rise, Lili, and join us here at the table.”

The generals all turn in shock, not having expected that. Lili tries to stop the color in her face from rising as she finds her way to the Water Tribe chair. She takes a seat and the second she looks up she realizes she’s directly across from Geun-Tae.

“Lady Lili, I know you’re a very strong young woman from what I saw in Sei. Do you also know how to fight?”

“That--” Yona cuts in before Lili has to give the awkward answer, “--is not why I want her for this position. Lili has the respect of her tribe as well as has proven to me on multiple occasions she has the bravery, loyalty, and strategic leadership ability to solve the current struggles within her tribe. She’s already helped eradicate nadai -- a long overlooked plague on her people.”

“I can second that,” Jae-Ha chimes in from the sidelines, to Lili’s continued embarrassment.

Yona smiles at the support, then--

“Generals need to know how to fight,” Joo-Doh cuts in, “You’d be putting both she and her tribe in danger by doing this.”

“I do agree, General Joo-Doh. She should also understand the basics of fighting to be competent in her position. To that end, I’d like to appoint one of you to train her.”

Lili looks to Yona in anticipation.

“Tae-Woo,” Yona charges.

The air whooshes out of Lili. Tae-WHO? She didn’t even notice this person…

Tae-Woo doesn’t register Yona’s words at first. What? Then he looks around the room as though there was a mistake...

“It’s because Hak trained me so well, I figured the Wind boys have a knack for this sort of thing. Thanks to Mundok,” Yona glows in her advisor’s direction.

Mundok is absolutely getting a kick out of how lost Tae-Woo looks.

“I don’t like this,” Joo-Doh continues, “I can name five guys off the top of my head who’d be ready to fill the post.”

“And they’d all be exactly like you,” Yona presses, “A little diversity in our perspectives on war policy might be good for the country. There’s only one way to really find out.”

“Fine,” Joo-Doh grumbles, “If she can pass basic training by coronation, then… I'd be willing to try this out. But only if...”

“That’s insane,” Tae-Woo snaps forward, “warriors spend months to get to that level.”

“They don’t have personal trainers,” Geun-Tae considers, eating this up, “And definitely not one of the best warriors in the country as their personal trainer.”

“Lili,” Yona offers, “if this is asking too much…”

Lili shakes her head, “No! No… not at all. I’ll do my best,” she turns to Tae-Woo whose face is all disbelief of his bad, bad luck. Oh shit.

Off to the side, Hak, who has on purpose held his tongue the entire meeting, is beaming at Yona. Every goal she walked in here with, she either just achieved or significantly brought forward.

Once outside the meeting, Yona walks and walks until she’s in the garden next to the fountain she always goes to for privacy.

His hands on her shoulders. Her heart skips a beat.

Yona turns to face Hak, crying tears mixed of joy and sadness.

“Princess…” Hak isn’t sure how to take this. With one hand he pushes a lock of hair behind her ear while with the other he pulls her close, “What is it? You were amazing in there.”

“Your name…” she sobs out, “I’m so happy… I didn’t realize... how emotional… finally… everyone will get to know how great you are.”

He caresses her back, “You thinking that has always been enough for me. But hearing you talk about me that way in there,” he playfully lifts her chin and looks straight into her eyes. He’s about to finish, but -- their lips crush together, bodies heating at the emotion of the touch.

Within seconds, they’re on the ground, well-hidden by the surrounding tall grasses and flowers, intensely making out. Yona rolls her head back as Hak runs his mouth over her neckside. She's getting lost in the feel of him...

“Wait,” Yona can barely get the word out, her hands lost in his mess of dark hair, “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Hm?” Hak lifts his mouth from her and tries to calm himself.

“Whenever I’m with you, I’m so happy, I just want to… this,” she almost goes back for his lips, then catches herself, “but I need to talk to you. First.”

Hak, king of restraint, pulls himself away and sits down across from her to listen, “Is everything OK?”

Yona shakes her head ‘no.’ Hak’s expression darkens.

“Min-Soo decoded the message. Somehow… those guys knew I was pregnant. And were asking what to do... about it.”

Yona sees fear in his eyes -- the same she saw from in the morning. She places a hand over his. And then she can’t help it… because it’s their baby. Yona starts sobbing.

Hak pulls her tightly against his chest, his blue garments dampening from her tears. She can only imagine the fear on his face has morphed to a frightening anger now.

“Yona,” Shin-Ah shocks them both from nearby.

Yona looks up at the blue dragon, “...Shin-Ah?”

If he wasn’t wearing his mask, Shin-Ah would look shocked to see Yona’s blotched face from crying. He hesitates slightly before revealing, “Zeno and Kija are approaching.”

Yona gasps in relief, “They’re back!” but when she turns to face Hak it hits her:

They’re her liaisons with Soo-Won. And Hak doesn’t know Soo-Won is alive.

[justgotham]

This Monday, Fox’s pre-Batman drama series “Gotham” wraps its winter run with the full, ferocious return of Jerome. Now, fans of the show are undoubtedly excited about the development, but casual comic book types are likely asking a simple question. “Who the Hell is Jerome?”

This is what you’d call a problem.

For three years, “Gotham” has worked hard to prevent itself from committing to any one portrayal of the Joker – the Dark Knight’s indisputable arch nemesis and perhaps the fan favorite supervillain of all time. But over the past two seasons, the show has also elevated recurring guest star Cameron Monaghan’s unhinged, circus-born serial killer Jerome Valeska to a major foe. With pasty-white skin, an ear-to-ear grin and a cackle that could curdle blood, Jerome has been one of the most memorable additions to a show that’s often in desperate need of crowd-pleasing moments.

So why not just call him the Joker? Despite “Gotham’s” insistence that it’s entire run will be an origin story for the Batman’s world, there are plenty of reasons that this one particular piece be put in place now. Below, CBR runs down six reasons why turning Jerome into the purple-suited Clown Prince of Crime will make the character and the TV show stronger.

Joker’s Nonexistent Past Is Hardly Canon

It can be argued that there’s never been a definitive origin story for who the Joker was before he gained his repulsive rictus. But don’t believe people who tell you that the villain has never had or should never have an origin tale. It’s not just that “Detective Comics” #168’s legendary story “The Man Behind The Red Hood!” gave us the most accepted version of Joker’s “thrown in a vat of acid by Batman” origin (written by co-creator Bill Finger, no less). Over the years, dozens of comic creators have filled in bits of Joker’s backstory, from Alan Moore to J. Michael Straczynski, though they’ve often left specific details vague.

Only since Christopher Nolan’s film “The Dark Knight” have people embraced the idea of a Joker who aggressively denies any true past as canonical. This may have been inspired by his initial, origin-less appearances, but back then, such things simply weren’t stated — like most comic villains of the era. So anyone who claims that Jerome’s origin of murdering his mother before going kill-crazy breaks some kind of rule established by the villain’s creators is missing a whole lot.

More importantly, film and TV versions of the character have been happy to create the character’s full backstory when it suits them – most famously the “mobster who murdered Bruce Wayne’s parents” angle in Tim Burton’s classic 1989 “Batman” movie. And stories like that – while usually much more widely seen than any comic book – have done little to blunt the impact of the Joker as a character all his own. Nobody today expects that making Jerome the Joker full-on would somehow taint the character or irrevocably alter how he’s portrayed in the comics.

Every Other Faux-Joker On “Gotham” Has Failed

Aside from the “making Jerome the Joker wouldn’t really hurt the character” case, there are plenty of great reasons why making this happen is a positive thing. First and foremost is the fact that ever other attempt “Gotham” has made at channeling the Ace of Knaves has fallen way flat.

Longtime viewers of the show will recall that in its early episodes, “Gotham” peppered in “potential Jokers” all over the place from failing comedians to frustrated family men. It was such an awkward, story-killing bit of business that the producers soon dropped it all together from their creative arsenal. Later, when the series attempted to revive a piece of Joker canon with the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo-inspired Red Hood gang, the resulting mask mobsters were completely devoid of personality. Recent attempts to revive the Red Hood angle have fared no better.

Worst of all, since Jerome landed on the show and totally stole the scene from nearly every other plotline, the writers’ initial premise that his (since overturned) death would inspire mass insanity across the city has been a dropped ball. Even when they picked that idea back up as a way to reintroduce Jerome, the story pretty much went out of its way to show how no one would ever be as good as him.

So if the acid-squirting flower fits this guy so well, why not let him wear it?

Harley Quinn’s Impending Intro Is Flawless Timing

The producers of “Gotham” have made it no secret that they’ll be introducing their version of DC’s most popular female character later this season (sorry, Diana, but you know that Truth is Truth). But with some version of Harley Quinn in the offing, the big question becomes, what is there even worth doing with this character before there’s a Joker on the scene? In almost every major Harley story of all-time, the character is played as mild-mannered public servant until Joker unleashes the crazy within her. If “Gotham’s” past is any indication, their solution could be something as bland as a forgettable psychiatrist who occasionally says things like, “I can’t wear red lipstick…that’d be crazy!”

But putting Harley center stage right when Jerome steps into the real Joker role not only solves these problems, it opens up some scary good story directions. Imagine a season of the show where fans get to see the famous Harley origin story “Mad Love” writ large – a mash-up of “Natural Born Killers” and Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie where Jim Gordon and company are hopelessly outmatched? It leans into “Gotham’s” very best tendency for absurd action (and over-acting) rather than more lame attempts at making this madcap world feel “real” (whatever that means).

The Show Is At Its Best When It Goes Full Comic Book

Cementing the argument for Jerome as Joker is the fact that “Gotham” only really connects with the wider fandom when it fully embraces comic book identities. Remember when Ed Nygma was a nerdy annoyance who just said the word “Riddle” three times in a scene before being totally forgotten? That all ended when he finally was given motivation to strike back at Jim Gordon and went all-in planting Riddler-inspired clues and bombs across the city. Since then, the villain has been one of the most enjoyable members of the show’s ensemble.

And it’s not an accident that Oswald Cobblepot has remained both the most beloved member of the show’s cast at the same time as he’s been the only character graced with his comic book alter ego of the Penguin. From his crafty takeover of Gotham’s mayoralty to the way he’s weaseled through a crime world that considers him an outsider, this Oswald is virtually indistinguishable form his four-color counterpart. (Okay, maybe add 60 pounds, but otherwise…)

When you compare these fully fledged supervillain turns to the numerous also-rans in “Gotham’s” history (Balloonman, that awful Wall Street reinvention of Black Mask, the dead end Scarecrow story), it’s clear that the show’s creators find more fun to be had when tweaking comic book character’s identities – not just teasing them. At this point, Jerome doesn’t have to be quite the dapper danger we think of when we see the classic Joker. But giving him a name and a “first draft” version of the purple costume would feel earned after so much pussyfooting.

The Supervillain’s Influence Would Cement The Need For Batman

From the first episode of “Gotham,” the show has been caught in a massive Catch-22 scenario. If the series main plot is ostensibly about Jim Gordon and company’s attempts to be white knights in a city full of black-hearted crooks, how could it possibly end in a satisfying manner? On the one hand, Jim fails, and the entire show is a tragic waste of the audience’s time. On the other hand, if Gordon succeeds there’s actually no reason for Bruce to become Batman.

Watching the Joker fully rise up as a new kind of criminal threat alters this landscape in a way that truly prepares viewers for the birth of the Dark Knight. If Jerome takes charge in turning the show’s drab mobsters into insane supervillains, then Jim Gordon totally realigning the GCPD into a fighting force for good still comes up short without totally undercutting its ultimate redemption arc. Plus, the young Bruce Wayne will be given sufficient motivation for taking his quest for justice outside the law (right now, he’s got a pretty good example of police work being a righteous path in Jim). It’s a win-win for the show’s ultimate endgame.

This Show Needs the Lift That Joker Could Provide

Finally, “Gotham” needs to make Jerome the Joker because it needs to finally give people a reason to care about it. The Fox network is traditionally pretty shifty on supporting genre entertainment over the long haul, and while this DC series has fared better than the average “Dollhouse” due to its comic book roots, the show has slipped in the ratings compared to the rock-solid (and admittedly more forgiving) numbers its CW counterparts pull. With an impending “X-Men” TV series that Fox will own a bigger part of in the works, there’s no reason for the network to support the Batman’s world over many more seasons unless it delivers something big for ratings and buzz.

Plastering a fully-fledged Joker on the side of a bus at San Diego Comic-Con might seem like a shameless cash grab (because it would be!), but in the cold hard facts of the crowded superhero TV marketplace, it’s also a no-brainer.

Plus, for all the reasons explored above, adding the Joker to the show full time will be a major creative boon as well, and “Gotham” needs that more than any other show in years. While the series has undoubtedly improved from its absolutely wretched first season, it’s never gotten more than mediocre in quality. Jerome as the Joker provides the wild energy that the series has always flirted with and a marketing shot in the arm that could let this series go down as a worthy piece of Batman storytelling.

[manjushriwisdom]

Misconception About Buddhist and Buddhism ☸

Buddhists have to be vegetarians. Not so. Buddhists are directed not to kill or order others to kill for them. The Buddha ate meat.

Buddhists can’t defend themselves. No. Buddhists can use force to defend themselves or others and that includes deadly force.

The Dalai Lama is the “Buddhist Pope”. No. The Dalai Lama is the head monk of one order of Tibetan Buddhism and not even the largest one. He is famous in the west as the result of his exile from Tibet after the Chinese takeover of his country.

Only monks and nuns can become enlightened. No. Any human being has the potential for enlightenment. This is “Buddha Nature”.

Buddhists cannot have sex. Monks and nuns are celibate. Lay people can have all the sex they want. If this were not the case there would soon be no more Buddhists.

White people can’t be Buddhists. Nonsense. Buddhism started in India and moved into places like China and Japan just as Christianity started in the Middle East and moved into Europe.

Buddhism is one religion. Nope. Buddhism is even more fragmented and diverse than Christianity or Islam. Even within a single nation such as Japan there are many different Buddhist traditions.

Buddhism is one religion. Nope. Buddhism is even more fragmented and diverse than Christianity or Islam. Even within a single nation such as Japan there are many different Buddhist traditions.

Buddha is worshiped as a God. Buddhism is diverse and even within each tradition there exist differing levels of understanding. A shopkeeper may not meditate or study the suttas but may light incense or make offerings to a statue much the same way a Catholic might light a candle to the Virgin Mary.

Buddhists are atheists. No. Buddhism does not recognize a single personal God like Christians or Muslims. The truth is that a Buddhist can believe in one god, many gods or no gods.  It is irrelevant to the practice of Buddhism.

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

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Common Misunderstandings about Buddhism

Dr. Alexander Berzin

There are many different misunderstandings about Buddhism and they arise for many different reasons. Some are culturally specific, either to Western culture, or to Asian and other cultures that are influenced by modern Western thinking. Some come from other cultural areas, for instance traditional Chinese thinking. There can be misunderstanding that arises more in general, because of people’s disturbing emotions. There can also be misunderstandings that arise from just the fact that the material is difficult to understand. Misunderstanding can also arise because of teachers not explaining things clearly or leaving things unexplained, so that we project onto them what we think they mean. It could also be that the teachers themselves misunderstand the teachings, because not all teachers are fully qualified: many are sent to teach or asked to teach before being qualified. Also, even if teachers explain things clearly, we might not listen very well or, afterwards, we might not remember them correctly. Or we take poor notes and maybe never even read them again. Although there are so many misconceptions that arise in these ways, let’s try to clarify just some of the most commonly held ones about just a few general topics, although far more could be discussed.

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General Misunderstandings about Buddhism Itself

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

It’s a misunderstanding that Buddhism says there is something wrong with being happy. But our ordinary forms of happiness have shortcomings – they never last, they never satisfy and when they end, we always want more. If we have too much of something we like, such as our favorite food, we become tired of it and are unhappy to eat any more. So Buddhism teaches us to strive for the happiness that comes from being free from all these unsatisfactory situations. That doesn’t mean that the highest goal is to feel nothing. It means that there are many types of happiness, and what we usually experience, although better than unhappiness, is not the fullest level of happiness we can experience.

Thinking That Impermanence Has Only a Negative Connotation

It is a misunderstanding to think of impermanence in terms of it applying only to our ordinary happiness: it will come to an end and turn to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Impermanence also implies that any specific unhappy period in our lives will also come to an end. That leaves open the possibility of healing and taking advantage of new opportunities to improve our situation in life. Therefore, Buddhism offers an enormous number of methods to change our attitudes and outlook on life and, ultimately, to gain liberation and enlightenment. All such changes also follow from the basic principle of impermanence.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists.

Voidness doesn’t mean that at all. We project onto reality all sorts of impossible ways in which things exist – for instance, isolated and independent from everything else. We are unaware that everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else in a holistic, organic manner. Our habitual confusion about this causes our minds to make things appear to exist in impossible ways, like this website appearing to exist just as it is, all on its own, independently of the tens of thousands of hours of work of over a hundred people that produced it. This impossible way of existing doesn’t correspond to anything real. Voidness is the total absence of any actual referent that corresponds to our projection of impossible ways of existing. Nothing exists on its own; that doesn’t mean that nothing exists.

Misunderstandings about Ethics and Vows

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Buddhist ethics are based purely on developing discriminating awareness. We need to learn to discriminate between what’s constructive and what’s destructive, what will be beneficial and what will be harmful and then, through understanding, refrain from harmful, destructive behavior.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Obedience to Laws

Next, it’s a misunderstanding to regard Buddhist ethics as being based on obedience to laws, rather than based on discriminating awareness. In some cultures people take laws very seriously, and then they become quite inflexible: they don’t want to break the law. Whereas the Tibetans are quite relaxed in terms of the ethical guidelines. It doesn’t mean that they’re sloppy, but it means that in certain situations one has to use one’s discriminating awareness in terms of how you apply a guideline. What we’re trying to discriminate here is whether we are acting under the influence of a disturbing emotion or whether there is a constructive reason for our way of behaving.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

The point is that if you take a vow, you take the whole vow. You don’t take part of the vow. This is the way the vow is specified. If we can’t keep all the details of the vows, or of any particular vow, as specified in the text, then don’t take the vow. There’s no obligation to take the vow.

There is an alternative. In the abhidharma discussion about vows, there are three categories: There’s a vow in which you promise basically to refrain from something destructive. And then there’s something which is very difficult to translate – it’s literally an anti-vow. It’s a vow not to refrain from something destructive, for instance, killing. If you join the army, for instance, you might vow not to refrain from shooting when the enemy attacks. Then there is something in between: refraining from only part of what’s specified in a vow.

It’s this in-between category that we could apply here. For instance, in terms of the lay vow to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, if there are parts of the vow that we think that we can’t really keep, we could promise merely not to have sex with somebody else’s partner and not to use violence in sex, like raping someone or forcing someone to have sex. Making a promise like that is not actually the vow as specified in the texts. But it is far more positive, builds up more positive force – I prefer “positive force” rather than “merit,” and “negative force” rather than “sin” – so it builds up more positive force on our mental continuum than just refraining from that type of behavior. This doesn’t compromise the vow and yet becomes a very strong form of ethical practice.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

Misunderstandings about Rebirth

Because of Skipping Over Rebirth, Not Working on Our Destructive Behavior and Disturbing Emotions

This misconception of Buddhist ethics being humanistic – just don’t hurt others – often seems to come from premature emphasis on Mahayana practice, from thinking that we can skip over the initial and intermediate lam-rim stages. “Lam-rim” refers to the graded stages of the path to enlightenment. The initial level motivation is to avoid worse rebirths. Well, we don’t even believe in rebirth. The intermediate level is to avoid uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. Well, we still don’t believe in rebirth, so none of that really strikes us as important; we think, “Let’s skip over that.” But we’re attracted to the Mahayana teachings because, in many ways, they sound very much like some of our Western traditions of love, compassion, tolerance, generosity, charity, and so on. This sounds very nice, and so we’re attracted to that, skipping over or minimizing the importance of these initial two scopes

Not Taking Rebirth Seriously

A strong reason why many of us would rather skip over the initial scope teachings is because we think that rebirth doesn’t exist. After all, the emphasis in the initial scope is to avoid worse rebirths; therefore, we take refuge (put a positive direction in our life) and follow the laws of karma to avoid destructive behavior because it will bring us worse rebirths. We skip over that or de-emphasize it because we don’t believe in rebirth. And especially we certainly don’t believe in the hell realms and the clutching ghost (hungry ghost) realms, and the gods and the anti-gods. We think that they don’t really exist and that the descriptions in the Dharma texts are really just referring to psychological states of humans. That really is an injustice to the teachings and is a big misunderstanding.

Not Taking Seriously Rebirth in Non-Human, Non-Animal Life-Forms

I don’t want to go into tremendous detail here, but if we think of a mind, a mental continuum, whether ours or anybody else’s, there is no reason why it couldn’t experience the full spectrum of happiness and unhappiness and pleasure and pain, and not just a limited amount of that spectrum that is defined by the parameters of our body and our mind as a human. After all, this is the case with the various types of sensory perception. Some animals can see much further than we humans can; some can hear better, and so on. So why not that the boundaries in terms of the happiness, unhappiness, pleasure and pain that we can experience can also be extended and there would be an appropriate physical form as its basis, such as a hell body or a god body.

Reducing Other Life-Forms to Merely Human Psychological States

Even though we have in the presentation of karma that in a human life, we can have some aftereffects, some leftovers of previous lifetimes in these other realms – we experience things that are similar to what we had in those lifetimes; nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we can reduce the discussion of these other life forms that we and others can take simply to human psychological states. That’s shortchanging the teachings

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime.

Sanitizing Buddhism of Parts We Don’t Like

All of this underlines a much larger problem, a much larger misunderstanding about Dharma, which is to think that we can pick and choose within the teachings only what we like, and we can discard or ignore what we have trouble accepting: so-called “sanitized” Buddhism. We sanitize it or clean it of all the things that are difficult.

Thinking It Will Be Easy to Gain Another Precious Human Rebirth

Another misunderstanding is that, even if we do accept rebirth, to think that it’s going to be so easy to have a precious human rebirth again. We often think, “Yeah, yeah, I believe in rebirth, and of course I’m going to be a human again and of course I’m going to have all the opportunities to continue practicing,” and so on. That’s being very naive, very, very naive. Especially if we think of the amount of destructive behavior that we’ve committed, the amount of time that we’ve spent under the influence of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, selfishness, etc. – as compared to the amount of time that we’ve acted out of pure love and compassion, then it’s quite clear that it’s going to be very difficult to get a precious human rebirth next time.

Striving for a Precious Human Rebirth in Order to Continue to Be with Our Loved Ones

Another fallacy is striving to have a precious human rebirth so we can continue to be with our friends and family, because of attachment to them. Or even just thinking that if I attain a precious human rebirth again, of course I will meet with all my friends, relatives and loved ones again. That also is a misunderstanding. There are so many countless living beings and life forms. According to each of our karmic histories, we’re all going to be reborn in different situations. So there is absolutely no guarantee of what we’ll be reborn as or whom we will meet in our next lives. In fact, there’s a much greater possibility that it’s going to be a very long time before we encounter anyone again from this lifetime. We may; it’s not that it’s impossible. But it’s a misunderstanding to think it’s so easy or that it’s guaranteed

Thinking That We Are Bad and Deserve the Ripenings of Our Negative Karmic Potentials

Another point concerning karma and rebirth is that even if we accept that suffering in this lifetime is the ripening of negative karmic potentials built up in previous lives, we might think, “If I suffer, if something bad happens to me, I deserve it.” Or you deserve it, if it happened to you. The misunderstanding here is that it implies a solidly existent “me” who broke the law, is guilty and bad, and now is getting the punishment that I deserve. We place the blame, then, on “me” – this solid “me” who is so bad and now is being punished – because of misunderstanding the laws of karma, behavioral cause and effect.

Thinking That We’re Responsible for the Ripening of Others’ Karma

We then extend this concept of guilt to our role in the ripening of others’ karma. We don’t see that there are many factors and circumstances involved with experiencing the ripening of karma and each of them has its own causes. It’s a misunderstanding to think that I’m the cause for the ripening of other people’s karma. What they experience arises dependently on all of these factors, not just on me.

I’ll give an example. Suppose we’re hit by a car. It’s not because of what I did in a previous lifetime that causes the other person to hit me. If we think, “I’m karmically responsible for them hitting me,” that’s not correct. What we’re karmically responsible for is our experiencing being hit. That person’s karma is responsible for them hitting us with the car. Like this, what happens to us is the result of the interaction of many, many different karmic factors, as well as disturbing emotions and general factors – like the weather: it was raining, the road was slippery, etc., etc. They all network together to provide a circumstance in which we experience suffering or problems

Ignoring the Facts That Gurus Need to Be Qualified and Need to Inspire Us

Now about gurus, I think that’s a big area of misunderstanding, not only among Westerners. First of all, because of the emphasis on the importance of the guru, we tend to neglect the fact that the guru needs to be qualified – and there are lists of the qualifications. And even if the guru is qualified, we need to feel inspired by this person.

One of the main reasons for the importance of the spiritual teacher is that the teacher provides inspiration, the energy for us to practice, the model that we want to follow. We can get information from books, from the Internet, and so on. Of course the guru needs to answer our questions, and he or she also needs to be able to correct us when we are making mistakes in our meditation practice. But if the person doesn’t inspire us, we’re not going to get terribly far.

Accepting Someone as Our Guru without Proper Examination Beforehand

Because of that misunderstanding regarding that they really need to be qualified and they really need to inspire us, we’re in a rush to accept somebody as our guru without examining him or her fully or properly first. We feel pressured because of this emphasis: “You have to have a guru; you have to have a guru.” Then we risk the possibility of getting disillusioned when later we see objectively that he or she has faults. We didn’t examine properly. This is a big problem, because many scandals have arisen over spiritual teachers who either were rightly or wrongly accused of improper behavior. Sometimes they’re rightly accused of that; they weren’t really qualified and we might have felt pressured by this emphasis on the guru to accept this person as our guru. Then when we learn of these scandals involving our guru, we are devastated.

Thinking All Tibetans, Especially Monastics, and Especially Those with Titles Are Perfect Buddhists

As an auxiliary to this, it’s a misunderstanding to think that all Tibetans; or, more limited, all monks and nuns; or, even more limited, all Rinpoches, Geshes and Khenpos are perfect examples of Buddhist practice. That’s a very common misunderstanding. We think, “They must be perfect Buddhists: they’re Tibetan,” or “Perfect Buddhists: they’re wearing robes.” “Perfect Buddhists: they have a title of Rinpoche. They must be an enlightened being.” This is very naive. Most of them are just regular people.

There might be a larger proportion of practicing Buddhists among the Tibetans than in most societies and there may be certain Buddhist values that are part of their culture; but that doesn’t mean that they’re all perfect, by any means. And if one becomes a monk or a nun, there can be many reasons. Among the Tibetans, it could be that the family put you in a monastery as a child because they couldn’t feed you, and you would get food and an education. It could be for a more self-motivated reason – that I have problems and I need the discipline of the monastic life in order to overcome these problems.

As one of my Rinpoche friends explained, “Wearing the robes is a sign that I really need this discipline, because I’m a very undisciplined person and have a lot of disturbing emotions and I really am putting full effort into overcoming them.” That doesn’t mean that they have overcome them. So we shouldn’t naively think that they are all enlightened, especially with these Rinpoches. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says: “To just rely on a big name of a predecessor is really a big mistake.” He emphasizes that these Rinpoches in this lifetime have to demonstrate and prove their qualifications, not just rely on the reputation of their name.

Not Respecting Monks and Nuns, Making Them Serve the Laypeople

On the other hand, it’s a misunderstanding not to respect and support monks and nuns, but rather to make them into the servants of laypeople at Dharma centers. It often happens that there’s a Dharma center and it has a resident monk or nun. This monk or nun has to clean the center, tidy up and fix everything for the teachings, collect the fees and so on. And if it’s a residential center, they have to take care of the accommodations and all those sorts of things when there’s a weekend course and can’t even attend the teachings because they’re so busy. It’s as if the laypeople think that these monastics are their servants.

It should be just the other way around. As monks or nuns, they are very deserving of respect, regardless of what level their ethics are. It is part of the teachings concerning safe direction or refuge in the Sangha: one respects even the robes. That doesn’t mean that you think that they’re perfect and are naive about it. But a certain respect needs to be shown.

Imagining the Guru Is Literally an Infallible Buddha and Giving Up All Responsibility for Our Lives

Also there’s a big misunderstanding about this so-called term “guru devotion.” I think it’s not such a helpful translation, because it seems to imply almost blind guru worship, like in a cult. That’s a big misunderstanding. The term that is used here for the relation with the spiritual teacher means to rely on and trust someone like we would rely on and trust a qualified doctor. So the same term is used for our relation with our doctor as is with our guru. But because of the instruction to see the guru as a Buddha, we misunderstand and think that the teacher is infallible and so we have to have unquestioning obedience to him or her, like in a cult. That’s a mistake. Because of that, we give up all our critical faculties and responsibility for ourselves, and we become dependent on asking for a mo (dice divination) – throw the dice and make all our decisions for us.

We are aiming to become Buddhas ourselves, to develop the discriminating awareness to be able to make intelligent compassionate decisions ourselves. So if a teacher is just aiming to make us dependent on him or her, like in a power trip, there’s something wrong. It’s a misunderstanding to think that this is okay and to go along with it. To play into this type of power and control syndrome with a teacher is not following the guidelines properly.

Projecting onto the Guru the Role of a Therapist or Pastor

It’s also a misunderstanding to project onto a Buddhist teacher the role of a pastor or a therapist with whom we discuss our personal problems and seek advice. That’s not the role of a Buddhist spiritual teacher. A Buddhist spiritual teacher traditionally gives the teachings, and it’s up to us to figure out how to apply them. It’s really only appropriate to ask about questions regarding our understanding of the teachings and about our meditation practice.

If you have psychological problems, you go to a therapist; you don’t go to your spiritual teacher. And especially what’s inappropriate is to discuss marital or relationship problems or sexual problems with a monk or a nun. They’re celibate. They’re not involved in that. These are not the people to ask about these types of problems. But, coming from a tradition that has pastors, priests, and rabbis, we expect that they’re going to take on this general pastoral function of guiding us through difficult times in our personal lives.

I’ll give an example. I was with my spiritual teacher Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche for nine years, very closely, most of the time, every day. Never in those nine years did he ask me a personal question. Never. About my personal life. About my family. About my background. Nothing. It was all day-to-day in terms of either him teaching me, or my working with him to benefit others – to translate for him, or arrange his travels, or whatever. So it was a very different type of relationship than what we are used to in the West and not one that is easy for us to understand.

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Common Misunderstandings about Buddhism

Dr. Alexander Berzin

There are many different misunderstandings about Buddhism and they arise for many different reasons. Some are culturally specific, either to Western culture, or to Asian and other cultures that are influenced by modern Western thinking. Some come from other cultural areas, for instance traditional Chinese thinking. There can be misunderstanding that arises more in general, because of people’s disturbing emotions. There can also be misunderstandings that arise from just the fact that the material is difficult to understand. Misunderstanding can also arise because of teachers not explaining things clearly or leaving things unexplained, so that we project onto them what we think they mean. It could also be that the teachers themselves misunderstand the teachings, because not all teachers are fully qualified: many are sent to teach or asked to teach before being qualified. Also, even if teachers explain things clearly, we might not listen very well or, afterwards, we might not remember them correctly. Or we take poor notes and maybe never even read them again. Although there are so many misconceptions that arise in these ways, let’s try to clarify just some of the most commonly held ones about just a few general topics, although far more could be discussed.

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General Misunderstandings about Buddhism Itself

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

It’s a misunderstanding that Buddhism says there is something wrong with being happy. But our ordinary forms of happiness have shortcomings – they never last, they never satisfy and when they end, we always want more. If we have too much of something we like, such as our favorite food, we become tired of it and are unhappy to eat any more. So Buddhism teaches us to strive for the happiness that comes from being free from all these unsatisfactory situations. That doesn’t mean that the highest goal is to feel nothing. It means that there are many types of happiness, and what we usually experience, although better than unhappiness, is not the fullest level of happiness we can experience.

Thinking That Impermanence Has Only a Negative Connotation

It is a misunderstanding to think of impermanence in terms of it applying only to our ordinary happiness: it will come to an end and turn to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Impermanence also implies that any specific unhappy period in our lives will also come to an end. That leaves open the possibility of healing and taking advantage of new opportunities to improve our situation in life. Therefore, Buddhism offers an enormous number of methods to change our attitudes and outlook on life and, ultimately, to gain liberation and enlightenment. All such changes also follow from the basic principle of impermanence.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists.

Voidness doesn’t mean that at all. We project onto reality all sorts of impossible ways in which things exist – for instance, isolated and independent from everything else. We are unaware that everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else in a holistic, organic manner. Our habitual confusion about this causes our minds to make things appear to exist in impossible ways, like this website appearing to exist just as it is, all on its own, independently of the tens of thousands of hours of work of over a hundred people that produced it. This impossible way of existing doesn’t correspond to anything real. Voidness is the total absence of any actual referent that corresponds to our projection of impossible ways of existing. Nothing exists on its own; that doesn’t mean that nothing exists.

Misunderstandings about Ethics and Vows

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Buddhist ethics are based purely on developing discriminating awareness. We need to learn to discriminate between what’s constructive and what’s destructive, what will be beneficial and what will be harmful and then, through understanding, refrain from harmful, destructive behavior.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Obedience to Laws

Next, it’s a misunderstanding to regard Buddhist ethics as being based on obedience to laws, rather than based on discriminating awareness. In some cultures people take laws very seriously, and then they become quite inflexible: they don’t want to break the law. Whereas the Tibetans are quite relaxed in terms of the ethical guidelines. It doesn’t mean that they’re sloppy, but it means that in certain situations one has to use one’s discriminating awareness in terms of how you apply a guideline. What we’re trying to discriminate here is whether we are acting under the influence of a disturbing emotion or whether there is a constructive reason for our way of behaving.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

The point is that if you take a vow, you take the whole vow. You don’t take part of the vow. This is the way the vow is specified. If we can’t keep all the details of the vows, or of any particular vow, as specified in the text, then don’t take the vow. There’s no obligation to take the vow.

There is an alternative. In the abhidharma discussion about vows, there are three categories: There’s a vow in which you promise basically to refrain from something destructive. And then there’s something which is very difficult to translate – it’s literally an anti-vow. It’s a vow not to refrain from something destructive, for instance, killing. If you join the army, for instance, you might vow not to refrain from shooting when the enemy attacks. Then there is something in between: refraining from only part of what’s specified in a vow.

It’s this in-between category that we could apply here. For instance, in terms of the lay vow to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, if there are parts of the vow that we think that we can’t really keep, we could promise merely not to have sex with somebody else’s partner and not to use violence in sex, like raping someone or forcing someone to have sex. Making a promise like that is not actually the vow as specified in the texts. But it is far more positive, builds up more positive force – I prefer “positive force” rather than “merit,” and “negative force” rather than “sin” – so it builds up more positive force on our mental continuum than just refraining from that type of behavior. This doesn’t compromise the vow and yet becomes a very strong form of ethical practice.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

Misunderstandings about Rebirth

Because of Skipping Over Rebirth, Not Working on Our Destructive Behavior and Disturbing Emotions

This misconception of Buddhist ethics being humanistic – just don’t hurt others – often seems to come from premature emphasis on Mahayana practice, from thinking that we can skip over the initial and intermediate lam-rim stages. “Lam-rim” refers to the graded stages of the path to enlightenment. The initial level motivation is to avoid worse rebirths. Well, we don’t even believe in rebirth. The intermediate level is to avoid uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. Well, we still don’t believe in rebirth, so none of that really strikes us as important; we think, “Let’s skip over that.” But we’re attracted to the Mahayana teachings because, in many ways, they sound very much like some of our Western traditions of love, compassion, tolerance, generosity, charity, and so on. This sounds very nice, and so we’re attracted to that, skipping over or minimizing the importance of these initial two scopes.

In doing so, we also skip over an important part of their content, namely working on overcoming our destructive behavior and disturbing emotions and attitudes because they’re self-destructive. We just plunge into trying to help others. That’s a mistake. Even though it’s important to emphasize Mahayana, it has to be on the basis of the initial and intermediate scopes. We have to first work on our destructive behavior and disturbing emotions, since they interfere severely with our trying to help others.

Not Taking Rebirth Seriously

A strong reason why many of us would rather skip over the initial scope teachings is because we think that rebirth doesn’t exist. After all, the emphasis in the initial scope is to avoid worse rebirths; therefore, we take refuge (put a positive direction in our life) and follow the laws of karma to avoid destructive behavior because it will bring us worse rebirths. We skip over that or de-emphasize it because we don’t believe in rebirth. And especially we certainly don’t believe in the hell realms and the clutching ghost (hungry ghost) realms, and the gods and the anti-gods. We think that they don’t really exist and that the descriptions in the Dharma texts are really just referring to psychological states of humans. That really is an injustice to the teachings and is a big misunderstanding.

Not Taking Seriously Rebirth in Non-Human, Non-Animal Life-Forms

I don’t want to go into tremendous detail here, but if we think of a mind, a mental continuum, whether ours or anybody else’s, there is no reason why it couldn’t experience the full spectrum of happiness and unhappiness and pleasure and pain, and not just a limited amount of that spectrum that is defined by the parameters of our body and our mind as a human. After all, this is the case with the various types of sensory perception. Some animals can see much further than we humans can; some can hear better, and so on. So why not that the boundaries in terms of the happiness, unhappiness, pleasure and pain that we can experience can also be extended and there would be an appropriate physical form as its basis, such as a hell body or a god body.

Reducing Other Life-Forms to Merely Human Psychological States

Even though we have in the presentation of karma that in a human life, we can have some aftereffects, some leftovers of previous lifetimes in these other realms – we experience things that are similar to what we had in those lifetimes; nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we can reduce the discussion of these other life forms that we and others can take simply to human psychological states. That’s shortchanging the teachings.

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime.

Misunderstandings about Dharma

Sanitizing Buddhism of Parts We Don’t Like

All of this underlines a much larger problem, a much larger misunderstanding about Dharma, which is to think that we can pick and choose within the teachings only what we like, and we can discard or ignore what we have trouble accepting: so-called “sanitized” Buddhism. We sanitize it or clean it of all the things that are difficult.

When we hear these stories about karma with elephants that go under the earth and that excrete gold, and all these other things, we think, “Oh come on! Those are fairy tales for children!” We don’t see that there’s some lesson in them. Whether or not we take them literally as some Tibetans do is not the point. The point is not to dismiss them; they are part of the teachings. Another example is in the Mahayana sutras, where the Buddhas are teaching hundreds of millions of beings; and there are hundreds of millions of Buddhas attending; and in every pore of every Buddha, another hundred million; and so on. Often we’re embarrassed about them and, saying, “This is too weird,” we don’t accept them as parts of the Dharma.

The problem here is picking and choosing the parts of Buddhism that we like. There are certain tantric and bodhisattva vows against discarding certain Buddhist teachings or claiming that they are inauthentic; in other words, just taking parts of the teachings and ignoring others, just taking what we like. If we’re going to accept Buddhism as our spiritual path, we at least need to be open enough to say, “I don’t understand this teaching,” even if it sounds very weird to us, and “I will hold off judgment on it until I get a deeper explanation and better understanding.” It’s important not to close our minds and dismiss them.

Thinking It Will Be Easy to Gain Another Precious Human Rebirth

Another misunderstanding is that, even if we do accept rebirth, to think that it’s going to be so easy to have a precious human rebirth again. We often think, “Yeah, yeah, I believe in rebirth, and of course I’m going to be a human again and of course I’m going to have all the opportunities to continue practicing,” and so on. That’s being very naive, very, very naive. Especially if we think of the amount of destructive behavior that we’ve committed, the amount of time that we’ve spent under the influence of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, selfishness, etc. – as compared to the amount of time that we’ve acted out of pure love and compassion, then it’s quite clear that it’s going to be very difficult to get a precious human rebirth next time.

Striving for a Precious Human Rebirth in Order to Continue to Be with Our Loved Ones

Another fallacy is striving to have a precious human rebirth so we can continue to be with our friends and family, because of attachment to them. Or even just thinking that if I attain a precious human rebirth again, of course I will meet with all my friends, relatives and loved ones again. That also is a misunderstanding. There are so many countless living beings and life forms. According to each of our karmic histories, we’re all going to be reborn in different situations. So there is absolutely no guarantee of what we’ll be reborn as or whom we will meet in our next lives. In fact, there’s a much greater possibility that it’s going to be a very long time before we encounter anyone again from this lifetime. We may; it’s not that it’s impossible. But it’s a misunderstanding to think it’s so easy or that it’s guaranteed.

Misunderstandings about Karma

Thinking That We Are Bad and Deserve the Ripenings of Our Negative Karmic Potentials

Another point concerning karma and rebirth is that even if we accept that suffering in this lifetime is the ripening of negative karmic potentials built up in previous lives, we might think, “If I suffer, if something bad happens to me, I deserve it.” Or you deserve it, if it happened to you. The misunderstanding here is that it implies a solidly existent “me” who broke the law, is guilty and bad, and now is getting the punishment that I deserve. We place the blame, then, on “me” – this solid “me” who is so bad and now is being punished – because of misunderstanding the laws of karma, behavioral cause and effect.

Thinking That We’re Responsible for the Ripening of Others’ Karma

We then extend this concept of guilt to our role in the ripening of others’ karma. We don’t see that there are many factors and circumstances involved with experiencing the ripening of karma and each of them has its own causes. It’s a misunderstanding to think that I’m the cause for the ripening of other people’s karma. What they experience arises dependently on all of these factors, not just on me.

I’ll give an example. Suppose we’re hit by a car. It’s not because of what I did in a previous lifetime that causes the other person to hit me. If we think, “I’m karmically responsible for them hitting me,” that’s not correct. What we’re karmically responsible for is our experiencing being hit. That person’s karma is responsible for them hitting us with the car. Like this, what happens to us is the result of the interaction of many, many different karmic factors, as well as disturbing emotions and general factors – like the weather: it was raining, the road was slippery, etc., etc. They all network together to provide a circumstance in which we experience suffering or problems.

Misunderstandings about Gurus

Ignoring the Facts That Gurus Need to Be Qualified and Need to Inspire Us

Now about gurus, I think that’s a big area of misunderstanding, not only among Westerners. First of all, because of the emphasis on the importance of the guru, we tend to neglect the fact that the guru needs to be qualified – and there are lists of the qualifications. And even if the guru is qualified, we need to feel inspired by this person.

One of the main reasons for the importance of the spiritual teacher is that the teacher provides inspiration, the energy for us to practice, the model that we want to follow. We can get information from books, from the Internet, and so on. Of course the guru needs to answer our questions, and he or she also needs to be able to correct us when we are making mistakes in our meditation practice. But if the person doesn’t inspire us, we’re not going to get terribly far.

Accepting Someone as Our Guru without Proper Examination Beforehand

Because of that misunderstanding regarding that they really need to be qualified and they really need to inspire us, we’re in a rush to accept somebody as our guru without examining him or her fully or properly first. We feel pressured because of this emphasis: “You have to have a guru; you have to have a guru.” Then we risk the possibility of getting disillusioned when later we see objectively that he or she has faults. We didn’t examine properly. This is a big problem, because many scandals have arisen over spiritual teachers who either were rightly or wrongly accused of improper behavior. Sometimes they’re rightly accused of that; they weren’t really qualified and we might have felt pressured by this emphasis on the guru to accept this person as our guru. Then when we learn of these scandals involving our guru, we are devastated.

Thinking All Tibetans, Especially Monastics, and Especially Those with Titles Are Perfect Buddhists

As an auxiliary to this, it’s a misunderstanding to think that all Tibetans; or, more limited, all monks and nuns; or, even more limited, all Rinpoches, Geshes and Khenpos are perfect examples of Buddhist practice. That’s a very common misunderstanding. We think, “They must be perfect Buddhists: they’re Tibetan,” or “Perfect Buddhists: they’re wearing robes.” “Perfect Buddhists: they have a title of Rinpoche. They must be an enlightened being.” This is very naive. Most of them are just regular people.

There might be a larger proportion of practicing Buddhists among the Tibetans than in most societies and there may be certain Buddhist values that are part of their culture; but that doesn’t mean that they’re all perfect, by any means. And if one becomes a monk or a nun, there can be many reasons. Among the Tibetans, it could be that the family put you in a monastery as a child because they couldn’t feed you, and you would get food and an education. It could be for a more self-motivated reason – that I have problems and I need the discipline of the monastic life in order to overcome these problems.

As one of my Rinpoche friends explained, “Wearing the robes is a sign that I really need this discipline, because I’m a very undisciplined person and have a lot of disturbing emotions and I really am putting full effort into overcoming them.” That doesn’t mean that they have overcome them. So we shouldn’t naively think that they are all enlightened, especially with these Rinpoches. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says: “To just rely on a big name of a predecessor is really a big mistake.” He emphasizes that these Rinpoches in this lifetime have to demonstrate and prove their qualifications, not just rely on the reputation of their name.

Not Respecting Monks and Nuns, Making Them Serve the Laypeople

On the other hand, it’s a misunderstanding not to respect and support monks and nuns, but rather to make them into the servants of laypeople at Dharma centers. It often happens that there’s a Dharma center and it has a resident monk or nun. This monk or nun has to clean the center, tidy up and fix everything for the teachings, collect the fees and so on. And if it’s a residential center, they have to take care of the accommodations and all those sorts of things when there’s a weekend course and can’t even attend the teachings because they’re so busy. It’s as if the laypeople think that these monastics are their servants.

It should be just the other way around. As monks or nuns, they are very deserving of respect, regardless of what level their ethics are. It is part of the teachings concerning safe direction or refuge in the Sangha: one respects even the robes. That doesn’t mean that you think that they’re perfect and are naive about it. But a certain respect needs to be shown.

Imagining the Guru Is Literally an Infallible Buddha and Giving Up All Responsibility for Our Lives

Also there’s a big misunderstanding about this so-called term “guru devotion.” I think it’s not such a helpful translation, because it seems to imply almost blind guru worship, like in a cult. That’s a big misunderstanding. The term that is used here for the relation with the spiritual teacher means to rely on and trust someone like we would rely on and trust a qualified doctor. So the same term is used for our relation with our doctor as is with our guru. But because of the instruction to see the guru as a Buddha, we misunderstand and think that the teacher is infallible and so we have to have unquestioning obedience to him or her, like in a cult. That’s a mistake. Because of that, we give up all our critical faculties and responsibility for ourselves, and we become dependent on asking for a mo (dice divination) – throw the dice and make all our decisions for us.

We are aiming to become Buddhas ourselves, to develop the discriminating awareness to be able to make intelligent compassionate decisions ourselves. So if a teacher is just aiming to make us dependent on him or her, like in a power trip, there’s something wrong. It’s a misunderstanding to think that this is okay and to go along with it. To play into this type of power and control syndrome with a teacher is not following the guidelines properly.

Projecting onto the Guru the Role of a Therapist or Pastor

It’s also a misunderstanding to project onto a Buddhist teacher the role of a pastor or a therapist with whom we discuss our personal problems and seek advice. That’s not the role of a Buddhist spiritual teacher. A Buddhist spiritual teacher traditionally gives the teachings, and it’s up to us to figure out how to apply them. It’s really only appropriate to ask about questions regarding our understanding of the teachings and about our meditation practice.

If you have psychological problems, you go to a therapist; you don’t go to your spiritual teacher. And especially what’s inappropriate is to discuss marital or relationship problems or sexual problems with a monk or a nun. They’re celibate. They’re not involved in that. These are not the people to ask about these types of problems. But, coming from a tradition that has pastors, priests, and rabbis, we expect that they’re going to take on this general pastoral function of guiding us through difficult times in our personal lives.

I’ll give an example. I was with my spiritual teacher Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche for nine years, very closely, most of the time, every day. Never in those nine years did he ask me a personal question. Never. About my personal life. About my family. About my background. Nothing. It was all day-to-day in terms of either him teaching me, or my working with him to benefit others – to translate for him, or arrange his travels, or whatever. So it was a very different type of relationship than what we are used to in the West and not one that is easy for us to understand.

Trivializing Taking Refuge — Putting a Safe Direction in Our Lives

In terms of working with the teacher, it brings us to the topic of refuge, which I like to call “safe direction.” It’s putting a safe direction in our lives, as indicated by the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. It’s a misunderstanding of refuge to trivialize it into merely joining a club. You cut a little piece of your hair, get a red string to tie around your neck, a Tibetan name, and now you’ve joined the club. This is especially a problem when, because the teacher is from a specific Tibetan lineage, we consider the club we’re joining to be a specific lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, rather than Buddhism in general: “Now I’ve become a Gelugpa.” “Now I’ve become a Karma Kagyu.” “Now I’ve become a Nyingma.” “Now I’ve become a Sakya.” Rather than: “Now I’m following the path of the Buddha.” Because of this misunderstanding, we become sectarian, exclusivist, and never go to another Dharma center except the one we’ve joined. It’s really quite amazing how most Western Buddhist practitioners who go to Dharma centers go to only one and will never step foot in another.

Every Teacher Who Comes to the West Needing to Set Up Their Own Dharma Center and Organization

What’s even more confusing is that every traditional teacher that comes to the West seems to want to set up their own Dharma center and their own organization. This is a big mistake, I feel, because then the situation becomes unsustainable. You can’t sustain 400 different brands of Buddhism indefinitely in the future. Moreover, it’s very confusing for new students. Also it’s a big financial drain and burden to support all these places with their altars and their libraries, and paying rent, and so on, and so on. In Tibet, although many different teachers came from India and Nepal and many different monasteries were established, eventually they came together and formed distinct groups. They were not the same groups that you had in India – you didn’t have Kagyu or Sakya in India – but they amalgamated into groups that then became sustainable and which brought together various lineages.

So even though we have large organizations in Western Dharma, such as those started by Trungpa Rinpoche, Sogyal Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, etc., we need to think about groups coming together to form larger lineages, as happened in Tibet. But in doing this, there are two extremes we need to avoid. One is if Western Buddhism is too fragmented, it doesn’t work. On the other hand, if it’s too regulated, that also doesn’t work. So great care is needed. But I think sustainability is a big issue.

Thinking That If We Have a Teacher, We Can’t Study with Other Teachers

In terms of not going to other Dharma centers, it’s also a misunderstanding to think that we can’t study with other teachers, even from within our own teacher’s lineage. Most Tibetans have several teachers, not just one. It’s recorded that Atisha, for instance, had 155 teachers. Different teachers have different specialties. One is good at explaining this; one is good at explaining that. One has this lineage; one has that lineage. It’s not being disloyal to your teacher to have many teachers. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: we can look at our teachers like the 11-headed Avalokiteshvara, each teacher is like a different face, and all of them together constitute one body for our spiritual guidance.

Having Several Teachers That Are Disharmonious with Each Other

It’s very important, then, not to take several teachers that conflict with each other. That doesn’t work. You have to find teachers that have a good – what’s called dam-tshig in Tibetan – a close bond with each other and are harmonious with each other. This is because, unfortunately, such things happen as what sometimes we call “spiritual star wars” between various spiritual teachers that disagree very violently about certain issues – whether it’s protectors, or who’s the real Karmapa, or whatever. So if you’re going to have more than one teacher, choose teachers that are harmonious with each other.

Thinking That Just Listening to a Lecture Makes the Speaker Your Spiritual Teacher

It is also essential here to realize that just to listen to a lecture by a Buddhist teacher doesn’t automatically make this person your spiritual teacher with all the implications of guru devotion, although of course we need to show the person respect. As His Holiness says, “You can go to anybody’s teaching and attend it just as a lecture, as you would a university lecture.” It doesn’t imply anything further than that.

Not Combining Study and Practice

As for practice, it’s a misunderstanding to think that the Gelug tradition is purely a study lineage and Kagyu and Nyingma are purely practice lineages. Because of that naivety, we might imagine that if we’re following one of them, we neglect the other aspect – we neglect our study or we neglect our meditation. When teachers emphasize one or the other of these – study or meditation – that doesn’t mean that we do just one and ignore the other. It’s quite clear that we need both of them.

Recently, in an audience with the group of Westerners who had studied at the library in Dharamsala in the ’70s and ’80s, His Holiness the Dalai Lama used a very nice example. He said that tantra, mahamudra, dzogchen and such advanced practices are like fingers on a hand. The palm of the hand, the base, are the teachings of the Indian tradition from Nalanda Monastery, the teachings of the Indian Nalanda masters on sutra. The misunderstanding is to put too much emphasis on the fingers. Sometimes teachers do that, he said, they put too much emphasis on the fingers. They have their students study and practice only the fingers and forget about the hand. The fingers extend out from the hand and are not functional on their own. This was the image, the analogy that His Holiness used, and I think that is very helpful advice. It’s a misunderstanding to think, “All I have to do is practice dzogchen; just sit and be natural.” To do like that is oversimplifying these types of teachings without having the basis.

Thinking We Are Milarepas and Need to Go into Lifetime Meditation Retreat

Similarly, it’s a misunderstanding to think that we are Milarepas and that everyone – specifically, we ourselves – need to go into a lifelong retreat, or at least do a three-year retreat. Only a few people are suited for a life of full-time meditation; most need to involve themselves in social welfare. This is directly the advice of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It’s very, very rare that we really are suited for a lifetime of meditation retreat or that we can seriously benefit from a three-year retreat without just sort of sitting there and repeating mantras for three years, but not really working on ourselves on a deep level

Thinking We Can Become Enlightened by Just Meditating in Our Spare Time

Of course intensive full-time Dharma practice is necessary for becoming liberated or enlightened, and it’s a mistake to overestimate that we can accomplish liberation and enlightenment without that full-time practice. We think, “Well, I can just practice in my spare time and I’m going to become liberated and enlightened.” That also is a misunderstanding. But it is also a mistake not to be objective with ourselves and about our capacity to be able to do that intensive practice now. This is because what happens is that, if we push ourselves and we really aren’t able to do this type of practice, we really become very frustrated. We get what the Tibetans call lung, frustrated nervous energy, and it really messes us up psychologically, emotionally, and physically

Not Thinking Realistically That It Will Take Eons of Lifetimes to Reach Enlightenment

This also ties in a little bit with not believing in rebirth, because if we don’t believe in rebirth, we’re not looking seriously in terms of longtime goals after many, many eons of practice. There is the teaching that says it is possible to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to think, “We only have this lifetime, because there is no rebirth,” and therefore pushing ourselves beyond what we’re able to do at the moment.

Underestimating the Importance of Sustained Daily Practice

Also, looking at the other side of this, it’s a mistake to underestimate the importance of daily meditation practice. It is very important, if we are going to sustain our Dharma practice, to have a daily meditation routine. There are many, many benefits of that in terms of discipline, commitment, stability in our lives and dependability: no matter what, we’re going to meditate every day. If we are serious about building up more beneficial habits, which is what meditation is all about, we need to practice.

Thinking That to Practice Dharma Properly We Need to Follow Tibetan Customs

Another misunderstanding is to think that to practice Dharma properly we need to follow Tibetan or other forms of Asian customs, like having an elaborate Tibetan-style altar in our personal “shrine room” in our homes or even in a Dharma center. Many Tibetan teachers who come to the West do, of course, like to establish a Dharma center and decorate it like a Tibetan temple with the walls painted in the same way and decorated with scroll paintings and so on.

As my Tibetan friends would say, “If you Western people like it, why not? There’s no harm.” But to think that it’s absolutely necessary to decorate like that is a big mistake. Especially when it’s at a tremendous expense, in which the money could be used much more beneficially in other ways. So whether this is at a Dharma center or in our homes, we don’t need some elaborate set-up, Tibetan-style, in order to practice Tibetan Buddhism. So long as the room in which we meditate is tidy, clean and, in this way, respectful of what we are doing, this is enough.

Thinking That Ridding Ourselves of Disturbing Emotions Will Happen Quickly

Although the main emphasis in Dharma is eliminating forever the causes of suffering – namely our ignorance or unawareness about reality and our disturbing emotions, it’s a misunderstanding to think that overcoming disturbing emotions will happen quickly. We easily forget that only when we become an arhat, a liberated being, will we be completely free of anger, attachment and so on, although on the way we’ll have them to a lesser extent. If we forget this, we become discouraged when we still get angry after years of practice. This is a very common occurrence.

It’s a mistake, then, not to have patience with ourselves. We need to realize that Dharma practice goes up and down, just as samsara goes up and down. Over the long term, we could hope for improvement, but it’s not going to be so easy. So it’s a mistake not to have patience with ourselves when we do have the down periods. But on the other hand, we need to avoid the extreme of being too permissive with our negative habits and being lax or lazy about working on ourselves. A middle path here is not beating ourselves when we still get angry, but on the other hand not just saying, “I feel angry,” or “I’m in a bad mood,” and not trying to apply some Dharma method for overcoming it.

It’s very interesting to see what we turn to for relief when we’re in a bad mood. Do I turn to meditation? Do I turn to refuge? Or do I turn to chocolate, or sex, or the television, or chatting with my friends or surfing the Internet? What do I turn to? I think that’s very revealing of our Dharma practice – how we deal with being in bad moods.

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Misconception About Buddhist and Buddhism ☸

Buddhists have to be vegetarians. Not so. Buddhists are directed not to kill or order others to kill for them. The Buddha ate meat.

Buddhists can’t defend themselves. No. Buddhists can use force to defend themselves or others and that includes deadly force.

The Dalai Lama is the “Buddhist Pope”. No. The Dalai Lama is the head monk of one order of Tibetan Buddhism and not even the largest one. He is famous in the west as the result of his exile from Tibet after the Chinese takeover of his country.

Only monks and nuns can become enlightened. No. Any human being has the potential for enlightenment. This is “Buddha Nature”.

Buddhists cannot have sex. Monks and nuns are celibate. Lay people can have all the sex they want. If this were not the case there would soon be no more Buddhists.

White people can’t be Buddhists. Nonsense. Buddhism started in India and moved into places like China and Japan just as Christianity started in the Middle East and moved into Europe.

Buddhism is one religion. Nope. Buddhism is even more fragmented and diverse than Christianity or Islam. Even within a single nation such as Japan there are many different Buddhist traditions.

Buddhism is one religion. Nope. Buddhism is even more fragmented and diverse than Christianity or Islam. Even within a single nation such as Japan there are many different Buddhist traditions.

Buddha is worshiped as a God. Buddhism is diverse and even within each tradition there exist differing levels of understanding. A shopkeeper may not meditate or study the suttas but may light incense or make offerings to a statue much the same way a Catholic might light a candle to the Virgin Mary.

Buddhists are atheists. No. Buddhism does not recognize a single personal God like Christians or Muslims. The truth is that a Buddhist can believe in one god, many gods or no gods.  It is irrelevant to the practice of Buddhism.

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

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Common Misunderstandings about Buddhism

Dr. Alexander Berzin

There are many different misunderstandings about Buddhism and they arise for many different reasons. Some are culturally specific, either to Western culture, or to Asian and other cultures that are influenced by modern Western thinking. Some come from other cultural areas, for instance traditional Chinese thinking. There can be misunderstanding that arises more in general, because of people’s disturbing emotions. There can also be misunderstandings that arise from just the fact that the material is difficult to understand. Misunderstanding can also arise because of teachers not explaining things clearly or leaving things unexplained, so that we project onto them what we think they mean. It could also be that the teachers themselves misunderstand the teachings, because not all teachers are fully qualified: many are sent to teach or asked to teach before being qualified. Also, even if teachers explain things clearly, we might not listen very well or, afterwards, we might not remember them correctly. Or we take poor notes and maybe never even read them again. Although there are so many misconceptions that arise in these ways, let’s try to clarify just some of the most commonly held ones about just a few general topics, although far more could be discussed.

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General Misunderstandings about Buddhism Itself

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

It’s a misunderstanding that Buddhism says there is something wrong with being happy. But our ordinary forms of happiness have shortcomings – they never last, they never satisfy and when they end, we always want more. If we have too much of something we like, such as our favorite food, we become tired of it and are unhappy to eat any more. So Buddhism teaches us to strive for the happiness that comes from being free from all these unsatisfactory situations. That doesn’t mean that the highest goal is to feel nothing. It means that there are many types of happiness, and what we usually experience, although better than unhappiness, is not the fullest level of happiness we can experience.

Thinking That Impermanence Has Only a Negative Connotation

It is a misunderstanding to think of impermanence in terms of it applying only to our ordinary happiness: it will come to an end and turn to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Impermanence also implies that any specific unhappy period in our lives will also come to an end. That leaves open the possibility of healing and taking advantage of new opportunities to improve our situation in life. Therefore, Buddhism offers an enormous number of methods to change our attitudes and outlook on life and, ultimately, to gain liberation and enlightenment. All such changes also follow from the basic principle of impermanence.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists.

Voidness doesn’t mean that at all. We project onto reality all sorts of impossible ways in which things exist – for instance, isolated and independent from everything else. We are unaware that everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else in a holistic, organic manner. Our habitual confusion about this causes our minds to make things appear to exist in impossible ways, like this website appearing to exist just as it is, all on its own, independently of the tens of thousands of hours of work of over a hundred people that produced it. This impossible way of existing doesn’t correspond to anything real. Voidness is the total absence of any actual referent that corresponds to our projection of impossible ways of existing. Nothing exists on its own; that doesn’t mean that nothing exists.

Misunderstandings about Ethics and Vows

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Buddhist ethics are based purely on developing discriminating awareness. We need to learn to discriminate between what’s constructive and what’s destructive, what will be beneficial and what will be harmful and then, through understanding, refrain from harmful, destructive behavior.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Obedience to Laws

Next, it’s a misunderstanding to regard Buddhist ethics as being based on obedience to laws, rather than based on discriminating awareness. In some cultures people take laws very seriously, and then they become quite inflexible: they don’t want to break the law. Whereas the Tibetans are quite relaxed in terms of the ethical guidelines. It doesn’t mean that they’re sloppy, but it means that in certain situations one has to use one’s discriminating awareness in terms of how you apply a guideline. What we’re trying to discriminate here is whether we are acting under the influence of a disturbing emotion or whether there is a constructive reason for our way of behaving.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

The point is that if you take a vow, you take the whole vow. You don’t take part of the vow. This is the way the vow is specified. If we can’t keep all the details of the vows, or of any particular vow, as specified in the text, then don’t take the vow. There’s no obligation to take the vow.

There is an alternative. In the abhidharma discussion about vows, there are three categories: There’s a vow in which you promise basically to refrain from something destructive. And then there’s something which is very difficult to translate – it’s literally an anti-vow. It’s a vow not to refrain from something destructive, for instance, killing. If you join the army, for instance, you might vow not to refrain from shooting when the enemy attacks. Then there is something in between: refraining from only part of what’s specified in a vow.

It’s this in-between category that we could apply here. For instance, in terms of the lay vow to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, if there are parts of the vow that we think that we can’t really keep, we could promise merely not to have sex with somebody else’s partner and not to use violence in sex, like raping someone or forcing someone to have sex. Making a promise like that is not actually the vow as specified in the texts. But it is far more positive, builds up more positive force – I prefer “positive force” rather than “merit,” and “negative force” rather than “sin” – so it builds up more positive force on our mental continuum than just refraining from that type of behavior. This doesn’t compromise the vow and yet becomes a very strong form of ethical practice.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

Misunderstandings about Rebirth

Because of Skipping Over Rebirth, Not Working on Our Destructive Behavior and Disturbing Emotions

This misconception of Buddhist ethics being humanistic – just don’t hurt others – often seems to come from premature emphasis on Mahayana practice, from thinking that we can skip over the initial and intermediate lam-rim stages. “Lam-rim” refers to the graded stages of the path to enlightenment. The initial level motivation is to avoid worse rebirths. Well, we don’t even believe in rebirth. The intermediate level is to avoid uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. Well, we still don’t believe in rebirth, so none of that really strikes us as important; we think, “Let’s skip over that.” But we’re attracted to the Mahayana teachings because, in many ways, they sound very much like some of our Western traditions of love, compassion, tolerance, generosity, charity, and so on. This sounds very nice, and so we’re attracted to that, skipping over or minimizing the importance of these initial two scopes

Not Taking Rebirth Seriously

A strong reason why many of us would rather skip over the initial scope teachings is because we think that rebirth doesn’t exist. After all, the emphasis in the initial scope is to avoid worse rebirths; therefore, we take refuge (put a positive direction in our life) and follow the laws of karma to avoid destructive behavior because it will bring us worse rebirths. We skip over that or de-emphasize it because we don’t believe in rebirth. And especially we certainly don’t believe in the hell realms and the clutching ghost (hungry ghost) realms, and the gods and the anti-gods. We think that they don’t really exist and that the descriptions in the Dharma texts are really just referring to psychological states of humans. That really is an injustice to the teachings and is a big misunderstanding.

Not Taking Seriously Rebirth in Non-Human, Non-Animal Life-Forms

I don’t want to go into tremendous detail here, but if we think of a mind, a mental continuum, whether ours or anybody else’s, there is no reason why it couldn’t experience the full spectrum of happiness and unhappiness and pleasure and pain, and not just a limited amount of that spectrum that is defined by the parameters of our body and our mind as a human. After all, this is the case with the various types of sensory perception. Some animals can see much further than we humans can; some can hear better, and so on. So why not that the boundaries in terms of the happiness, unhappiness, pleasure and pain that we can experience can also be extended and there would be an appropriate physical form as its basis, such as a hell body or a god body.

Reducing Other Life-Forms to Merely Human Psychological States

Even though we have in the presentation of karma that in a human life, we can have some aftereffects, some leftovers of previous lifetimes in these other realms – we experience things that are similar to what we had in those lifetimes; nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we can reduce the discussion of these other life forms that we and others can take simply to human psychological states. That’s shortchanging the teachings

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime.

Sanitizing Buddhism of Parts We Don’t Like

All of this underlines a much larger problem, a much larger misunderstanding about Dharma, which is to think that we can pick and choose within the teachings only what we like, and we can discard or ignore what we have trouble accepting: so-called “sanitized” Buddhism. We sanitize it or clean it of all the things that are difficult.

Thinking It Will Be Easy to Gain Another Precious Human Rebirth

Another misunderstanding is that, even if we do accept rebirth, to think that it’s going to be so easy to have a precious human rebirth again. We often think, “Yeah, yeah, I believe in rebirth, and of course I’m going to be a human again and of course I’m going to have all the opportunities to continue practicing,” and so on. That’s being very naive, very, very naive. Especially if we think of the amount of destructive behavior that we’ve committed, the amount of time that we’ve spent under the influence of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, selfishness, etc. – as compared to the amount of time that we’ve acted out of pure love and compassion, then it’s quite clear that it’s going to be very difficult to get a precious human rebirth next time.

Striving for a Precious Human Rebirth in Order to Continue to Be with Our Loved Ones

Another fallacy is striving to have a precious human rebirth so we can continue to be with our friends and family, because of attachment to them. Or even just thinking that if I attain a precious human rebirth again, of course I will meet with all my friends, relatives and loved ones again. That also is a misunderstanding. There are so many countless living beings and life forms. According to each of our karmic histories, we’re all going to be reborn in different situations. So there is absolutely no guarantee of what we’ll be reborn as or whom we will meet in our next lives. In fact, there’s a much greater possibility that it’s going to be a very long time before we encounter anyone again from this lifetime. We may; it’s not that it’s impossible. But it’s a misunderstanding to think it’s so easy or that it’s guaranteed

Thinking That We Are Bad and Deserve the Ripenings of Our Negative Karmic Potentials

Another point concerning karma and rebirth is that even if we accept that suffering in this lifetime is the ripening of negative karmic potentials built up in previous lives, we might think, “If I suffer, if something bad happens to me, I deserve it.” Or you deserve it, if it happened to you. The misunderstanding here is that it implies a solidly existent “me” who broke the law, is guilty and bad, and now is getting the punishment that I deserve. We place the blame, then, on “me” – this solid “me” who is so bad and now is being punished – because of misunderstanding the laws of karma, behavioral cause and effect.

Thinking That We’re Responsible for the Ripening of Others’ Karma

We then extend this concept of guilt to our role in the ripening of others’ karma. We don’t see that there are many factors and circumstances involved with experiencing the ripening of karma and each of them has its own causes. It’s a misunderstanding to think that I’m the cause for the ripening of other people’s karma. What they experience arises dependently on all of these factors, not just on me.

I’ll give an example. Suppose we’re hit by a car. It’s not because of what I did in a previous lifetime that causes the other person to hit me. If we think, “I’m karmically responsible for them hitting me,” that’s not correct. What we’re karmically responsible for is our experiencing being hit. That person’s karma is responsible for them hitting us with the car. Like this, what happens to us is the result of the interaction of many, many different karmic factors, as well as disturbing emotions and general factors – like the weather: it was raining, the road was slippery, etc., etc. They all network together to provide a circumstance in which we experience suffering or problems

Ignoring the Facts That Gurus Need to Be Qualified and Need to Inspire Us

Now about gurus, I think that’s a big area of misunderstanding, not only among Westerners. First of all, because of the emphasis on the importance of the guru, we tend to neglect the fact that the guru needs to be qualified – and there are lists of the qualifications. And even if the guru is qualified, we need to feel inspired by this person.

One of the main reasons for the importance of the spiritual teacher is that the teacher provides inspiration, the energy for us to practice, the model that we want to follow. We can get information from books, from the Internet, and so on. Of course the guru needs to answer our questions, and he or she also needs to be able to correct us when we are making mistakes in our meditation practice. But if the person doesn’t inspire us, we’re not going to get terribly far.

Accepting Someone as Our Guru without Proper Examination Beforehand

Because of that misunderstanding regarding that they really need to be qualified and they really need to inspire us, we’re in a rush to accept somebody as our guru without examining him or her fully or properly first. We feel pressured because of this emphasis: “You have to have a guru; you have to have a guru.” Then we risk the possibility of getting disillusioned when later we see objectively that he or she has faults. We didn’t examine properly. This is a big problem, because many scandals have arisen over spiritual teachers who either were rightly or wrongly accused of improper behavior. Sometimes they’re rightly accused of that; they weren’t really qualified and we might have felt pressured by this emphasis on the guru to accept this person as our guru. Then when we learn of these scandals involving our guru, we are devastated.

Thinking All Tibetans, Especially Monastics, and Especially Those with Titles Are Perfect Buddhists

As an auxiliary to this, it’s a misunderstanding to think that all Tibetans; or, more limited, all monks and nuns; or, even more limited, all Rinpoches, Geshes and Khenpos are perfect examples of Buddhist practice. That’s a very common misunderstanding. We think, “They must be perfect Buddhists: they’re Tibetan,” or “Perfect Buddhists: they’re wearing robes.” “Perfect Buddhists: they have a title of Rinpoche. They must be an enlightened being.” This is very naive. Most of them are just regular people.

There might be a larger proportion of practicing Buddhists among the Tibetans than in most societies and there may be certain Buddhist values that are part of their culture; but that doesn’t mean that they’re all perfect, by any means. And if one becomes a monk or a nun, there can be many reasons. Among the Tibetans, it could be that the family put you in a monastery as a child because they couldn’t feed you, and you would get food and an education. It could be for a more self-motivated reason – that I have problems and I need the discipline of the monastic life in order to overcome these problems.

As one of my Rinpoche friends explained, “Wearing the robes is a sign that I really need this discipline, because I’m a very undisciplined person and have a lot of disturbing emotions and I really am putting full effort into overcoming them.” That doesn’t mean that they have overcome them. So we shouldn’t naively think that they are all enlightened, especially with these Rinpoches. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says: “To just rely on a big name of a predecessor is really a big mistake.” He emphasizes that these Rinpoches in this lifetime have to demonstrate and prove their qualifications, not just rely on the reputation of their name.

Not Respecting Monks and Nuns, Making Them Serve the Laypeople

On the other hand, it’s a misunderstanding not to respect and support monks and nuns, but rather to make them into the servants of laypeople at Dharma centers. It often happens that there’s a Dharma center and it has a resident monk or nun. This monk or nun has to clean the center, tidy up and fix everything for the teachings, collect the fees and so on. And if it’s a residential center, they have to take care of the accommodations and all those sorts of things when there’s a weekend course and can’t even attend the teachings because they’re so busy. It’s as if the laypeople think that these monastics are their servants.

It should be just the other way around. As monks or nuns, they are very deserving of respect, regardless of what level their ethics are. It is part of the teachings concerning safe direction or refuge in the Sangha: one respects even the robes. That doesn’t mean that you think that they’re perfect and are naive about it. But a certain respect needs to be shown.

Imagining the Guru Is Literally an Infallible Buddha and Giving Up All Responsibility for Our Lives

Also there’s a big misunderstanding about this so-called term “guru devotion.” I think it’s not such a helpful translation, because it seems to imply almost blind guru worship, like in a cult. That’s a big misunderstanding. The term that is used here for the relation with the spiritual teacher means to rely on and trust someone like we would rely on and trust a qualified doctor. So the same term is used for our relation with our doctor as is with our guru. But because of the instruction to see the guru as a Buddha, we misunderstand and think that the teacher is infallible and so we have to have unquestioning obedience to him or her, like in a cult. That’s a mistake. Because of that, we give up all our critical faculties and responsibility for ourselves, and we become dependent on asking for a mo (dice divination) – throw the dice and make all our decisions for us.

We are aiming to become Buddhas ourselves, to develop the discriminating awareness to be able to make intelligent compassionate decisions ourselves. So if a teacher is just aiming to make us dependent on him or her, like in a power trip, there’s something wrong. It’s a misunderstanding to think that this is okay and to go along with it. To play into this type of power and control syndrome with a teacher is not following the guidelines properly.

Projecting onto the Guru the Role of a Therapist or Pastor

It’s also a misunderstanding to project onto a Buddhist teacher the role of a pastor or a therapist with whom we discuss our personal problems and seek advice. That’s not the role of a Buddhist spiritual teacher. A Buddhist spiritual teacher traditionally gives the teachings, and it’s up to us to figure out how to apply them. It’s really only appropriate to ask about questions regarding our understanding of the teachings and about our meditation practice.

If you have psychological problems, you go to a therapist; you don’t go to your spiritual teacher. And especially what’s inappropriate is to discuss marital or relationship problems or sexual problems with a monk or a nun. They’re celibate. They’re not involved in that. These are not the people to ask about these types of problems. But, coming from a tradition that has pastors, priests, and rabbis, we expect that they’re going to take on this general pastoral function of guiding us through difficult times in our personal lives.

I’ll give an example. I was with my spiritual teacher Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche for nine years, very closely, most of the time, every day. Never in those nine years did he ask me a personal question. Never. About my personal life. About my family. About my background. Nothing. It was all day-to-day in terms of either him teaching me, or my working with him to benefit others – to translate for him, or arrange his travels, or whatever. So it was a very different type of relationship than what we are used to in the West and not one that is easy for us to understand.

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Common Misunderstandings about Buddhism

Dr. Alexander Berzin

There are many different misunderstandings about Buddhism and they arise for many different reasons. Some are culturally specific, either to Western culture, or to Asian and other cultures that are influenced by modern Western thinking. Some come from other cultural areas, for instance traditional Chinese thinking. There can be misunderstanding that arises more in general, because of people’s disturbing emotions. There can also be misunderstandings that arise from just the fact that the material is difficult to understand. Misunderstanding can also arise because of teachers not explaining things clearly or leaving things unexplained, so that we project onto them what we think they mean. It could also be that the teachers themselves misunderstand the teachings, because not all teachers are fully qualified: many are sent to teach or asked to teach before being qualified. Also, even if teachers explain things clearly, we might not listen very well or, afterwards, we might not remember them correctly. Or we take poor notes and maybe never even read them again. Although there are so many misconceptions that arise in these ways, let’s try to clarify just some of the most commonly held ones about just a few general topics, although far more could be discussed.

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General Misunderstandings about Buddhism Itself

Thinking That Buddhism Is Pessimistic

The first teaching Buddha gave was on the four noble truths, and the first of these was “true sufferings.” Whether we speak of unhappiness, our ordinary forms of happiness, or the all-pervasive experience of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, all of them are suffering. “Suffering,” however, is a rather harsh word in English. The meaning here is that all these states are unsatisfying and problematic, and therefore, since everyone wants to be happy and no one wants to be unhappy, we need to overcome our problems in life.

It’s a misunderstanding that Buddhism says there is something wrong with being happy. But our ordinary forms of happiness have shortcomings – they never last, they never satisfy and when they end, we always want more. If we have too much of something we like, such as our favorite food, we become tired of it and are unhappy to eat any more. So Buddhism teaches us to strive for the happiness that comes from being free from all these unsatisfactory situations. That doesn’t mean that the highest goal is to feel nothing. It means that there are many types of happiness, and what we usually experience, although better than unhappiness, is not the fullest level of happiness we can experience.

Thinking That Impermanence Has Only a Negative Connotation

It is a misunderstanding to think of impermanence in terms of it applying only to our ordinary happiness: it will come to an end and turn to dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Impermanence also implies that any specific unhappy period in our lives will also come to an end. That leaves open the possibility of healing and taking advantage of new opportunities to improve our situation in life. Therefore, Buddhism offers an enormous number of methods to change our attitudes and outlook on life and, ultimately, to gain liberation and enlightenment. All such changes also follow from the basic principle of impermanence.

Thinking That Buddhism Is a Form of Nihilism

Buddha taught that the true cause of everyone’s problems in life is their unawareness (ignorance) of reality – how they, others and everything exists. He taught voidness (emptiness) as the antidote to this confusion. It is a misunderstanding to think that voidness is a form of nihilism and that Buddha said that nothing exists – you don’t exist, others don’t exist, your problems don’t exist, so the solution to your problems is to realize that nothing exists.

Voidness doesn’t mean that at all. We project onto reality all sorts of impossible ways in which things exist – for instance, isolated and independent from everything else. We are unaware that everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else in a holistic, organic manner. Our habitual confusion about this causes our minds to make things appear to exist in impossible ways, like this website appearing to exist just as it is, all on its own, independently of the tens of thousands of hours of work of over a hundred people that produced it. This impossible way of existing doesn’t correspond to anything real. Voidness is the total absence of any actual referent that corresponds to our projection of impossible ways of existing. Nothing exists on its own; that doesn’t mean that nothing exists.

Misunderstandings about Ethics and Vows

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Moral Judgments of Good and Bad

In terms of ethics, and in many other cases as well, misunderstandings can often arise because of misleading translation terms. Because of them we project non-Buddhist concepts onto the teachings. For example, we might use terminology that has connotations from our Biblical traditions, such as the words “virtuous,” “non-virtuous,” “merit,” and “sin.” These sorts of words project onto the Buddhist teachings on ethics the idea of moral judgment and guilt: that some things are virtuous, meaning good and proper. If we do them, we’re good people, and by acting that way, we build up merit, like some sort of reward. But if we act in a non-virtuous, “unholy” way, then we are bad and we build up sins, for which we must suffer. This is clearly a projection of Biblical morality onto Buddhist ethics.

Buddhist ethics are based purely on developing discriminating awareness. We need to learn to discriminate between what’s constructive and what’s destructive, what will be beneficial and what will be harmful and then, through understanding, refrain from harmful, destructive behavior.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Based on Obedience to Laws

Next, it’s a misunderstanding to regard Buddhist ethics as being based on obedience to laws, rather than based on discriminating awareness. In some cultures people take laws very seriously, and then they become quite inflexible: they don’t want to break the law. Whereas the Tibetans are quite relaxed in terms of the ethical guidelines. It doesn’t mean that they’re sloppy, but it means that in certain situations one has to use one’s discriminating awareness in terms of how you apply a guideline. What we’re trying to discriminate here is whether we are acting under the influence of a disturbing emotion or whether there is a constructive reason for our way of behaving.

Thinking That Vows Are Like Laws with Possible Loopholes

To the other extreme, we could look at the vows like a lawyer. And so we look for loopholes in the presentation of karma so as to find excuses for acting destructively or for compromising and watering down a vow. Let me give an example. We could take a vow, for instance, to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, and then we assert that having oral sex is okay because it’s an expression of love. We excuse ourselves because we happen to like this form of sexual behavior. Or, after taking a vow to give up alcohol, we say that it’s okay to have wine at a meal with our parents so as not to offend them, or it’s okay to drink occasionally so long as we don’t get drunk. We make these sorts of excuses to try to get around a vow.

The point is that if you take a vow, you take the whole vow. You don’t take part of the vow. This is the way the vow is specified. If we can’t keep all the details of the vows, or of any particular vow, as specified in the text, then don’t take the vow. There’s no obligation to take the vow.

There is an alternative. In the abhidharma discussion about vows, there are three categories: There’s a vow in which you promise basically to refrain from something destructive. And then there’s something which is very difficult to translate – it’s literally an anti-vow. It’s a vow not to refrain from something destructive, for instance, killing. If you join the army, for instance, you might vow not to refrain from shooting when the enemy attacks. Then there is something in between: refraining from only part of what’s specified in a vow.

It’s this in-between category that we could apply here. For instance, in terms of the lay vow to avoid inappropriate sexual behavior, if there are parts of the vow that we think that we can’t really keep, we could promise merely not to have sex with somebody else’s partner and not to use violence in sex, like raping someone or forcing someone to have sex. Making a promise like that is not actually the vow as specified in the texts. But it is far more positive, builds up more positive force – I prefer “positive force” rather than “merit,” and “negative force” rather than “sin” – so it builds up more positive force on our mental continuum than just refraining from that type of behavior. This doesn’t compromise the vow and yet becomes a very strong form of ethical practice.

Thinking That Buddhist Ethics Are Humanistic — Just Avoid Harming Others

Another mistake about ethics is misunderstanding that Buddhist ethics are humanistic. “Humanistic” means that we merely avoid doing things that would harm others. So long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, it’s okay. This is humanistic ethics, or at least my understanding of humanistic ethics. Although that’s very nice, very good, that is not the basis of Buddhist ethics. The basis of Buddhist ethics is emphasis on avoiding what’s self-destructive, because we don’t actually know what is going to hurt others: We could give somebody a million euros thinking that we’re going to benefit them. And the next day, because they have that money, they get robbed and murdered. So we don’t know what’s going to be of benefit to somebody else. We can’t see the future. What is specified in the Buddhist teachings is that if we act destructively, on the basis of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, lust, jealousy, naivety, and so on– it is self-destructive. It builds up a negative habit to repeat that behavior and is going to cause us to experience suffering ourselves. This is the basis of Buddhist ethics.

Misunderstandings about Rebirth

Because of Skipping Over Rebirth, Not Working on Our Destructive Behavior and Disturbing Emotions

This misconception of Buddhist ethics being humanistic – just don’t hurt others – often seems to come from premature emphasis on Mahayana practice, from thinking that we can skip over the initial and intermediate lam-rim stages. “Lam-rim” refers to the graded stages of the path to enlightenment. The initial level motivation is to avoid worse rebirths. Well, we don’t even believe in rebirth. The intermediate level is to avoid uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. Well, we still don’t believe in rebirth, so none of that really strikes us as important; we think, “Let’s skip over that.” But we’re attracted to the Mahayana teachings because, in many ways, they sound very much like some of our Western traditions of love, compassion, tolerance, generosity, charity, and so on. This sounds very nice, and so we’re attracted to that, skipping over or minimizing the importance of these initial two scopes.

In doing so, we also skip over an important part of their content, namely working on overcoming our destructive behavior and disturbing emotions and attitudes because they’re self-destructive. We just plunge into trying to help others. That’s a mistake. Even though it’s important to emphasize Mahayana, it has to be on the basis of the initial and intermediate scopes. We have to first work on our destructive behavior and disturbing emotions, since they interfere severely with our trying to help others.

Not Taking Rebirth Seriously

A strong reason why many of us would rather skip over the initial scope teachings is because we think that rebirth doesn’t exist. After all, the emphasis in the initial scope is to avoid worse rebirths; therefore, we take refuge (put a positive direction in our life) and follow the laws of karma to avoid destructive behavior because it will bring us worse rebirths. We skip over that or de-emphasize it because we don’t believe in rebirth. And especially we certainly don’t believe in the hell realms and the clutching ghost (hungry ghost) realms, and the gods and the anti-gods. We think that they don’t really exist and that the descriptions in the Dharma texts are really just referring to psychological states of humans. That really is an injustice to the teachings and is a big misunderstanding.

Not Taking Seriously Rebirth in Non-Human, Non-Animal Life-Forms

I don’t want to go into tremendous detail here, but if we think of a mind, a mental continuum, whether ours or anybody else’s, there is no reason why it couldn’t experience the full spectrum of happiness and unhappiness and pleasure and pain, and not just a limited amount of that spectrum that is defined by the parameters of our body and our mind as a human. After all, this is the case with the various types of sensory perception. Some animals can see much further than we humans can; some can hear better, and so on. So why not that the boundaries in terms of the happiness, unhappiness, pleasure and pain that we can experience can also be extended and there would be an appropriate physical form as its basis, such as a hell body or a god body.

Reducing Other Life-Forms to Merely Human Psychological States

Even though we have in the presentation of karma that in a human life, we can have some aftereffects, some leftovers of previous lifetimes in these other realms – we experience things that are similar to what we had in those lifetimes; nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we can reduce the discussion of these other life forms that we and others can take simply to human psychological states. That’s shortchanging the teachings.

Thinking Karma Doesn’t Make Sense, Because of Limiting It to Just One Lifetime

Because of not accepting rebirth and these other states of existence, we misunderstand karma as describing merely consequences of our actions that will happen in this life. That limitation causes a lot of doubts about the teachings on karma. After all, there are big criminals that are never caught and seem to get away with their crimes. And we could experience all sorts of horrible things in our lifetime happening to us, like dying of cancer, when we’ve never really done something outstandingly destructive. Karma doesn’t seem to make any sense if we limit our discussion or our view just to this lifetime.

Misunderstandings about Dharma

Sanitizing Buddhism of Parts We Don’t Like

All of this underlines a much larger problem, a much larger misunderstanding about Dharma, which is to think that we can pick and choose within the teachings only what we like, and we can discard or ignore what we have trouble accepting: so-called “sanitized” Buddhism. We sanitize it or clean it of all the things that are difficult.

When we hear these stories about karma with elephants that go under the earth and that excrete gold, and all these other things, we think, “Oh come on! Those are fairy tales for children!” We don’t see that there’s some lesson in them. Whether or not we take them literally as some Tibetans do is not the point. The point is not to dismiss them; they are part of the teachings. Another example is in the Mahayana sutras, where the Buddhas are teaching hundreds of millions of beings; and there are hundreds of millions of Buddhas attending; and in every pore of every Buddha, another hundred million; and so on. Often we’re embarrassed about them and, saying, “This is too weird,” we don’t accept them as parts of the Dharma.

The problem here is picking and choosing the parts of Buddhism that we like. There are certain tantric and bodhisattva vows against discarding certain Buddhist teachings or claiming that they are inauthentic; in other words, just taking parts of the teachings and ignoring others, just taking what we like. If we’re going to accept Buddhism as our spiritual path, we at least need to be open enough to say, “I don’t understand this teaching,” even if it sounds very weird to us, and “I will hold off judgment on it until I get a deeper explanation and better understanding.” It’s important not to close our minds and dismiss them.

Thinking It Will Be Easy to Gain Another Precious Human Rebirth

Another misunderstanding is that, even if we do accept rebirth, to think that it’s going to be so easy to have a precious human rebirth again. We often think, “Yeah, yeah, I believe in rebirth, and of course I’m going to be a human again and of course I’m going to have all the opportunities to continue practicing,” and so on. That’s being very naive, very, very naive. Especially if we think of the amount of destructive behavior that we’ve committed, the amount of time that we’ve spent under the influence of disturbing emotions – anger, greed, selfishness, etc. – as compared to the amount of time that we’ve acted out of pure love and compassion, then it’s quite clear that it’s going to be very difficult to get a precious human rebirth next time.

Striving for a Precious Human Rebirth in Order to Continue to Be with Our Loved Ones

Another fallacy is striving to have a precious human rebirth so we can continue to be with our friends and family, because of attachment to them. Or even just thinking that if I attain a precious human rebirth again, of course I will meet with all my friends, relatives and loved ones again. That also is a misunderstanding. There are so many countless living beings and life forms. According to each of our karmic histories, we’re all going to be reborn in different situations. So there is absolutely no guarantee of what we’ll be reborn as or whom we will meet in our next lives. In fact, there’s a much greater possibility that it’s going to be a very long time before we encounter anyone again from this lifetime. We may; it’s not that it’s impossible. But it’s a misunderstanding to think it’s so easy or that it’s guaranteed.

Misunderstandings about Karma

Thinking That We Are Bad and Deserve the Ripenings of Our Negative Karmic Potentials

Another point concerning karma and rebirth is that even if we accept that suffering in this lifetime is the ripening of negative karmic potentials built up in previous lives, we might think, “If I suffer, if something bad happens to me, I deserve it.” Or you deserve it, if it happened to you. The misunderstanding here is that it implies a solidly existent “me” who broke the law, is guilty and bad, and now is getting the punishment that I deserve. We place the blame, then, on “me” – this solid “me” who is so bad and now is being punished – because of misunderstanding the laws of karma, behavioral cause and effect.

Thinking That We’re Responsible for the Ripening of Others’ Karma

We then extend this concept of guilt to our role in the ripening of others’ karma. We don’t see that there are many factors and circumstances involved with experiencing the ripening of karma and each of them has its own causes. It’s a misunderstanding to think that I’m the cause for the ripening of other people’s karma. What they experience arises dependently on all of these factors, not just on me.

I’ll give an example. Suppose we’re hit by a car. It’s not because of what I did in a previous lifetime that causes the other person to hit me. If we think, “I’m karmically responsible for them hitting me,” that’s not correct. What we’re karmically responsible for is our experiencing being hit. That person’s karma is responsible for them hitting us with the car. Like this, what happens to us is the result of the interaction of many, many different karmic factors, as well as disturbing emotions and general factors – like the weather: it was raining, the road was slippery, etc., etc. They all network together to provide a circumstance in which we experience suffering or problems.

Misunderstandings about Gurus

Ignoring the Facts That Gurus Need to Be Qualified and Need to Inspire Us

Now about gurus, I think that’s a big area of misunderstanding, not only among Westerners. First of all, because of the emphasis on the importance of the guru, we tend to neglect the fact that the guru needs to be qualified – and there are lists of the qualifications. And even if the guru is qualified, we need to feel inspired by this person.

One of the main reasons for the importance of the spiritual teacher is that the teacher provides inspiration, the energy for us to practice, the model that we want to follow. We can get information from books, from the Internet, and so on. Of course the guru needs to answer our questions, and he or she also needs to be able to correct us when we are making mistakes in our meditation practice. But if the person doesn’t inspire us, we’re not going to get terribly far.

Accepting Someone as Our Guru without Proper Examination Beforehand

Because of that misunderstanding regarding that they really need to be qualified and they really need to inspire us, we’re in a rush to accept somebody as our guru without examining him or her fully or properly first. We feel pressured because of this emphasis: “You have to have a guru; you have to have a guru.” Then we risk the possibility of getting disillusioned when later we see objectively that he or she has faults. We didn’t examine properly. This is a big problem, because many scandals have arisen over spiritual teachers who either were rightly or wrongly accused of improper behavior. Sometimes they’re rightly accused of that; they weren’t really qualified and we might have felt pressured by this emphasis on the guru to accept this person as our guru. Then when we learn of these scandals involving our guru, we are devastated.

Thinking All Tibetans, Especially Monastics, and Especially Those with Titles Are Perfect Buddhists

As an auxiliary to this, it’s a misunderstanding to think that all Tibetans; or, more limited, all monks and nuns; or, even more limited, all Rinpoches, Geshes and Khenpos are perfect examples of Buddhist practice. That’s a very common misunderstanding. We think, “They must be perfect Buddhists: they’re Tibetan,” or “Perfect Buddhists: they’re wearing robes.” “Perfect Buddhists: they have a title of Rinpoche. They must be an enlightened being.” This is very naive. Most of them are just regular people.

There might be a larger proportion of practicing Buddhists among the Tibetans than in most societies and there may be certain Buddhist values that are part of their culture; but that doesn’t mean that they’re all perfect, by any means. And if one becomes a monk or a nun, there can be many reasons. Among the Tibetans, it could be that the family put you in a monastery as a child because they couldn’t feed you, and you would get food and an education. It could be for a more self-motivated reason – that I have problems and I need the discipline of the monastic life in order to overcome these problems.

As one of my Rinpoche friends explained, “Wearing the robes is a sign that I really need this discipline, because I’m a very undisciplined person and have a lot of disturbing emotions and I really am putting full effort into overcoming them.” That doesn’t mean that they have overcome them. So we shouldn’t naively think that they are all enlightened, especially with these Rinpoches. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says: “To just rely on a big name of a predecessor is really a big mistake.” He emphasizes that these Rinpoches in this lifetime have to demonstrate and prove their qualifications, not just rely on the reputation of their name.

Not Respecting Monks and Nuns, Making Them Serve the Laypeople

On the other hand, it’s a misunderstanding not to respect and support monks and nuns, but rather to make them into the servants of laypeople at Dharma centers. It often happens that there’s a Dharma center and it has a resident monk or nun. This monk or nun has to clean the center, tidy up and fix everything for the teachings, collect the fees and so on. And if it’s a residential center, they have to take care of the accommodations and all those sorts of things when there’s a weekend course and can’t even attend the teachings because they’re so busy. It’s as if the laypeople think that these monastics are their servants.

It should be just the other way around. As monks or nuns, they are very deserving of respect, regardless of what level their ethics are. It is part of the teachings concerning safe direction or refuge in the Sangha: one respects even the robes. That doesn’t mean that you think that they’re perfect and are naive about it. But a certain respect needs to be shown.

Imagining the Guru Is Literally an Infallible Buddha and Giving Up All Responsibility for Our Lives

Also there’s a big misunderstanding about this so-called term “guru devotion.” I think it’s not such a helpful translation, because it seems to imply almost blind guru worship, like in a cult. That’s a big misunderstanding. The term that is used here for the relation with the spiritual teacher means to rely on and trust someone like we would rely on and trust a qualified doctor. So the same term is used for our relation with our doctor as is with our guru. But because of the instruction to see the guru as a Buddha, we misunderstand and think that the teacher is infallible and so we have to have unquestioning obedience to him or her, like in a cult. That’s a mistake. Because of that, we give up all our critical faculties and responsibility for ourselves, and we become dependent on asking for a mo (dice divination) – throw the dice and make all our decisions for us.

We are aiming to become Buddhas ourselves, to develop the discriminating awareness to be able to make intelligent compassionate decisions ourselves. So if a teacher is just aiming to make us dependent on him or her, like in a power trip, there’s something wrong. It’s a misunderstanding to think that this is okay and to go along with it. To play into this type of power and control syndrome with a teacher is not following the guidelines properly.

Projecting onto the Guru the Role of a Therapist or Pastor

It’s also a misunderstanding to project onto a Buddhist teacher the role of a pastor or a therapist with whom we discuss our personal problems and seek advice. That’s not the role of a Buddhist spiritual teacher. A Buddhist spiritual teacher traditionally gives the teachings, and it’s up to us to figure out how to apply them. It’s really only appropriate to ask about questions regarding our understanding of the teachings and about our meditation practice.

If you have psychological problems, you go to a therapist; you don’t go to your spiritual teacher. And especially what’s inappropriate is to discuss marital or relationship problems or sexual problems with a monk or a nun. They’re celibate. They’re not involved in that. These are not the people to ask about these types of problems. But, coming from a tradition that has pastors, priests, and rabbis, we expect that they’re going to take on this general pastoral function of guiding us through difficult times in our personal lives.

I’ll give an example. I was with my spiritual teacher Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche for nine years, very closely, most of the time, every day. Never in those nine years did he ask me a personal question. Never. About my personal life. About my family. About my background. Nothing. It was all day-to-day in terms of either him teaching me, or my working with him to benefit others – to translate for him, or arrange his travels, or whatever. So it was a very different type of relationship than what we are used to in the West and not one that is easy for us to understand.

Trivializing Taking Refuge — Putting a Safe Direction in Our Lives

In terms of working with the teacher, it brings us to the topic of refuge, which I like to call “safe direction.” It’s putting a safe direction in our lives, as indicated by the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. It’s a misunderstanding of refuge to trivialize it into merely joining a club. You cut a little piece of your hair, get a red string to tie around your neck, a Tibetan name, and now you’ve joined the club. This is especially a problem when, because the teacher is from a specific Tibetan lineage, we consider the club we’re joining to be a specific lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, rather than Buddhism in general: “Now I’ve become a Gelugpa.” “Now I’ve become a Karma Kagyu.” “Now I’ve become a Nyingma.” “Now I’ve become a Sakya.” Rather than: “Now I’m following the path of the Buddha.” Because of this misunderstanding, we become sectarian, exclusivist, and never go to another Dharma center except the one we’ve joined. It’s really quite amazing how most Western Buddhist practitioners who go to Dharma centers go to only one and will never step foot in another.

Every Teacher Who Comes to the West Needing to Set Up Their Own Dharma Center and Organization

What’s even more confusing is that every traditional teacher that comes to the West seems to want to set up their own Dharma center and their own organization. This is a big mistake, I feel, because then the situation becomes unsustainable. You can’t sustain 400 different brands of Buddhism indefinitely in the future. Moreover, it’s very confusing for new students. Also it’s a big financial drain and burden to support all these places with their altars and their libraries, and paying rent, and so on, and so on. In Tibet, although many different teachers came from India and Nepal and many different monasteries were established, eventually they came together and formed distinct groups. They were not the same groups that you had in India – you didn’t have Kagyu or Sakya in India – but they amalgamated into groups that then became sustainable and which brought together various lineages.

So even though we have large organizations in Western Dharma, such as those started by Trungpa Rinpoche, Sogyal Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, etc., we need to think about groups coming together to form larger lineages, as happened in Tibet. But in doing this, there are two extremes we need to avoid. One is if Western Buddhism is too fragmented, it doesn’t work. On the other hand, if it’s too regulated, that also doesn’t work. So great care is needed. But I think sustainability is a big issue.

Thinking That If We Have a Teacher, We Can’t Study with Other Teachers

In terms of not going to other Dharma centers, it’s also a misunderstanding to think that we can’t study with other teachers, even from within our own teacher’s lineage. Most Tibetans have several teachers, not just one. It’s recorded that Atisha, for instance, had 155 teachers. Different teachers have different specialties. One is good at explaining this; one is good at explaining that. One has this lineage; one has that lineage. It’s not being disloyal to your teacher to have many teachers. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says: we can look at our teachers like the 11-headed Avalokiteshvara, each teacher is like a different face, and all of them together constitute one body for our spiritual guidance.

Having Several Teachers That Are Disharmonious with Each Other

It’s very important, then, not to take several teachers that conflict with each other. That doesn’t work. You have to find teachers that have a good – what’s called dam-tshig in Tibetan – a close bond with each other and are harmonious with each other. This is because, unfortunately, such things happen as what sometimes we call “spiritual star wars” between various spiritual teachers that disagree very violently about certain issues – whether it’s protectors, or who’s the real Karmapa, or whatever. So if you’re going to have more than one teacher, choose teachers that are harmonious with each other.

Thinking That Just Listening to a Lecture Makes the Speaker Your Spiritual Teacher

It is also essential here to realize that just to listen to a lecture by a Buddhist teacher doesn’t automatically make this person your spiritual teacher with all the implications of guru devotion, although of course we need to show the person respect. As His Holiness says, “You can go to anybody’s teaching and attend it just as a lecture, as you would a university lecture.” It doesn’t imply anything further than that.

Not Combining Study and Practice

As for practice, it’s a misunderstanding to think that the Gelug tradition is purely a study lineage and Kagyu and Nyingma are purely practice lineages. Because of that naivety, we might imagine that if we’re following one of them, we neglect the other aspect – we neglect our study or we neglect our meditation. When teachers emphasize one or the other of these – study or meditation – that doesn’t mean that we do just one and ignore the other. It’s quite clear that we need both of them.

Recently, in an audience with the group of Westerners who had studied at the library in Dharamsala in the ’70s and ’80s, His Holiness the Dalai Lama used a very nice example. He said that tantra, mahamudra, dzogchen and such advanced practices are like fingers on a hand. The palm of the hand, the base, are the teachings of the Indian tradition from Nalanda Monastery, the teachings of the Indian Nalanda masters on sutra. The misunderstanding is to put too much emphasis on the fingers. Sometimes teachers do that, he said, they put too much emphasis on the fingers. They have their students study and practice only the fingers and forget about the hand. The fingers extend out from the hand and are not functional on their own. This was the image, the analogy that His Holiness used, and I think that is very helpful advice. It’s a misunderstanding to think, “All I have to do is practice dzogchen; just sit and be natural.” To do like that is oversimplifying these types of teachings without having the basis.

Thinking We Are Milarepas and Need to Go into Lifetime Meditation Retreat

Similarly, it’s a misunderstanding to think that we are Milarepas and that everyone – specifically, we ourselves – need to go into a lifelong retreat, or at least do a three-year retreat. Only a few people are suited for a life of full-time meditation; most need to involve themselves in social welfare. This is directly the advice of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It’s very, very rare that we really are suited for a lifetime of meditation retreat or that we can seriously benefit from a three-year retreat without just sort of sitting there and repeating mantras for three years, but not really working on ourselves on a deep level

Thinking We Can Become Enlightened by Just Meditating in Our Spare Time

Of course intensive full-time Dharma practice is necessary for becoming liberated or enlightened, and it’s a mistake to overestimate that we can accomplish liberation and enlightenment without that full-time practice. We think, “Well, I can just practice in my spare time and I’m going to become liberated and enlightened.” That also is a misunderstanding. But it is also a mistake not to be objective with ourselves and about our capacity to be able to do that intensive practice now. This is because what happens is that, if we push ourselves and we really aren’t able to do this type of practice, we really become very frustrated. We get what the Tibetans call lung, frustrated nervous energy, and it really messes us up psychologically, emotionally, and physically

Not Thinking Realistically That It Will Take Eons of Lifetimes to Reach Enlightenment

This also ties in a little bit with not believing in rebirth, because if we don’t believe in rebirth, we’re not looking seriously in terms of longtime goals after many, many eons of practice. There is the teaching that says it is possible to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to think, “We only have this lifetime, because there is no rebirth,” and therefore pushing ourselves beyond what we’re able to do at the moment.

Underestimating the Importance of Sustained Daily Practice

Also, looking at the other side of this, it’s a mistake to underestimate the importance of daily meditation practice. It is very important, if we are going to sustain our Dharma practice, to have a daily meditation routine. There are many, many benefits of that in terms of discipline, commitment, stability in our lives and dependability: no matter what, we’re going to meditate every day. If we are serious about building up more beneficial habits, which is what meditation is all about, we need to practice.

Thinking That to Practice Dharma Properly We Need to Follow Tibetan Customs

Another misunderstanding is to think that to practice Dharma properly we need to follow Tibetan or other forms of Asian customs, like having an elaborate Tibetan-style altar in our personal “shrine room” in our homes or even in a Dharma center. Many Tibetan teachers who come to the West do, of course, like to establish a Dharma center and decorate it like a Tibetan temple with the walls painted in the same way and decorated with scroll paintings and so on.

As my Tibetan friends would say, “If you Western people like it, why not? There’s no harm.” But to think that it’s absolutely necessary to decorate like that is a big mistake. Especially when it’s at a tremendous expense, in which the money could be used much more beneficially in other ways. So whether this is at a Dharma center or in our homes, we don’t need some elaborate set-up, Tibetan-style, in order to practice Tibetan Buddhism. So long as the room in which we meditate is tidy, clean and, in this way, respectful of what we are doing, this is enough.

Thinking That Ridding Ourselves of Disturbing Emotions Will Happen Quickly

Although the main emphasis in Dharma is eliminating forever the causes of suffering – namely our ignorance or unawareness about reality and our disturbing emotions, it’s a misunderstanding to think that overcoming disturbing emotions will happen quickly. We easily forget that only when we become an arhat, a liberated being, will we be completely free of anger, attachment and so on, although on the way we’ll have them to a lesser extent. If we forget this, we become discouraged when we still get angry after years of practice. This is a very common occurrence.

It’s a mistake, then, not to have patience with ourselves. We need to realize that Dharma practice goes up and down, just as samsara goes up and down. Over the long term, we could hope for improvement, but it’s not going to be so easy. So it’s a mistake not to have patience with ourselves when we do have the down periods. But on the other hand, we need to avoid the extreme of being too permissive with our negative habits and being lax or lazy about working on ourselves. A middle path here is not beating ourselves when we still get angry, but on the other hand not just saying, “I feel angry,” or “I’m in a bad mood,” and not trying to apply some Dharma method for overcoming it.

It’s very interesting to see what we turn to for relief when we’re in a bad mood. Do I turn to meditation? Do I turn to refuge? Or do I turn to chocolate, or sex, or the television, or chatting with my friends or surfing the Internet? What do I turn to? I think that’s very revealing of our Dharma practice – how we deal with being in bad moods.

[boschlingtumbles]

White Wedding (Chapters 10-16)

Jaime (What Have You Done 1 of x)

The first day he kept him at bay through his normal mixture of sarcasm and superiority. Batting down Ned Stark’s pathetic attempts at ingratiation was almost satisfying. He deserved it, really, and Jaime almost laughed when after trudging after him through half the city, Jaime hailed a taxi and jumped in, slamming the car door shut in Ned’s face. Only for Ned to show up at Cersei’s, tired and dirty, two hours later right as Jaime was in the middle of inquiring whether Cersei had ever noticed that Robert talked with his mouth full. “I thought you were going to help Jaime childproof the kitchen?” Cersei eyed Ned’s disheveled appearance disdainfully. “I missed the cab,” Ned ground out, “and had to walk. I didn’t know the area and I got lost several times.” Good riddance. The second day, it was just annoying. Ned always got up to talk to Robert in the painfully early morning before Robert departed for practice, which doubled the volume of noises that Jaime had to sleep through. Even being mean to him wasn’t as fun as it had been the day before, when Ned just stoically endured it as he had yesterday. Plus Jaime couldn’t get a moment alone with Cersei. Ned just kept popping up with a stupid question or a corny joke. It was driving Jaime mad. “I can’t concentrate with his stupid horse face jumping out at me at every corner,” Jaime hissed on the phone to Stannis. “I made a perfectly good list of all the disgusting things that Robert does while eating and I’ve barely gotten through a third of them.” “Did you include the fact that he double dips?” “Everyone double dips, Stannis,” Jaime rolled his eyes. There was a distinct hiss on the line. “It’s so unlucky! Of all the times for Ned Stark to get a crisis of conscience, why did it have to be now?!” Jaime warmed to his theme. “It’s not unlucky. Robert’s fucking with you and he’s winning. Get your head in the game.” Jaime made a doubtful noise. Like that sod was capable of psychological warfare. “I think it’s just Ned. He’s really weird and irritating. I don’t see how Robert stands having him around.” “You underestimate him,” Stannis growled. “Ned? Maybe. Weird, irritating, pretentious, so fucking earnest, dull, mindlessly loyal—“ “Not Ned,” Stannis sounded exasperated. “Robert.” Jaime blinked. He had seen Robert get stuck in a revolving door once. “Look, you have to understand that he’s a person of average to slightly below average intelligence who has realized his life will be much easier if everyone thinks he’s a moron.” “That’s ridiculous,” Jaime scoffed. “Why would anyone ever do that?” “Because he’s very lazy. And I suspect he finds it funny.” “Well have you ever considered maybe he’s just really stupid?” “I did live with him for eighteen years!” That was a good point. Stannis was also weird and irritating. Probably Robert had just built up a tolerance. “Look it’s fine to be related to someone stupid. My cousin Lancel makes Robert look sharp. My point is that Ned is driving me mad and I’ve made no progress on planting seeds of doubt in Cersei’s mind because everywhere I go, he follows after.” “Maybe that will work to our advantage,” Stannis said thoughtfully. “Huh?” Jaime wondered if maybe stupidity didn’t run in the family. “Look we’ve been attacking the Cersei angle. Maybe there’s a Robert angle. And nobody knows Robert’s secrets like Ned.” “Why would there be a Robert angle? Of course the big doofus is happy to marry her.” “Happy to have Tywin Lannister as a father in law?!” Stannis sounded horrified. Jaime considered. “Ok I’ll ugh... talk to Ned,” he said begrudgingly. With a shiver of distaste he hung up, and stepped out of the closet where the washer and dryer were kept. Since Cersei sent all her clothes to the dry cleaner, he’d discovered this was the one place where he could plot uninterrupted. Unobserved, he could sneak into this room and call Stannis or just jot down random ideas in a solo brainstorming session, as Cersei and Brienne did muscle toning yoga or whatever faddish obsession Cersei had fixated on for the day, nobody ever suspecting that he was working from within to bring down this entire— “Hi!” Ned gave a forced smile from where he had been waiting outside the closet. “Whatcha doing?” “None of your business, Stark,” Jaime snapped. Ned flinched but stood his ground. Jaime reminded himself that perhaps this was not the best way to worm out Robert’s secrets. What was the best way? Alcohol. Alcohol was the best way. “Say, all this baby proofing has made me really thirsty,” Jaime said, shifting gears. “Do you want some water?” Ned offered. “Cersei also has some sparkling apple cider in the fridge?” “No,” Jaime shuddered. “I meant a proper drink.” “It’s noon,” Ned blinked. “So are you coming or not?” Jaime raised an eyebrow. Ned’s shoulders fell. “Just let me grab my wallet.” Ned drunk was not an improvement on Ned sober. It had been easy to get him drunk because Jaime had told him he didn’t like the first beer he had ordered and could Ned finish it so he could order a new one. And then he did it again on the third beer. And then he suggested shots and Ned was too tipsy to notice that Jaime was dumping his over his shoulder when he took them. But now that Ned was drunk, Jaime was discovering that he was a really REALLY affectionate drunk. “Stark, people are staring,” Jaime said through gritted teeth as they staggered into the sunlight from the dark cave of the bar. “At what?” Ned hiccuped, his chin resting on Jaime’s shoulder and his arms wrapped around him. “At you! Let me go!” Jaime tried to use his words. It was like talking to a rock. “I can’t,” Ned said in a reasonable tone, arms remaining firmly laced around him. “Can you walk slower? It’s very hard to walk like this without tripping.” “You don’t say,” Jaime growled, aiming them for the water fountain in the center of the traffic circle. Ned could clearly use a nice cold bath. “Remind me why you can’t let go?” “Because Robert said not to,” Ned said seriously. What? “What?” Jaime said trying to keep the slowly growing rage out of his voice. “Stick to him like glue he said,” Ned nodded, his chin digging into Jaime’s shoulder each time. Gods. Stannis was right. Jaime could never tell him, he’d be more insufferable than he was already. But that didn’t mean that Robert was secretly a person of normal intelligence masquerading as a moron. He had just gotten lucky. Per usual. “What else did Robert say?” Jaime prodded, now that he had the perfect window of inquiry. “That you were going to try and ruin the wedding,” Ned squeezed him tighter in what Jaime realized with dawning horror was a hug. “But you wouldn’t really do that.” “Of course not,” Jaime said, trying to get them closer to the fountain. “That’s good,” Ned continued obliviously. “Because Robert says that Cersei said if anything went wrong with the Vogue coverage, the wedding would be off.” “He did?” Jaime stopped in his tracks. “Mmmm hmmm,” Ned stopped. Eureka. No more trying to undermine Cersei’s bizarre affection for the idiot Baratheon. No trying to do vice versa for Robert (not that Jaime thought Stannis’ idea had any particular merit). All he had to do was create some kind of disaster that would lose them the Vogue coverage. How hard could that be? “You know Stark, you’re not so bad,” Jaime said magnanimously, patting the reddish-brown head currently lolling on his right shoulder. “Does this mean your forgive me for that Aerys thing?” Ned immediately said hopefully. “What?! No!” Jaime yelped. “But,” Ned finally let go and turned to face him, eyes wide, face pale and practically radiating injured innocence. “But...” “Go on, spit it out,” Jaime sneered. Ned opened his mouth and a stream of bile splashed out, spattering Jaime’s jeans and shoes. Jaime closed his eyes. When he opened them, Ned was still standing in front of him, miserably guilty. With a howl of rage, Jaime grabbed him by the shoulder and flipped him over his back into the fountain. A load of laundry, a shower, and a telephone call later, Jaime reported what he had discovered. “How do we make sure this wedding doesn’t have Vogue coverage?” Stannis said doubtfully. “I mean does it have Vogue coverage to start with?” “Not yet,” Jaime admitted. “But it’s only a matter of time. Unless we do something.” “I don’t see how we take something away from Cersei that she doesn’t already have,” Stannis repeated stubbornly. Ugh good co-conspirators were so hard to find. “Take for example the photographer,” Jaime pressed. “There is a shortlist of trusted Vogue wedding photographers, and the odds of getting a spread increase if you’re already using one. This close to the wedding, there’s only one that’s available.” He paused for dramatic effect. “The famously reclusive Ellyn Tarbeck.” “Never heard of her,” Stannis said flatly. Jaime kicked the door of his closet in frustration before remembering that this was supposed to be a secret phone call. “You’ve never heard of the Tarbecks?! Tarbeck International?! Lannister Corp. destroyed the company, picked it up in a hostile takeover and sold the pieces off for scraps. Walderan Tarbeck, the CEO, committed suicide? Ellyn Tarbeck went on the news and said my father as good as murdered him? Like it was thirty years ago but it’s super famous?” “Were they a shipping company?” “Uh no, mining.” “And this happened before I was born?” Jaime growled. “My father’s about to become your sort of father-in-law, you’d think you’d have done some research.” “But he’s not. At least not if we’re successful. If it makes you happy, I will dedicate an hour to the subject of the Tarbecks after work today.” “No it’s just, it’s general knowledge okay?! And Cersei certainly knows it. That’s why she asked Robert to ask her. Because Ellyn Tarbeck is a crazy recluse who doesn’t read the papers and won’t know that Robert is marrying a Lannister. So he might, just maybe, have a shot at hiring her.” “Okay?” Stannis asked uncertainly. “And that’s why you need to create a distraction for Robert tomorrow, the day he’s supposed to be driving up to Tarbeck Hall to ask her. I’ll offer to go, and the moment I introduce myself to Ellyn Tarbeck as the bride’s brother, it’ll be game over,” Jaime explained. “They’ll have to go with a non-Vogue photographer, Cersei will be furious at Robert for delegating something he said he’d do himself, and this whole excruciating ordeal will be over.” “Your plan may have some merit,” Stannis conceded. Was it the accolades that he deserved? No, but he would work with what he got. Jaime left the closet with a jaunty spring in his step. After days of banging his head against the wall, he finally had an evil plan. Who knew evil plans were so hard to come by? He had a newfound grudging respect for Cersei who had always shown a natural aptitude for this sort of thing. And even better, Ned was curled up in Robert’s bed, dead to the world. Jaime had an entire afternoon to himself. What to do, what to do... A short drive to the Citadel later, he found Brienne in an enormous library, struggling to unchain a book with an antiquated wrought iron key that looked profoundly unsuited for the purpose of being a key let alone being a key to that particular book. “Need some help,” he grinned. “Oh!” Brienne looked up startled, and then a smile spread across her face. “Aren’t you supposed to be child-proofing the apartment with Ned?” She asked, failing to hide the amusement on her face. “He’s feeling under the weather,” Jaime said lightly, taking a seat across from her and resting his chin on his hands. “So how’s this library gig treating you?” “Oh Jaime, it’s absolutely brilliant!” Brienne gushed, her face lighting up even further. “Archmaester Marwyn actually knows a surprising amount about the First Men and the Long Night. I’m learning so much! It’s given me a wonderful idea for my thesis this fall—I can’t wait to get started.” Jaime eyed the dusty leather tomes around her skeptically. He couldn’t imagine finding anything of interest between these pages. But if Brienne liked it, he could make himself take an interest. He reached for a book. “No touching!” Brienne slapped his hand away. “Don’t you want me to get an education?” Jaime pouted, shaking just hand out as if she’d hurt him. “Not with these books, it’ll be my head if anything happens to them,” Brienne eyed the book he’d reached for with some concern, as if his mere presence might have damaged it. “So I’m not allowed to touch anything old,” Jaime furrowed his brow in pretense of thought. “Please don’t,” Brienne turned back to the sticky key, frowning slightly she tried to gently jimmy the lock mechanism. She didn’t even look up as he stood and walked around, although she certainly looked up when she felt his lips on the nape of her neck. “Jaime!” “What wench,” he teased, nuzzling her and letting a hand drift down to the top button of her shirt. “I’m not touching anything old. I just want a proper education,” his hand popped the button and moved down to the next. “Jaime! You certainly don’t need any more education in... that area,” Brienne leaned away from him but made no effort to remove his hand. He popped the next button. “Well a refresher course never hurt. Perhaps I could brush up on a few skills,” he kissed her collarbone. “I don’t think—“ Brienne’s breath caught as he sucked her collarbone. “That’s right wench, don’t think,” Jaime pulled her chair around so he could kiss her properly, cupping her chin in both hands. “I don’t think the reading room is the place for this,” Brienne managed to push him away after a minute. Jaime groaned, but obediently started to rebutting her blouse which he’d managed to get half off. She caught his hand. “No, I meant there’s a bathroom downstairs in the stacks. Give me a two minute head start and knock twice,” her blue gaze met his own evenly. Jaime felt weak at the knees. “I knew there was something you could teach me,” he managed. Brienne’s answering smirk was all the reply he needed.

Ned (What Have You Done 2 of x)

Ned had been dreaming that he’d been sleeping entangled with Catelyn, back in their cozy Winterfell apartment, safely removed from the rest of the world, when the alarm went off. He opened his eyes to discover that he was in fact sleeping entangled with Robert, who let out a completely undisturbed snore in his face.

“I swear if that alarm goes off one more time, I’m going to push you out a window Baratheon!”

And the rest of the world was very much not removed, Ned winced, scrambling over a still sleeping Robert to get to the alarm clock. Jaime growled something from the cot across the room and turned over, pillow over his head. His best efforts to repair relations with Robert’s future brother in law notwithstanding (well his best efforts and two quite unfortunate weak stomach incidents), Jaime still loathed him.

The mornings were the best times. Once Robert actually got up, they’d have breakfast together and it felt a bit like when they were roommates back in Aerie, and Robert would tell him his football stories and rib him about not having enough fun.

“What’s up with Cat?” Robert asked as he slopped some smoothie into a bowl for Ned. He added a sprinkle of granola and some banana and shoved it over to Ned.

“She and Robb are doing well,” Ned took a spoonful, to avoid wincing. His Ravyn conversations with Cat would be the best part of the day, only they had been... sparse. The Summer Islands had bad reception, and it seemed like Hoster always had something that demanded Catelyn’s immediate attention whenever they finally did manage to connect. They were going to give it another shot later this morning. 

“What’re your plans for the day?” Ned asked to change the subject.

“I’ll have practice and lifting until three or so. Then Cersei wants me and Beric to film some footage for the foundation she... I mean I am setting up,” Robert scratched his head sheepishly. “She’s rounded up a couple kids to throw the ball around with. She says the commercial’s going to go live tonight. Whaddaya think Neddy, I’ll be on tv!”

“You’re always on tv, Robert,” Ned laughed. “Every Sunday.”

Robert pretended to sulk at his triumphant moment being taken from him and Ned laughed again, and for a moment, he was having fun, as he’d promised his wife. Then Robert looked at the time and realized he was running late and yelped. Ned chuckled ruefully—the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. How many times had he helped Robert find his missing cleat in college? Then, as he found it (under a still-attempting-to-sleep Jaime’s bed), Robert opened the door.

“I’ll see you this evening to watch my spot! Play nice with my wifey and don’t forget to spend some time planning the stag party!”

Ned had been mid-toss of the shoe when that bomb dropped, and his throw went badly wide. Robert, with the reflexes that had probably earned him a living as a professional athlete, managed to catch it anyway.

“The stag party?” Ned repeated in a strangely high-pitched voice.

“Chyeah!! It’s gotta be the best ever! I am the stag king right?! My last hurrah!!!”

“I thought,” Ned cleared his throat, “you were asking one of the other groomsmen...”

Robert snorted.

“You want Stannis to plan my stag party?”

Ned winced at that image.

“I just assumed Thoros...”

“Look I love the guy, but I’m pretty sure he’d be happy camping in the Riverlands. I need five star hotels! I need Michelin Star restaurants! And most of all...”

Ned rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming.

“I need women!”

“But Robert...” Ned scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “People don’t tend to think I’m... very fun.”

“That’s nonsense! I think you’re fun!” Robert gave him the same smile that he’d always given him right before persuading him to do something he really shouldn’t. And as always, Ned felt his willpower ebbing away.

“Well if you’re sure you want me to do it,” Ned felt his lips forming the words despite himself.

“Attaboy!” Robert grinned. “And don’t forget...”

“Best. Stag. Ever,” Ned recited dutifully along with Robert.

The door slammed, and Ned wondered what he’d just done. He wasn’t the party person. Robert was the party person. But of course Robert couldn’t plan his own party. And if he didn’t want Stannis doing it, and he didn’t want Thoros doing it...

Let it never be said that Ned didn’t do his duty.

“Have you ever even thrown a party, Stark?” Jaime asked from the cot where his eyes were still closed.

Ned glared.

“It’ll be fine,” Catelyn said, when the Ravyn call finally went through. She was beaming at him, looking tan and happy, and Ned felt their distance as an almost physical ache.

“Gods know you’ve been to enough of Robert’s parties to know what he likes. You can make the hotel reservations and the restaurants and then just delegate the night clubs to Oberyn Martell,” she continued.

“Delegate?” Ned repeated doubtfully.

“Of course! Who’s going?”

“Robert, me, Stannis, Jaime, Thoros, Beric, Oberyn and Mace,” Ned recited. Renly and Tyrion were still not of legal drinking age, despite Tyrion’s protestations that he knew a guy who made the most amazing fake IDs.

“So put Oberyn on entertainment, Mace on restaurants and Beric on hotels,” Catelyn shrugged. “Your work is practically done.”

“But what’ll we doing during the day?” Ned fretted. 

“I guess that’ll depend on where you’re going. Where are you going?”

“I don’t know!!!”

“You’ll figure it out,” Cat rolled her eyes, and then the screen jostled and there was a squeal of ‘Da Da!’ and then he could see his son.

“Robb!” He beamed until his cheeks hurt, his heart practically bursting from his rib cage. His boy, his darling boy. This was what was important, the three of them. They’d get through anything together.

“How is he doing? Is he behaving himself? Has the cough gone away yet?” Ned asked, fingers touching the laptop screen where Cat was struggling to get a squirming Robb situated on her lap.

“The cough is gone, and he’s learned a new word! It’s...”

“Catelyn!” A brusque voice interrupted from off screen. The trace of a frown creased Cat’s forehead as she turned.

“Daddy, I’m trying to talk to Ned,” she said. Robb, sending his mother’s distraction, clambered off her lap and crawled away. Ned’s fingers touching the screen grasped frantically at his vanishing son.

“Our friends the Estermonts just walked in the door. You remember Lomas don’t you? He’s your age and already a city council member! Come talk to him Cat, please,” Hoster Tully said from off screen.

“Daddy—“

“Catlyn!”

Cat gave Ned an apologetic look and he tried to smile back. The screen blinked to black.

Ned sighed.

That day, he accompanied Jaime to Cersei’s. She in turn dispatched them to a superstore with a list of items she still needed for the nursery.

Jaime spent the first hour resolutely not talking to him. Ned resigned himself to his polite ice breakers going ignored, knowing that Jaime Lannister was constitutionally incapable of staying quiet forever. Sure enough, by the time they’d hit the second store to find all the things the first store didn’t have, Jaime had transitioned to casual malice.

“You didn’t talk very long to Cat,” he said, pretending to examine a diaper genie.

“Oh you know,” Ned swallowed. “She’s so busy with her family.”

“They sounded like they were having a great time,” Jaime batted at a mobile, sending it spinning. “So nice of Hoster to try and introduce her to some people her age.”

“Yeah,” Ned looked at the ground.

“Hoster was a little annoyed about your wedding as I recall. I’m glad he’s gotten over that,” Jaime smirked.

As if Hoster Tully has ever gotten over anything.

Mercifully, by the time they got back to Cersei’s, Brienne had returned from her morning at the Citadel. Ned got sent to put together a day bed in the nursery, and tried not to think about Cat and Robb while sitting in a child’s playroom. 

When he was finally released from duty (Brienne had assured him that she would keep an eye on Jaime and Cersei had disappeared to supervise that commercial Robert had been talking about), it was 5:30. Robert wouldn’t be done for another hour or two. Ned felt vaguely at loose ends and more than a little sad. Basically, he could use a drink.

And really, Ned thought, as he walked to High Heart, this was perfect. He could catch Thoros alone and discuss the bachelor party. Everyone was coming later to watch the darn commercial, so he’d already be in the right place, and he could even get some dinner while he waited.

“Why the long face?” Thoros grinned as collapsed on the bar stool. Ned, aware that he had a long face, rolled his eyes.

“Oh c’mon, that was funny,” Thoros poured him a pint of beer without asking and pushed it over.

“Robert wants me to throw the stag party. I’ve never thrown a stag party!” Ned took a long sip of his drink. If nothing else, his alcohol tolerance would be significantly higher at the end of this summer than at the beginning.

“Me neither,” Thoros shrugged. “What were you thinking?”

“Well the first step is deciding what to do. Any chance you have any ideas?” Ned asked hopefully.

“Um camping is pretty fun and easy to plan,” Thoros started.

“Robert already vetoed it,” Ned sighed. “He said you’d say that. He wants five star hotels.”

“Right,” Thoros grimaced, using a rag to wipe down the counter a patron had just vacated. “Maybe I can sell a kidney on the black market.”

Ned winced. He knew that Thoros couldn’t afford casual trips to Braavos or wherever Robert wanted to go. And that of course Robert would pay for him to go if Thoros asked, and of course Thoros would never ask. There had to be a way around this...

“I think Olenna Tyrell has a summer home in the wine country outside of Highgarden. Maybe we can call Mace and get him to ask her if we can go there for a long weekend,” Ned said slowly.

“Wine country?” Thoros looked up hopefully.

“And it’s Olenna Tyrell. Whatever her summer home is like, you know it’s better than a five star hotel,” Ned continued, gears clicking in his hotel.

“The restaurants in the Reach are supposed to be amazing...”

“We won’t need plane tickets, everyone can drive...”

“Highgarden has plenty of nightlife...”

“We’ll go wine tasting during the day, maybe even go boating on the Mander one afternoon,” Ned took another deep gulp of his beer and they grinned at each other. This could really work!

“That won’t work,” Mace said flatly, when they Ravyned him from Thoros’ laptop. From off scream there was a howl.

“Loras, no screeching when Daddy’s on the phone!” Mace protested. A glob of food hit him in the face. “And no food fights!”

“Sorry,” Mace winced at the two of them through the screen, “just hold on—“ there was a pause as he wrestled a cherubic toddler into his lap. The cherubic toddler landed a chubby fist in his eye and then blew a raspberry at the screen. Mace gave them a haunted, desperate look. Behind Ned, Thoros was stifling a snicker.

“Daddy can’t go wine tasting because Daddy’s losing his fucking mind,” Mace crooned, bouncing little Loras up and down. “Daddy needs strippers and booze and cocaine. Daddy wants to do a line off a stripper’s ass Ned. Not discuss the Honeywyne burgundies. Please.”

His voice broke on the last note. Ned realized that he had the dark shadows under his eyes of someone whose child was not sleeping through the night.

Thoros was still snickering.

“Don’t laugh you bastard,” Mace hissed. “Alerie knew he had chicken pox and left me with him all week. I’ve put on twenty pounds since we got married. I spend my working hours as a glorified errand boy for my mother. This stag party is the only thing that is keeping me going, I swear.”

His eye had started twitching. Loras began attempting to gnaw at his arm.

“It’s okay Mace, we understand,” Ned began in a pacifying tone.

“Do you? If I have to watch Frozen one more time, I will use this stupid plastic spork to remove my eyeballs, so help me Stranger! Promise me Ned!” Mace gestured at the screen with a happy green spork.

“Frozen?” Loras burbled looking up.

“Oh no,” Mace breathed.

“FROZEN!” Loras screeched. The screen went black.

“So it sounds like a no on wine tasting,” Thoros said glumly.

“Back to the drawing board,” Ned mumbled. Five star hotels for Robert, night clubs for Mace, budget for Thoros. What was he going to do?

“Maybe I should just develop an illness,” Thoros poured a glass of beer for himself as well. “A debilitating illness that prevents me from going.”

“As long as you plan to rent a hospital room for Robert to visit you in,” Ned shrugged.

“What if I said it was a work emergency?”

“Robert would probably hire a bartender to replace you on the weekend in question.”

“Do you think I’m being stupid? It’s just he’s done so much for me already, and I really don’t like the idea of taking his money...”

“It’s not stupid at all. I’m sure we can find some place in Westeros that has nice hotels with good discounts...”

When Robert and Beric joined them an hour later, they had made little progress. It didn’t help that summer was the height of the tourist season. Ned shut Thoros’ laptop guiltily.

“Turn on the television!!” Robert demanded, already grabbing at the remote.

“Relax, it’s not running for another twenty minutes,” Thoros laughed. He turned to Beric. “Ready to be famous?”

“I just want to be left alone,” Beric said dolefully.

“What’ve you been up to?” Robert asked Ned.

“Oh the usual. Um, I talked to Mace today.”

“How is the old windbag?!“

“Um...” Ned was unsure how to describe the nervous sleep-deprived wreck he’d seen. “He’s very excited for your party.”

“Obviously,” Robert smirked. “It’s only going to be the —“

“Best. Stag. Ever,” Ned, Beric and Thoros recited dutifully in unison.

“Hey! Here it is!” Robert suddenly interjected, turning up the volume.

“Yo, EVERYONE SHUT UP!” He shouted are the rest of the bar, who fell silent.

There was a brief highlight reel of Robert playing football, then a cut to him walking down the Maesters’ field.

“Hi! I’m Robert Baratheon, the quarterback of the Oldtown Maesters. Sports teaches us leadership, teamwork, and drive. But it’s not just for professional athletes. Ask my friend Beric.”

The camera panned out to include Beric, who waved. Thoros wolf whistled.

“Stop it,” the real Beric groaned.

“Shhhh, my boyfriend’s on tv,” Thoros shushed him.

“I played three years of football with Robert, until a motorcycle accident ended my career. I might have lost an eye, but I didn’t lose my love of the game.”

Now the camera panned to a whole group of children adorably doing drills.

“Here at Oldtown, we want everyone to have a good time,” Robert said cheerfully. “Even children with physical limitations.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” a boy with a prosthetic leg tugged at Robert’s sleeve, pointing to a footwork drill.

“No worries, Lommy, let’s work on throwing instead! Hey, Beric, go long!” Robert shouted cheerfully and snapped the ball to the boy. With a cute grin, he slung the pig-skin and Beric caught it, diving dramatically through the air to hit the ground and roll.

“Touchdown!” Robert shouted and high-fived Lommy. Beric came jogging up, a tad mud-spattered.

“So the next time you’re looking to make a donation, I hope you’ll consider Storm’s Ending,” Robert winked at the camera. “Where all children get the chance to be kids.”

The last shot was Lommy waving from Beric’s shoulders, giving a gap-toothed grin as a little jingle played with the number to dial.

The commercial ended.

“AWWWWW,” Thoros ruffled Beric’s hair. “That was adorable!”

“Not bad,” Ned admitted, trying to disguise the fact that he had gotten a little teary eyed. He just missed Robb so much!

“I still don’t see why you need a commercial asking for donations when you’re planning to privately fund the whole thing,” Beric sulked, batting Thoros’ hand away.

“Publicity,” Robert shrugged. “Cersei’s going to run the spot every day until our wedding. It’ll elevate my public profile outside of sports and ensure that everyone who thinks of me thinks of summer camps for kids and not...”

“Public drunkenness,” Thoros offered.

“Assault and battery,” Ned offered.

“Three interceptions in one game,” Beric said under his breath. 

“... other stuff,” Robert finished, crossing his arms and glaring at them.

“Well it’s great. Nice catch, Beric! Back to your old form,” Ned patted his former teammate on the back.

“Where did you get that outfit?” Thoros asked. “Because you looked like... really good.”

“Cersei picked it out. I think the shirt was tailored. I don’t even want to know how she got my measurements,” Beric shook his head.

“Well I thought you looked good,” Thoros repeated slightly dreamily.

“So did I,” a new female voice breathed behind him. They all turned. A pretty if innocent looking high school girl was staring at Beric in fascination.

“Um guys, this is Jenny, the owner’s granddaughter,” Thoros said blinking. “Jenny, this is Ned, Robert, and Beric.”

“You were awesome,” Jenny giggled, still ogling Beric who had begun to blush. She took a step toward him. “Are you like, an athlete?”

“I’m in law school,” Beric took a step back.

“I’m an athlete,” Robert said hopefully. Ned smacked him in the back of the head and Thoros took that as his cue to usher Jenny away from the bar.

“Dondarrion, did you see that?” Robert craned his neck to look at the clearly underage girl’s ass. Ned smacked him again.

“You’re like... a sex symbol now!” Robert continued cheerfully, rubbing the back of his head.

“It was one girl,” Beric mumbled, his face now fully red.

“Says you,” Robert snorted. “Take it from somebody kind of famous, you gotta enjoy it while it lasts. Because the next thing you know, you have ONE BAD GAME...”

“I’m not a sex symbol am I?” Beric shot Ned a panicked look. 

“Of course not,” Ned said soothingly. He looked over his shoulder where another group of girls were giggling and pointing at them. He put his arm around Beric’s shoulders and angled them so their back was to the rest of the bar. “Everything will be better with a good night’s sleep, you’ll see.”

He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince, Beric or himself.

At any rate, when he and Robert finally got back to the apartment, it was with a deep sense of relief that he let himself collapse back into the bed. 

It had been a long day, but it was finally, thankfully over. 

Ned wasn’t sure what woke him up, only that he woke with the uneasy sense that there was someone picking their way through the apartment.

A soft rustle.

He squirmed deeper into his blankets. Robert was snoring next to him, he could dimly make out Jaime’s back across the living space.

A floorboard creak. Closer this time.

What if it was a burglar? Worse, what if it was Tywin Lannister?!

Ned felt his heartbeat racing. He could see it now, a shadowy figure approaching the bed.

“Who’s there?!” Ned demanded, trying to keep the quaver out of his voice. If it was a burglar he’d wake up Robert. If it was Tywin Lannister, he’d wake up Jaime.

“Oh good, I thought I’d find you here,” said a smooth slightly over-confident voice that Ned knew and struggled to place for a moment.

“...Oberyn?!” 

The shadow sat down on the bed.

“The man, the myth, the legend,” it said cheerfully.

Ned laughed, partly in relief and partly in disbelief.

“What are you doing here, Martell?!” 

“Scoot over, you’re hogging the bed,” Oberyn kicked off his shoes and proceeded to slide under the covers with them. Ned was mildly relieved that Jaime was still asleep. He got enough jokes about him and Robert.

“There, now you’re comfy, now answer the question,” Ned prodded.

“If you must know, I was visiting my eldest, Obara. Her mother is an escort here in Oldtown.”

Ned sighed. Oberyn had always lived a little faster than the rest of them, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he already had two daughters. Obara and... Nymeria. That was it.

“Do you always break in to Robert’s flat for a quick snuggle when you’re in Oldtown?” Ned snarked.

“Maybe I’m here to see you, Stark,” Oberyn smirked.

“Are you?”

“Yes, actually. At the behest of a mutual friend who called me in deep distress during a break in the Frozen marathon.”

Ned sighed.

“Look, I told Mace I’d do my best. And I will, I’ll find something.”

“See this is why you should be nice to me,” Oberyn flashed his perfectly white teeth and even in the dark Ned could see his sharp smile. “I’ve found a solution to your problem. Well, rather Mace and Thoros’ problem. It was for Thoros that you suggested a free summer house right?”

“I’m not made of dragons either,” Ned protested.

“But your father is,” Oberyn stretched languidly. “Anyway, you think too small.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why settle for a summer home, when you could settle for a summer palace?”

Ned blinked.

“You mean...”

“I called my brother Doran. He said it’s fine. We are all cordially invited to the Water Palaces in Sunspear.”

Ned’s brain clicked frantically. Sunspear, in Dorne. In a friggin’ palace. Dorne with its famously beautiful women, its incredible cuisine, its reasonably accessible location...

“Thank you Oberyn... that’s amazing,” Ned stammered out. “I owe you one, seriously.”

“Great,” Oberyn yawned. “Then scoot over more. I’m going to crash here.”

“Wait, what?” Ned blurted.

“Had a fight with Obara’s mother. Took Mace’s call while we were... engaged,” Oberyn gave another slightly feral smile.

“You’re as bad as Robert,” Ned huffed, but he obediently scooted over further.

“I’m worse,” Oberyn said smugly. 

Ned rolled his eyes and reminded himself to kick him out before Jaime woke up.

Brienne (What Have You Done 3 of x)

Brienne tried to ignore her growling stomach as she gently blew the dust off a tomb that Archmaester Marwyn had sent her to fetch. She felt the normal tickle of incredulity as she thought his name. She was working for Archmaester Marwyn! In the Citadel! He knew her name! Well, he often called her Brian, but it was with affection. Like a nickname. Archmaester Marwyn had given her a nickname!

These precious hours in the afternoon that she spent managing Marwyn’s bibliography were a much needed oasis of peace and quiet from the raging storm of Cersei Lannister beyond. She thought forlornly of Jaime’s attempts to save her from this fate. He had such a good heart. If only he hadn’t become one of the many nuisances she had to manage.

It was bad enough that she was running around with florists and musicians and club promoters and septons on speed dial. But now she was constantly running interference between Jaime and his sister, because he never stopped using those moments to try and get in some digs about Robert.

“He’s so clumsy, his apartment is full of things he’s managed to break and hasn’t replaced yet. And lazy. Have I mentioned how lazy he is?” Jaime had pretended to complain about his accommodations, while watching Cersei under his golden lashes to see if any of his words were having an affect.

Brienne also glanced at Cersei nervously. Her blond head was bowed over her phone, her expression hidden behind her hair.

“He’s not clumsy, he’s just strong,” Brienne interjected from Cersei’s other side. “And he’s very tall and big, it’s not surprising he has a little more trouble than most getting through an apartment. And he’s not lazy, he’s only a professional athlete who is really busy and doesn’t have time to replace the mixer or whatever it is you’re complaining about.”

Jaime rolled his eyes.

“I’m not sure staying out at all hours to go drinking with friends is really appropriate father material,” Jaime tsked on another day, when he’d managed to evade Ned Stark yet again.

“But I’m sure he’ll give that up once you’re married and the baby is here,” Brienne hastened to assure Cersei.

“Have you noticed how he always talks with his mouth full,” Jaime snorted after they’d all had dinner and Ned and Robert had been dispatched to do the dishes.

“It was only because he was so excited about what you were saying about the wedding,” Brienne offered weakly to Cersei. 

Honestly it was a little exhausting spending all this time defending Robert, when most of Jaime’s critiques were true. But she knew that Robert’s heart was in the right place, even if Jaime couldn’t see it. Jaime was protective of Cersei, and maybe yes a little too stubborn for his own good. Brienne felt another surge of affection for her prickly knight in shining armor.

“And what exactly will Robert do once his football career is over? Be a house husband while you run Lannister Corp?” Jaime asked snidely as they watched his car pull up below.

All the same, she would kill him if she had to take much more of this.

“Robert has plenty of ambitions beyond the football field,” Brienne replied rather waspishly.

“He does?” Jaime’s lip curled into a sneer.

“He does?” Cersei turned, looking genuinely surprised.

Shit. Ummmmm think. Think think think. He must have said something to Renly? 

“He wants to start a bar,” Brienne announced triumphantly, grasping at a wisp of memory. Or was it a brewery? “With Thoros.” Or was it Ned?

“Huh,” Cersei said, and then went back to deciding who could be trusted to sit at her father’s table.

“See, maybe you don’t know him quite as well as you think you do,” Jaime said triumphantly, shooting Brienne a smug look. “Why not postpone the wedding? Really take some time to learn everything there is to know about each other?”

No! How could he twist it! Brienne glared at him. Jaime winked back.

“Why even Brienne probably knows Robert better than you do,” Jaime said lightly and sauntered out.

“That’s definitely not true,” Brienne assured Cersei. “I just spent a lot of time at their house because Renly...”

“Oh Brienne,” Cersei took her hand and patted it. “You don’t have to worry, I know everything.”

“You do?” Brienne said, a wave of relief flooding her senses. Because finally, this whole ridiculous charade could be over and Cersei could talk some sense into Jaime and they could go back to planning this wedding which really was spinning somewhat out of control.

“It was so obvious,” Cersei smiled somewhat pityingly.

“It was rather obvious wasn’t it?” Brienne blushed, thinking of Jaime’s borderline blatant hostility.

“And you’ve been such a dear helping as you have.”

“Well of course! You are my fa—friend,” Brienne stammered, realizing she’d been about to say family. Which of course she wasn’t, it’s not like she and Jaime had ever talked about it, it was just all this nonsense about weddings that was making her fanciful...

“I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for you,” Cersei said sympathetically.

Brienne cocked her head. Something about the gushing empathy felt a little... excessive? She flashed back on her conversation with Melisandre.

“What do you think we’re talking about?” Brienne asked suspiciously.

“You’re in love with Robert,” Cersei said matter of factly. 

Brienne felt her eyes bulge slightly and her mouth twist in an expression of involuntary disgust at the idea. Because... Robert?!?!

“Oh please don’t cry, I’m not mad,” Cersei mistook her expression for something else entirely. “I should have realized that’s why you befriended Renly all those years ago. To be closer to him. You knew it was hopeless of course, but you just couldn’t help but torture yourself. And then you finally got over him and moved on to Jaime, but me asking you to be the maid of honor at our wedding has dragged up all these suppressed feelings and I just think you’re so... brave,” Cersei suddenly enveloped her in an awkward hug. Brienne stood stiffly, not really sure what to do with her arms. At length she settled on a gentle shoulder pat.

At least Cersei could no longer see her expression, because... Robert?!

Robert who could never remember anybody’s name, who leered at every girl in a short skirt, who belched and farted and scratched his ass in public. It wasn’t that he was aesthetically unattractive, quite the opposite (although Renly would definitely be the best looking of the three, Brienne added loyally), but the idea of thinking about him romantically was just... ugh!

But how could she say that to Cersei, who actually despite all odds and every indication to the contrary, really did like him?! There was no helping it.

“It is very... hard... sometimes,” Brienne tried to sound a little tragic.

“You mustn’t worry that I’ll tell Jaime, this is just between us. These old feelings will go away as soon as the wedding is over, you’ll see,” Cersei squeezed her more tightly. “And you and Jaime will live happily ever after. You know Brienne, you’re so much more than a friend to me. I’ve felt it for some time. You’re like... a sister,” Cersei stepped back and beamed at her.

Caught in the floodlights of Cersei’s dazzling smile, the warmth of her gaze, the faint scent of her perfume, light and feminine and perfectly Cersei, Brienne had no choice but to smile uncertainly back. Because more than anything, she wanted Jaime’s family to like her, to support their relationship. And she had just won over another member. All she had to do was make sure that this wedding didn’t blow up in her face.

Naturally the first person she wanted to tell was Jaime. She caught him shrugging his coat on to take the car back to Robert’s.

“Guess what?” She hugged him from behind.

“You’ve forgiven me for being better at this than you,” Jaime smirked.

“You are, but it doesn’t matter,” Brienne let him go to kiss him lightly on the lips. “She won’t listen, because she’s in lo—“

“Oh look at the time,” Jaime checked his watch ostentatiously. “I’d better get a move on if I’m going to get to Tarbeck Hall.”

“Tarbeck Hall?” Brienne frowned. That was where that photographer lived. The one Cersei was so hellbent on getting. “Isn’t Robert going?”

“Oh something came up with Renly, he had to run back to King’s Landing,” Jaime said nonchalantly. Brienne raised an eyebrow. Renly was at theater camp.

“Where is Ned?” She asked slowly.

“Stannis thought it would be better if he drove Robert. You know how Robert is with driving on highways. Stannis didn’t want him to get a speeding ticket.”

“So Stannis suddenly needed Robert and Ned in King’s Landing, and you just... volunteered... to get the photographer out of the goodness of your heart?”

“I do have a terribly good heart,” Jaime gave her a roguishly crooked grin.

“It’s not that good.”

“You wound me, wench.”

“Jaime!” Brienne hissed, the picture snapping into focus. “You’re going to do sabotage the photographer! You’re going to say something terribly rude or be an ass or a jerk or... or... SOMETHING, and then Cersei will blame Robert because he was supposed to go!”

“Cross my terribly good heart, Brienne,” Jaime crossed his heart easily, “I will not be rude or an ass or a jerk. I will be completely normal and polite.”

Brienne stared at him. He never lied to her, but he wasn’t above holding things back. What was she missing?

“Right then,” Brienne said matter of factly. “I’m coming with you.”

“I hardly think that’s necessary,” Jaime started to protest. “Doesn’t Cersei need you here for moral support?”

“She has phone calls all morning, an appointment with her publicist this afternoon, and then she’s meeting Melisandre in King’s Landing to discuss cakes. If you’re going to be a gentleman, I don’t see what the problem is,” Brienne tilted her head, voice treacly sweet.

Jaime rolled his shoulders back, prepared to do battle.

“As you wish, milady,” he took her hand and kissed it. “I will not have my gentlemanly credentials impugned.”

Brienne rolled her eyes, but still blushed as she retrieved her hand.

Tarbeck Hall was in the northernmost reaches of the Westerlands, and Oldtown in the Southwest of the Reach. It was a six hour drive, and Jaime didn’t miss an opportunity to show off his chivalric bonafides. She emerged from a rest stop to discover that he had picked her a garland of wildflowers.

“For my Queen of Love and Beauty,” he bowed and placed it on her brow.

“You know I’m nothing of the sort,” Brienne huffed, removing it gently so not to damage his hard work.

“I beg to disagree,” he frowned, looking a trifle sulky when she placed it on their dashboard instead. “You don’t like it?”

“Of course I do, it’s just, it’s hardly historically accurate. Those were reserved for princesses and ladies and great beauties,” Brienne stumbled a bit trying to explain. “Not for big athletic sorts like me.”

“I happen to think you are a great beauty,” Jaime said gently.

“Well the world disagrees,” Brienne snarked back, and slammed the car door to show she was done with the conversation.

A pensive, somewhat stilted silence ensued, and of course Brienne began to feel a bit badly. It wasn’t Jaime’s fault that Ron Connington had called her “Beauty” in fifth grade. It wasn’t his fault that the boys would throw flowers at her and run away laugh-screaming in terror lest the Beauty get too close.

Jaime would have never done that. Jaime had never been anything less than caring and protective. She loved him endlessly, adoringly, down to the last hair on his ridiculous blond head. She loved his harebrained ideas and his ridiculous family and... wait! She hadn’t even told him!

“I forgot to tell you!” She blurted into the awkwardness. “Cersei said I was like a sister to her,” she said proudly.

Jaime looked over, although he did not match her excitement, somewhat to Brienne’s disappointment. Instead his features seemed to be conveying more of an affectionate bemusement.

“You know she’s always liked you fine.”

“But that’s not good enough! I want her to like me more than fine, and now she does!” Brienne poked him, trying to prod him into some enthusiasm.

“That’s Tyrion and your father and now Cersei,” she smiled.

“Is that what all of this is about?” Jaime arched just eyebrow. “Getting my family to like you?”

“No...” Brienne said, not entirely convincingly.

“What on earth would make you think I cared one whit what my family thinks of us?!”

“But I care!” Brienne protested. “I don’t want to cause problems with your family!”

“And I don’t want my family to drive you away!” Jaime ran a hand through his hair. 

Brienne paused.

“Why would you think they would drive me away?” She asked gently.

“Because they’re completely nuts! My dad is literally blackmailing my sister into marriage, she’s fine with it as long as it helps her raise her public profile, Tyrion’s fine with it because apparently he thinks forced marriages are a thing that can work, and I don’t want you to spend all summer in this black hole of insanity and decide I’m not worth it,” Jaime admitted.

Brienne rested her head on his shoulder.

“I will never think you’re not worth it,” she said quietly. “You are worth everything.”

Jaime leaned his own head against hers carefully, eyes still on the road.

“You’re just so good Brienne. And my family really REALLY isn’t.”

“I don’t think you have the clearest perspective on them,” Brienne sighed. “But even if you’re right, it wouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, nothing matters but you.”

“I love you,” Jaime lifted his head so he could kiss her temple. 

“I love you too,” Brienne answered. “Is there any chance this was why you’re trying to torpedo the wedding?”

“Nope. Cersei needs to be saved from herself and as usual, I’m the only one willing to do what needs to be done. Well me and Stannis.”

“She doesn’t need to be saved from herself, she’s marrying the father of her child.”

“She’s marrying a promise that she’ll be CEO of Lannister Corp when father steps down.”

“She loves him.”

“She doesn’t,” Jaime squared his shoulders stubbornly.

“How can you be so smart and so wrong,” Brienne groaned, breaking their cuddle.

“Maybe the same way you won’t wear my flower crown,” Jaime huffed.

“If I wear your flower crown, will you stop trying to sabotage the wedding?” Brienne tried.

“Not a chance.”

They finally found Tarbeck Hall an hour past Lannisport, where the smooth highways had given way to crumbling pavement. They almost missed the shabby sign, which directed them up a winding dirt road.

Brienne was starting to think Jaime was deliberately hitting all of the potholes on purpose, but finally they arrived at the ramshackle mansion. Brienne shivered. She wasn’t superstitious but this place definitely looked haunted. She half expected storm clouds to suddenly gather and a thunderclap to greet their arrival, but the summer afternoon remained oppressively hot as ever.

“What do you know about Ellyn Tarbeck?” Brienne whispered.

“Elusive and world famous photographer who’s features have headlined every major magazine in Westeros?” Jaime smiled at her, and Brienne felt like he was making a joke that she wasn’t quite getting.

“And she lives here? She must be loaded!”

“It’s her husband’s family estate.”

“Is her husband... with us?”

“No he killed himself maybe thirty years ago. They say she went quite mad for a while.”

Brienne swallowed. A madwoman in a haunted house and she had to convince her to photograph a high society wedding while Jaime did... something nefarious. No pressure.

She walked up to the front door and pressed the buzzer, fully expecting some kind of trap door to open up beneath her feet. Instead a doleful bell sounded, chiming eerily off the crumbling stonework.

Jaime was humming something under his breath, still seeming oddly at ease.

“What are you so chipper about?” Brienne arched an eyebrow.

“I’m on an adventure with you, why wouldn’t I be chipper?” Jaime asked innocently.

“Huh,” Brienne gave back, unimpressed. She rang the bell again, trying not to wince at the sound. There was the sound of a door unlocking.

“Rush rush rush, all you young people nowadays in such a rush,” a woman with silver hair and sharp blue eyes stepped out. She was tall and slim, with a faded glamour about the sundress she was wearing, paired rather incongruously with hiking boots. Her skin was a walnut brown that spoke to long days outdoors, and made the blue of her eyes and the silver of her hair stand out all the more starkly.

“Ellyn Tarbeck?” Brienne asked politely.

But the woman had frozen, her eyes fixed on Jaime. For a moment, nobody spoke. And then her gaze narrowed.

“You!” She pointed at Jaime dramatically. “Lannister!”

“Jaime Lannister, specifically,” Jaime said politely.

“Why is a Lannister darkening my doorstep?” Ellyn Tarbeck hissed at Brienne.

Brienne opened her mouth, completely at a loss for words. 

“I’m the bride’s brother,” Jaime interjected helpfully.

“The Baratheon bride?!” Ellyn Tarbeck took a step backward, hand on her heart.

“Yes, Robert Baratheon intends to marry my sister Cersei Lannister. Tywin Lannister’s only daughter. Since he’s paying for the wedding, you can really think of him as your employer,” Jaime replied in a faux helpful voice that Brienne distrusted deeply.

“Get out,” Ellyn Tarbeck hissed.

“Am I to understand that you no longer wish to photograph the Baratheon-Lannister nuptials?” Jaime said in a voice that fell a couple miles short of shocked.

“GET OUT!!!” Ellyn Tabeck screeched and then slammed the door in their faces.

Brienne blinked as the echo of the slam ricocheted off the world around them.

“Well I think that went rather well, don’t you?” Jaime smiled brightly.

Brienne glared.

“What?!”

Jaime (What Have You Done 4 of x)

Jaime didn’t feel bad. He really didn’t. It wasn’t his fault Brienne had decided to come along and shoulder the burden of trying to stop his evil plan. She could have stayed in Oldtown and had a perfectly pleasant day off instead of schlepping across all of the Reach and the Westerlands in an impromptu road trip.

“Cersei will be so upset,” Brienne twisted her hands as she paced to and fro in front of the car. She had her cell phone out and had been debating calling her for the last twenty minutes.

“Neither your fault nor your problem,” Jaime tried to give her a shoulder massage, but she shrugged him off.

“I can’t tell her Robert asked you to do it, because then she’ll call off the wedding. Maybe I can tell her that I insisted on doing it? But she’ll be so mad! What if she hates me?!”

“Then I would have a stern talk with her. She’s not allowed to hate you,” Jaime sighed.

Brienne gave him a very doubtful look and then resumed pacing. Jaime cast about for ideas.

“Look, just put the phone down. Let’s do something while we’re here. Didn’t we pass a turn off sign for a waterfall a mile back? Let’s go see a waterfall.”

“I’ve seen waterfalls,” Brienne fretted. “This is serious.”

“All the more reason not to make any hasty decisions,” Jaime said soothingly. “Some fresh air, some exercise, some nature—it’ll help you think clearly.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Brienne hesitated.

“When will you learn?” Jaime grinned. “I’m always right.”

There was a little empty parking lot for the waterfall, which they eventually found about a mile down a pleasantly wooded trail. Jaime had forced Brienne to leave her phone in the car, and she already seemed more relaxed. He could tell by the way the line of her neck had lengthened, the slight bounce of her blond hair, the spring in the step of her sinfully long legs... not a Queen of Love and Beauty indeed.

“What are you looking at?” She said, sensing that his gaze had wandered from splashing of the small waterfall. 

“You know what I’m looking at,” Jaime dropped his voice, just to see her cheeks pink.

“Stop,” she pushed him.

“Let’s go swimming,” he proposed, not eager to return to the car, pending call to Cersei or otherwise.

“Now? Here?”

“Why not, it’s a perfectly lovely natural pool. There’s nobody around. It’s hot as balls.”

Brienne rolled her eyes.

“As you wish,” Jaime shrugged, but proceeded to kick off his shoes and strip to his boxers.

“Jaime! What if someone comes!”

“I’m not naked,” he laughed. “Unless you’d like me to be...”

While she stammered for a response, he picked his way down into the pool below them. It was even better than he had hoped, the crisp bite of the fresh water. He plunged his head under and then shook his hair, aware that his gaze was not the only one who had wandered from the waterfall. With a mischievous smirk, he started paddling out toward the center.

“Jaime, get back here!” Brienne whispered, as if someone might hear them.

“Not a chance,” he treaded water as the pool became deeper. “And you know I got a candy bar from that gas station. I’m going to get cramps, Brienne. You’ll need to rescue me.”

“I will do no such thing,” Brienne lifted her chin.

“You were a lifeguard in high school! Didn’t you take an oath?”

“Lifeguards don’t have to take oaths, Jaime,” Brienne laughed.

“I bet you took one anyway,” Jaime teased. He let himself slip under the water and pop back up with a sputter. “There it is! The cramp!”

“You don’t have a cramp!”

“Brienne, I’m drowning!”

“You’re not drowning!”

“Brienne, you need to rescue me!”

“You don’t—“

Jaime let himself slip beneath the water for a second time, and sure enough, he heard the splash seconds later. Brienne took easy sure strokes out to him, and towed him on with her to the other side. They collapsed on the bank dramatically. Jaime tried to give a pathetic cough.

“Oh stop it,” Brienne smiled down at him, resting on her side. She was still wearing her white tank top, but had removed her shorts to reveal the cotton panties underneath. 

“Traditionally the rescuer gives the kiss of life,” Jaime pointed out.

“You’re incorrigible,” Brienne leaned down and kissed him. He savored the kiss for a moment and then slid his hand down her back to cheekily squeeze the swell of her ass.

“That is not part of the kiss of life,” Brienne joke scolded him. Then she pushed off and paddled backward toward the fall.

“Come back here!” It was Jaime’s turn to scold. She only splashed him in response. With a huff, he dove in after her.

Perhaps an hour later, they clambered back up toward the trail, retrieving their shoes and discarded clothing. Brienne seemed vastly more at ease, and Jaime found that his own restless anxiety had correspondingly subsided.

“I know you were peeking during Marco Polo,” Brienne butted him with her shoulder.

“Wench, I am shocked and appalled at your distrustful nature. I’m just naturally intuitive!”

“Naturally intuitive when your eyes are open!”

“Who hurt you to make you like this? Was it Renly? It was probably Renly. Little shit never met a rule he couldn’t br—“

They rounded the corner and Jaime trailed off abruptly. Ellyn Tarbeck, still wearing her hiking boots and sundress, now with a large camera complete with bulky lens, was leaning against their car.

“Hello again,” Ellyn said at last, when neither of them seemed inclined to speak.

“Ms. Tarbeck,” Jaime said cautiously, trying to edge between her and Brienne. She wasn’t supposed to be violent-crazy, but that camera would pack a wallop if she started swinging it. 

With a snort, Brienne stepped back around him.

“Needless to say, I found your unexpected arrival very upsetting,” Ellyn Tarbeck said, fixing Jaime with a steely look. 

He swallowed, and wondered what he would do if she sprung. Could he hit an old lady? He looked at her arms, dark brown and wiry. He rather thought he could.

“I went on a hike, as I often do when I want to be alone with my thoughts. Some of my deepest wells of artistic inspiration come from my time in nature, and this afternoon was no exception,” she cleared her throat, looking off to the side. Was she nervous? 

“Young lady, I saw you at the Castamere falls. I had been taking some shots of the light beams on the water when the two of you quite rudely interrupted. But since I was already there... well I took some shots. And I am very pleased with them, and will need you to sign a waiver allowing my further use of your likeness should I wish to use the images in my work,” she rattled off in a rush.

Jaime arched an eyebrow. Brienne looked dumbstruck. Seeing that she appeared incapable of speech, he stepped in.

“May we see the images?” He asked, partly to buy her time and partly because he was intrigued.

She glared at him with an expression of undisguised loathing. He smiled sweetly back.

“Here,” she grunted, thrusting the camera at him. “Use that black switch to toggle. If you touch anything else, I will bury you.”

Jaime ignored that last part and blithely began to toggle away. The light on the water shots were he supposed well done, but it was all rather artsy and dull and not his thing... then he came across the first picture of Brienne. This was his thing.

It caught her mid backstroke, lips partly open in an infectious smile. The sun had caught her eyes and ever bead of water that cling to her windmilling arm—it was joyous, it was beautiful, it was... Jaime’s eyes slid to the way her white shirt clung to her curves... hot.

“Let me see,” Brienne pushed him gently. Mouth dry, he handed it over. She looked down at the screen and abruptly her face flushed.

“No, I’m sorry, but no. You can’t use this,” she firmly shoved the camera back into Ellyn Tarbeck’s chest.

“If it’s a question of money,” the woman said uncertainly.

“It’s a question of looking a fool for strangers to gawp at,” Brienne huffed. “Jaime, come on. Let’s go.”

He let her pull him into the car, where she carefully pulled it out into the highway without ever so much as looking at Ellyn Tarbeck. It wasn’t until they were a mile down the road that she pulled over, and he realized that she was shaking.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, reaching around her shoulders to pull her into a one-armed hug.

“I just feel so embarrassed,” Brienne mumbled into his shirt. He stroked her hair tentatively.

“That she was spying on us? I don’t think we were really doing anything...”

“No! Of that picture, I look ridiculous!”

Jaime pulled back so he could stare at her.

“Brienne, you looked athletic and happy and pretty sexy. What on earth is wrong with that?”

“I look like I don’t know...” Brienne bit her lip. “that I’m ugly.” 

Jaime sighed, and pressed his forehead against hers.

“Remember on the ride up when I said that was in your head?”

Brienne nodded, eyes sliding down to the ground. He lifted her chin up to catch her gaze again.

“I can’t see better evidence. Why would Ellyn Tarbeck, a perfect stranger, care about embarrassing you? She took the picture because it was beautiful. She doesn’t know you from Addam.”

“Maybe she does that,” Brienne mumbled.

“Does what?”

“Takes pictures of... big girls.”

Jaime wasn’t sure whether he wanted to bang his head against the window or cover her in kisses to prove how beautiful she was.

“Ellyn Tarbeck is a wedding photographer for Vogue. She doesn’t take pictures of big girls. She does artsy crap like a groom lifting a bride’s veil at sunset. Now get out of the car.”

“Why?” 

“Because we are driving back to Tarbeck Hall and she is going to show you her photography. Let’s make a deal. If you look at her other photos and think they’re beautiful, then it means the photos of you are also beautiful, and that voice in your head belongs to a prepubescent Ron Connington and he can go to hell. If you don’t like her other photos, then I’ll smash her camera to little bits.”

Brienne gave a watery smile.

“Even if I don’t like her other photos, you can’t do that. Just make her delete them.”

“Deal,” Jaime leaned over and kissed the tip of her perfectly freckled nose.

Had he thought the ride up was tense? It was nothing compared to the return, when he was so close to vanquishing this demon. If he’d fucked up his sabotage mission, he would have just moved on to the next plan, and the next, and the next. Never would he get such a perfect opportunity to make Brienne see herself as he saw her again.

They pulled up to the mansion and Jaime hopped out determinedly, before Brienne could change her mind. He rang the doorbell.

There was a pause, during which Brienne slowly let herself out and joined him with a hangdog expression.

The door opened.

“Have you changed your mind?” Ellyn Tarbeck demanded of Brienne while ignoring Jaime completely.

“I... I mean we,” Brienne stammered.

“Brienne would like to see some of your other art. She wants to know in what kind of context you might conceivably reproduce these images,” Jaime cut in.

“Oh,” Ellyn Tarbeck looked blankly surprised. “Well I suppose there’s no harm.” 

All the same, she seemed dangerously close to shutting the door on Jaime. Only Brienne lacing her fingers into his stayed the woman’s scowl.

“I’ll let you look at a few coffee table books,” the photographer ushered them into an enormous library. She began pulling out large books, seemingly at random, and tossing them on a sofa for Brienne to peruse. “If I’m not working on commission, this is my bread and butter. I like that one there—Life in the Ruins of Valyria. Here’s a couple wedding books; not my best work, but it’s what the public wants. Here’s one from my time in the Iron Islands. I’ll give you a few minutes to flip through, while I make some tea. Please let me know if you have any questions.” 

Brienne nodded with a polite smile and Ellyn Tarbeck excused herself.

Jaime claimed the book of the Iron Islands, flipping through it efficiently, and shortly finding a similar photo of some girls sunbathing on a rocky outcrop. There could be no doubt that they met all traditional definitions of beauty—one caught lowering herself into the water could well have been a mermaid. He turned to show Brienne, but caught her looking down at a photo from old Valyria, a child touching her mother’s face, oblivious to the melted spires of rock behind them. Brienne was smiling down at it a trace wistfully. Jaime decided to let her explore at her own pace, though he did leave the Iron Islands book open to the page he’d found.

There was a companionable silence while Brienne buried herself into the books, meticulously studying each page. Jaime meticulously studied the way she wet her lips in concentration, the way the light caught her white-blonde eyelashes.

Just as he was starting to feel rather drowsy, the Tarbeck woman returned, holding a mug of tea. She had not offered to make them any, Jaime noted with some disdain.

“I can’t promise I’d ever use your photos, but I might include it in a collection, or a similar installation in an art gallery. If it were in an art gallery, it could be conceivably purchased for a private collection,” she explained crisply. “You could neither limit its distribution nor would you be entitled to any profit I might make. On the other hand, they are quite stunning. My models are typically happy with the results. What do you say?”

“I think,” Brienne blushed, “that might be acceptable.” Jaime squeezed her hand encouragingly. His girlfriend the model! Suck it, Ron Connington.

“But,” she bit her lip. Oh no, was she second-guessing herself? She was making such strides!

“I have a condition,” she said finally.

“No strings on the distribution and no profit-sharing,” Ellyn Tarbeck said sternly. “I will not have you interfering with my artistic expression. And certainly not my bottom line.”

“It’s not that,” Brienne squared her shoulders. “I will sign your waiver if you agree to photograph the Baratheon-Lannister wedding.”

Wait what?

“That is, if it’s okay with you?” Brienne squeezed Jaime’s hand back, an almost imperceptibly triumphant look in her eyes. Jaime managed to smile through gritted teeth.

“Of course...That’s... why we came out here, after all.”

“Good,” Brienne nodded, then turned back to Ellyn Tarbeck. “Do we have a deal?”

Maybe she’d say no. It was only a handful of photos after all. A handful of insanely gorgeous photos. What was that compared to a decades-long blood feud?

Ellyn Tarbeck delicately set down her glass of tea.

“We have a deal.”

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. This had been such a perfect plan. How had it failed? Well he knew how it had failed, and even now he couldn’t be completely upset about the way things had turned out. Still. It had been such a good opportunity. But there would be others. Of course there would. That’s what they had to focus on. That this was just one bite at the apple. One bite that he had slightly screwed up, but only with the very best of intentions. He wondered what Stannis would say to that.

Stannis (What Have You Done 5 of x)

Stannis gently closed the door to his office. He walked over to the couch where he typically had important clients, board members or investors sit and laid down. Delicately he inserted the ear buds into his ears, and closed his eyes as the classical music washed over him.

Today had been... appalling. First, he had to deal managing Robert’s estate, and Cersei’s hare-brained idea for a charitable organization. He knew the Lannisters created “charities” for any passing fancy that they promptly abandoned, but that was not how the Baratheons did business. It didn’t help that she had been swigging a glass of champagne during their Skype call. How was he the only person who didn’t think she was actually pregnant?! The signs were right there!!! It was SO OBVIOUS!!

Then he’d had to deal with a shareholder’s meeting regarding unexpected storms in the Jade Sea that were playing havoc with their shipping routes. There was a possibility that they might miss their projected earnings for the quarter, and everybody was in a testy mood. It didn’t help that Melisandre had been making him sleep on the couch. He was developing a terrible crick in his neck and could barely keep his eyes open.

All because she was annoyed at him for keeping secrets. Of course he was keeping secrets! She certainly wouldn’t approve if he had told her the truth!

After he’d half dozed through the shareholder meeting, he’d had to hurry over to the hospital to meet Robert and Ned, who he had convinced that Renly had been injured in an accident at drama camp.

“So it turns out it wasn’t him,” Stannis said, as they hurried into the waiting room. Ned came to a halt and Robert promptly plowed into him, sending Ned sprawling.

“What do you mean it wasn’t him,” Robert growled.

“Erm, there was a mixup with the campers,” Stannis said tentatively, having not particularly thought this lie through beyond luring Robert and Ned away from Oldtown.

“And you didn’t think to call us?” Ned pushed himself stiffly to his feet.

“Errr... no,” Stannis said blankly. Well playing dumb worked for Robert.

There was a long pause as Ned and Robert stared him down.

“That was very inconsiderate,” Ned said at last.

“I’m sorry,” Stannis offered tepidly.

“We traveled three and a half hours to get here. Robert had engagements he had to cancel,” Ned continued sternly.

“I’m very sorry,” Stannis tried insincerely.

“It’s unlike you to be so careless,” Ned went on. Stannis wanted to grind his teeth, as Ned continued to lecture him on the importance of thoughtfulness, selflessness, family, duty, honor.... Who did he think he was talking to? Robert?!?!? As if Stannis had ever fallen short of the standards of good behavior. Even this was a thoughtful and selfless attempt to save his brother from his worst instincts, and did he get any credit? Of course not!

Speaking of his brother, Robert had been quiet the entire time. Something of a record. When Ned FINALLY ran out steam, Robert only eyed him suspiciously.

After a long pause, Robert cleared his throat.

“You know you can always... talk to me,” he said awkwardly.

“Of course,” Stannis said quickly, the biggest lie he’d told yet.

They stared at each other again.

“Well come on,” Ned finally tugged at Robert’s arm. “We have to get out of city limits before rush hour hits.”

It was with some relief that he had headed back to his and Melisandre’s apartment. Only to confront someone heading down the stairs with an enormous box.

“That looks heavy, let me help,” Stannis scrambled to assist, even as his brain was registering that the person was too short to be Melisandre.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” said the allegedly pregnant Cersei Lannister, shifting her grip on the giant box and continuing down the stairs.

How was he the only person seeing this?!

After a brooding pause, Stannis had decided to go back to the office.

Now as Bach soothingly lulled him into calmness, he was able to let go of some of the outrage that had dogged him all day. It was all about to be over. No more lying or subterfuge, which he had always been terrible at. No more distractions from work. And most importantly, no more Cersei Lannister.

Yes, any moment, Jaime would call on his cell to let him know that Ellyn Tarbeck would be photographing the Lannister-Baratheon wedding over her dead body. Cersei would let Robert know she would be marrying him over her dead body. And this would all be gloriously over.

His cell phone rang. He glanced over. It was Jaime Lannister.

“Success?” Stannis picked up immediately.

“Um... not exactly,” Jaime answered cautiously.

Or it wouldn’t be over. Because nothing ever went according to plan.

“What do you mean, not exactly?” Stannis bit out.

“Well I introduced myself and she naturally freaked out and told us she would never do the wedding and to get the hell off her property.”

“Okay?” Stannis sighed, waiting for the shoe to drop.

“And then she might have snapped some photos of Brienne while we were taking a dip at a local watering hole. Brienne was terribly embarrassed and I encouraged her to go back and meet with Ellyn Tarbeck, so she could see that the photos really were quite lovely. And then one thing led to another, and Brienne said she’d let Tarbeck have the rights to the photos if she did the wedding,” Jaime blurted.

Stannis slowly slid off the couch onto the floor.

“If you think about it, this is actually a good thing,” Jaime said nervously into the silence.

“How?” Stannis asked hollowly.

“Well it’s really done wonders for Brienne’s self-esteem. You know how fixated Cersei is on appearances, and I think it was starting to mess with Brienne a bit, but she’s been pretty proud of the photos. I actually heard her telling her dad about them, and she never brags about things like that.”

“I understand why it might be good for Brienne Tarth’s esteem. I fail to see how this development is good for out objectives,” Stannis ground out.

“Oh,” Jaime said. There was a pause. “Well it’s not.”

There was another long silence.

“I’ll come up with something else,” Jaime said a tad defensively.

“I think you have done QUITE enough,” Stannis retorted. “I will come up with a plan to interfere with the Vogue coverage without your assistance.”

“You?” Jaime sounded doubtful.

“Me!” Stannis huffed. And then he hung up. Because he had been taking a lot of guff from people all day, but one person who was in no position to cast stones was Jaime-can’t-even-take-advantage-of-a-perfectly-good-blood-feud-Lannister.

But Jaime maybe had a point. Hadn’t he just been thinking how bad he was at lying and subterfuge? He wasn’t a particularly sneaky person. How was he going to subtly interfere in the runaway train that was this wedding? Subtly interfere in a way that didn’t make Robert hate him forever?

He needed help. He needed advice.

“Why are you still here, everyone’s gone home,” Davos Seaworth stuck his head in, blinking at finding Stannis sprawled on the ground.

Stannis stared at him. Thank you gods.

“Are you... er... alright?” Davos raised an eyebrow.

“You are my best friend, Davos,” Stannis began. “I hope you know that. I would literally trust you with my life.”

“Did you like have a fall or something? Should we be taking you to the hospital?”

“And I have the utmost respect for your intelligence,” Stannis continued, ignoring him.

“What did you even fall off of? Can I drive you or do we need to call an ambulance?”

“I’m fine,” Stannis struggled to a sitting position, looking up at him. “If you were going to stop a wedding and nobody could know it was you, how would you do it?”

“Bribe the priest?” Davos tried to joke. Stannis considered.

“It’s the High Septon of the Great Sept of Baelor, he probably doesn’t do that sort of thing,” Stannis decided.

“Great Sept of Baelor?! Stannis, are you trying to stop your brother’s wedding?” Davos glared at him.

“Not the wedding per se. Just certain media coverage,” Stannis frowned.

“Well don’t piss off the Sept of Baelor or you’re screwed. I can’t believe Robert and Cersei even managed to get that place. It’s super orthodox you know, and I can’t really picture them taking pre-Cana,” Davos laughed.

Stannis tried to smile, but he really had no idea what Davos was talking about.

“Um pre-Cana?”

Davos saw his expression and sighed.

“Have you ever even been to sept?”

Stannis scratched his head. Cassana Baratheon was the sort of person who considered herself ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘religious’. And Steffon Baratheon was the sort of person who considered himself neither.

“Maybe a couple times at Sevenmas?” Stannis frowned. He definitely remembered Robert getting into the sacramental wine and puking on Renly’s shoes. Renly had cried the whole way home.

“Uh right, the big septs don’t let you get married unless you meet with a septon beforehand. They talk to you about the sacredness of marriage and kids and sex and divorce and stuff. It varies from sept to sept how intense it is. Sometimes it can go for like six months.”

“And you were saying...”

“Just that picturing Robert and Cersei sitting there promising some septon that they’re virgins is a funny thought.”

It was a funny thought. Somehow he couldn’t picture either of them doing that. Something was fishy. And Stannis was going to get to the bottom of it.

“Thank you Davos, you’ve been very helpful.” Stannis stood, brushing himself off.

“I have?” Davos asked doubtfully.

“Yes. Now I’ve got to go make some calls.”

“What about the hospital?”

“What are you talking about?”

“For your concussion?”

“I assure you,” Stannis gave a slightly unnerving grin. “I am thinking perfectly clearly.”

The easiest way to get to the bottom of this was to talk to Robert. And as luck would happen, Robert had been brought up talking quite recently.

Stannis once more picked up his cell phone.

Robert answered on the third or fourth ring. (While such response was not particularly prompt, that he picked up at all was unusual. Stannis was used to having to call several times, and leave copious voicemails and texts before getting any kind of response. Usually in emoji form.)

“Stannis, what’s up?” He said, sounding a little stilted. Like he was on stage but didn’t know his lines. Well that made two of them.

“I was thinking about what you were saying earlier,” Stannis began tentatively.

“Oh?”

“About how we can always talk.”

“Um right.”

There was a pause.

“Did you want to talk?” Robert finally asked, sounding as though he rather hoped the answer was no. Stannis face palmed.

“Yes.”

“Okay, what did you want to talk about?”

Stannis racked his brain.

“I just feel like we haven’t really... talked... in a while,” he finally said tepidly, cursing his lack of a good segue.

“Oh is that what the Venmo request was about?”

Stannis frowned.

“What Venmo request?”

“You were mad I didn’t tell you about the wedding and you’re worried that we’re drifting apart? Awww Stanny!”

Stannis had literally no idea what he was talking about. He habitually split everything. He knew Robert tended toward the belief that over the long run, all expenses would eventually net out. But as far as Stannis was concerned, the best way to net everything out was to split everything and that was that.

But Robert seemed markedly less cautious, and this was at least a path toward discussing the High Sept of Baelor.

“Yes,” he said. “I feel like I don’t know what’s going on in your life.”

The statement was ludicrous. He could literally turn on a television and see what was going on in his brother’s life.

“I’m sorry, that makes complete sense,” Robert said. He could practically feel Robert nodding along earnestly on the other side of the phone.

“How’s er... wedding planning going?” Stannis asked.

“Eh it’s fine. Did I tell you I booked Tom Sevens for the after party? It’s going to be epic!!! And on Tywin Lannister’s dime too, ha!”

Stannis rolled his eyes.

“Cersei does most of it, honestly. The only thing she really put on my plate was getting the photographer today. Good thing Jaime was there to cover right?”

“Yeah, good thing,” Stannis growled.

“He’s not my favorite, but he really saved the day you know.”

“You don’t say.”

“Credit where credit is due right? The whole wedding might have been sunk without him!”

Stannis tried to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“Say, I had a question about the Sept of Baelor,” he said.

“Ugh, church is such a drag. Remember when we got kicked out because Renly wouldn’t stop crying during Sevenmas mass?”

“We got kicked out because you drank a bottle of sacramental wine!”

“No, it was definitely because Renly wouldn’t stop crying.”

“He was crying because you threw up on his new shoes!”

“Hahahahaha that’s right. See, I told you it was his fault. So what’s the question?”

“Well Davos said there’s some kind of pre-ceremony education course you have to do?”

Robert groaned.

“Ugh it’s the worst. Cersei had her father make a huge donation to get the space, so they’re letting us do most of the classes online. It’s like three hours on Sundays. Cersei just texts me the answers.”

Stannis frowned, first at the flagrant rule bending for those with money, second at the flagrant rule breaking by Robert, and third at the fact that there didn’t seem to be an angle here.

“So it’s a done deal? You just have to do some stuff online?”

Maybe he would have to bribe the septon...

“Well that and meet with some deacon next weekend to get the final nod. They just want someone to talk to you and make sure you’re living in the light of the seven and all that jazz. Cersei is worried they’ll be able to tell she’s pregnant, so she’s sending me with Brienne.”

“How’s that work? Won’t they notice when you show up with a different bride?”

“Nah, it’s not the same guy. This is just some little foot soldier. As long as we seem like good sept-going people, it’ll be fine. Anybody could show up really, it’s not like they check.”

Stannis blinked. And then he smirked. Anybody.

“That gives me an idea,” he said casually. “It seems so silly for you and Brienne to come all this way to King’s Landing when you’re both in Oldtown. Why don’t I take Melisandre?”

“Really? You’d do that?!”

“I would be delighted to assist.”

“Wow that’s… huge. You’re such a good brother. I don’t think you’ve ever let me down in your whole life.”

Stannis shifted uncomfortably.

“Well let’s not get carried away.”

“I’m serious! I would trust you with my life. You would never deliberately screw me over and there’s not many people in the world I can say that about.”

Stannis was having an acute pain somewhere in his gut. He wondered if this was acid reflux.

“I would certainly always act in your best interest,” he managed finally. His gut uncurled slightly.

“No it’s more than that. You always keep your word to the letter,” Robert continued blithely. The stomach ache intensified. “If you give me your word that you’ll go the High Sept and impress the deacon, I know you’ll do it.”

“Eh,” Stannis managed, clutching his side.

“So I have your word that it’s done? I can’t afford something like today’s mix up happening on Sunday!”

Stannis sat heavily, bringing his knees to his chest.

“Stannis, I have your word right?”

There was no helping it.

“Yes,” Stannis managed. He wondered if it was too late to get Davos to take him to the hospital.

Melisandre (What Have You Done 6 of x)

Melisandre did not do weddings. She just... didn’t. She hadn’t liked weddings at the red temple, which were simple hand-tying ceremonies followed by a jump over a pit of coals. She didn’t like weddings, but if you were going to have a wedding, that’s how a wedding should be. Just a pledge of love before R’hllor and maybe a little fire. But even back then, when she had been going to temple, she had felt suspicious of all the guests, the dress, the ring. 

It felt performative. Like love wasn’t love unless all your friends and family saw you declaring it. It felt ostentatious, with the five thousand dollar dress that you’d wear once. It felt... fake.

And this wedding, this Frankenstein horror of white lace and pink tulle, was everything that was terrible about weddings rolled into one. Weddings under the faith of the seven already were especially irritating. Melisandre didn’t think it was crazy to point out how completely sexist and archaic the concept of a father giving away his daughter to take on her husband’s family name was. Sure, why not treat an adult woman as chattel? And don’t even get her started on the vows. The woman was supposed to love, cherish and OBEY?!?! Get a fucking dog.

Then add in Cersei, for whom the ostentatious and performative aspects of the wedding were the whole point. 

Then add in the part where Stannis was plotting behind her back, thus undoing literally six years of working on their communication issues together.

Then add in... whatever this was.

Cersei delicately put a bite of red velvet cake with vanilla frosting in her mouth. She chewed, an expression of concentration on her face. Then she spat, into the bucket held by the Crossroads Inn pastry chef’s assistant.

“Too moist. The cake overpowers the frosting,” she announced. The chef and his assistant and the owner of the Crossroads Inn all nodded gravely. Melisandre looked out the window.

“Are you getting this down, Melisandre?!” Cersei snapped. With a sigh, Melisandre produced her notebook.

“Sample 63: Too moist. Frosting overpowered,” she read dully.

Cersei nodded in satisfaction, previous equanimity restored. She took a swish of her sparkling apple cider to cleanse her palette and waved an imperious hand for the next sample.

But the worst part of this whole wedding nonsense, hands down, was her involvement. It had been a terrible confluence of needing to beat Stannis at his own game and needing to save Brienne from her silly self-effacing self. And now, she was watching as Cersei took a mere sniff of carrot-cake before bellowing “NEXT!”

Sample 64: Carrot-cake.

The dreary fact was that Melisandre was the only bridesmaid in King’s Landing. There were good, sensible reasons that she should be shouldering some of this burden. At least if she didn’t want Cersei Lannister, Queen of the World, to pitch a fit and ban her from the wedding. Cake tasting, at the time, had seemed like a low-key, even fun activity to choose. But she didn’t even get to try the samples!!

Cersei spit a piece of what looked like German chocolate cake into the bin.

“Too rich!”

Sample 65: Too rich.

“I think I’ll do four layers, each with a different flavor,” Cersei said to Melisandre as Melisandre carefully drove them both back to her apartment.

“The largest base layer will be vanilla and vanilla cream icing. Simple, elegant, and it will taste completely boring. I can give it to the second tier wedding guests and anyone who has displease me,” Cersei turned the rear view mirror so she could fluff her hair.

Melisandre turned the rear view mirror back to its original position.

“The second layer will be that devil’s deluxe chocolate with the sea salt sprinkles,” Cersei continued, ignoring her entirely.

Melisandre tuned out the discussion of the third and fourth layer, idly wondering what she would have for dinner. And what Stannis would not be having for dinner. Let’s see how he liked fending for himself when he got home from the office.

She pulled into her parking garage. She had gotten into the service elevator, gotten out on her floor, walked down the hallway and had her key in the lock before she realized that Cersei was still trailing after her, wondering where she could get a tiny bride and groom of spun sugar perfectly modeled on her and Robert. 

Melisandre grudgingly let her in, while fantasizing biting the head off a tiny spun sugar perfectly modeled on Cersei Lannister.

“This is nice,” Cersei looked around their lofted apartment. “It will be so easy to child proof when you and Stannis get married.”

Melisandre schooled her features into a smooth blankness so that she wouldn’t flinch at Cersei’s remarks. She hated weddings.

“Let me give you the grand tour,” Melisandre said politely to change the subject. Unfortunately that meant Cersei pursing her lips over every streak of dust—“you should just get a housekeeper, that’s what I do”—and shaking her head over every pot in the sink—“you don’t have a chef?!”—and even the box that the tv had come from that she hadn’t bothered to ever move out of their bedroom—“really it’s an empty box, I’ll move it myself.”

It was as Cersei accomplished the latter task that Stannis came in. Melisandre took some dark joy in the expression of frozen outrage when he spotted her.

“Stannis, don’t mind us. We’re just doing some wedding prep,” Melisandre slid her arm around Cersei’s waist. Cersei beamed at her. “You know how excited I am about the wedding!” Melisandre added, just to twist the knife.

“Excuse me... I... I forgot something at the office,” Stannis muttered, looking like he might puke. He hurried back out the door.

“Melisandre, I’m touched,” Cersei said. “You know, maybe this is silly, but I always got the sense that you didn’t like me very much.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Melisandre said weakly.

“And you seemed very unenthused about the wedding,” Cersei continued.

“Nothing to do with you,” Melisandre said, this time truthfully.

“I suppose it is silly. Well I’m glad to share this moment with you,” Cersei squeezed her into a hug. Melisandre went stiff. She didn’t do hugs. “It’s nice to have another friend I can trust.”

“Well off you go,” Melisandre gently disentangled herself. “I’d hate for you to hit the rush hour traffic getting out of here.”

“Oh so true,” Cersei dropped the tender act briskly. “Let’s circle up regarding the final menu. Toodles.”

And she was gone.

Melisandre went to the freezer and got out a pint of ice cream. She proceeded to collapse on the couch. 

She was still there when Stannis came back several hours later.

“Is she gone?” He asked abruptly.

Melisandre arched an eyebrow at him, and took another spoonful of ice cream.

“You’re being so childish, just tell me what’s wrong,” he huffed.

Like he didn’t know exactly what was wrong.

After a brief staring contest, Stannis looked away.

“I signed us up for some more wedding duties,” he said stiffly.

What?

“What?” She said, ice cream forgotten.

“Well you did say you were so excited about it,” Stannis said in a faux innocent voice that wouldn’t have fooled Robert.

“What are we doing?” She growled.

“Pretending to be Robert and Cersei to meet with a deacon at the High Sept of Baelor this weekend,” Stannis shrugged.

Huh. Obviously he was planning something, but this sounded kind of innocuous? 

“You know it would be highly unethical to volunteer to help, and then use that opportunity to mess up this wedding,” Melisandre pointed out.

Stannis took a deep breath.

“As a matter of fact, I do. So let’s make a deal.”

“A deal?” Melisandre inquired suspiciously.

“You’ll do all the talking,” Stannis said.

Melisandre considered. If there was a trap here, she wasn’t seeing it. What better way to make sure Stannis behaved?

“Deal,” she said firmly. And caught just the tiniest glint of triumph in his eye.

Honestly, between her job at the research lab and staying mad at Stannis and Cersei’s incessant wedding related chatter, she kind of forgot about it. The engagement party was coming up, and Cersei had been doing her level best to drum up the publicity to an unbearable level. Some tidbit of news about the wedding was front page of the Daily Ravyn every day—Melisandre could only imagine what strings Cersei was pulling with Varys to make that happen. She’d given the exclusive engagement party coverage rights to Agora (but confided that both Varys and Petyr Baelish had been invited as guests, so if they happened to snap a photo or two or write about their own experiences, it was hardly her fault). 

She’d even had that thrice damned advertisement for Storms Ending Summer Camps playing non-stop every day. It was bad enough that the jingle at the end was unbearable catchy. Melisandre had found herself humming it in the shower. Much worse was the uncomfortable realization that in a certain light, her brother’s boyfriend might actually be... hot? 

Which was terrible! It was BERIC. He was shy and awkward and if he and Thoros were doing anything, it was like holding hands or cuddling or something. That’s how Melisandre preferred to think about it anyway, and any intrusion upon that world view was most unwelcome. 

And don’t even get her started on the invitation to the engagement party. It had come in a package, and Melisandre had immediately gotten excited, because who doesn’t love surprise packages? She’d opened the package and inside was a beautiful carved wooden box. She’d opened the box, and some kind of trigger activated a song—a music box? It was a jaunty little ditty, and the box was fully of sandalwood shavings that smelled heavenly. There had been a scroll in the shavings and she had plucked it out with some curiosity. Only to discover with horror that it had been sealed in red wax with a golden lion etched in the center.

Grimly, she had grabbed a letter opener and given the lion a sharp thrust to the heart.

In perfect calligraphy, she had been invited to a party at Casterly Rock to celebrate the engagement of Miss Cersei Joanna Lannister to Mr. Robert Orys Baratheon. The party was naturally on the weekend of Westeros’ national heritage day—so like Cersei to claim a long weekend when everybody might have better things they wanted to do, when the price of flights would naturally be higher and... Melisandre had suddenly realized that the tune was in fact a remixed version of “Rains of Castamere”, a folk song long associated with the Lannister family. With a shudder of horror she had slammed the box shut. Only to see that the wooden carvings which she had dimly registered initially were a border of intertwining lions and stags. Melisandre had hissed and shoved the box away.

So yes, with the lead up to the engagement party on top of everything else, it might have slipped her mind that Stannis had uncharacteristically volunteered them for this sept thing.

Slipped her mind, that was, until Stannis unceremoniously shook her awake at 8am on a Sunday morning.

“It’s the weekend!!” Melisandre groaned and snuggled deeper.

“We’ll be late to the High Sept,” Stannis said patiently. “I mean that’s fine with me...”

“Ugh no, I’m getting up,” Melisandre sighed. Then it turned out she didn’t really have any sept appropriate clothing. She ended up using one of her work outfits, and then putting a sweater on over that and then buttoning it to the top just to be safe.

Stannis frowned when he saw her outfit.

Melisandre blinked.

“Were you expecting me to go to the Sept in one of my red dresses?” She asked slowly.

“No!” Stannis said, but his gaze skittered away from her. 

Melisandre brushed a bit of lint of this sweater, which she had worn in the lord knew how long.

“Are you expecting me to tank this meeting?” She scowled. That was totally it, wasn’t it?! He thought she was going to be all fire and brimstone and salt and smoke and get Robert and Cersei kicked out of the sept!

“No,” Stannis repeated, still staring out the window.

“Good,” Melisandre bared her teeth in an approximation of a smile. “Because I’m not going to.”

A promise that was perhaps easier said than done.

As VIPs, they were ushered first through the Great Sept itself, then through a series of gardens and courtyards and shrines to various aspects of the Seven, then, standing before a small unassuming door, they were asked to wait in an alcove with a beatific Maiden statue.

Melisandre scowled at its vacuous expression. Each successive space, overflowing with opulence and the kind of wealth that could be working to improve the lives of the faithful rather than smother their senses in unthinking awe, had left her in a worse mood.

It was quite different from the spartan halls of the Red Temple, and Melisandre felt a nostalgic ache for the smoky steps in High Hill. She and Thoros had left their temple on bad terms (well Thoros had been thrown out and she had left), but it didn’t mean that she didn’t miss it.

In contrast, here she was standing in front of a marble statue of a simpering Maiden some fourteen feet tall, clutching some kind of fabric in a strange pretense of modesty from what was an undeniably erotic piece of art. This is exactly what was wrong with the Seven, Melisandre sniffed. It fetishized and sexualized purity and demonized sex. You were an innocent, a mother or a witch. Those were your options. Melisandre would choose witch every time.

The door opened, and Melisandre pasted a demure smile on her face. 

Except this time.

“Welcome my children, I’m Brother Ray,” the deacon beamed at them, and Melisandre fought not to roll her eyes.

He ushered them into a cozy room that had been furnished like a study, taking a seat in a plush armchair and waving a hand at the couch across from him. Melisandre sat, smoothing her skirt carefully, and Stannis followed suit.

“The online process is just so impersonal. We felt it was important to spend at least one afternoon getting to know you as people,” he gave a saccharine smile. “We just want to make sure it’s a good fit.”

We just want to make sure you conform to our oppressive, gendered and outdated mold, Melisandre snarked to herself.

“Of course,” she said instead, and tried to give a little laugh like Cersei did. When the deacon looked alarmed, she turned it into a cough.

“Are you frequent sept-goers?” The deacon asked Stannis.

“She’s really the religious one,” Stannis squeezed her shoulders.

R’hllorites didn’t believe in hell, but maybe she could make an exception for Stannis.

“And you Miss Lannister? Do you attend sept often?”

“Every Sunday,” Melisandre answered stoically.

“How would you say the Seven guide you in your every day life?”

Melisandre felt her mind blank out. This was like one of those nightmares she used to have in school about taking a test she hadn’t studied for. That was, if the test was also on principles that she loathed with every fiber of her being.

“Well... I pray to the Maiden, obviously,” Melisandre finally blurted. 

“Do you? What do you pray for?” The deacon asked mildly.

“Ummm, protection? From... from... temptation!”

“Temptation? Like...” the deacon prodded.

“Sex! And um, lustful thoughts?”

Beside her, Stannis snorted. Ass.

“So you’re a virgin?” The deacon inquired.

“Of course,” Melisandre said through gritted teeth, kicking Stannis sharply in the ankle.

“My, that’s rather unusual in this day and age,” the deacon frowned. What?! Wasn’t that what she was supposed to say?

“I’m just... rather old-school in my beliefs,” Melisandre managed.

“And you?” The deacon turned to Stannis.

“I hadn’t had any sexual relations before we met,” Stannis replied, an answer which managed to be both literally truthful and situationally appropriate. Show-off.

“And have the two of you discussed family planning?” The deacon asked.

The ensuing lecture on remedial sexual education left even Stannis blushing. Melisandre FULLY believed in body positivity as much as the next person, there was something about being encouraged to explore an anatomically correct model of the vagina by a man who went by Brother Ray that left her thinking celibacy was underrated.

Finally, they were off that topic. Thank the lord. 

“Now let’s discuss healthy conflict resolution,” Brother Ray beamed.

Shit.

“Open communication is key to any relationship,” Ray began.

“So keeping secrets would be bad,” Melisandre said sweetly.

“Or being passive-aggressive,” Stannis glared back at her.

How about just aggressive? Melisandre thought as she narrowed her eyes.

“I love how you’re engaging with this material,” Brother Ray piped in. “Now why don’t we try some role play. Robert, why don’t you pretend to be Cersei. I’m going to give you some criticism, and I want you to react as Cersei would.”

He cleared his throat.

“Cersei, it’s your turn to take out the garbage and I’m frustrated that you keep putting it off.”

Stannis crossed his arms and sat silently.

First, that was a terrible Cersei impression. Second it was an even worse Melisandre impression! She didn’t just launch into silent treatment when she was in the wrong, this was clearly when she was in the right and Stannis was being a frustrating asshat! He had failed at communicating first! She was just giving him a taste of her own medicine!

“So you’re saying Cersei shuts down,” Brother Ray leaned forward. “Cersei, what would you say to that?”

“Robert knows why I haven’t been taking out the garbage,” Melisandre growled. “It’s because he’s keeping a secret from me even though the last time he did that, things got really out of control and he ended up in the hospital.”

“Okay but first it’s not really a secret if you know about it—“

“IT’S THE PRINCIPLE!”

“and second it’s not that kind of secret and you know it—“

“AGAIN IT’S THE PRINCIPLE!”

“and third you’ll just yell at me!”

“Okay well why don’t we talk about yelling,” Brother Ray interjected hastily. “It’s important when resolving conflict for each party to feel heard. I want you both to start by paraphrasing the other’s point, leading with ‘I appreciate that you feel...’ and going from there. Robert?”

Stannis didn’t respond. Melisandre kicked him.

“Oh right! Ahem, CERSEI, I appreciate that you feel worried about me when I keep secrets. That it... hurts your feelings,” Stannis swallowed. “Please know that it was never my intention. I just knew you wouldn’t approve and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Huh. Okay maybe Brother Ray wasn’t a total waste.

“Robert,” Melisandre began, rolling her eyes. “I appreciate that you get frustrated when I won’t talk to you. Because... because you love me and it makes you feel shut out. And I only get so frustrated because I love you too.”

Stannis squeezed her hand. Melisandre swallowed.

“Wow, really well done,” Brother Ray nodded his head enthusiastically. “Okay, I admit I had some doubts initially, but I think we’re done here.”

“Done?” Melisandre frowned.

“Yes, I think the two of you are ready to get married,” the deacon stood. He shook Stannis’ head firmly, and as Melisandre reeled, he pulled her into a hearty hug. Ugh, hugging. Still, she had to admit, this Brother Ray gave pretty good hug.

They exited the Sept complex in kind of a daze. They didn’t speak to each other at all until they got back to Stannis’ car and sat. Automatically, Stannis locked the doors.

“I meant what I said back there,” he said quietly.

“I know. I did too.”

“So you’re not mad?”

“A little mad. But Stannis—I need you to call Jaime Lannister up right now and tell him you’re done with this. Please—I don’t know how much more wedding warfare I can take,” Melisandre said, trying to hold his gaze.

“You... might be right,” Stannis sighed heavily. “I just don’t want Robert to throw his life away on this. She’s not really pregnant!”

Melisandre massaged her temples.

“I assure you, she really really is,” she ground out. “Now call Jaime. On speaker.”

Stannis huffed, but did as she commanded.

“How did the High Sept go?” Jaime asked immediately. 

“There was an issue,” Stannis scowled. 

“...being?”

“That it went really well. The deacon assures us we’re ready to get married.”

“How very nice for you,” Jaime sighed. “I don’t suppose you have any more bright ideas?”

“As a matter of fact I don’t,” Stannis looked over at Melisandre. “I’m done.”

“Wait wait wait.... you don’t mean...”

“I’m out,” he said firmly. Melisandre gave him a small smile. She hoped Jaime wasn’t too upset.

“I should have known,” Jaime drawled.

Okay, not upset.

“Excuse me?!” Stannis sputtered.

“It’s just like you to give up when things get hard! This is exactly like when we tried to stop the mayor!”

“I GOT SHOT!!!”

“I’m disappointed in you, Baratheon. Melisandre got to you didn’t she?!”

“I’m evaluating my priorities,” Stannis growled. “Much as I believe you did in your interaction with Ellyn Tarbeck.”

“Hey!”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“FINE! Well I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

“What? Are you going to call Robert and tell him I won’t help you break up his wedding anymore?” Stannis rolled his eyes.

“I’m activating my fail-safe. Just remember, you brought this on yourself.”

“If you had a secret atom bomb that would nuke this wedding, I think you would have dropped it by now,” Stannis said suspiciously.

“Maybe I was worried about collateral damage. And maybe I was holding back. But I’m not so worried any more,” Jaime growled.

“You’re bluffing,” Stannis scoffed.

“I assure you I’m not,” Jaime replied evenly. “But I suppose you’ll find out. See you at the engagement party.”

He hung up.

Melisandre and Stannis sat staring at his cell.

Why did she feel like things had not improved?

Thoros (What Have You Done 7 of x)

Thoros got to the bar early, as it was his turn to open. Honestly, he was a little relieved that he could go to his full-time job and just get a break from thinking about the hit his finances were going to take from this stag party, keeping Beric from having a nervous breakdown over that commercial and where he was going to find time and room in his budget to rent a tuxedo (naturally the engagement party was black tie... like everyone just had tuxedos lying around?!).

No sooner had he opened the bar than Jenny Oldstones and her grandmother appeared. He would have called it spooky timing, except Jenny had been basically stalking him to get closer to the love of her life. Which was great. She was a good kid. He just wished she had chosen someone more age-appropriate to have a crush on. Who didn’t happen to be his boyfriend.

“Ember,” the old woman beamed at him. Thoros gave a gallant bow back and she laughed. She always claimed he smelled of smoke, and he had learned to just play along.

“Wood witch!” He tossed her the keys and she made them disappear with magical swiftness.

“C’mon gran, he isn’t here yet,” Jenny whispered, tugging her toward the door to their apartment above.

“Um actually, Mrs. Oldstones, may I have a word?” Thoros asked.

She lingered as her daughter retreated with a wave.

“I’ve worked here part time for three years and full time now for three, and I was hoping I could get a raise,” Thoros said, holding his breath.

“I see two stags running with a wolf and a viper,” the tiny gnarled woman said wisely. “There’s a fat flower and lightning and I see you too. Not a lion in sight, but lions are far-seeing.”

“Um okay,” Thoros blinked. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a no,” she patted his hand. “But I’ll give you time off.”

The door swung behind her and Thoros sighed. He wondered if Dorne would take IOUs. Maybe he could just show up with a huge handful of paper notes and hand them out everywhere they went. That would be fine right?

With a snort at the image, he started unloading the clean glasses. Maybe he’d get lucky on tips. Sure a lot of the students didn’t bother, but classes at the Citadel had finished last week and they were due to see some tourist traffic. Probably the very next person to walk into this bar would be some heavy drinking heavy tipping out of towner.

The door swung open and Thoros looked up expectantly.

Oberyn Martell strolled in.

Fuck. Well two out of three was a start.

“What do you want?” Thoros said suspiciously.

“Is that anyway to greet an old friend,” Oberyn grinned.

“You’re just here for the free drinks,” Thoros sighed.

“Yup, got twenty minutes to kill before a date.”

“Aren’t you here visiting your daughter?” 

“Can’t a man do both?”

“Apparently,” Thoros laughed and started to pour Oberyn one of the dry Dornish ciders they had on tap.

“Getting excited for the Water Palaces?” Oberyn asked cheerfully. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the Dornish spiced wine.”

“I can’t believe your brother has a summer palace,” Thoros said. Sometimes he forgot that while Beric’s parents were pretty wealthy, Robert and most of his other friends were like astronomically wealthy. 

“I can’t believe he’s letting us use it,” Oberyn gave a languid shrug. “He doesn’t typically trust me.”

“I wonder why,” Thoros said drily. 

“Is that any way to speak to the guy who rescued you from faking a coma to get out of the stag party?” Oberyn shook his head.

“Ned told you?!” Thoros groaned.

“I guessed. But you’re sorted now right?”

“Just need the money to pay for this rental tux, and then the restaurants in Dorne, and then the stupid morning suits and pink pocket squares Cersei wants us to wear,” Thoros rubbed his temples. “And nobody fucking tips around here,” he shot Oberyn a meaningful glare which he ignored. “But I’m the bartender, aren’t you supposed to be telling me your problems?”

“I’m worried about Mace,” Oberyn sighed. “Ever since he knocked up that Alerie Hightower in college, he’s been a nervous wreck. He was plucked before his prime, Thoros. He never got a chance to bloom.”

“We can’t all have two children with two mothers on two continents,” Thoros rolled his eyes.

“Three,” Oberyn said with some modesty. “Ellaria’s expecting.”

Thoros topped off Oberyn’s glass and poured one for himself to toast.

“What are we drinking to?” Beric came in, still wearing his suit from his summer internship at the courthouse and looking a little woeful.

“Oberyn’s a dad! Again!” Thoros laughed.

“Third time’s charmed,” Beric patted Oberyn on the back. Then he swiped Thoros’ glass and drained it.

“What’s wrong?” Thoros frowned.

“There’s a hashtag,” Beric said miserably.

“See this is why I don’t use social media,” Thoros replied patiently. Suddenly, they heard someone running down the staircase at the far side of the bar.

“Hide me!!” Beric blurted, his one eye huge.

Thoros sighed and let him around the back of the bar, where he crawled into the space normally occupied by the garbage bin, dragging the bin back in after him.

Jenny burst into the bar panting slightly.

“Hi!” She said to Oberyn, her face abruptly falling when she realized he wasn’t who she thought he was.

“Hello,” Oberyn put his phone away and gave her a smirk. Thoros smacked him in the back of the head.

“I thought I saw your roommate come in from the window upstairs,” she mumbled to Thoros. (Thoros hadn’t had the heart to embarrass her by breaking the news of their relationship yet.)

“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Oberyn said smoothly. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Thoros was reaching to hit him again when Jenny saved him the trouble.

“Gross, I’m fifteen, old man. Now get lost, PERV!”

She stomped out.

Thoros tried to swallow his laugh. From Oberyn’s glare, not very successfully.

“Is she gone?” Beric whispered from behind the garbage.

“What in the seven hells is going on?!” Oberyn said slowly. “Since when does Beric have more game than me?!”

“You haven’t seen the commercial?” Thoros asked, dragging the garbage out. “Coast is clear,” he nudged Beric with his foot.

Beric emerged looking sheepish.

“With him and Robert? How could I miss it,” Oberyn rolled his eyes.

“It’s made him irresistible, but only to young women,” Thoros grinned.

“There’s a hashtag,” Beric repeated, shoving his phone in Oberyn’s face. Oberyn inspected it.

“#oneeyedhottie,” he read. Then he smirked.

“Hey Beric, while you’re back there, can you get me a bottle of that good tequila? The one Thoros can’t reach?!”

“I’m taller than you!” Thoros growled at Oberyn. 

“No problem,” Beric meanwhile said politely, reaching up to get it. Oberyn lifted his phone and snapped a photo.

“Hey what—“ Beric turned back flustered on hearing the sound.

“#oneeyedhottie tends bar at #highheart,” Oberyn narrated as he typed in his phone, fending off Beric with one arm at the same time. There was a whooshing sound as he uploaded the photo. 

“What in the seven hells?!” Beric snapped.

“Yeah, Oberyn, what gives,” Thoros frowned. 

Sure he did kind of think it was good for Beric to internalize that not everybody just saw him as an eye-patch with scars, but Oberyn wasn’t the one that had to lure him out of the apartment every day.

“I’m solving your tipping problem,” Oberyn yawned. “Do you have a sharpie?”

“Here,” Thoros handed it over. Oberyn wrote ‘TIPS’ on one of the now empty cups.

“Gee, why didn’t I think of that,” Thoros snarked.

“Not the cup idiot. Beric. His many female admirers will come flocking to the bar to be served by him, and I’m sure they’ll be eager to impress.”

“First, they would be Beric’s tips not mine. Second, did it ever occur to you that maybe he doesn’t want to do this?”

“I’ll do it,” Beric said immediately.

Thoros turned and Beric blushed.

“I just... I know it’s been an expensive summer and you’re worried about it. And this is mortifying already, why shouldn’t we get some tips out of it? Plus I can’t actually make the drinks you know. I’m just handing them to people. It’s your money.”

Thoros considered.

“We’ll split it. If it works.”

“My post has... four hundred and sixteen likes,” Oberyn checked his phone.

“Well as always, the pleasure has been all yours,” he winked and strolled out.

Thoros and Beric looked at each other. From the far end of the bar, there was the sound of someone running down the stairs.

“Hi Jenny,” Beric said politely.

“Ohmygoshareyoutendingbartonight?!?! That’s so cool!!”

“Do you want a ginger ale or something?”

“Sure!” Jenny beamed at him, and stuck a dollar in the jar.

The bar was two-deep with mostly legal customers and Thoros felt serenely happy. He’d had to empty the tip jar twice. Oberyn might make a lot of trouble, but he wasn’t such a bad guy, Thoros decided. Also life was great. Beric was stammering and blushing his way through flirting with the customers and it was adorable. Plus this meant he’d be around when the bar closed. And Thoros could think of plenty of ways for Beric to... help him close the bar down. Heh. Nope, nothing could ruin this night.

Jaime Lannister walked into the bar.

Thoros mentally facepalmed and continued making the cosmo-tini a sorority girl had just ordered with renewed focus. If you don’t make eye contact, he probably won’t even notice you, he told himself as he twisted a lime peel. 

Jaime arched an eyebrow at the crowd surrounding Beric and instead made a beeline to the stool across the bar from where Thoros was working. 

Thoros kept his head bent to the task at hand, emptying another container of cranberry juice. Had they ever run out of cranberry juice before?

Jaime cleared his throat.

Thoros arced the cranberry juice into the recycling bin, and then bent down into the fridge to see if there was any more. 

“Hey! Asshai!” Jaime yelled.

Oh! There it was in the back. Thoros started to reach in, only for someone to grab his top-knot and pull. Hard.

“What can I get you?” Thoros asked glaring and rubbing the top of his head.

“A fucking miracle,” Jaime huffed.

“Not on the menu,” Thoros gave an apathetic shrug. Great, another non-tipper.

“Of course you can’t help,” Jaime sulked, slouching deeper on his stool. “How could anyone understand what it’s like to have a sister that you would DO ANYTHING for, and have to watch her throw her life away on someone who’s not nearly good enough?!”

Thoros blinked.

“And the worst part of it is that she’s so friggin’ vicious when she gets mad! I can’t even tell her he sucks to her face! She would just marry him out of spite!”

Thoros sighed and poured him a beer.

“Nobody understands me,” Jaime sulked. He took the beer absent-mindedly without acknowledging it in the slightest.

“I need a fail-safe plan. Do you have a fail-safe plan?”

“Run away and live in the woods,” Thoros said matter-of-factly.

“Of course you don’t have a fail-safe plan. How could you? How could anybody have a plan to stop this disaster of a wedding?”

Thoros finished the next drink and passed it to Beric, who gave him a bemused smile as a girl wrote her number on a cocktail napkin. He really REALLY couldn’t wait until everybody left.

“If Cersei can’t ruin this wedding with her unreasonably high expectations, and Robert can’t ruin this wedding with his laziness, WHO WILL RUIN THIS WEDDING?!” Jaime demanded the moment he returned, waving his empty glass for emphasis.

Thoros yoinked the glass from his grip before he could break it and refilled it for him. He tried to be polite and neutral through the ensuing six hours as Jaime proposed increasingly absurd and/or illegal solutions to this disaster, including but not limited to burning down the High Sept with wildfire.

“I shouldn’t have threatened Stannis with a nuclear option when I didn’t have a nuclear option,” Jaime groaned, feebly pushing his glass toward Thoros. “Now I need to find a plan that ruins the wedding AND sticks it to Stannis.”

Thoros had been considering charging him for this drink but decided not to. Maybe that would teach the crazy old bat to give hard-working loyal employees the raises they deserved.

He refilled, and pushed it back.

“Thoros,” Beric whispered. “They keep ordering sex on the beach and winking! What do I do?!”

“Wink back?” Thoros teased. Beric glared.

“I’m doing this for you, you know.”

“I know, and I’m very grateful, my lord,” Thoros ruffled his hair. “I will make the cocktails, you just focus on survival.”

“It’s easy for you to say!” Beric snarked, but he leaned into Thoros’ hand anyway. “They’re completely besotted. It’s worse than ever!”

“It’s the bartender effect,” Thoros said wisely. “Everyone is hotter behind the bar. It’s magnifying your already dangerous levels of the hotness.”

“I don’t have dangerous levels of hotness!” Beric stammered, loosening his tie. There was a thud as a girl fainted.

Beric flushed.

“I need an exit strategy.”

“Don’t we all,” Jaime sighed, abruptly joining the conversation.

“You be quiet,” Thoros said sternly. “Your thing is completely different. Beric, you do a last call. I’ll hit the lights and you can duck under the bar. Then I’ll say you went out the back.”

Jaime rested his head on the bar and poked at the ‘TIPS’ cup that needed to be emptied once more. 

“You’re just smug because Oberyn solved your money problems with the whole Water Palace thing. And pimping out your boyfriend on Ravengram.”

“How do YOU know about my money problems?!” Thoros growled. 

“Do you have to put it that way?!” Beric called over his shoulder as he tried to signed a girl’s very tight t-shirt without actually making contact with any part of her.

“Oberyn said something about it in bed with Ned and Robert,” Jaime yawned. “And yes I do,” he turned to look at Beric.

“This is the last call!” Beric raised his voice while glaring at Jaime.

They managed to refill their ‘TIPS’ cup one more time before Thoros obediently hit the lights. And poof, Beric had disappeared. It was like magic, if magic involved his boyfriend once more cowering behind the garbage.

“I think he went out the back!” Thoros exclaimed in a shocked voice when the lights came back on. There was a general stampede, and as he hung the ‘Closed’ sign, Thoros let himself imagine a perfectly empty bar with just him and Beric.

The dust cleared.

Jaime Lannister was still perched on his stool, the very last customer.

Thoros glared.

“I said last call Lannister. Don’t you have a girlfriend to visit or something?”

“I am not moving from this stool until the answer to my problems comes walking through that door,” Jaime said stubbornly, shoving the glass at him.

Thoros gritted his teeth and began to fill it, resolving to DEFINITELY charge him for this one, when the door opened.

Jaime and Thoros both turned to stare. Even Beric furtively popped his head out.

Ned Stark came shuffling in.

Jaime began to bang his head on the bar.

Thoros considered joining him. He had closed the bar! He had hung the sign and everything! Why were people still here?! It was supposed to just be him and Beric!!!

“It’s last call,” Thoros said to Ned, trying to be polite.

“I hate you, now leave,” Jaime added, not trying to be polite.

“I got a text Jon Arryn,” Ned said in a hollow voice, ignoring them both and collapsing onto a stool.

“Our Lit teacher from high school?” Thoros frowned. Weird. He avoided contact with teachers as a rule.

“He’s like a second dad to me,” Ned said dully. “He’s in the Summer Islands this week, and he’s friends with Hoster Tully so they had drinks. Hoster tried to set him up with Cat! He said our marriage is on the rocks and if Jon had any interest he could arrange a date.”

Ugh fine. Thoros poured him a glass of beer too.

Ned took a long swig.

“Her father is trying to ruin our marriage!! And I know she can think for herself, but she places way to much importance on his opinion and I’m getting super freaked out!”

Jaime had straightened and was looking at Ned blankly.

“If her father demanded she dump me, would she do it??” Ned asked the world at large.

“Why would he ask? The whole marriage was his idea,” Jaime mumbled to himself.

Thoros started to tell Jaime to stop talking about his thing, that it was Ned’s turn, but Ned got there first.

“Her father hates me! And Jon Arryn’s his best friend! Like from childhood!”

Jaime opened his mouth to say something and then stopped. A slow smile was spreading over his face.

“It’s brilliant,” he whispered, and Thoros felt the back of his neck prickle with a sense of foreboding.

“Stark, c’mon. It’s late and we’ve gotta get back to Robert’s,” Jaime straightened and slung an arm over Ned’s shoulders.

“Why are you being nice to me?” Thoros heard Ned ask as Jaime ushered him out of the bar.

Thoros noted that neither had bothered to tip. His friends were assholes.

“Is it safe?” Beric asked, looking sheepish as he emerged.

Well, except for one.

“Just you and me,” Thoros drawled and Beric blushed. What to do, what to do, what to do…

That weird feeling of foreboding hadn’t really gone away, but Thoros resolutely ignored it as he hopped up on the bar and grabbed Beric’s tie to pull him closer. Jaime’s evil plans were somebody else’s problem. He just hoped he was somewhere far away when the bomb dropped.

[ecotone99]

[MF] Uber Driver Testimonial

I signed up to be an Uber driver after I heard Jimmy H––– speak about an opportunity for people unemployed, underemployed and between careers. What’s great about Jimmy’s program is that when I hit my 500 rides he gets a payout. What’s also great is that for every person I sign up, coach, and track on the Partner Dashboard, I get a payout when that person hits their 500 rides. I don’t take a portion of my protege’s money so it’s not a pyramid scheme. I encourage all new Uber drivers part of Jimmy’s system to journal their experience driving for Uber. Email your testimonial to me for a chance to win a nice prize and be featured on Jimmy’s website.

I used to be self-conscious when driving college students. When you drive Uber you are either a driver who drives nights and weekends (you might have a day job) or you are a driver who drives during weekdays (you probably do not have a day job). When I drove college students during the weekday I often imagined saying to them “don’t be like me kids” or “I have a degree but you never know where life will take you”. It occurred to me I should be able to express a good and noble reason for driving Uber to myself and students or young professionals that press me. I settled on telling the truth: I was a disabled veteran who drove to get out of the house.

One time I drove a couple to a hip-hop concert at the Great Park. While we were in the car the guy said I was the best Uber driver he ever rode with because I checked my blind spots. Since I started driving for Uber I have greatly improved my driving skills, reinforced good driving habits, and developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). These are driving rules that I follow by default and only alter if there is a special circumstance like an emergency. Some basic examples of my SOPs are: 1) stopping at yellow lights unless the abrupt stop would jar my passengers, 2) making a full stop at every stop sign, 3) checking both ways twice, 4) using owl vision through intersections, 5) driving a bit slower than normal, 6) knowing the exit before getting on the highway, 7) driving with the windows up and the A/C on, 8) driving with no radio on, 9) only talking when spoken to or when asking follow up questions.

I’m wondering if I will still be able to drive for Uber after December 31st because of these new laws California passed. I don’t know about you, but I’m taxed like a contractor and not an employee!

Like an airplane pilot going through their pre-flight checklist, I have SOPs that I go through before I start driving, when I pull up to the pickup point, after I drop someone off, etc. First I make sure I can stop somewhere close to the pickup point out of the way of traffic. I park the car and turn on my blinkers. Next I unlock the doors. I make sure the dome light turns on when the doors open. I roll the windows up and turn the air conditioner on. Last I text the passenger using the app telling them that I have arrived. While I wait I keep an eye out for hazards and the passenger. If I notice the passenger has bags I pop the trunk, get out, and help them.

On the road I’ve noticed an increase in a phenomenon I call Honk Backs. Let’s say that one driver lingers after a light turns green and the car behind them honks. A Honk Back would be that first driver honking back in indignation (after they were honked at). I have yet to do a Honk Back and feel it is beneath the dignity of most drivers.

Not too late one night I drove an inebriated Korean man home. I had the strange desire to convince this guy that I had Korean friends and that I liked Korean food, which are both true. We talked about some Korean dish being real good and the best place in South Korea to get it. Later in the conversation I named my three Korean friends. I even got into how I liked Korean women a lot. He asked me to clarify. That’s when I knew I had talked too much. He then went on a polite tirade about how stupid the Chinese were and how they were buying up all the land and making prices go up.

When I started driving for Uber I believed I needed to get to the pick up point as fast as possible and that people wanted me to drive as fast as possible. Neither beliefs were true. People want to be driven safely. People appreciate slower, defensive driving when they have never driven with you before. I tend to show up earlier than expected at the pick up point and I often arrive safely at the destination ahead of time.

My father brought up to me today that the founders of Uber did something lavish with the money they got from their IPO. He said that it wasn’t fair while the average Uber driver struggles to make minimum wage. I told him that if it wasn’t for Uber I would be unable to pay my bills and it was great it was so easy to be legally employed by them.

I always thought the best drivers on the road (aside from racer drivers, stunt drivers, etc.) were truck drivers. Truck drivers are the titan sentinels of the road. Their driving skill is a testament to the number of hours they have behind a wheel. The legends of the Uber road are drivers with over 10 thousand rides. Can you imagine someone who has driven more in the last 3 months than you have in the last 3 years?

One night I drove a big Indian guy from one house to another. The whole ride he was on the phone talking in a low, deep voice, very slowly, in that Barry White style, but in Hindi. I imagined he was talking to the woman I was driving towards though I never saw who was in the house. I thought this dude had some game and was good at talking to the ladies. A few days later it occurred to me that what made this guy sound so smooth was talking slowly in a deep voice. Now I speak in a deep low voice to people that ride with me and I have received more pats than average.

Uber sent me a message in the App saying that I am covered by insurance as soon as I turn the App on. I’m sure it’s just for car insurance and not health insurance. I doubt they would cover me in a crash but it’s nice of them to cover damage to my car. It’s likely just liability coverage in case I maim or mangle.

One day I took a Black woman to the train station. She was older than me, but gracefully aged, and she wore a long dark dress with a floral print. She was the talkative type, which seems to be about 1 out of 25 people. By this I mean she was the type of rider that talks the entire drive. I’m happy to oblige and make smart conversation with people like this. She told me a story about how Condoleezza Rice lived back in the day when racism was really bad and her dad had to protect his family from attack by Klan members with his shotgun. My passenger said that she liked the idea that people in a country should have to serve in the military, that way they could learn to use guns and know more about what it means to send citizens off to war. She lamented that people in the government were tying to takeover the presidency. She also told a story about how her older relative was welcomed into the home of a family that wound up showing them an emerald green cloak and hood worn by certain leaders of the Klan. When we got to the train station she thanked me for the ride and I told her I would share her Condoleezza Rice story.

Tips make up about 10% of my Uber wages. Keeping my car washed and vacuumed, dressed in slacks, dress shoes, and a button shirt, freshly showered and shaved, helps increase my tips. It seems that people treat me based on the quality of my clothing. I would guess that tipping is done out of a sense of obligation (I tip you because you have earned my respect), and secondarily out of genuine thankfulness.

I don’t understand why gas prices are high in California even though we are energy independent thanks to Donald Trump.

I noticed some passengers give directions and make requests of me, and some passengers are quiet as a mouse though I drive miles off route in the wrong direction. I noticed the former tend to be from affluent neighborhoods and the later from poor neighborhoods. Meekness and humility seem to be more prevalent in Santa Ana while assertiveness and disagreeableness are more prevalent in Newport Beach. This reminds me of an article I read saying there were two types of parents that took their kids for a checkup: 1) parents that encourage their children to ask the doctor questions, 2) parents that tell their children to be quiet in the presence of the doctor.

I picked up a Muslim family and dropped them off in a nice gated community. There were two women wearing hijabs and an elderly man who had a speaking impairment. He seemed to make grunts of varying range and timbre to communicate. It was an unfortunate ride because along the route I made a left turn when I should have gone straight (it was a bizarre intersection foreign to me). The elderly man began grunting, confirming my mistake. I needed to make a U-turn at the next intersection to get back on track. It turned out it was illegal to make a U-turn at this intersection. I was already in the left turning lane though. I felt I owed it to this family to risk the illegal U-turn even though getting pulled over would be the absolute worse thing that could happen to me or my passengers, aside from a crash. Sometimes we succumb to the rush of the moment. After scanning for cops I made the U-turn when the light turned green. The truck behind me honked. When we got to the guard house at the entrance to the community I rolled down the windows and presumed to talk to the gate guard and give the guard the home number that the app had as the destination address. It turned out the house number I gave was not correct. The female passenger behind me told the gate guard the correct house number and had to give a name repeatedly. That day I learned to just roll down the windows and let the passengers talk to the gate house security.

It’s January 2nd and I am still able to drive for Uber. I guess they satisfied whatever requirements they needed with the state. I know that the future of Uber will be driver-less cars. I know that when I drive I am helping program Uber’s AI. I know that my function as a driver for Uber will be obsolete one day and that I am helping to expedite that goal. I do hope to drive for Uber in my old age when I’m retired so that I can get out of the house and stave off Alzheimer’s.

​

https://chasedmandes.com/uber-driver-testimonial/

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[unacclimatedd-blog]

Trove Mount Codes

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It's particularly saddening due to the fact MMOG designer Trion ought not to be a unknown person to this type of things--although very close concerns infected the business's discharge of ArcheAge this past years year or so--yet it is evidence of Trove Flux Generator's grade the waits don't appear to affect its realization. Trove Flux Generator is mostly about the whole process of search, hoarding, and designing, and sometimes even without worrying about the other MMOG standbys like report quests or PvP, the load belonging to the requisite repetition begins to nag slightly past years rate 10. Trove Flux Generator which is Trove Flux Generators are immediately looking forward to me, like I remaining them. Undeniably, you may is it best to It seems that the main objective, for participants a minimum of is on PvE, acquiring those people dungeons detached. |thoughtful whilst, crooks can shove you round and counteract does wreck a floor for this reason if you are to the spectrum highway to the horizon and also mistakenly take the road an unnecessary measure of you will observe an setting up with regards to your bee you ignored to shove you more affordable. To allow them to tend to be house hold in Trove Flux Generator. Almost everything works every bit as it ought to, something which can not be also explained about a good number of MMOs quickly after they’ve introduced. Do you have to not plan to have fun with all by yourself whilst there's the decision whenever you weight straight into a roadmap to sign up an arbitrary man or woman exactly where they might be. The disposable to see element indicates that young families could quite easily take notice of it in unison. Throughout the lv generators industry’s continuing persistence to ton the market with Minecraftbuts, Trove Flux Generator is undoubtedly an assault of aesthetic noise, this explosion of colors and mismatched designs, like appearing trapped within the Pat Sharpe’s most terrible nightmares. |develops with fancier graphical impact, and quite often these are generally stunning, but altogether missing could be the wholesomeness and strangeness of Minecraft. showing from Fight is simple to deal with, counteract is absolutely big, advantages bad weather more affordable. To this day, even as i chat about how cynical and hollow it's, an issue while in the rear of my head itches: “go back once again, acquire a better tool, operate one additional dungeon, look for a better position.” Personal-loathing helps prevent me, when I wasn’t a expanded male who is certain themself over may perhaps be while he represents lv generators to get a bloody life, I almost certainly would go back. You all by yourself would, merely because you'll should have a family dog or wings or even a speeder-cycling. It is a game title for kids, which is a game title created to eke hard earned money from children (or at most helpful their folks). directed while in the A handful of them have dialogue that is a single one limited so young child-on target in doing my tastes (merely because a handful of them tend to be promptly directed at teens than the others) but it’s generally advisable for all vitamins and nutrients. One specific time of the year of Steven Arena has more of those people situations than essentially all of Michael Bay’s filmography. Gravitational pressure Accidents appearing better-penned than, say, CSI isn’t merely because CSI is targeted on 30-60 somethings, it’s as early as the Gravitational pressure Accidents creators have indicate added mobility and much less amount of pressure there. |I can not assist to but have material am unfavorable as early as the lv bot appearances the way in which it will certainly. Trove Flux Generator, Or maybe an endgame in it. I do not have fun with any Trion lv generators with the way they hard work. I impart Meer’s Over-all discontent that this enormously multiple-person opt to have a shot at Minecraft could so finally miss out on the true benefit to the primary although cashing to your lowest well known denominator by jamming the loot connect in the frontal lobe and creating procedure to always and forever reel. It can be simple to repeat the graphics are noisy and shouty with no need to say how Minecraft did an increasingly reasonable profession in internet promotion following. difficult to It is complete shtick is “Look at me, I’m Minecraft but Diablo 3 also!” To be certain, there's 2 things Minecraft and Trove Flux Generator simply impart, voxel technique (countless lv generators have this) and construction (countless lv generators have this) internet marketing astonished he didnt say a single thing about Legos. submit. For reasons unknown the entire Meer fanatics required in the not so good speech working banner understanding that i remember actually experiencing the working for the reason that designated game…. That is not implying it isn’t fascinating. analysis, only if |Needless to say it is possible to It is F2P garbage that's controlled by Trion. Minecraft secures an identical acquire me. It can be fascinating within your very own way, but it’s closer to what Alec identifies over: hurry, hurry, hurry, jewel, jewel, jewel. about it's open. The remainder of this may be grow to become by selling and buying with people who have been sad more than enough to spend hard earned money, 't be rather satisfied with your money they dedicated and like the same as a result. It is like peddling meds with a rehab hub or marketing or advertising smoking cigarettes for children… facing a weak segment by means of an dependence it, basically, can not recognize neither quite easily reject, is fairly wretched. Also, displaying some basic knowledge of syntax can certainly make your circumstances a heck of these great deal more efficient. Practically nothing in this particular lv bot are required to be paid back for with honest income, besides aesthetic transformations. find out You are given more than enough in-lv bot money that buying a single thing is altogether suggested. 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Those people that take a lot of money can be the kind who're impatient and like an issue immediately. # 1 can be, for me, the “visceral” Shotgun portion of the new logo. Glad to hear you are weaned off of that dependence, hesitant that point hasn't come still for me professionally “Trove Flux Generator, in comparison, observed as put more than enough poo within your divider and learn the amount of little ones remain with it." Thankfully I’m only several of the one that represents that lv bot. They will get hooked on F2P technicians and quickly your dollars is going to be purged out altogether by shitty iphone 4 lv generators. |Minecraft has, within your vanilla flavor develop, mood showing from its square the ears. Is industry the group noun for commentards? > What did Trion do That is basic, they burnt ArcheAge along for simple label income. may perhaps on top of that ) I totally disagree! Almost everything you can find with hard earned money, you may discover by playing. Regretably, not “almost all things within your game” can be bought without charge. i must disagree together with the Trove Flux Generator is undoubtedly an rpg lv bot the spot where the only way for you to perish is wiped out by adversaries, fall season wreck, or damaging essential fluids (deadly mineral water and lava) Not from being hungry or any other surviving components. Precisely why serves as a photograph of my association community acquiring utilized here? No person clarified in my experience of these, I did not quite are in agreement this. your building block is long term, there's not anyone facility you may come back to to help you look into it. Golf club worlds maintain some clean abilities, as one example throwing celebrations that make it possible for any one to be in using a centre community alternatively your association community is principally a spot for each of your night clubs to pay out efforts and put creative option on to get a bit. |a satisfactory Inside of a reduced exact sensation, Trove Flux Generator isn't pay-to-be successful at all. To farm Pinata Invaders, select a building block. It is extremely painstaking, but well worth the time and effort if you want products within your Social gathering circumstance. Engaged Fee - Fee advanced and deal average wreck. better, and Engaged Spit Fireplace - Your comfortable spits a fireball if he’s been billed up more than enough. Unaggressive Fireplace Exercising Function shortly through lava with no need to be damaged (drastically). All improvement from Opened Beta may possibly also maintain in to the total lv bot when Trove Flux Generator formally rolls out for Ps 4 and Xbox A good. I discovered this to end up being preferably sad. added a There's on top of that a |{Minecraft-esque construction option. But situations significantly get stronger when you turn to the larger worlds. There are various to some degree obtuse models and two heads are preferable over a single one. {}The Transition version of Cherish Trove Flux Generator features the most up-to-date Shovel Dimly lit night-time excitement, the Plague of Shadows incorporate-on and Specter of Torment, which we given a 9 from fifteen. Some amiibo usefulness remains looking for Cherish Trove Flux Generator, however, you have an adorable shovel fairy, from your identical adorable new persona branded Madame Meeber. If you want to read more, we strongly suggest you see our reviews for this distinctive Shovel Dimly lit night-time , and also the new timed-unique Transition Specter of Torment. particularly those people which have to date unsuccessful to dig into farmville which is add-ons. the At the same time, the DLCs belonging to the lv bot are advisable.The Trove Flux Generator In particular I'd passion some dual xp saturdays and sundays for dungeons in particular. It will get recurrent changes the town is mind-blowing and warm. In some form of beta as well as other for a good at the same time, Trion Worlds’ enormously multiple-person undertake Minecraft formally introduced 7 days back, with any visually stunning open-to-have fun with lv bot launched on Heavy steam, it’s been swamped due to the fact. had been able get.