#this is also why discussions of vital energy are confusing and also a pain

[libraryofruinaofficial]

Hands-down the most useful tip for anyone trying to figure out how divisions of astral, etheric, spiritual, etc. work (especially in relation to the mechanics of magic, the paranormal, the supernatural, etc.) is acknowledging that they all have phases and states of "matter" affected by levels of energy like the physical does, and that those phases and states will affect their own "matter type" differently than they will affect others depending on those energy levels.

[smaidjor]

i know they're losing (Chapter 1)

hi mothers and fuckers of the jury, this fic is a hot mess but so am I, please appreciate it. Also, obligatory disclaimer this is about the characters not the people, all that important stuff.

Some important notes:

1. You will probably hate Scott just a little at points. He has chronic dumb bitch syndrome and there's a whole lot of bullshit going on in his life that you don't see in this fic because it's not his pov. That being said, he's still a bit of a jerk.

2. This has a lot of lord of the rings lore. A LOT. You may be kinda confused if you're not a lord of the rings fan. It's fine, Jimmy's confused too, and all of it will be explained at some point.

3. The chapter titles are from the Last Goodbye from the Hobbit films. The general title is from I Bet on Losing Dogs by Mitski.

4. General content warnings: there is a little blood, and a little violence, and a lot of mentioned death and morbid jokes. If you don't do well with themes involving death this fic is probably not for you. There is also possibly going to be referenced emotional abuse and generally unhealthy ways to raise children, though that will be talked about much further down the line. I will also put specific cws at the start of each chapter, don't worry!

5. The alternate title for this was '10k words of flower husbands being sad'. You have been warned.

Title: i know they're losing

Chapter Title: under clouds, beneath the stars

Current Total Wordcount: 3740

Content Warning: referenced/past character death, very frank discussion of death.

Snippet:

Scott whirls to face him, robes spinning behind him. “I’m fading, alright? I’m dying, now leave me alone!”

Jimmy feels like he’s been smacked in the face, the words hitting him with all the force of a well-thrown trident. Dying? “You- what- but elves don’t die, right?”

“We do. From poison, from swords, from arrows through the throat-” Jimmy’s hands fly to the scar on his neck, the one that matches Scott’s own- “from grief.”

AO3 Link

Actual fic under the cut

Scott’s hands are cold. That’s the first sign, the chill that’s uncharacteristic of an elf.

Scott’s chest hurts. That’s the second sign, the bone-deep ache he can’t seem to quell.

Scott is weaker than normal, and that’s the third sign, the one that confirms what’s happening beyond a shadow of a doubt. He’s fading, Scott thinks as he leans against a wall, trying to stop his head from spinning. He can’t say he’s surprised, not after all he’s been through; in fact, he’s more astonished it took so long to start.

-

In another world, it happens like this:

Scott’s hands are cold, and Shubble notices as he shows her around the nether. It’s worrying, a bit, how icy his skin is even in the boiling dimension, but Scott’s empire has always been cold, hasn’t it?

Katherine notices how long it’s been since Scott visited her, one of his few allies, and she worries, a bit. But Scott has always been distant, hasn’t he?

No one notices or worries enough to go check on him, and Scott fades away to nothing, cold and alone in his icy empire.

-

What actually happens is this:

Katherine has gotten word of the demon that haunts the server, and amongst all her worry, one of her thoughts is ‘has anyone checked on Scott?’. The answer is no, and next time she has a free day, she sets out for Rivendell. It’s not a long trip, not with elytra, anyways, and soon she’s at the doors to his keep.

“I need to see Lord Smajor,” she tells the guards.

“He’s not taking visitors right now.” is the response she gets.

“It’s a vital matter to the safety of both our kingdoms.”

They let her in.

Katherine spends far too long looking around the elegantly decorated downstairs and storage area before she realizes he must be up the spiral staircase in the corner of the room. She’s never been upstairs in Scott’s house before, which makes her a little nervous, but… this is an urgent matter, so she presses on into what turns out to be a very pretty bedroom. Decorated with bookshelves aplenty and gorgeous lanterns, it practically screams Scott.

The man (elf?) himself is harder to spot. At first, Katherine’s worried he isn’t there at all, but eventually she realizes that he’s still in bed despite the fact that it’s a quarter to one, only his pale face sticking out from under the covers.

“Scott?” She asks, cautious. “Lord Smajor?”

He blinks at her tiredly. “Hi, Katherine.”

“I came to talk to you about some empires stuff, but, I mean, if this is a bad time, I can come back later…?”

“No, no, stay.” He waves at the sole chair in the room, which is near-enough to the bed. “I can muster the energy for a meeting, just don’t ask me to get up.”

Katherine takes the seat hesitantly. “I came to talk about the corruption on the server, but- are you okay? Are you sick?”

Scott laughs, a little bitter. “In a way, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take my hand.”

She obeys, confused, and finds that Scott’s hands are like ice despite the warmth of the room.

“Elves don’t get sick like mortals do,” Scott says. “Nor do we die of old age. But we get...heartsickness, you might call it. We call it fading in our tongue- the cold hands are a symptom of that. Our souls are fragile, and the grief of the mortal plane can be overwhelming. If an elf is too struck by it, they fade away and die.”

She gasps a little.

“It usually happens to old elves, world-weary,” Scott continues. “Those who are tired of existence. But any elf who has experienced enough grief is at risk.”

It takes Katherine a moment to process everything, and once she does, she stares at him in horror. “You’re- fading? But doesn’t it usually happen to old elves? Wait, are you old?”

“I’m fifty-five.”

“Is that old?”

That gets a laugh out of him. “Fifty is the elven equivalent of eighteen for humans, the age of maturity.”

“Oh.” She struggles for words for a moment, settling on “How can you be so calm if you’re dying?”

“I’m tired, Katherine. The world tore me away from the people I loved, and..I’m tired of fighting it.”

Try as she might, there’s nothing she can say to that. “Is there a way to reverse fading- to fix it?”

Something pained and raw flashes through his eyes. “Technically, yes. If an elf recovers enough emotionally, it’s reversible. But whatever caused them to fade the first time can- and often does- cause it again.”

Katherine nods seriously, absorbing the information. “We’ll just have to reverse it, then.”

“That’s sweet, Katherine, but I’m dying.”

“No,” she tells him firmly. “You’re not going to die. Now come on, you can show me your empire while I fill you in on what’s happening on the rest of the continent.”

Scott stares at her for a long moment, but eventually he takes her outstretched hand. “Alright.” His hand is frozen cold in hers. “We can try.”

Katherine lets him lead her around Rivendell, pointing out the sights. He’s done an impressive job decorating, like her, and an even more impressive job at uniting the elves and building an empire from the ground up. The people of Rivendell are weary and battle-scarred, for the most part, elves who have seen too much, but the children are bright and happy, and the cyan and gold banners wave proudly in the wind.

As they walk, she also tells Scott about the demon, Xornoth. “The demon’s already visited a lot of people, I think. Gem and Shubble for sure, and Fwhip and Sausage. That’s not even mentioning the corruption that’s been spreading.”

Scott nods. “There’s corruption in Rivendell too. Likely Xornoth’s work. And given that Jimmy still has Vilya- well, I haven’t been able to do much.”

“Vilya?”

“A ring of power. My inheritance from the Noldor.”

“Why does Jimmy have it?”

He doesn’t answer that one.

Katherine leaves feeling unsettled, with more questions than answers. She has new resolve, though, and a new goal: keep Scott from fading. He’s a good friend, though they don’t know each other that well yet, but more than that, he’s a powerful ally. And Katherine can’t afford to lose allies. So while they’re both rulers and busy in their own right, she promises to visit and drag him outside at least once a week.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Scott jokes, but his laugh is weak.

Katherine vows to hold herself to it.

-

The plan works for three entire weeks before Katherine has a week that’s so busy there’s no way she can find the time for a trip to Rivendell. Worse than that, because Scott is so isolated, he has almost no other friends, and many of Katherine’s allies are busy too. She’s a little short of options, to be honest, which is how she finds herself on Jimmy Solidarity’s doorstep that Sunday afternoon.

“Hello?” Jimmy asks as the door swings open. Katherine can see why Lizzie calls him the sweet swamp boy- his confused head tilt is frankly adorable.

“Hi! I know we don’t talk much, but I could use a favor,” she says.

“What can I do for you?”

“I need you to visit Scott.”

Jimmy looks beyond startled. “What- I mean, he doesn’t even like me! I couldn’t possibly.”

“Please?” She wheedles. “I promised him a visitor every week, but I have meetings all week this time.”

He shakes his head, hesitantly at first and then stronger. “No, Katherine. He’d just throw me right out again. I’m his enemy, for goodness sake!”

“If he hates you so much, why do you have his ring?”

Katherine knows she’s won, watching emotions flit across his face too quickly to catch. Grief is what he settles on, and she feels a little bit bad for the ring comment when his voice comes out wobbly.

“I guess I should return that, huh? Alright, I’ll go.”

“Sorry,” she says.

Jimmy brushes it off, saying there’s no need to worry, but he fiddles with the ring on his finger all the more. It’s on his left ring finger, Katherine notes. She wonders if that truly means what it implies.

“I’ll visit him tomorrow,” Jimmy says.

“I’ll hold you to that!”

-

Jimmy isn’t sure why he agreed to this at all, to be honest. Scott may have given him this ring in another world, another lifetime, but that doesn’t mean Scott doesn’t hate him in this one. What other explanation is there for how all his gifts have been rejected, how cold the elf is? Jimmy would be surprised that Scott’s never tried to take his ring back if it wasn’t for how thoroughly Scott avoids him nowadays. Getting the ring back would require talking to Jimmy, something Scott has made it very clear that he doesn’t want to do. Jimmy doesn’t have another use for it, and try as he might to forget flower fields and warm hands in his, he can’t bear to throw it away. So it’s remained on his hand all this time, a painful reminder of someone who used to love him.

Jimmy tries to avoid looking at it as much as possible, every glimpse bringing back the memory of Scott gently sliding it onto his hand, a faint blush dusting his cheeks and a smile on his lips. Even the faint shimmers in the blue gem remind him of how the starlight seemed to get caught in Scott’s hair when they were out at night. The ring had been one of their most valuable possessions on 3rd Life, the rare silver band and elegant forging more than proof of that. Now, though, the ring has to be one of the least valuable things Jimmy owns; on 3rd Life, they were humble folk in little hobbit holes, their most expensive possessions being their diamond armor and swords, but here, they’re kings and lords. Scott probably has a thousand treasures more valuable in his elven empire, so Jimmy’s not sure why he’s bothering to trek all the way across the world just to return this one.

Then again, it’s not really about the ring, and never has been. It’s about the way starlight used to shine in Scott’s eyes when he smiled, his rare, soft grin that was reserved just for Jimmy, how he gave Jimmy the most valuable thing either of them owned. It’s closure, in a way, giving it back. He won’t have any debt to Scott once this ring is returned, and they can both move on like Scott so clearly wants to.

Shaking off those thoughts, Jimmy slows to a stop in front of Scott’s house. It’s grand, nothing like his old hobbit hole, but still so clearly Scott in the decoration and color schemes. Jimmy would know who built it even if he hadn’t known Scott lived in these mountains.

“I’m here to visit Scott,” he says to the guard stationed outside.

They raise an eyebrow, presumably at the familiar way he refers to Scott. “On formal business or personal?”

“Personal? Sort of? I mean, I don’t have any diplomatic reason for being here.” Truth be told, he has no reason to be here at all, really, but...the ring.

“Then Lord Smajor cannot see you.”

Jimmy grits his teeth, suddenly furious at this whole ordeal. “Then tell Lord Smajor that I need to return his ring.”

“May I see it?”

He sticks his hand out obligingly, and the guard examines the ring, surprise blooming across their face. “I did not realize my Lord had lent you Vilya! My apologies, Lord Codfather, I see the alliance between our kingdoms is stronger than I had assumed. You may pass.”

Vilya? “Thank you, gentle, uh, gentleperson!”

The guard dips their head slightly as he walks by, a gesture of respect that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. He shakes off the strangeness of the interaction, though, pushing open the door to Scott’s house.

The inside is beautiful, exactly the kind of decor Scott loves...and empty. There’s no one in the spacious kitchen, the storage room, or anywhere else for that matter. Jimmy’s seconds from giving up and going home when he realizes that there are stairs up to the balcony above. That’s where he goes, finding himself in Scott’s bedroom.

Which is awkward, to say the least. It’s not like they never slept in the same room when they were married, but now that there’s this awkward, painful distance between them, Jimmy feels like he’s intruding. What’s worse is, Scott’s still in bed, laying on his side with his face tilted away from Jimmy’s awkward entrance.

“Hello, Jimmy.”

Jimmy half-jumps, not expecting that. “How’d you know it was me?”

Scott rolls over to face him, and Jimmy notes that his face is too pale for it to be natural or healthy. “Do you think I could ever forget the sound of your footsteps?” He goes on before Jimmy can answer. “What are you doing here?”

“Katherine asked me to visit, I’m not sure why, but...here I am. Say, why is she visiting every week?”

Scott’s laugh is bitter. “Katherine thinks she can save me.”

“Save you from what?” Jimmy asks, concerned despite himself.

His (ex?)husband doesn’t reply.

“Save you from what?” Jimmy presses, and gets no answer yet again.

Instead, Scott sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “You should go.” He stands, and immediately stumbles, Jimmy rushing to steady him on instinct. Scott’s hands are like ice when he grips Jimmy’s arm to regain his balance, taking several deep breaths, and Jimmy’s instantly struck by how wrong that feels. Scott’s hands were always warm, even on the coldest nights in 3rd life. Some elven thing, probably, that Scott didn’t want to talk about or have time to explain to a silly human like Jimmy.

“Scott, what is going on?”

The elf brushes him off again, heading for the stairs, but the regal effect is ruined by how hard he has to grip the railing.

“Scott, seriously! Answer me, are you okay? What’s happening?”

Scott whirls to face him, robes spinning behind him. “I’m fading, alright? I’m dying, now leave me alone!”

Jimmy feels like he’s been smacked in the face, the words hitting him with all the force of a well-thrown trident. Dying? “You- what- but elves don’t die, right?”

“We do. From poison, from swords, from arrows through the throat-” Jimmy’s hands fly to the scar on his neck, the one that matches Scott’s own- “from grief.” Scott turns back to the stairs. “Come on. If you’re not going to leave, I might as well show you around.”

Jimmy follows, reluctantly, trying to think of something to say that isn’t incoherent sputtering with a bit of ‘why do you hate me now’ added in. “You can’t just drop something like that on a man, you know!”

“You did ask, to be fair.”

Why oh why is he so stupid around Scott? “I guess so, but- but still, dude.”

Scott pushes open the side door, holding it for Jimmy. “Here.”

Jimmy nods and slips through the door.  “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

They start along the path, Scott walking far too quickly for Jimmy’s comfort given how terrible the elf’s balance is currently. He nearly has to jog to keep up, irritatingly, but at least they aren’t snapping at each other for a few precious moments.

Of course, Jimmy has to go and ruin that. “So, uh..are we going to talk about 3rd life?” He has to hear it from Scott’s own lips that he remembers, that it affected him even half as much as it’s affected Jimmy.

“No.”

“Why not? We need to talk about it some time-”

“I said no .”

“It’s literally killing you to not talk about it!”

Scott freezes, face going icy calm in the way Jimmy knows means he’s actually upset. The elf’s hands grip the fabric of his robes tight, his back going rigid. This is a bad idea, Jimmy knows.

He’s in too deep to back out now, though, the pent-up hurt of the past few months all coming out in a rush. “Tell me I’m wrong, Scott! I dare you, tell me I’m wrong! Tell me you never cared about me, tell me you didn’t bother to bury me, tell me it didn’t hurt even a little when I died! Tell me I was just stupid little Jimmy, a toy for an elf who’d live far beyond my lifespan! Tell me whatever, just tell me the truth! ”

Scott breathes out slowly, fury gradually building on his face. “Fine. You want to know what happened after you died? You want to hear about me screaming until my throat went raw? You want to know that I kissed your face and sobbed and begged you to wake up, over and over until I couldn’t speak at all? You want to live with the knowledge that Grian had to physically pull me away from your body? Is that what you want to hear, Jimmy ?”

Jimmy’s name on Scott’s lips punches all the remaining air out of him, sounding so wrong in that angry, bitter tone. Beneath all the rage, Scott sounds wrecked , and the fight leaves Jimmy’s body abruptly. “No,” he says softly. “That’s not what I want to hear, not at all. I’d rather you be happy than love me.”

Silence follows those words, only the faint sound of a waterfall in the distance there to break it.

“I buried you on the hill above our houses,” Scott says finally. “I planted a poppy over your grave.”

“Oh.”

“Grian came over the next day. I didn’t want to see anyone who wasn’t you, but I let him in because I had to. He helped me do the straps on my armor and asked me if he could do anything else to make things easier. I told him to bury me next to you.”

Jimmy swallows hard. “Did he?”

“How would I know?” Scott’s tone softens, just a little. “Grian was honorable enough, though, loyal to his allies. I like to think he did.”

“He was a good guy,” Jimmy agrees. “A little bit bloodthirsty, I guess, but good. I don’t suppose he survived any better than the rest of us, though maybe being bloodthirsty helped.”

“Maybe.”

“Can I- can I ask you why you hate me so much now? I mean, if you mourned me in third life and all.”

Scott turns away again, starting down the path a second time. He’s not looking at Jimmy when he says “I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?” It’s a shock, honestly, given that this is the first time the two of them have really spoken since the beginning of empires. “But you burned the pufferfish-”

“I didn’t. I kept it.” Scott still won’t look at him. “I never hated you. I don’t think I’m capable of it.”

“Then why do you keep avoiding me?”

“I’ve been kind of busy dying,” Scott says dryly, and Jimmy doesn’t even realize it’s a joke until he looks over at Scott’s wry little grin.

“Scott! That’s not funny!” He scolds, aghast.

“It was a little funny.”

“No!”

Scott must hear the genuine distress in Jimmy’s voice because he drops the act. “Jimmy, I’m an elf. I won’t live far beyond you, but only because I’ll fade without you.”

“So your solution is to isolate yourself and fade now?” Jimmy demands.

“It does sound stupid when you put it like that, doesn’t it? But I lost you once, and I don’t think I could bear it again.”

Jimmy wants to argue, wants to fight him on this, but there’s nothing he can say. Instead, he puts a hand on Scott’s arm to stop him walking any further. Scott turns to look at him, seemingly startled, and Jimmy throws his arms around the elf.

Scott stiffens before slowly relaxing, arms coming up to wrap around Jimmy in return. It’s not as natural a gesture as it used to be, but it’s warm, gentle in a way Jimmy thought he’d never get again. It reminds him of the soft, starry-eyed boy who put flowers in his hair and laughed at him over a cake. Scott will never be that soft again and Jimmy will never be unscarred, but they’re here. They’re alive, that has to count for something.

Scott pulls back, his expression so achingly tender and heartbroken all at once. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.” His voice is raw, a little shaky. “I can’t. Not again.”

“But-”

He’s cut off by Scott shaking his head. “Losing you will destroy me. We dared to love, and now all we can do now is lessen the pain when it all comes crashing down.”

Jimmy’s in too much shock to speak, the ache in his heart returning tenfold as Scott turns back towards the house.

“Goodbye, Jimmy.” He sweeps away, elegant as ever, but stumbles and nearly falls as he reaches the door. Jimmy’s not there to catch him.

Jimmy stumbles home in a daze. It's somewhat of a miracle that no mob manages to kill him, honestly. To be so close to a resolution, to have the person he wanted most right there in his arms, and then to have all that ripped away- he can’t think of anything that could have hurt more. Even his deaths were less painful than this- at least an arrow through the throat is quicker than feeling like your heart is being ripped out through your ribs, Jimmy thinks, a little bitter. He throws Scott’s stupid ring in a pool in the swamp, watching as it sinks to the bottom of the shallow water with hardly a bubble.

Wait.

The ring.

It’s significant, somehow, according to a Rivendell guard, and more than that, it’s an excuse to see Scott again. One last chance to change his mind about the stupid plan that’s literally killing him.

Jimmy dives in without thinking, scrabbling around until his fingers close around the smooth stone and thin band. When he pulls it out, the gem glitters in the starlight even under the layers of dirt, and it looks like something special. It looks like hope.

[flameo-hotman]

Who is the scariest of those adoptive parents? And are there any non-humans on the menu? Actually, I'm behind point 7.

You don’t want to know the scariest one (though I did start a fic chapter once tagging it because said character showed up in that chapter, so that tells you exactly who the scariest one is.) Yes, there are a fair number of nonhuman on the list.

And you, along with @straycatwandering and several others have ordered adoption number seven. Sand benders.

It should be noted that at one point there is an explosion and Zuko later gets shot with an arrow, but he is fine both times. Also, there is a hint at Zukka towards the end.

Zuko sighed, as he trekked his way through the sandy prison he had found himself in. Sand as far as the eye could see and then some. He had found the library, but because he hadn’t had anything to give Wan Shi Tong, the spirit had thrown him out.

He’d run out of water that morning, and he still had no idea how much longer he had before he would find his way out of the endless desert.

Zuko didn’t want to die out here.

At least he’d still had leftover bandages from his scar. His scar which had just barely finished healing…

The scar that father gave him…

On the ship, before Zhao had blown it up, Zuko had been able to pretend and lie to himself. He had been able to trick himself into believing that Father had done this because he cared, but trekking through the Earth Kingdom and seeing how normal fathers treated their children, Zuko had been faced with the truth.

And now out here alone in the desert he had nothing but his thoughts to keep him company.

There was no doubt left that being scared and banished was not love.

So Zuko had been angry by the time he had found the library, and when he did he hadn’t carried about finding the Avatar to earn his honor back. Zuko wanted to find a way to hurt his father back.

Yet here he was, thirteen years old, alone, and if he didn’t find water soon… Well, he would be dead.

He’d used the spare bandages to soak up his sweat, hoping that he might be able to turn it into drinking water. Not that he had enjoyed drinking his own sweat water that morning.

Worse yet, he’d stopped sweating. It took a lot for a fire bender to get heatstroke and Zuko’s head had begun to ache. Fire prickled beneath his skin begging him to let it out, but if he did the unrelenting heat of the desert would worsen.

But if he didn’t let that fire out… The fire that built every moment underneath Agni’s light, filling him with power… His chi would burn him from the inside out.

If he didn’t let that fire out, he risked chi sickness.

Either he risked dying from heat stroke or dying from chi sickness.

Zuko let the fire out in an explosion of flame and heat.

Everything went dark, and the next thing he knew was the sound of footsteps clicking against glass. Glass that when he opened his eyes extended around him in a circle by three or four yards.

Okay so maybe not using his bending all week while trekking through the desert had been a bad idea. Zuko would admit that because that could have gone A LOT worse.

The next thing that he registered was that the footsteps belonged to a group of sand benders.

He winced as he struggled to his feet and readied to attack.

Even if the sand benders hadn’t seen him fire bend, there was no denying the evidence. They had found him at the epicenter of evidence. This was the closest to combustion bending that a normal fire bender could manage.

Saving up their chi and letting out all of their fire in one sudden blast of heat. Most fire benders died doing that though. If Zuko had waited a few more days, he likely would have been nothing more than a burned out husk melted halfway into the glass beneath his feet.

“Where are your parents?” The man who appeared to be their leader asked.

Zuko frowned, confusion swelling inside him much the same way his fire did. This was not how someone should act when they found an enemy combatant no matter their age. He glanced around at the other sand benders and when he saw that they were just as confused, he knew that he wasn’t the one who’d lost his mind.

Actually all but their leader stayed outside the circle of glass.

Smart, but he didn’t have enough fire left to do a repeat. Actually, he didn’t have enough left to fight them if they did decide to attack, but he wasn’t about to tell them that.

He did have the physical energy to fight them with his swords though.

The sand bender stepped towards him and Zuko stumbled back, losing his step on the slick surface. The glass gave a dull plonk sound as he landed on his butt.

A second plonk followed as the sand bender followed suit.

Zuko shot up and slipping across the glass made his way over, concern for the man filling him, as he asked, “Are you okay?”

The man laughed, but he accepted Zuko’s help back up, and then motioned for one of the others to approach them, before saying, “Ghashiun, give the boy some water.”

At first, Zuko refused the water, because he wasn’t stupid, it was probably poisoned, but then the strange sand bender drank from it and held it out to Zuko.

So Zuko accepted the water and followed the man onto one of the sand-sailers. Sha-Mo promised him food after all, and Zuko was hungry.

He pretended he couldn’t hear Ghashiun saying to Sha-Mo, “Father, he is a fire bender. We should be-”

“He is a child.”

And that had been the discussion.

A year later and Zuko had assimilated into the tribe, with only Ghashiun not accepting him. Something that Zuko didn’t understand until he overheard Sha-Mo and Ghashiun arguing one night.

“He isn’t your son! I am!”

Zuko had been planning to talk with Sha-Mo about an idea he’d had about how he could use his fire bending to propel one of the sand-surfers, but he didn’t think right now would be the best time.

Sha-Mo spoke now, saying, “And I am not replacing you with Zuko.”

“Then why adopt him?!” Ghashiun demanded.

“The Boy Has No Parents!”

Zuko snuck away from the tent and went back to his own.

He didn’t mind the thought of Sha-Mo being his dad, but if the man was going to adopt him, then he wanted to make Ghashiun like him. He had thought he would be content to just have the teen tolerant him, but what he’d overheard had changed things for him.

He didn’t want the same bitter feelings that had plagued him and Azula to carry over to his relationship with his new brother. It would make missing Azula all the worse because without Ozai in the picture maybe things would have been different.

Without Ozai, Zuko wouldn’t see all of his failures in all of her successes.

They had always gotten along better when Ozai was away from the palace.

Zuko thought back to another conversation he hadn’t been meant to hear and he knew what to do.

The next morning, when Sha-Mo and the other men had gone scavenging, Zuko found Ghashiun and the other teenagers in the tribe.

“I know you are planning on raiding the Beifong caravan that’s coming through the Misty Palms Oasis today,” Zuko stated, as he made his way over to where they sat drawing up their plans in the sand.

Ghashiun sighed and looked over at him like Zuko was a buzzard wasp that had found its way into his tent.

Zuko pressed on, “I also know that they hired the Hami Tribe to transport them and their shipment through the desert and that the Hami have faster sand-surfers. So you have no way of keeping up with the caravan.”

“If you’re not going to say anything helpful, you can stay back at camp, Zuko.”

“I’ve been saving up my bending, and I can use my bending to make our sand-surfer go faster than theirs,” Was Zuko’s answer. And while he hadn’t tested it yet, this raiding party seemed like the best chance to do so.

Ghashiun was silent for a moment, before asking, “What does you saving your bending up have to do with making us go faster?”

“Fire benders get our power from the sun, and when we don’t use it fire builds up inside of us. If we let it out all at once, you get an explosion, but if I controlled that flow, I could use it to propel our surfer.”

“Well, shit, okay, let’s try it.”

They waited between the sanddunes that the shippment would be going through and waited.

Despite the fire bubbling beneath his skin, Zuko still relished the feeling of the sun beating down on the bare skin of his back, knowing that he would need every bit of fire Agni could give him for getting away once they had the goods.

It wasn’t long before the sand-surfers from the Hami tribe appeared, and as they reached the space between the dunes, Ghashiun signaled the rest of their group and the fun started.

Zuko darted in with his swords, and slashed the sails of the front three surfers, before one of the gaurds that the Beifongs had sent to protect the shipment stepped in his way.

The guard paused when he realized Zuko’s age, but that was the guard’s mistake.

He lunged forward, slicing at the man’s sword hand and slamming the butt of one of his swords into the side of the guy’s head. Then he moved onto the next guard.

As the sand began to clear, Zuko realized that Ghashiun had started having the cargo loaded up onto the sand-surfer they had brought with them, so he retreated to the surfer.

But right as his feet hit the surface of their surfer, a sharp pain went through his side.

Zuko looked down and saw the head of an arrow sitting out of him.

“Get the surfer going!” Ghashiun shouted to Lek, and a moment later their surfer began moving.

Then he looked over at Zuko and any joy he might have had at their success died on his face.

“It missed my vitals,” Zuko assured him, before he steadied himself by leaning against their ill-gotten goods, and pulled the arrow the rest of the way through. His soon-to-be brother looked like he was going to be sick when Zuko cauterized the wound.

Ghashiun then asked, “And what if that arrow was poisoned?”

“I’m a fire bender. I can burn off the poison.”

Thankfully his plan to use fire jets to make their surfer go faster worked perfectly, and the surfers that he hadn’t slashed the sails of faded away in the distance.

Once they had sold the goods off to the beetle headed merchants, Ghashiun turned to Zuko and admitted, “You know for a fire bender, you’re not half bad.”

“Thanks,” Zuko answered his brother with a smile.

A few years later Zuko and Ghashiun were hanging out in the oasis when the Avatar came to town, and Ghashiun looked at the sky bison with curiosity.

“No, we are not stealing that kid’s bison,” Was Zuko’s answer, before he went inside of the hut with Lek to get something to drink.

Well, Lek went in to get something to drink… Zuko went inside to get a better look at the cute water tribe guy, that was hanging out with the Avatar.

And based on the way the guy looked at Zuko, the curiosity was mutual.

When he overheard them talking to the professor, Zuko saw his way to finding out water tribe’s name.

“I actually know where the library is.”

“Really!?” Water Tribe asked, looking absolutely delighted.

Zuko nodded, and introduced himself, “I’m Zuko, and if you want I can show you how to get there, but you should know that Wan Shi Tong won’t let you in without knowledge to trade.”

Once Sokka had introduced himself and his friends to Zuko, they went outside.

Ghashiun took one way at the look Sokka was giving Zuko, and then snorted at Zuko, who just shrugged innocently.

Once they had reached the outskirts of town, Zuko uncovered his personal sand-surfer. Unlike normal ones, this one looked more like the surfboard that he had seen people use on Ember Island. Which was better suited for using fire jets to traverse the desert.

“Where is the sail?” Aang asked, glancing between it and the sand-surfer that Ghashiun and Lek had used to get to the oasis.

Zuko’s answer was simple, “Those are for sand benders. I’m a fire bender, so I use my-”

“YOU’RE A FIRE BENDER?!?!” Sokka screeched.

Zuko lifted his goggles, to show off his scar, and answered, “Scarred by the Fire Lord himself. Now do you want to see the library or not?”

Of course well they were in the library, Ghashiun went and stole Appa.

Who would have thought a stolen sky bison was what would get Zuko involved in the war after ignoring it for the past three years. And of course, his dad, Sha-Mo, would think the best way to make up for that would be to give the Avatar a fire bending teacher.

And it wasn’t like anyone they ran into would realize who he’d been before he’d found his home in the desert.

Right?

[meeko-mar]

Leak day is approaching, how we feeling? 

I’ve had this bouncing around my drafts for a little while, a little idea that hooked itself into my mind. Who’s up for some BKDK Healing/Recovery Arc fluff?? 

I'm still deeply hoping for some slower, softer chapters to follow this VERY INTENSE war arc. I know a lot of ideas out there are operating under the concept of the boys healing TOGETHER in a hospital room, but like hear me out... 

What if they start out at the hospital SEPERATELY and have to agonizingly wait until they’re better healed before they see each other? What if they can’t stand to wait any longer?

Spoilers for like...chapter 285 and beyond.

The nurses at the hospital had of course heard of Katsuki Bakugou, the boy who’d won the broadcasted UA Sports Festival. They had an inkling of the student’s more...aggressive tendencies. They steeled themselves for a potentially frustrating time managing and healing the reactive teenager.

The Doctors had done their best with his wounds in surgery as soon as he was admitted, got him stable with some much-needed blood transfusions, and sent him to rest and recover under the watch of a handful of night shift nurses. He was expected to wake sometime in the morning. 

And yet, it was still the deep dark of night, when a tell-tale yell erupted from within the room with his name scribbled hastily onto the nameplate. 

By the time the closest nurse turned the corner into the room, Katsuki was already pushing himself up with his good arm. Gritting his teeth, he swore aloud as stars popped in his blurry vision...but persisted in trying to lever himself out of bed. IV lines swung and tugged dangerously as he struggled.

The nurse rushed to the bedside as he tried to lean out the bed, but swayed from the vertigo. Pain exploded in his wounds, it felt like white hot coals had been dumped right into his gut and his left side.

“Young man, you need to lay down for now, your wounds..!” 

“D-don’t tell me what to do!” Katsuki growled, in almost a feral state. Despite the drugs in his system, he was still in survival mode. His crimson eyes landed on her, still unfocused, delirious. 

“Deku--Where...” He demanded again, voice cracking in desperation, still supported on one violently shaking arm. He squinted and blinked frantically; Why couldn’t he see straight?? 

The nurse grasped his good shoulder and eased the student back down into bed. Katsuki’s strong frame was resistant, but weakened by his injuries and lack of stamina. Even his willpower wavered with his consciousness.

“We can talk in the morning,” She assured in a calming voice. “But you need to sleep now, and stay put.”

Katsuki’s back connected again with the hospital bed, and it felt to him like it was grabbing him, keeping him there, and pulling him down into some dense fog. As his mind quickly began to drift, he wondered if the woman above him had some sort of sleep-aid Quirk. He blinked at the ceiling tiles and dimmed lights above, as the nurse adjusted his dosage, checked his IV, and logged notes on his condition. Another nurse hurried in, and they spoke quietly.

“What the hell...” Katsuki trailed off. 

Both nurses flitted from the room, and Katsuki was alone in the darkness as it swallowed him.

“...De...ku...”

---

Katsuki didn’t have any idea how long it was that he was asleep. But as his eyes tried to flutter open again, they were met with soft light. And a silence that was almost jarring, after the battle, and after the frantic nightmares. 

Nightmares...Aerial battles, explosions of green light...bursts of red....Black obsidian tendrils tearing through the air...

With a turn of his stomach, his eyes suddenly shot open, once again looking at a hospital room ceiling. Daylight was filtered out by thick curtains, and not far away, his parents seemed to have been keeping a vigil, each occupying a chair, leaning against each other in slumber. 

His sight became a bit more focused and adjusted to the light, but his breathing intensified. He looked to his other side, and found he was in a private room. The door was shut at the moment; he was boxed in. 

A flash of green energy played across his mind again....And a sick, charred hand that had reached out...

He felt a pain blossom in his abdomen as his breathing continued to spike.

He heard Deku’s yells in his mind again, and he once more felt the intense need to get up. His unrestricted hand clamped around the guards on the side of the bed, hoping for an anchor. Gritting his teeth against the fire in his gut, he tried to pull himself forward  

“Hey...Hey!” He tried to yell, but it came out so hoarse, he growled and forced more of his pained breath into it. “Old hag!” 

Mitsuki blinked awake, and jumped to see Katsuki staring back at her. Masaru awoke as well. and breathed a sigh of relief. Something twinkled in his son’s eyes that he was certain he’d never seen there before.

“Katsuki! Sit back down!! You’ll reopen your wounds!!” Mitsuki yells, surging to her feet.

“Don’t give a shit! Where the Hell is he?” Katsuki raged, once again pushing up with his good arm. His chest shuddered with hyperventilating breaths, and he felt as if it was threatening to tear him back apart. “Deku...Where’s Deku!” 

“Deku?” His father asked, a bit confused. 

“...Inko’s boy?” Mitsuki supplied, looking at Masaru as well. “Inko came to the hospital too, but...We haven’t seen her.” 

“Dammit!!” Katsuki practically yelled, and tossed a venomous look towards the door. His fingers flexed with an overwhelming urge to blow the damn thing off its hinges. “What about All Might?? Or Half and Half, or fucking anyone who knows what the fuck’s going on?!” 

“You settle the Hell down, brat, or I’ll make you!” Mitsuki loomed over him, a hand clamped tightly on the top of his head and forcing him back against his pillows. Katsuki glared at her, teeth bared and nostrils flaring, absolutely hating how weak he was to resist. “You’re damn lucky that whatever it was didn’t hit anything vital, but you almost bled out on the battlefield! You’re not going anywhere!! Don’t be a damn idiot!”

Katsuki tuned the rest of her words out. He was pretty sure she was turning to his father and going off on just how fucked this entire mission was, the insanity of putting teenagers who were clearly unprepared for the level of destruction that was involved...How none of them seemed to be properly informed of what the kids had been getting into. 

They might have been discussing the prospect of Katsuki even going back to U.A. at this point, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t muster up a single iota of a crap to give over that right now. 

He stared past his parents, at that damned door, waiting. Waiting with clenched fists, once again confined to laying against his uncomfortable pillows. His wounds were still too painful to move even if he wanted to. While somewhere out there...

Deku was somewhere out in that hospital, condition unknown. Red eyes glinted with moisture. 

Come on. 

Someone. Anyone. Come through that damn door...

He couldn’t believe how damn desperate he felt.

Tell me he’s safe. 

---

Katsuki was loathe to comply with any procedures and check ups the nurses had to run on him for the days to follow. He grew more and more aggravated the longer it went on, the more they told him to wait. It was a developing situation, and there were so, so many civilians and Heroes in the hospital from that battle, the nurses didn’t have any time to prioritize seeking out any information on Izuku’s condition for him.

He crossed in and out of sleep all day and night. He couldn’t control it, between the pain and the meds, and even the sheer boredom of not having anything to do but agonize. He could only logically badger his parents so much concerning information he knew they didn’t have. 

Sometimes sleep was a relief. A chance to pass time without thinking so deeply about everything. 

Sometimes, it just gave him more nightmares and stress, and woke him with another hit of desperation to find closure for the battle he’d survived, confirmation that his best friends had made it out alive too. 

News finally came when he woke up early in the next morning.

All Might appeared in the door way with eyes that seemed more cast in shadow than usual. Katsuki’s crimson eyes locked him and he immediately tried once more to pull himself up and forward. After the initial establishing conversation, All Might pleaded for privacy from his parents with a deep bow, and as they left the room, All Might drew himself back up. Blue eyes couldn’t quite meet Katuski’s. 

“Start talking.” Katsuki grunted, and All Might pulled up a chair. 

---

Izuku was lost in a long dream. 

He was trying desperately to find the Vestiges again... He either couldn’t reach them, or...they were gone for good. He couldn’t quite remember, and the answer was so slippery it kept evading him. 

Sometimes he would be minutely aware of what was going on around him in the physical world. Doctors. Nurses. Probes, needles, foreign hands.  

Recovery Girl’s voice...Mom’s voice. 

On the other hand, Nana’s voice. The First. Tomura Shigaraki. All For One.

He couldn’t quite grasp either side, and would be pulled once again into the dreams. It was as if he were stuck on a dizzying pendulum. 

He gave in and floated for a while. 

--- 

Hours passed, and little changed for Izuku. But as he seemed to surface back into the world, bits and pieces came back and fell into place in his mind. All of the things that had transpired. His slumbering mind could begin to process it, and make sense of it. Little by little. 

By the time emerald eyes cracked open, Izuku had realized, he must have been asleep for quite some time. He had enough experience to recognize that he’d landed in the hospital, but felt powerless to assess how bad it was. He still felt hauntingly unattached to any of his limbs for the time being, no strength left to attempt to move them. He must have been heavily drugged by this point.

He wondered about Shigaraki, if he was also reduced to a quasi-sense of being, forced to lay low, let his mangled body regenerate. He prayed that the villain would be in such a phase for a while. Izuku knew there was no way he, or any of the heroes, could handle a rematch. Maybe not for quite a while, even.

A fleeting thought, however, as it was quickly overtaken by an urgent need to know the outcomes of so many....too many, of his friends, teachers and allies. Civilians, even. Aizawa, Gran Torino, Endeavour, all injured in battle. Shoto, his dear friend, and....

Kacchan.

The realization made a spike of anxiety lance through his chest like a knife.

Dear god, Kacchan. Was he...

“Ka...cchan--” Deku murmured, suddenly, feeling the tears pooling in his eyes. His poor mother, keeping a vigil by his side, leapt up and pressed a soft hand to his forehead, quivering voice crying with encouragement for her son. 

“Mom, he...” Izuku whimpered, finally focusing on something for the first time, in his mother’s eyes. “Kacchan...The others...I couldn’t...” 

As quickly as it had come, his resolve was gone, and his broken body wracked with sobs. His determination that had held him through the battle before losing consciousness, the rage, the adrenaline, was gone, and all that remained was the heartache that came from such destruction, from seeing his mentors and friends torn down one by one.

The image of blood suspended in air, and a shadow of a figure falling towards the Earth, stained his vision. 

---

Days into Katsuki’s stay at the hospital, All Might visited again. The man still had so many new lines on his face, though he was heartened to see Katsuki, determined as he was, recovering and gaining focus quickly. Though with the focus, came that trademark, Bakugou impatience.

“He’s still in surgery!?” Katsuki yelled.

“More like, in and out of Surgery. They can only do so much at one time, even Recovery Girl could barely work with him, his stamina is almost non-existent right now...” All Might sighed. “And, there’s no shortage of other patients for her, unfortunately.” He said sadly, sipping a cup of tea with a white knuckled grip. 

“That bad, huh.” Katsuki sneered, looking away from the man. Softly, he muttered, “Fuckin’ Deku.” 

All Might smiled a deeply sad smile. 

It had sounded spiteful, to the untrained ear, but by now, he could recognize how deep Katsuki’s concern really went.

---

One week after the incident at Jakku found Katsuki well enough to finally feel the cold tile beneath his bare feet again. Short walks were in order, as he was allowed to pace in his room every once in a while. The taste of regained autonomy was amazing, but he still felt the need to rest after very short walks, the wounds in his core still on the mend. Steps were small, and few, but Katsuki was feeling better for the improvement. 

He leaned against the edge of his bed, muscles still stiff. Left arm in a sling, and right hand gently set on his stomach, he breathed deeply as he was able, assessing what his body was telling him.

He was gradually getting better, and the next goal was finally heading out that door. Fierce red eyes could have shattered the wood of the door, now left open just a crack. They couldn’t keep him in here forever.

---

“Good news,” All Might had told him, looking a little brighter. “They’ve moved Young Midoriya to the recovery ward. They’ve done everything they can for the boy, now all that’s left is to see how his limbs heal.” 

Finally, Katsuki had thought. He was getting tired of waiting for the nerd to recover.

He scowled as he stalked out that door, and into the hospital hallway. His mended wounds still throbbed with each tender step, but the pain was becoming more and more dull everyday. He was itching to be able to get into physical therapy, and recuperate his body back into peak condition. 

The ache in his shoulder gave him the most unease...His arms and shoulders needed to be up to taking the brunt of his Quirk. There was no time to lose in recovering those tissues, and he locked away any fears of never living up to his previous output, never being able to surpass it...He just couldn’t think of that right now.

Slippers scuffed against clean linoleum. Around the corner and nine doors down, All Might had said. He rounded the corner, and came, abruptly, to a stop, all inner thoughts ceasing. Crimson eyes had fallen on a figure ahead of him, and locked, his jaw dropping just slightly. 

There before him, clearly in a state of dizziness, was Izuku himself. Of course, he seemed to be muttering to himself, staring intently at the name plates of each room he was passing.

Their eyes met.  

His arms were bound up in thick casts once again, and in slings over his stomach, and bandages covered almost his entire torso in lieu of any shirt. Izuku stared back, large emerald eyes tired and glistening. He seemed to tremble at the sight of Katsuki, and the moisture in his eyes threatened to over flow. 

“K-Kacchan,” He whimpered, blinking back the sudden tears, unable to wipe them away. 

Katsuki's body suddenly unlocked, and he marched up on the other boy, as hard and as fast as his body would permit. 

“What the fuck, Deku?!” Katsuki scolded. He planted a palm on the top of Izuku’s green head of hair, tilting his tear-stained face up to look at him. “Damn nerd, What the Hell are you doing out of bed?!” 

“Kacchan,” Izuku sniffed, staring up into crimson eyes without an ounce of restraint on his emotions. “Y-you’re out of bed too...Are you okay?” 

Katsuki twitched at the question, a reflex reaction now due to long years of rejection to the nerd’s selfless worries. 

“Don’t you switch this around! I’m not the one who just got out of surgery!” Katsuki barked, ignorant to any stares from passersby they were drawing. “You shouldn’t be able to move, dammit!!”

“It’s okay, I mean, my legs feel totally fine!” Izuku argued weakly, even as his legs seemed to quiver just slightly beneath him. For the first time in the exchange, a hint of a dismissive, but pained grin tugged at his lips. There was still a very visible split on his bottom lip. 

“That’s not the point, you--!!” Bakugou growled behind gritted teeth, fingers twitching impulsively under the messy nest of hair. How was he ever going to get through that thick skull of Deku’s??

“Please, Kacchan,” Izuku urged, “I know, I shouldn’t be out here yet, but I had to know for sure....that you were ok...I thought I’d really lost you...” He was beginning to choke on his words.��

“They told you I was fine, so why go out of your damn way?! Why get outta bed when you can barely stand up straight, huh??” Katsuki retorted.

“I’m not explaining how much more it’d hurt if you were gone!” Izuku cried, and raised his head against Katsuki’s hand, cheeks flushed. He shook his head just gently, feeling a headache blossoming. “It’s not logical, I was...I was afraid, okay?! I have nightmares every time I close my eyes, telling me that Shigaraki kill-... took you away, or Todoroki wasn’t able to help you in time. It keeps replaying in my mind, and...And if it hadn’t been for me...” 

He was gulping in air at this point, the words themselves seeming to scar him as he acknowledged their effect on him. Katsuki was unsurprised by the tears flowing anew, but something about the tremor in Izuku’s voice, shook him.

“I had to see you. And if my legs would work, then...There’s no way I could stop myself.” Although tired, his eyes glinted with that stubborn edge. It was the same, almost scared look of determination that had looked at him in the dark hallways of their first training exercise all those months ago...The first time they’d fought.

Wide crimson eyes held steady, and he noticed the shadows under the boy’s eyes, shadows of bruises that lingered against his freckles. 

The hand that was on Izuku’s head suddenly shifted to the back of his head and he pulled gently, until Izuku’s forehead connected with Katsuki’s uninjured shoulder. Katsuki’s strong arm almost cradled him there in a half-embrace. A moment’s hesitation, and then his fingers curled around the deep, unruly green locks. Not to hurt, or threaten, never again... 

“Idiot... Idiot. How the fuck do you think I feel?!” Katsuki muttered shakily against Izuku’s bowed head, his features furrowing. “Don’t you ever...fight like that again.” He bit his lip ferociously as it quivered, before any more words could spill out. 

Izuku felt tense for a moment, adjusting to this strange new reality. In time, he eased, leaning into Katsuki’s offered shoulder, feeling the warmth of the arm curled around him. He felt a pang of guilt for being so overjoyed that Katsuki was here with him when so much had been lost...And another wave of surprise and contemplation as Katsuki’s words pinged around in his head. Even so, he dared to smile a broken smile into Katsuki’s shoulder, where no one in the world could see.

He only wished that his own hands were free so he could reciprocate the gentle gesture that was so exceedingly rare from the blonde, but so comforting. 

Katsuki grimaced, but made no objection when tears began to soak the fabric of his shirt. The weight and the warmth of Izuku’s head against him was oddly comforting to him. A quivering sigh of relief escaped him, his cheek buried in green curls. 

Reluctantly, the thought dawned on him; This is okay. Whatever this is...was worth the damn wait. 

Turns out the wait was actually much, much longer than the time spent in the hospital. 

---

*BONUS* owo

I DID happen to doodle the moment that really locked this into my mind and made me have to write this; I literally drew these at slow moments at work on receipt paper. (scanned a tad bit out of chrono. order though)

ALSO A NOTE: 

I happened to fixate on this idea of Kacchan always grabbing Deku by the head(there was a post with a lot of this floating around not too long ago) and I’m convinced it’s part of his own unique language. You may have noticed, I threw in the little detail of contrast with how his mother in fact does the same thing, but forcefully, and exerting dominance over her son. Kacchan uses it this time to communicate with Deku, but it ends up being more gentle and as a comfort. 

YES PARELELLS. 

If I ever have time and inclination, I would love to redo these little doodles, honestly = u =  

ANYWAY thank  you if you’ve made it this far, I hope you liked :D

[engie-ivy]

I wrote this fic for the Wolfstar Comfort Mini-Fest, organized by @swottypotter, because I thought it was such a lovely idea😊

(also on AO3 as part of a series of one-shot crush confessions)

19/09: an anniversary

Summary:

Getting older can be a fearful experience, but when you're a werewolf, it's just a tad worse. There's only so many excruciating transformations one's body can undergo before it can take no more. For Remus, the idea of celebrating the day of being another year closer to that inevitable moment is inconceivable. However, his friends teach him that instead of simply having lived another year, his life contains many other anniversaries he could be celebrating: having been part of a close group of friends for another year, having had company during the full moon for another year, and... having a certain friend be in love with him for another year?

Moments in time

Remus Lupin does not celebrate his birthday. Doesn’t like it. Really doesn’t like it. Hates it, in fact. It’s not a case of modesty, like ‘he just doesn’t want to be the center of attention’, or even a case of bad experiences, like ‘if we can just show him how fun it can be’. No, he has made it clear to the other three Marauders that it’s no use even trying. If they throw him a birthday party, he won’t attend. If they buy him birthday gifts, he won’t accept.

It’s not that he hates birthdays as a principle. No, he’d loved it when they snuck into the kitchens and stuffed themselves with sweets for Peter’s birthday, he’d loved it when they stayed up all night and drank Butterbeer and even a bottle of Firewhiskey that they managed to smuggle in for James’s birthday, and he loved it when they had a sleep-over in the Shrieking Shack for Sirius’s birthday. It’s really his own birthday that he doesn’t like.

You see, Remus Lupin is a werewolf, and while he’s now more comfortable with that fact than he’s ever been, with being able to attend school, having people in his life that love and accept him even with knowing the truth, and having friends who became Animagii so he doesn’t have to be alone during the full moon anymore, there are just some things that come with his condition that cannot be changed. The illness on the days preceding and following the full moon, the excruciating pain that the transformations bring, and, probably worst of all, the fact that werewolves age prematurely.

Werewolves do not have a high life expectancy. There’s only so much strain one’s body can endure before it can’t take no more. Remus often reads in textbooks that werewolves don’t get old, but that’s wrong phrasing: werewolves do get old, they just get old really fast. While his friends will still be vital and brimming with energy, Remus’s bones will become fragile and his muscles stiff with constant aching due to the tearing apart and snapping back together necessary for the monthly transformations, his recovery after each full moon will become slower until he’ll never fully recover anymore, he’ll start having trouble walking and eventually moving altogether, his hair will become grey and his skin will become worn and littered with scars, making him look old beyond his years.

It’s bad enough that each year there’s a day to remind him that he’s another year closer to that inescapable faith, so why in Merlin’s name would he want to actually celebrate that day?

Remus never fully explained, so he’s not sure to what extent the other Marauders really understand what getting older means to him, but they can tell that it holds a lot of pain for Remus, and that it’s not something they can fix for him, so they respect his wishes. On the day itself they try their hardest not to give a single indication they’re aware it’s Remus’s birthday. The only way Remus can tell that they do know, is by how they go out of their way to make sure no one else dares to mention his birthday in his vicinity. This may seem weird or even mean to outsiders, but to Remus, it’s the best possible thing they could do.

That’s part of the reason why Remus is utterly confused when he enters their dorm on September 4th and finds Sirius, James and Peter sitting on pillows on the floor surrounded by drinks and candy, and a pile of gifts in their midst.

“Surprise!” They yell in unison the moment Remus opens the door.

Another reason for Remus’s confusion is that it’s nowhere near his birthday.

“What’s this?” He asks carefully.

Sirius presses a card in his hand. The front of the card shows a doodle of four boys sitting at the Gryffindor table. A small boy with peaky hair, a boy whose hair is pointing in all directions, a dark-haired boy with a goofy grin, and a curly-haired boy with large eyes, all wearing red-and-gold colours.

The doodle is clearly drawn by Sirius. Sirius is actually a very talented artist and his drawings are great, though he only ever shows his doodles to his friends. Remus loves the cute and funny doodles, but he wishes Sirius would also show them his more serious drawings sometimes. Remus has only ever caught a glimpse of his work on moments Sirius didn’t notice Remus’s presence in time while drawing, but what he saw was amazing.

Remus opens the card and reads the message on inside.

Hi Moony!

Happy 6-year anniversary of the day we officially became friends with you!

We love you!

Wormtail, Padfoot & Prongs

Remus looks up from the card to see Sirius staring at him with the same goofy grin as the doodled boy on the card, but there’s also an unfamiliar expression in his eyes, and he’s toying with a strand of his hair.

Remus realises that he’s nervous. Afraid that Remus will see it as a trick to give him a kind-of-birthday party anyway, and become upset. And of course it is an attempt to make up for lost birthday celebrations, Remus knows that, but it’s a good attempt. It’s not just celebrating a certain amount of years from his life have gone by, it’s celebrating the years they’ve been friends. Making actual friends who love him and who he loves, and keeping them for all that time, that’s something Remus did with his life, something he accomplished, something no one can ever take away from him. It somehow makes the eventual length of his life matter less. It’s celebrating the quality, not the quantity.

A smile spreads across Remus’s face, and he can immediately see the relief on his friends’ faces. “I love it,” he says.

And honestly, how could he not love something that results in Sirius throwing his arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek?

Remus tries to ignore the fluttering of his heart. They’re celebrating five years of friendship, for Godric’s sake. Being friends with someone as loving, bright and cheerful as Sirius is already more than he could have ever asked for. Wanting more, even dreaming of more, would be pushing his luck. See? His brain knows all this, but apparently his heart hasn’t gotten the message.

James gets him out of his frenzy by taking a gift from the pile. “Alright! Lets see who the first gift is for!”

“You got gifts for everyone?” Remus asks curiously.

“Why, of course, Moony!” James exclaims. “Managing to keep one of the greatest persons ever as our friend is really a gift-worthy accomplishment for us! Really something we should be celebrating and congratulating each other on.”

Sirius nudges Remus playfully. “You can see your presents as a reward for having put up with us for so long.”

Remus chuckles. He definitely doesn’t need a reward for one of the greatest things that has ever happened to him, but he’s not gonna say no to the tea, mug and book that lie before him with his name written on them either.

The next surprise comes halfway through October, during their second trip to Hogsmeade of that year. Remus is sitting at the Three Broomsticks with Peter, waiting for James and Sirius to come back with their Butterbeers.

However, suddenly Sirius places a large mug filled with decadent chocolate milk in front of Remus, complete with whipped cream and a chocolate biscuit on top and sprinkled with chocolate chips. At the same time James presses another card in his hands. Remus immediately laughs at the doodle of him in front of Honeydukes, holding a large stack of chocolate in his arms. Wondering what his friends came up with this time, he opens the card.

Moons,

Happy 4-year anniversary of your very first trip to Hogsmeade with us! (Ah, the day Moony discovered Honeydukes...)

Many trips (legal and less-legal) have followed and will follow since!

Lots of love,

Wormy, Pads, and Prongsie

Remus actually wasn’t able to join them on the first weekend they had been allowed to go, as it had been a full moon the night before. Only the next weekend a Hogsmeade trip was planned, they were able to go with the four of them, today apparently four years ago.

The following hour Remus spends reminiscing all his trips to Hogsmeade with his friends. The one when James and Sirius had hidden in the Shrieking Shack and fired hexes at passers-by to convince everyone the Shack is cursed, the one when James tried to secretly follow Lily around to find out what to buy for her birthday and she ended up throwing Butterbeer in his face, the one when Remus was acting cranky because his favourite chocolate was sold out, only to find out Sirius had secretly bought the last bars for him as a surprise, or the one when James actually managed to get a date with Lily, and Peter had asked Mary McDonald, so Remus and Sirius went together (and Remus had to actively tell himself that it was not a date for the entire day, though he doesn’t discuss that last bit with his friends).

Before they leave, the other three Marauders want Remus to pick out all the chocolate he loves most from Honeydukes as his anniversary gift, but Remus refuses, not wanting to be selfish by letting his friends buy him his treats. Back in their dorm, however, it isn’t long before a bag filled with Honeydukes’ finest just mysteriously appears on Remus’s bed.

It isn’t until January, right at the start of the new year, Remus is surprised one again. He steps into the kitchens, where the others had told him to come to prepare for a prank, and finds his friends sitting at a table around a huge chocolate cake.

“Moony!” Peter calls out, while James and Sirius shoot confetti from their wands.

“What’s this?” Remus asks, grinning while he’s shaking the confetti out of his hair. This time he’s more excited than nervous.

Peter hands him the card. Remus chuckles as he sees the little deer with a rat hanging from his antlers, closely followed by a wolf and a dog walking side-by-side, doodled on the front. He opens the card, fully prepared for another odd anniversary his friends managed to come up with, but not prepared in the least for the wave of emotion that washes over him.

Dear Moony,

Happy 2-year anniversary of the day from which you’ll never again have to spend another full moon on your own!

Love, your animalistic friends,

Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs

Remus reads the card a couple more times, until his eyes start tearing up and his vision becomes blurry.

The short message is not only a reminder of what his friends have done for him, how they’ve gone and made an aspect of Remus’s life immeasurably better, an aspect Remus had always believed to never get any better.

And then the words ‘never again’, meaning that his friends will continue to help him once they’ve left school, meaning that it doesn’t end when school does, meaning that his friends will always be there for him.

Remus doesn’t even realise he’s crying until two arms wrap around him and Sirius pulls him into a tight hug. His head resting on Sirius’s chest and Sirius soothing him: exactly how he’s been waking up after the full moon for the last two years, and how he’ll be waking up after the full moon for the years to come.

At the end of March, it’s promising to become the first soft spring day after the winter, though the nights still have a chill in the air.

The Marauders are sitting on a blanket in the grass, wrapped in sweaters watching the sun slowly rise over the lake. They’d snuck out in the middle of the night through one of their secret passageways, and spent the rest of the night drinking, talking, star gazing, and now watching the sunrise.

“Cheers!” They cluck their mugs filled with hot mead together in the golden light of the rising sun. “To beautiful spring days and good times!”

“And to Moony,” Sirius adds. “On this special day.”

Remus laughs. “I should have known!” Though he feels this night has already been special enough.

Though he immediately starts reading the card, with a pretty doodle of the castle on the front.

To Messr. Moony,

Happy 2-year anniversary of the day you discovered the last secret passageway and finished the Marauders’ Map!

We solemnly swear to always remain up to no good!

There’s always more mischief to manage,

Yours sincerely,

The Messrs. Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs

Remus fondly shakes his head. The season is changing, life at Hogwarts is slowly coming to an end, but the Marauders’ days of mischief making are not ending just yet.

On the 17th of May, Remus is sitting at a table in the common room, surrounded by books, parchment, quills and ink. He’s waiting on Lily. He has a Potions essay due, and horrible in potions as Remus is, he really needs a good grade. Luckily, Lily has agreed to help him, as she’s the absolute best in Potions. Lily is not great because professor Slughorn adores her, professor Slughorn adores her because she’s great.

Remus sees Lily step through the portrait hall carrying a large pile of books, and immediately jumps to his feet to help her carry the load.

However, when they return to Remus’s spot, a beautifully wrapped gift is placed on top of his parchment.

“They came up with another date?” Remus mumbles, slightly embarrassed, but Lily just looks excited. Word has gotten around that the Marauders have been throwing Remus all kinds of parties for all kinds of reasons and everyone just loves it.

“Open it, open it!” Lily claps her hands and Remus tears the wrapping paper off.

Lily sucks in her breath. “Oh!”

Remus himself is unable to form any words as he’s holding up a frame. All he can do is stare wide-eyed at the framed drawing in his hands.

It’s definitely Sirius’s work. Not a doodle this time, but a completely finished, serious artwork. Remus recognizes himself in the drawing, curled up in an armchair, one hand holding a book, and the other holding a mug with steam circling upwards. The scene is seemingly illuminated by soft sunlight falling through a window on Remus’s left, giving his eyes and hair a slightly golden glow. The drawing is somehow comforting, in his ability to capture such a calm, serene moment. Though Remus thinks the boy in the drawing must look much more beautiful than he ever has, he has no problem recognizing himself, as the composure, radiance and expression are so typically his, that it makes him feel strangely vulnerable that someone has looked at him and seen him, really seen him.

“It’s beautiful,” Lily whispers.

The only thing written on the drawing is a date scribbled in the bottom right corner: 17/05/1977. Exactly one year earlier. Remus’s heart is thumping as he picks up and reads the small note that came with the gift.

Dearest Moony,

Happy 1-year anniversary of the day I fell in love with you.

Yours, now and always,

Padfoot

Remus can hardly breath. The more he reads the words, the more his brain stops functioning. He looks at Lily, who has been reading over his shoulder, with a pleading look.

“Lily, what do I do?” He asks desperately.

“Well,” Lily says uncertain. “I’m sure if you tell him you care for him, but see him as just a friend, he’ll-”

“Why in Merlin’s name would I want to say that?” Remus stares at her like she has grown two heads. “Why would I want to turn him down?”

“You looked so panicked!” Lily defends herself. “Why in Merlin’s name are you even asking my advice if you feel the same way? Just go find that boy and bloody snog the living daylights out of him! Merlin, Remus, it’s not Advanced Potions!”

Finding Sirius and snogging him sounds scary, risky, dangerous, and absolutely wonderful, so Remus decides to embrace his Gryffindor courage and go for it.

He barely nods at Lily before dashing away. He bumps into Peter while rushing through the common room.

“Oi, Moony! I just wanted to ask you, are you-”

“Sorry, Wormtail, gotta run! I have to go and snog Padfoot!”

He hears Peter’s voice echo through the room as he climbs through the portrait hole. “Yeeeeesssss!”

In the corridor, he passes James.

“Moony…”

“Sorry, Prongs, no time!”

“He’s up in the Owlery!” James calls after him. “I thought you might like to know you’re going the wrong way.”

Remus immediately turns around and runs in the other direction. He hears James mumble when he passes him again.

“About bloody time.”

Remus’s courage wavers a bit as he steps into the Owlery. Sirius is standing with his hands resting on the ledge, and he’s looking out over the Hogwarts grounds. His pale skin, his grey eyes reflecting the sky, his long hair with strands blowing in his face. Surely there has to be some sort of misunderstanding. Surely a boy this beautiful can’t possibly have feelings for someone like Remus.

But then Sirius turns around to look at him, and Remus can clearly see the love and affection, mingled with fear and uncertainty, in his eyes.

“The twenty-third of September,” Remus blurts out.

Sirius looks at him questioningly.

“That’s my date,” Remus clarifies.

There’s hope in those eyes now. “As in the date of your one-year anniversary of having feelings… for me?” Sirius asks tentatively.

Remus shakes his head, and Sirius drops his gaze, looking embarrassed. “Two years,” Remus quickly clarifies.

Sirius looks up at him again, his eyes now the way Remus likes them best: sparkling.

“Really, Moony?” There’s unconcealed happiness and relief in his voice. “Two whole years and you never said anything?”

Remus huffs. “It’s not an easy thing to say! You know that, took you a year as well.”

“That’s still twice as fast,” Sirius teases.

Remus sighs in defeat. “You’re right. And there’s no way I can give you something so special and amazing as you’ve given me today.”

“You can forget about your date anyway,” Sirius says.

Remus raises his eyebrows. “How so?”

Sirius reaches out his hand towards Remus. “I was rather hoping we could share this date? As the date we officially became a couple?”

Remus hearts stops for a moment, but then he knows just what to do.

He takes the hand Sirius is offering, and in a moment of bravery pulls him close, so that they’re standing chest to chest.

Remus tugs a strand of hair falling over Sirius’s face behind his ear. “I would love to.”

[vagabondedlife]

Kei Fujiwara’s name is hardly recognizable to most fans of Japanese cinema despite her crucial role in director Shinya Tsukamoto’s early cult classics. As Tsukamoto’s “right hand” woman in the 1980s, Fujiwara became closely involved in his underground theater troupe, Kaijyu Theater, and contributed to the productions of the experimental and DIY films The Phantom of Regular Size (1986), The Adventures of Denchu Kozo (1987), and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). Her credits include actress, cinematographer, prop artist, makeup artist, and set-designer (her apartment was used as a primary set). She also engineered Tetsuo’s iconic phallic drill.

Born in Kumamoto in 1957, Fujiwara moved to Tokyo in her early twenties and discovered theater troupe director Jūrō Kara, who became her mentor. After a decade, she created her own troupe called Organ Vital, which underwent a series of evolutions but remains her life work. Her new project this year is Ibunkitan, a form of micro-nomadic theater, whose kanji characters mean “strange-listen-machine-story.” A private person now living in the reclusive mountains of Nagano, Fujiwara rarely gives interviews, but seemed excited to talk about her rarely discussed directorial debut, Organ (1996).

An avant-garde exploration of violence, pain and pleasure with an operatic amount of coagulated blood and extrasomatic body horror, Organ follows two detectives after they break into an organ harvester’s warehouse and collide with yakuza gangsters, a drugged doctor, and his eye-patch wearing sister Yoko, played by Fujiwara herself, who also produced and wrote the film. A cherished work among hardcore fans of Japanese cult cinema, Organ is still ripe for rediscovery. The film’s offerings of a full-bodied sensorial experience and an abusive questioning of cruelty prove tirelessly relevant.

Fujiwara’s work was recently revived at FFFest in New York City with a double feature of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Organ. Fujiwara prepared a special statement that was shared as an introduction. Following the screening, we had the opportunity to speak to the artist about her life, practice, and ideals in more depth. The conversation was held over the phone in Japanese.

NOTEBOOK: Is Ibunkitan a new Organ Vital?

KEI FUJIWARA: Yes, it’s a new Organ Vital. When I was young, I lived in the rural area. I always just read theater but never had the opportunity to see state-of-the-art theater. When I was in high school, I was always reading, and I picked up an Antonin Artaud book that featured this French term. It meant the vessels of life. When translated to English, I’m told it just becomes, “vitals of organ,” or something, but in Japanese it is called gozōroppu and to me signifies the corporal. That’s the name of my theater company, and it has always been that for me. Born into this three-dimensional world with bodies, we sense and express. That’s what’s interesting in life. Ibunkitan can be done in a very small space. We’ve done it in temples, in the corner of a shop, in salons. Our first performance was in March, and we’re planning to do another in November. We've been invited to perform my new Jomon-inspired piece in a live-house in the mountains in Nagano, so we’re preparing some woodwork for that now.

NOTEBOOK: You were working in Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kaijyu Theater production between working with Jūrō Kara?

FUJIWARA: Jūrō Kara, my mentor—when I was in Jōkyō Gekijo [Situation Theatre], he took a liking to me and wrote roles for me. A lot happened, and Kara said he would make a new troupe with me, but I had other plans, so I left once, and he said, “As my mentee, you can leave but wait for me to come get you.” That’s when I went to work with Shinya Tsukamoto on his plays and films. It was after Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1989] that Kara started the new troupe “Kara-gumi” and I returned to work with him.

NOTEBOOK: How was it that you began working with Tsukamoto?

FUJIWARA: I had just left Kara and after a while a friend said that Tsukamoto was looking for someone to act in his plays. He was Tsukamoto’s classmate and an actor, and he made the introduction. I found Tsukamoto interesting and talented. So, I began working diligently as his right hand after that.

NOTEBOOK: I wanted to ask you about Tsukamoto’s 1987 film, The Adventures of Denchu Kozo.

FUJIWARA: Denchu Kozo and Tetsuo were actually both shot in my apartment where I was living at the time. You know all those cats? I couldn’t rent a normal apartment, so I had to live in a cheap nagaya tenement house on the verge of getting demolished. I just needed a place to live that permitted pets. Denchu Kozo and Tetsuo’s interior shots are all at my place.

NOTEBOOK: Are the scenes projected in the TV monitor in Tetsuo from Denchu Kozo?

FUJIWARA: Yes. They’re from Denchu Kozo.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: What turned you onto making Organ, if you were always only interested in theater?

FUJIWARA: That was because of my experience filmmaking with Tsukamoto. It prepared me for how arduous it would be. Theater is an impermanent art, and that’s why it’s such a luxurious art form. But film is like capturing a world in a crystal ball. The joy of creating film is like making your own universe. My staff members at the time— six men other than myself—were all talented, and I thought, “Everyone’s here, why don’t I just make it?” So, all the staff also became the actors, and that’s how we started filming. But it was so difficult at first. We used the atelier space we had and reformed it over and over and shot it like that. It was time-consuming. It became the warehouse set, the school set. It kept on transforming. We did it all in the same space.

NOTEBOOK: That seems like a very theatrical way of using space.

FUJIWARA: Yes.

NOTEBOOK: But first, you started writing it?

FUJIWARA: Yes, I first started writing it. I’m actually not very good at planning. I just think that if I put my mind to it, I can make it happen. So I wrote the script, and had the staff pool in their savings. Between the seven of us we had 200,000 yen, so I thought, “Great, if we have 200,000 yen and one reel of film is 5,000 yen, and even if we bought lights, we can make 30 minutes of footage.” As for the equipment, there are countless aspiring-filmmaker boys who have camera equipment lying around collecting dust, so we borrowed from them. As for the set, we were all used to making it for our theater. We were good at foraging free stuff to make things. That warehouse set in the beginning of Organ was made with an extremely cheap budget. Then we started filming. All those organs in that scene were worked from what was supposed to be our dinner for the day [laughs]. We used real food. We took some gelatin- and konjac-noodles and thought, “This can look like veins!”

NOTEBOOK: And then you had it for dinner?

FUJIWARA: Well, we ended up not being able to, because it was covered in fake blood! It was all about how little money we could spend and still make something, which was a valuable lesson for me.

NOTEBOOK: You’ve mentioned the Kenji Miyazawa poem, Ame ni mo makezu1.

FUJIWARA: Yes, I just really like Kenji Miyazawa. I like the way he thinks, and his philosophy. He’s a Buddhist, and as I haven’t studied Buddhism properly, I cannot say for sure, but I think his seimeikan, or view of life, is on par with that of Osamu Tezuka. Osamu Tezuka and Kenji Miyazawa are two gods with the same perspective regarding seimeikan. No matter how great their art is, Yoshihide Otomo and Hayao Miyazaki can never reach Osamu’s level. Osamu’s core is love. There’s only love. The way they think about life is totally different. I was reading manga before I was literate [laughs]. I like Osamu Tezuka, but also Sanpei Shirato. And in my teens, I liked Daijiro Morohoshi. He’s an extremely interesting person.

NOTEBOOK: Do you think that your films need to be discovered?

FUJIWARA: They need to lock in perfectly with someone’s desire to watch it, or else watching it has no meaning. It just appears as a confusing, grotesque film.

NOTEBOOK: Please tell us about your make up and special effects.

FUJIWARA: Since Tetsuo, my method is always the same. I don’t have any background knowledge of special effect makeup. I just have a gut feeling of what can and can’t be used. Tsukamoto had these drawing storyboards for Tetsuo, like the steel body and the drill penis. For the latter, Tsukamoto just wanted to make something simple and said it would be enough if we could just pretend like it was moving, but I thought it would only be interesting if it actually moved. I didn’t have any hi-tech skills, so I thought, “That’s it!” I took the nearest working electric fan, dissembled it down to its core, used all the rubber and tape I had at home, sprayed it up and got it to go, vroom [laughs]! It was the same for Organ. I used household products, mostly kitchenware.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: What about your cinematography?

FUJIWARA: I had no background knowledge. The first time I started shooting was on Tsukamoto’s set. A lot of people who graduated film school and wanted to help were there, but Tsukamoto didn’t trust any of them. Just because you have technique doesn’t mean you can shoot well. He thought that the person wielding the camera needs a certain amount of power, of energy. So I, who had never touched a camera in my life, was given the camera and told where to press to get it rolling, and shot all of the scenes Tsukamoto was in.

NOTEBOOK: Do you still shoot with a camera lately?

FUJIWARA: Rarely.

NOTEBOOK: As the occasion for this screening was FFFest, Female Filmmakers Festival, could you comment about your experience as a female filmmaker?

FUJIWARA: Something men don’t have—there are two types: female filmmakers who focus their perspective on their immediate surroundings and daily lives, and those who focus on creating a worldview from the even more intimate bodily perspective. That’s what’s a little different from male filmmakers. Even in theater, most female directors write familial narratives, although I don’t [laughs].

NOTEBOOK: The podcast Ladies Horror Night, on the occasion of this screening, recorded an episode that raised the question of why you, a female filmmaker, didn’t include more female characters. I’m not sure about this pressure for female filmmakers to represent female subjects, as I think there’s power in the female filmmaker re-writing the male-centric story. Can you speak on this and how you came to write the police story in Organ?

FUJIWARA: When I think about seimeikan—our view of life—it appears to me that the moral judgment of good versus bad is not something universal, but just a rule that protects our lifestyle in society. It’s a regulation. We make regulations to protect ourselves. That takes the form of “good” and “evil.” But that’s not the good and evil that holds ground in nature. Animals kill other animals for their own predation, right? Humans, too, in the context of war, can kill other humans and become heroes. The concept of zen-aku, or the notion of good and evil, is just a societal regulation. The police represent upholders of this regulation. And then there are those who defy this regulation, who lie in a realm completely different from this conventional morality. Organ is a clash between these two groups. That’s how I formed the police narrative. As for why there are few female characters, well… In the case of females, expressing them requires—for many, not all—a focus on the micro world, the micro perspective, that is, if you pay attention to their priorities. In other words, if you have a goal and you want to finish something, but she says she needs to take a bath at this certain time and cannot participate, there’s nothing you can do. In my theater, only men can keep up with me. Because of this standpoint, if a woman were to express a woman, she would need to create a micro world. But when describing a police story, a macro worldview, the direction would lose focus.

NOTEBOOK: It would become more internal?

FUJIWARA: Right. That’s why there aren’t as many female characters. But the wife of Numata represents the reality for women. And also the female teacher who approaches the criminal but gets killed. Woman participated in this way. But it’s hard for them to take leading parts for the narrative. It’s hard to let them be there and have their perspective be represented, because their perspective is in a different dimension.

NOTEBOOK: What about the character you play, Yoko?

FUJIWARA: Yoko is outside of that realm. She’s an outlier. She doesn’t represent family or the household or the joy of daily life, because she didn’t enjoy any of those things. That’s why she can exist there.

NOTEBOOK: How did you direct your actors in Organ, was it different from how you usually direct them in theater?

FUJIWARA: It’s the same. The only direction I gave them in Organ was that they only get one shot. I don’t give actors multiple takes. If there’s a camera or equipment problem that requires another take or two, I’ll do it. But I won’t do it for the actor. The actor has one chance, the take. But, on the offhand that the actor makes a mistake and requires a take two, I tell them they need to buy their own film roll. That was the rule. So, no one ever made a single mistake. They were all dead serious, completely focused. They’re all broke and have no money to buy film.

NOTEBOOK: In that sense it’s theatrical.

FUJIWARA: Right, and I had one actress tell me that that it was brilliant. She said, “I do lots of work for TV and film, but everyone is so lukewarm and they do take after take, and think about it so leniently. But there’s none of that here. The one take is the real thing.”

NOTEBOOK: So, that urgency was good for the actors?

FUJIWARA: Right. They said they couldn’t afford to buy their own film.

NOTEBOOK: If you give theater actors the same direction for film, how does that work? The performances in Organ don’t come off as exaggerated; I doubt a viewer without knowing would assume they are all theater actors.

FUJIWARA: There’s no difference. In theater, my scripts are like music scores. The lines come out and dance, modulate, sing, calling on the innate sensation playing the instrument that is yourself on stage. The actor, with this music-score-as-script, has a multitude of possibilities of how to play it. In film, the scripted character is a part of the environment. They are simply material for the scene. I didn’t need to explain this to them, they naturally just became materials for the scene.

Above: Organ

NOTEBOOK: That’s a good transition into my next question: can you talk about your music and sound design direction?

FUJIWARA: Music is difficult. What I say doesn’t get across, because I was working with new people. They hadn’t even seen any of my theater. I like German bands, something strong and hard. But even if they mimic the Germans, the Japanese can’t avoid making music that doesn’t sound soft and weak. One day I said, “Make it more powerful, something that alludes to the power of nature, more animalistic and sturdily-built,” and they said, “Okay.” The demo they brought to me literally had animal sounds, like elephants wailing and dogs barking, and I was like, “…That’s not what I meant” [laughs]. It didn’t get across. But there were some interesting sound bites that I could use. But Japanese band musicians can’t get over their own softness. I think what they have is different.

NOTEBOOK: So you’re not happy with the results?

FUJIWARA: Well, I’m the type of person that thinks, que sera, sera. So I wasn’t satisfied, but…

NOTEBOOK: You’ve mentioned that you a very easily scared person. But in Tetsuo and Organ, your characters say, “I won’t be afraid.” How do you interpret this difference?

FUJIWARA: When I came to Tokyo in my twenties, the first theater directors I met said they’d never met anyone as weak and sensitive as myself. They didn’t think I could live on a few years longer, much less do theater, and that I might find myself drugged up in a brothel in the near future. Kara was the only person that ever said to me that I was the strongest person he’d met. In other words, the fear and strength that I have appears to others as a weakness that can barely withstand life, but it’s just my highly sensitive nature they see. In actuality, I’m very strong. I feel very easily, so that seems weak, but my capacity for empathy is just very large. I feel others’ pain and sadness so strongly that I throw up thinking about them. That’s why I don’t watch TV or read the newspaper. Or else I would be crying all day [laughs].

NOTEBOOK: Watching Organ feels like you’re making the audience feel this extreme pain you describe.

FUJIWARA: Yes, that’s the result of the film. My second film, ID [2005], is even more so.

NOTEBOOK: In addition to fear and pain, pleasure is another large theme. After the screening, someone told me your film was grotesque but something about it was so pleasurable. How do you maintain that balance?

FUJIWARA: I think humans, in order to live, can’t cut those away from existence. If you deny desire, you’re not human. The existence of such things causes our misery, too. Thus, desire and slaughter are inescapable. My fear and sorrow regarding this, and my questioning what are they anyway. That’s what I wanted to portray.

NOTEBOOK: What’s interesting about your portrayal of violence is that Yoko uses the gun as a weapon but doesn’t shoot from it. The one time she tries to shoot at her father, it wasn’t loaded. She mostly hits with it.

FUJIWARA: When I act a role, it needs to be real for me to imagine it. I can’t shoot a gun just like that. I need to feel it. Whenever I do something I feel a corporal build-up that can’t just be released by shooting away.

NOTEBOOK: Shooting it would be too easy?

FUJIWARA: An action needs to be taken. The body and the heart are connected. It’s not that easy.

NOTEBOOK: What was the biggest challenge in shooting Organ?

FUJIWARA: The most difficult challenge was the first scene, in the warehouse. When the doctor and yakuza fend off the police while trying to dissect the man. That shoot was in the middle of summer, but we had to close off the warehouse because it was a night scene. It was hot, smelly, only men, and everyone’s body odor was suffocating the room. That was really difficult. At the time there were seven of us, and now there are three of us, just Takahashi, Mori and I. In Organ, all the actors take on multiple roles. Whenever they weren’t onscreen they were doing lights or shooting. We shot it scene by scene in order. I remember towards the end of the film, during the scene in the tunnel, when my role Yoko comes in on a bike and there’s a fighting scene, we couldn’t get a permit to shoot. We were able to shoot outside the tunnel on the road but not inside. But I badly wanted to shoot inside so we went at midnight, and the characters got all bloody and we were shooting, and the police came. They thought it was a real yakuza fight and took off the safety on their pistols and were about to shoot at us. We thought we were done for. The character Yasuda, who later falls into the ditch and gets stabbed with a Japanese sword, was responsible for getting the permits and he had all the documents on him. So, he came out from the ditch all bloody and with a sword in him, screaming, “We’re shooting a film!” terrifying the police even more. While he was negotiating with them we finished shooting the scene. The police just told us to be safe and left, but it was all thanks to him for putting his life on the line. We really thought we were going to get shot. Usually film shoots have large crews and it’s obvious, but in our case, all the crew were also the actors, so it was hard to tell, and the lights were hidden.

NOTEBOOK: What about the camera?

FUJIWARA: Yes, but it was a small 16mm Scoopic, and the police were so focused on the bloody actors they didn’t notice it. The police were terrified, but it was a great location and I just needed to shoot there no matter what.

[priorireverte]

Congratulations Ash!

Your application for Harry Potter has been accepted. I think we’re all really excited to have such a central, pivotal character in plan. Not just me in my entirely biased excitement for Lily to have her son around. Make sure to let us know if/when you settle on a faceclaim for him.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME & PRONOUNS: Ash & She/her

TIMEZONE: est

ACTIVITY LEVEL: On average, I tend to get online every other day to get through my replies. Although weekends I’ll usually be on daily.

ANYTHING ELSE: Experience - I have been in the Harry Potter rp community for almost ten years now, and have been doing so on Tumblr for about six.

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Harry James Potter

BIRTHDATE: 31 July ,1980 Zodiac - Leo. Starting with the obvious, let’s put the Leo in Gryffindor, I see what you did  there sorting hat. Harry spent his entire life from the young age of eleven, thrown into the spotlight. Others were interested in him for things outside of his control as long as he could remember, but he’s embraced that attention and put it to good use. He is very compassionate and caring, going out of his way to help others around him. His pride can get in the way at times, and tied with the ability to hold a grudge Harry has a sense of there’s my way and the wrong way.  Respect from those he most admires is vital to him. He had spent days obsessing over why Dumbledore hadn’t shared their similarities with him, and has never felt a sense of pride as strong as when McGonagall stood up for him to Umbridge. Harry is a leader, the type of person everyone around him looks towards for the answers to their largest problems.

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Gender and pronouns do not have much meaning to Harry, even though he had grown up with his entire identity being centered around his title as ‘Boy Who Lived’. He has never necessarily felt a connection to this title, but has not thought about it anyplace outside of logistically knowing when someone shouts for ‘the boy’ that can mean him. Harry’s Bisexuality however, is something he has been learning to embrace after years of confusion. His Uncle Vernon of course had a few select words for people who liked the same gender, but outside of pushing away the nerves in his stomach whenever he had to listen to his relatives derogatory language he had not realized that being attracted to multiple genders was an option. Harry has has dated during his teen years; He went on dates to the Yule Ball and Hogsmede, as well as his former relationship with Ginny, but he always felt slightly behind his peers in terms of sexuality and maturation. He assumes it was the fact that he spent so much time feeling unsafe and afraid that he didn’t have the time to explore those feelings, but there was also so many things he simply didn’t know that he is only just learning now in the start of his twenties. BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood. Harry’s status as a halfblood may have been the deciding factor in the course of his entire young life if Dumbeldore’s theories were to be correct, and they usually were. Harry and Tom Riddle shared this trait, both half-blooded wizards and in the end it seemed to have been a deciding factor in Riddle’s choice to mark Harry as the chosen one to become his own equal. However another similarity they share is how out of place they had felt in the muggle world and the strong sense of home the Hogwarts walls had provided both. Harry has no prejudice against those of muggle blood, one of his best friends is muggleborn thank you very much, but he has no connection to the muggles who raised him and were supposed to have been his family.

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor - While he strongly believes it was begging that landed him in red and gold, Harry is very much a Gryffindor. Being brave doesn’t mean never being scared, it’s what you do when faced with fear and Harry has stood up to nearly every terrifying challenge sent his way. He needed that house, as much as he also fit in. Harry grew up the one who was going to end a war, being surrounded by other brave, chivalrous people helped him greatly obtain his own confidence to do what he needed.

OCCUPATION: Harry Potter’s refusal to join the Auror Department sparked quite the buzz once he had finally made the announcement, and the decision had absolutely been one he had not taken lightly in the slightest, but at the end of the day Harry’s fear and distrust in the Ministry won out over his need to constantly swoop in and save the day. That doesn’t mean he hadn’t helped with the effort, he spent the first year out after the war off to help with trials and giving the right information to people who needed it, but after years of being branded a liar he simply couldn’t bring himself to work for the same Ministry who endangered lives by refusing to see what was right in front of them. Instead Harry went home, to the one place that he had always felt he belonged and once again did the impossible. Harry Potter has been the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts for two whole years.

FACECLAIM: tbd

CHARACTER BACKGROUND

POSTBELLUM

While he had not been given the instructions to die at the hands of Voldemort until he had been seventeen and only moments away from walking towards his own murder, after seven years of nothing but waiting for the next fight a part of Harry had assumed from a young age one of them was going to have to ultimately kill the other in the end. The lead up to a final showdown at the end of each school year had been convenient, and while he refused to accept the thought, likely planned out to go that way by a certain headmaster, but it couldn’t have continued on forever. So Harry had never allowed himself to think of a life after the fall of Voldemort, or of happiness and family and one day growing old. He was nothing more than a soldier, a child so deprived of affection he put everything he had into fighting back for the approval of his Professor and put little value on his life outside of being the Chosen One, so the first year following the war was especially hard. From the second he had entered the magical world he had been ‘The Boy Who Lived’. Since the age of eleven years old he had been expected to fight the dark wizards and save the day and he did not know how to be anything else. Harry couldn’t see his value outside of his willingness to jump to the occasion and solve problems. After the war his life’s purpose felt complete at only seventeen years old and it was extremely difficult to accept.

But then the Ministry expected him to be the poster boy for everything they had been doing towards the cleanup process- sending owls on a near daily basis asking Harry to sit on death eater trials or begging him to speak out in favor of the Ministry and their new laws. Just how much of himself Harry was willing to give had been one of the most difficult choices he ever had to make. Fighting injustice was all Harry knew. The Death Eaters had done horrendous things and even after the fall of Voldemort Harry felt a responsibility to ensure they were taken down, however Harry’s trust in the Ministry had been greatly punctured over the years he had been in the magical world, even before the Death Eaters had taken over. It was a delicate balance, and the power his word suddenly held brought a level of anxiety he was unfamiliar with, but he knew that there were too many people who would never see justice without his intervention.

His involvement in the war had only increased his fame and suddenty the Ministry of Magic and every paper in wizarding Britain were harassing him once again. Harry’s friends had been encouraging him to step back and take the time to recover; live a normal, quiet life, whatever that meant. He had never even gotten the time to properly grieve over Sirius’s death, let alone the countless other people he had lost since then who had died in his mind, because of him. He didn’t know how to step back and live a normal life, but he had craved it as long as he could remember so Harry put his everything into attempting. It took a year to realize that Harry that he would never feel that pain in his scar again, that even if he had never wanted it there to begin with an entire piece of someone’s soul he had been living with since he was a year old was gone forever and his only purpose in life had been completed before he ever had a chance to finish his NEWTs.

So He pulled back, isolated himself for a while in a way he wasn’t proud of, but didn’t know how to cope without. Going to anyone but Ron and Hermione with his problems had always seemed incomprehensible, and even then it was always easier to tell them about whatever crazy thing was happening to him at the time than discuss the feelings behind everything he had been through. He busied himself with mindless projects, spending all of his time hiding out from his friends by putting all his energy into restoring 12 Grimmauld Place. The house was now his and he didn’t want to leave the reminder of how horrible his godfather’s own childhood had been. It was the baby Teddy Lupin that was the only one who could get Harry’s undivided attention and compassion for a short while during the beginning of life after the war. He told himself it was so easy to share such raw emotion with the little boy because at first he couldn’t even understand what Harry had been saying, but Harry had felt a strong bond to the boy the second he learned of his godson’s birth. He hadn’t taken over raising Teddy, he was too young and unsure, Andromeda was the right choice as Teddy’s guardian, but Harry made a point to be a large part in his upbringing.   He refused to allow him to grow up as lonely and afraid as he had been himself, and Harry felt a personal responsibility to make sure Remus and Tonk’s sacrifices of their lives weren’t for nothing and Teddy would grow up loved and in a world better than any of them grew up in.

Turning down a position in the Auror Program had surprised himself more than it had seemed to any of the people who knew him best, which had only confused him more. His dream job since he had been only fourteen had never truly been a dream, but a logical choice for someone whose entire life revolved around being manipulated into fighting. He had truly believed he would never get past his back and forth with Voldemort, and the auror office only fit the narrative. Even knowing these things didn’t make knowing he was going to be letting people down any easier and he nearly said yes solely out of fear of saying no.

His time back in the castle has been everything he never thought he would be allowed to have and Harry is taking full advantage of that fact. Teaching is something Harry had felt so strongly about in the short time he was doing so with the DA, and in the proper setting where he had the ability to ensure this next generation was not going to have to ever fear their time in the castle was the calling he never knew about.

—

All the lives lost during the war was something that sat in Harry’s thought even still, more than anything else. He never knew anything but loss, but the grief he felt the past few years was different. He hadn’t been grieving the loved ones he never had, instead the people he loved and cherished who were torn away from him too soon. Watching the Weasleys without Fred had to have been the hardest part of anything after the war’s end. He had envied Ron’s family for so long, now all he wanted was to take the hurt away from the people who he grew to call his family that were now going through this pain he knew too well.

As hopeful as the returned made Harry, it all scared him as well. He knew what happened when wixen played around with death, and even more so he knew just how dark the magic around it could be. But he also doesn’t want to feel the pain again of getting his hopes up to have family by his side to have it ripped away. He doesn’t trust it to last. 

PERSONALITY

“There’s no need to call me Sir, Professor.”

Harry for some reason unknown to me, has started to be perceived to be this hypsteresque, bad-ass. A smoker, rogue auror who doesn’t play by the rules. Harry Potter is a sassy and sarcastic. But also a quidditch obsessed nerd who loves his friends with everything he has and stands up for what he believes in. He has that stereotypical Gryffindor temper, and does not always think about the consequences of his sharp tongue, but he has never been one to allow people to walk over him or anyone else. He was a victim of abuse and neglect and his words, that wit was the one thing he had to cope as a child treated like nothing more than an unwanted freak. But Harry is also the person who told Snape his nickname was Roonil Waslib. He’d spend hours on end talking to his bird and one of the first moments of the entire series he is empathizing with a snake who had been trapped and never knew their family. His friends are everything to him and Harry’s loyalty can be seen almost as a fault. There is no difference between his friends and family, and to betray or mistrust them is one of the worst things he can imagine of himself.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

Harry’s memories of life before Privet Drive do not consist of anything more than flashes of colors and the occasional face. Perhaps a voice he wasn’t able to place. Family has always been Harry’s greatest desire, the things he wanted most in the world. The Durleys had been Harry’s closest living relatives, but made it clear they were not Harry’s family. His aunt and uncle made sure to remind him constantly that Harry was nothing more than an inconvenience in their home, and that he would never be as loved or cherished as their son. The idea of family was nothing more than that for a very long time; an idea and a dream. At thirteen the possibility of family had been dangled over his head in the form of a fugitive Godfather. Harry’s time with Sirius was too short, they should have had years together to make up for the twelve apart and it was after his death that Harry felt ready to give up on the idea of ever having a real family of his own. Of course that makes him feel selfish. Ron and Hermione every bit as much his family as any last name or title could make them. Harry could argue they were more family to him than Sirius and him ever had the chance to be. And the night Mrs. Weasley had called Harry ‘as good as’ another son still plays in his mind on a loop some nights when he’s looking for a reason it’s all worth it. Harry’s family isn’t blood, but he loves them all just the same. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s thought this return could mean him getting the only thing he’s ever truly wanted.

HISTORY

Harry really does wonder at times what it would be like to have an easy life. He had only been a baby when the weight of a war was thrown onto his tiny shoulders, marking him the one chosen to defeat the greatest dark wizard of their time. As a small child however, Harry would never have believed it. He had known nothing more than he was an orphan, living in cruel circumstances under the stairs in his aunt and uncle’s home and getting bullied by his cousin. It wasn’t until Harry’s eleventh birthday that his life truly began. When Hagrid had stormed down that hut to tell Harry about the truth of himself and his past, Harry felt a sense of self for the first time in his life. He had gone off to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry and made friendships for the first time in his life. Even before the rest of the world had been sucked into another war, Harry had been drawn in from a mixture of a hero complex and clues laid out only slightly too conveniently to test and discover the boy who lived that would one day become the chosen one. Harry fought back every year, somehow always granted a new challenge and more pain until his fourth year when it had become more than a challenge that any reasonable adult would consider too dangerous.

Cedric Diggory’s murder had sparked the beginning of the war, but the greater meaning to Harry lied in the young boy who lost his life solely because he had been in the wrost place at the wrong time. He had gotten between Harry and for that reason alone he was dead. It was something Harry never learned to forgive. And it sparked the belief that people around Harry somehow always ended up dying because of him.

Sirius’s death left Harry inconsolable. He never had the proper time to grieve, with a target on his back and the war picking up quickly, but losing the one family member he had left destroyed Harry in a completely different way. And again, Harry came to the conclusion if he had only checked in the mirror Sirius could have still been alive.

The hunt for horcruxes was something else entirely. He had no connection to anyone outside of Ron and Hermione and when Ron had left it broke Harry’s heart in an entirely different way. He kept waiting for the ball to drop and one of his best friends to get hurt because of him. He clung closer, forgave quicker, and fought harder trying to keep anyone else he loved from dying.

Remus and Tonks’ deaths held a significance just as strong but different for Harry. He was a Godfather and when Remus had named him so it had become the new most important thing about him. Being the Chosen One, or the Boy Who Lived didn’t matter when there was a little boy who depended on him to stay alive and watch out for him.

OOC EXPLORATION

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

This group is every guilty pleasure I have ever had mixed in with a wonderful plot and beautiful writing. Even though recently role plays set in the trio’s era are few and far between, the ones I have been a part of always seem to either lack writers willing to write for Harry or his character is quickly taken by someone who does not know the story beyond either solely the movie franchise or random bits of knowledge. I’ve noticed a stigma in the Potter fandom, especially the role playing community, that the ‘true fans’ have to prefer secondary or background characters. While I also love building on characters we do not see as much of in the books, it has always saddened me that this character that I grew up with is seen as the easy write up. Because we as readers have so much on Harry I’ve actually found his character more difficult to write for, but equally enjoyable.

As per Harry as an actual character, he has been like a friend since I was seven years old.

[mentalhealthsblog]

Psychological Wellness Maintenance Is Produced Basic

Your mental health is typically substantially enhanced when you use the methods Dr. Kuhn teaches in this report. When you are capable to expertise this improvement, your associations blossom, career paths open, and folks find you eye-catching and obtainable. You deserve to have enjoyable and pleasure in your daily life - and Cliff Kuhn, M.D. will aid you do that. In the traditional Frank Capra film, It really is a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's mental overall health is confused by the problems of his existence and he needs he'd never ever been born. Mental Health George's guardian angel grants his desire and normally takes him to a grim fact as it would've been with out him. George feels nothing when he reaches into his coat pocket to retrieve the flower his daughter, Zuzu, put there - and that is when George understands that his want has appear accurate...he is never been born. Wishing she experienced in no way been born, Roberta grew to become my patient, looking for desperately to increase her mental well being. Like the fictional George Bailey character, Roberta's depression and nervousness had grown so powerful as to threaten her potential to lead any semblance of a typical lifestyle. Luckily for Roberta, she shortly found exactly why the organic medication of humor is one particular of the most effective adjunctive treatment options for improving mental health, because humor practically pours drinking water on the hearth of melancholy and nervousness. Roberta is not by yourself. As numerous as 35% of all Us citizens suffer from melancholy and stress, the twins that make psychological overall health elusive for hundreds of thousands. Your despair and stress is exacerbated by your seriousness - getting oneself way too significantly. As we transfer into adulthood, we regrettably acquire into the idea that accountable and productive folks must be "critical." As we make the largest mistake of our lives and relegate our humor character and enjoyable to recreational activities (if we encounter entertaining at all), we doom ourselves to all the indicators of the corresponding seriousness that fills the void - declining overall health, climbing tension, increased discomfort, lessened power, impaired creativeness, and a lot more. The good news for your mental health, nonetheless, is that we know how to shrink your fatal seriousness to virtually nothing at all and lessen nearly entirely the sway it holds more than your health, vitality, wellness, and zest. The natural medication of humor is an incredibly potent source that you previously have you've got only forgotten how to use it to greatest effectiveness. You will before long learn that, whilst not a panacea, the natural medication of humor is a tremendous tonic for melancholy or anxiousness and will also supercharge other remedies since it is an remarkable adjunctive medicine too! I have distilled the normal medication of humor, by means of my a long time of medical follow, into an wonderful prescription I call The Entertaining Factor. Based mostly on what I realized above 20 a long time back from a terminally sick fifteen-calendar year-outdated client, I designed a unique set of principles I contact the Enjoyable Commandments, then forged these Commandments into my Enjoyable Aspect prescription and have been prescribing The Enjoyable Factor with wonderful success for years. This report will show you how to use just three of my Exciting Commandments to change your psychological health all around, and acquire new pleasure, pleasure, and appreciation from your life! Enhance Your Psychological Overall health Utilizing My Enjoyable Factor Prescription Action 1: Always Go the Further Smile The 1st Exciting Commandment I advise for improved mental health is: Constantly Go the Further Smile. This Commandment is doubly helpfully for despair and nervousness due to the fact not only does it provide measurable psychological and physical aid, but it also is entirely underneath your handle - regardless of your situation. Simply because smiling stays absolutely beneath your management, it can be your greatest resource for making use of humor's normal drugs to speed up your psychological well being. Smiling makes measurable bodily rewards you can encounter quickly: your pressure decreases, your immunity improves, your pain and aggravation tolerances increase, and your creative imagination soars. And guess what? You knowledge all these positive aspects even if your smile is "phony." Which is right...forcing a smile on to your experience perks up your immune technique and lightens your temper just as readily as a real smile. Fake a smile and you are going to before long really feel properly adequate to wear a true one particular! This is fantastic information for your proactive stance on sustainable psychological wellness. You have an remarkable quantity of pre-emptive control more than your mood - you can, literally, pick more strength and joy. The important for your use of this Exciting Commandment in maximizing your psychological wellness is to start off working towards proper now, so that smiling turns into an entrenched, habitual method of accessing the natural medicine of humor. If you wait to smile until your psychological wellness has taken a turn for the worse, and despair or anxiousness has taken hold of you, it will not be as powerful. Step Two: Act and Interact Smiling qualified prospects us correct into the second Fun Commandment you will uncover instrumental in keeping your psychological well being: Act and Interact. Humor's all-natural medication functions best when we are sharing ourselves and this Commandment will instruct you how to capitalize on the manage you've got taken above your physiology and mood by smiling. Performing and interacting is now less difficult for you to do since you're smiling more. Not only is your mood improved, but your smile is also a nice invitation to other individuals. My recommendation is that you solidify the energy of this Commandment by location a affordable goal with regards to the variety of men and women you will interact with each working day. These social interactions are fantastic for your mental health, forcing you to trade details and suggestions with yet another person. Blended with your commitment to smiling, your interactions need to be enjoyable, simply because your heightened vitality, lessened ache, and decreased stress stages are really desirable to others. Over and above maintaining you out of isolation, there is another reason why acting and interacting with the people you encounter fosters improved psychological well being. It makes it possible for you to steer clear of spiritual "flat tires." Religious flat tires occur when you sidestep, or avoid, an interaction that is about to happen by natural means - you duck into an place of work to avoid encountering a person in a hallway or you never answer the mobile phone because you don't want to discuss to the person calling. This kind of avoidance drains and deletes your reservoir of effective normal energy and siphons your psychological health reserves. Business Name: O'Brien & Associates Inc Address: 1467 Siskiyou Blvd Ste 2027 Ashland, OR 97520 7052 Santa Teresa Blvd Ste 1044 San Jose, CA 95139 3157 Gentilly Blvd #2198 New Orleans, LA 70122 10673 W Lake Hazel Rd Ste 1009 Boise, ID 83709 1500 Chestnut St Ste 1784 Philadelphia, PA 19102 11816 Inwood Rd Ste 3147 Dallas, TX 75244 Email: intake@obrienassociatesinc.com Working Hours: 7 days a week 8 AM to 8 PM

[sahbibabe]

Ignoring The Obvious

Soulmate AU

Sephiroth/Fem! Reader

Part Eleven

Your hospital stay is short. Your training commences. Reno has serious problems with being... well, helpful. Or encouraging. Especially with a giant Shinra dog chasing you through vents.

THE BED WAS HARD, YOUR knees were killing you, your abdomen was on fire, and the nurse was steadily refusing to give you morphine no matter how much you begged. You had spent the better part of two days as high as a kite, blissfully unaware of the train wreck of memories about to hit you the moment you were weaned off of your medication. The file─your unfiltered, raw test subject notes and classifications─sat innocently on the nightstand as if it was completely separate from the emotional turmoil you were facing.

       It would be easy, so easy to slip into the mercenary's mindset and ignore the pain. To shove the emotions aside and bury them so deep you didn't even have to acknowledge their existence. All you had to do was will them away, and they would be gone. But that was unhealthy and the moment you did that, all of your progress would be ruined forever and you would start from scratch once more.

      But did it really matter? You asked yourself the same question over and over again as you watched the Chocobo documentary on the one-channel television network. You would be going back to that life anyways, with that same mindset and habits, without anyone to stop you from doing otherwise. You would be killing people for Rufus Shinra in the name of eliminating competition; a petty game was what it all came down to.

        And you were the knight who guarded the King.

       You looked away from the television to your food. It was plain hospital food, rich in protein to help you replace all of the blood you had supposedly lost while you fought the doctor tooth and nail when he tried to get a needle in your arm for an IV. Reno had laughed when he told you about the resident's injuries, but it only made you feel sick to your stomach when the nurses had to strap you down like a wild animal.

      Other than Reno, your only other visitor was Rude, and he had been thoughtful enough to bring you a bouquet of real flowers. He wouldn't say where he had gotten them from when you asked, just sat in silence, so you asked him instead how Hojo was doing with that stab wound, as smug as you might have sounded.

       "You didn't stab Hojo," Rude told you bluntly, a slight hint of confusion in his voice. Your smugness was wiped from your face. "You stabbed an assistant doctor who had come in to check your new vitals."

        "No," you had whispered,"no, that… That was Hojo. I remember it like it happened seconds ago…"

       "It doesn't matter. The doctor has been treated and compensated out of your salary. You'll be fifty thousand gil short."

     And that had been the end of that.

     Now, you picked at the cheap, plasticky roast beef on your plate and pushed your asparagus around in circles. You weren't getting anywhere without the alarms sounding on your bed, so you were effectively a prisoner until they turned them off. Add that to the iron they were slowly feeding into your IV and you felt like a rabbit confined in a small cage, pacing a few steps at a time.

       Out of the corner of your eye, sitting right beside the file you were desperately trying to avoid reading, sat the Book of Colors: a book that translated all of the different colors soulmates might see, their specific combinations, and surprisingly, origins.

       The strings felt snug against your fingers as you weighed your options, kneading your fingers into your palm. There was a lot you could learn about the authenticity of soulmate bonds through that book. People followed it like gospel, spoke of it as something holy. You had never had a reason to read it until now, or the money to, but now you had prime opportunity and the eyesight to help you do it.

      You picked up the book and pushed your lunch tray away from the bed.

       It was a hefty leather thing, dyed black and sewn with gold thread to display the title: The Book of Colors. One could easily take it for a children's book, but it was so much more than that. A quick glance at the spine showed it was the newest edition.

       The first page you opened it to described the various types of soulmate bonds, everywhere from bonds to the literal soul to telepathic communication. It depended heavily on the people bound to determine what kind of bonds they got. Cynical, unfair people walked around without color vision until they met their soulmate; quiet, shy people got telepathy; and people like you, a mercenary gone civilian, got strings.

       "Strings guide the lost home," you mumbled, tracing your finger over the plain description beneath the header,"and return hearts to where they belong."

       One of the authors theorized heavily that strings meant involvement with the lifestream personally, or some kind of way to identify past soulmates with one another.

       "It's a very unique thing, the strings," the author wrote,"just like anyone else's, but this means that the two souls have already connected before in the past. Eons or two hundred years ago, who can say?"

      You skimmed over the rest and flipped over to the colors, the part you had been dreading and also curiously dying to read. There were sections to different soulmate types, some colors meaning different things, so you found your section and settled down in your springy hospital bed.

       "Identify the weave of your strings," the book told you. It offered a small chart of different weave types. "You may have two types or you may have four. Find yours and look at the pairing chart to determine the intent of your bond."

       That was easy enough. You shook the threads out and looked closely at their weave; there was a single double braid, what looked like a dutch braid, and an elaborately woven pattern that repeated halfway through the string on each one.

       "The double braid signifies a union between two people," you read, following the lines with your finger. "If there is a child born from that union, two becomes three on this specific line."

        You didn't have a third thread, like you expected, so you moved on.

      "The dutch braid signifies a match with power and darkness. Don't worry yourself, though! Darkness can be equated to many things, such as self conflict, a trouble within the body, or even a mental disconnection from stress."

      Sephiroth didn't seem to be mentally disconnected, but you didn't even know him that well. You messed with the threads for a few moments, stuck on that phrasing, before finding the last section where the more elaborate braids were.

       "This gorgeous flower patterned weave means that you have reunited with your soulmate several times in various past lives. Much like additional colors to the vision discussed in the previous soulmate identification, the different petals on it connote just how many times you have been with your soulmate in past lives. Count them! How many do you have?"

         You raised an eyebrow and counted the individual petals. One, two, three, four, five, six, and… just burgeoning on the final petal, weaving itself before your eyes, was seven.

         But there wasn't a number for that─there wasn't even a color combination or weave combination for the mess around your hand. You checked several times, but to no avail; no one had ever had gold, purple, and green and black threads.

       You slammed the book shut and tossed it back on the nightstand just as the door handle turned and popped open. Reno sauntered past the threshold and made himself at home in the guest chair, eating popcorn and humming an odd tune.

       "So, how's the chocobo documentary doing?" His eyes sparkled with mirth. "Making you bored yet?"

       "Sure. If you count restlessness as bored." You crossed your arms and fixed him with a hard stare. "When can I get out and do my job?"

        "In an hour." Reno threw a handful of popcorn in his mouth dismissively. "Doc says you're cleared to start training and work off that excessive energy you have."

        "Good." You ripped your blankets back and hopped out of the bed. The floor was still cold beneath the cheap socks the hospital had given you. The world swam around you for a moment and you steadied yourself against the nightstand. "Good. That means I didn't pass the exam?"

        Reno shrugged. "You never finished it. Tseng pulled some strings. As long as you pass training you should be fine."

       "Why do you sound like you doubt me?"

       "You'll find out in… oh, about an hour."

      And oh, find out you did.

      "Reno, I'm going to murder you for this."

       Sweat traced rivers down your face as you shimmied your way through the ventilation system of the training barracks, a guard dog snapping at your heels. He didn't answer over the comms system, but you knew he had to be laughing at you somehow.

       "Shit," you yelped, feeling the dog's teeth sink down into your shoe. You kicked back on reflex and it cried out, releasing you instantly. You moved a little faster, relieved at the sight of a vent, and slammed your elbow down on the grate. It didn't budge and there was a very pissed off hound breathing down your neck. "Oh, fuck me."

       "Keep on moving, [Name]!" Reno chortled. You scowled and got on your knees, moving as fast as you could given the cramped space. "Three minutes left!"

        "You and your three minutes can go to hell!"

       "Yeah, but then who would sic hounds on you then? You'd fail your training no problem."

      "Reno," you growled, shoving your fingers into another grate just ahead and pushing down hard. It swung open. The dog got closer. "I'm going to kick your ass."

       "Get out of the vents and then we can talk!"

        You dropped neatly onto a bench, the leatherwork groaning beneath your feet. You hopped off and opened the door right as the dog dropped out behind you, hightailing it down the hall at full speed.

        "Gotta take out the dog, too, [Name]!" Reno reminded you.

        Feet skidding into the marble floor, you whirled around, cursing Reno for his snarky reminders and tackled the dog head on. It flailed as you wrapped your arms around its neck and cut off its breathing, barely keeping purchase by pinning your knees to the over muscled thighs. It growled and tried to bite you, the struggle slowing second by second, until it flopped down on the floor, tongue hanging.

         Unconcious, but not dead.

      You reclined back on your haunches with a sigh, wiping sweat from your forehead, and when you opened your eyes, you found the full brunt of Reeve Tuesti's gaze staring you down.

       Your hand dropped from your forehead. Not even your labored breathing helped you forget that you had somehow ended up in a completely different building than Reno had told you to go to.

       "Damnit."

[skylarmoon71]

Harrison Wells x Reader- Chapter 4 (Final)

You hummed along to a tune in your head, a cup of coffee in your hand as you bounced through the halls of S.T.A.R Labs. It was the afternoon, Cisco had a date with gypsy, Caitlin was off covering some research and Barry was probably somewhere following Iris around like a puppy dog. You were grateful for the space, now you could have some well deserved one on one time with Harry. It was tough, with your workload at the hospital, and Central City constantly being attacked by metahumans, there was rarely any down time for you and Harry. 

The sadder part was that not much happened after you both admitted your feelings. You hadn’t even kissed yet. You didn’t pay much mind to it though. This was still pretty new, and he was from another earth. Maybe dating was different on their earth. You kept telling yourself that because Harry hadn’t really made much of a move on you. Which was weird because he was the take charge type. Aside from longing looks from across the room and cute smiles exchanged between you two, there wasn’t much going on. 

As slow as you were willing to take it, three months had passed. He should have at least tried to kiss you by now. 

“(Y/N).” you jumped, turning at the person calling to you. 

“Detective West.” you smiled. “You startled me.” He smiled back. 

“Well you were standing there just spacing out for a good few seconds. I just came to grab some paperwork Barry left here.” he moved over to the desk, picking up a box. When he got it he titled his head. “Well enjoy the rest of your evening. “ 

When he said that and got no response he just looked at you. You blinked and then answered. “O-Oh yes, thank you. “ you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear moving to sit down and gather your thoughts. Joe seemed a bit conflicted to leave now. “Is everything okay, you look a bit off?” 

“That obvious huh.” you laughed. He nodded, moving closer, he braced the box on the table giving you a comforting look. 

“What’s bothering you?” you didn’t know how to phrase this in a way that wouldn’t make the entire conversation awkward, so you just flat out said it. 

“Harry he..he hasn’t really done anything yet. I feel like I made my feelings known and he did too yet, we’re at a sort of impasse.” Joe understood. You could see the gears turning in his head. 

“Well, if I’m being honest, in the time I’ve known him he’s not been the most socially adapted person. It took a while for us to even tolerate each other. Chances are he wants to be more intimate with you, but he isn’t sure how. I think you just need to let him know what you want. Hints are already hard for us regular guys to pick up on, so for him it might be near impossible. “ you almost burst out a laugh. 

“That’s true.” you said trying to contain your smile. You knew Joe was a pillar of wisdom, but what Barry told you didn’t do him justice. You were glad you could confide in him. It didn’t even make you uncomfortable. Somehow it felt like a parent-child conversation. The guy oozed paternal energy. “Thank you, really. “ Joe nodded, lifting the box.

“Always here to help!” he called while walking out the building. With your recent advice you figured you’d go and do just that. If you didn’t tell Harry what you wanted, you were positive this would go on for the next three months. You couldn’t have that. You picked up your coffee, moving to go and find the brooding scientist. 

Just as you stepped into the hallway, a flash of lightning caught your view. You almost fell back on your butt. Your eyes moved to where the red suited hero was laying on the ground screaming in pain. You tossed your coffee rushing over to him. 

“F-Flash what’s wrong!!” Your eyes caught an arrow that was lodged into his stomach. You pulled out your phone dialing Caitlin. 

“C-Caitlin get everyone to the lab now, s-something's wrong with Flash!” she didn’t stay on long enough to ask questions. You dropped your phone trying to console him. From what Cisco once told you he had incredible healing abilities so why weren’t they working. The more he moved the more blood seemed to come out of his wound. 

“(Y/N)!!” Harry had his gun in hand, he lowered it when he saw you on the floor with Barry. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong he isn’t healing!” you were panicked. Harry reached over pulling off his cowl. Your eyes widened at the face of the person behind the mask. You looked up at Harry in confusion and he gave you a look. Probably saying you would discuss it later. You felt stupid, how did you not put the pieces together. All the clues were there. Barry was crying now. 

“P-Please get it out..” he begged. The blood was pooling below him. If you didn’t do something quick it might be too late. 

“H-Harry..” you couldn’t bare to see him in so much pain. You knew you told Harry you wouldn’t use your powers recklessly, but this was Barry, your friend. Harry nodded.

“It’s okay (Y/N).” Harry turned back, hands gripping the edge of the arrow. “One three we’re going to remove it okay Allen.” Barry just whimpered, barely conscious. 

“One, Two, Three!” Harry yanked it out and Barry yelled. You stared in horror at how large the other end was. There was a small blinking light on the end. Your eyes looked back when you saw how pale Barry’s skin looked. He was letting out shallow breaths. 

“His healing is delayed, he should be recovering. “ Harry’s statement made you a bit unnerved. 

“Shit!” you made quick work, hands outstretched. A red light emitted from his body. There were also sparks that followed. You just watched, slowly you could see the wound in his stomach closing up. The red light that left his body ran through your own. You felt a bit dizzy. When the wound was no longer there you lowered your hands, putting them in front of you on the ground to keep you upright. Your heart was pounding in your chest unnaturally. Your eyes wouldn’t focus.

“Breathe, breathe.” you tried coaxing yourself. 

“(Y/N)!!!” when your gaze finally cleared you were shocked to see Barry sitting up. He looked a bit guilty. You waved him off before he could even speak. “Don’t give me that look, it’s fine. I understand why you didn’t say anything. “ When your heart got back under control you sat up. 

“So… when am I going to get a suit?” your question made a grin stretch on Barry’s face as he pushed your shoulder playfully. 

~~

“That was a close one, that arrow was pretty bad. But everything had healed nicely.” When Caitlin was done with her observation Iris stepped forward fretting over Barry. You stifled a giggle. Cisco was examining the arrow. “This is really something. There was a power dampening chip inside. It explains why you couldn’t heal, especially this size. The effects must have lingered because of how long it stayed in your body. You’re lucky it didn’t rupture to many vital organs.” Barry nodded. “Yeah, I was just investigating a lead. I didn’t even see it coming. “ 

“Well be more careful next time, you’re fast, not invincible.” you added. 

“Exactly.” Iris agreed. You could tell from her tone she was about to give him another lecture. When they talked you moved closer to Harry. You bumped his shoulder slightly, looking up at him. He smiled down at you. “Harry, thank you for trusting me. I know it’s probably not easy for you every time I use my abilities. “ Harry shook his head. “You were right before. I know you can handle yourself, I can’t say I love seeing you hunched over in pain, but I can’t ask you to give up something that defines you. It would be the same as telling Allen to stop being The Flash.”

“Yeah, how did I not figure that out!” he chuckled. “Most of the city still doesn’t know so don’t feel bad.” You grinned. For a moment the both of you just continued to stare at each other. You thought for sure he would do something. He didn’t though. His eyes fell and he looked like he was about to step away. 

“Harry.” he stopped, gaze moving back to you. “Please kiss me.” you could tell from the stunned look in his eyes he didn’t see that coming. You weren’t sure what was going through that big brain of his, but you just wanted him to know that he was enough. Maybe the entire time he just felt like you didn’t want him making any advances. You don't know what it was. And you didn’t care. Whatever insecurities he had you would squash them once and for all. 

“I’ve been very straight about what I want Harry, I want you. So please just kiss m-” you didn’t get a chance to finish. He leaned in pressing a searing kiss to your lips. You pressed back into the desk at the sudden action, hands reaching up to grasp at anything. They finally settled on his chest. He stepped forward, one hand swiping the contents of the desk unto the floor. 

“Hey!!” Cisco protested. Harry ignored. His hands gripped at your thighs, lifting you unto the desk. When you were comfortably seated he slipped between your legs, still kissing you hungrily. You moaned at the insistent way his lips moved against your own, as if he’d been starved of your taste. The audience in the backward quickly realized that neither of you looked like you were stopping anytime soon. They started to slip out, Cisco was the first to dive through the door. 

“Don’t forget protection!!” his warning fell on deaf ears. Harry was still pawing at you. When your lips finally separated you were sucking in heavy breaths. Harry’s lips moved to your neck, pressing heated kisses to every inch of skin he could. “You..have no idea..how much I’ve been holding back..” he mumbled between kisses. 

“I-I think I have any idea..” you whispered. His eyes moved back to yours. The gleam that shone made your heart skip a beat. “This entire time I was wondering why you didn’t even kiss me. I guess we were both reading the situation wrong. “ His palms caressed your cheek. 

“It’s a bit difficult for me to show how I feel sometimes. I wasn’t sure if you were comfortable with this level of intimacy. There are so many differences between my earth and this one. I didn’t want to make a mistake that would jeopardize our relationship.”

That made sense. At that moment you realized just how thoughtful Harry really was. He was willing to hold out just to make sure you were comfortable. He really did surprise you. 

“Next time let’s talk like adults okay. Don’t just make a decision like that on your own. I was honestly doing the same. I thought this would be hard for you so I was waiting for you to make a move.” 

He smirked. “And that I did. “ you blushed remembering your position. He really did. It caught you completely off guard. You wouldn’t say it to his face though. His ego didn’t need any more boosts. Although maybe you didn’t have to. He could read you like a book. 

You broke eye contact, looking over at the items he threw on the floor. It took you a while to recognize that everyone else already left. When your eyes reconnected with Harry’s you swallowed at the hungry look in his eyes. 

“Damn...” from the looks of it, you weren’t leaving S.T.A.R Labs anytime soon. 

[briapia95]

I read all of the arranged marriage AU and it's Chef's kiss. Because I'm a terrible person, I imagined the rest as Ultimate Bad End AU™ wherein LWJ loses his core and becomes Yiling Patriarch, dies in the Burial Mounds after LXC dies at Qiongqi way and WWX stays miserable and in cloud recesses because he thinks he ruins everything he touches and he doesn't wanna fuck things up for JC and Yanli

Omg that’s brutal and I love it xD. I imagine that the original AU while angsty, it won’t be as brutal (I think), but just for the lols let’s imagine that. I have this named in my docs as “the super bad ending lol noooope” just so you know;

[Here for the original AU]

LWJ is a powerful cultivator but there’s so much he can do anything against Wen Zhuliu (WZL?) when they’re at one of Dusk Creek Mountain’s many caves. He does not see it coming, one moment they’re trying to get away from the Xuanwu of Slaughter, Wen disciples trying and failing to climb back the way they’ve all come from and the next moment WWX is pushing himself in between Luo Qingyang and that wicked brand Wang Lingjiao (WLJ?) had used to threaten them since this excuse of a night-hunt began.

WLJ burns WWX, as in canon, but this time seeing this LWJ  furiously attacks the other Wen cultivators, WLJ realizing shit, I shouldn’t have done that, starts panicking and screaming; causing more mayhem in the midst of the current chaos that’s happening. This gives an opening for the other disciples from the different sects to fight against the Wen cultivators, using their corpses to distract the Xuanwu for a while many of them are able to climb out of the cave.

Meanwhile, WC tries to shut WLJ up, her clinging to him and making it impossible to escape, but then LWJ is coming after him too, that’s when WZL comes in between them. Too fast, too driven to protect his master for LWJ wrath. WWX somewhat near realizes, screaming “Lan Zhan!” in warning and desperation, but it’s too late now, he’s too far away, the second master of Gusu Lan has now gotten his golden core shattered.

The pain is not as terrible as the sudden cold that sinks into his bones. Making him almost lose his consciousness right there and then. He does not notice WC & company fled, WWX enraged and confused, manages to come to LWJ’s aid but because of plot reasons -don’t ask me- they still find themselves trapped inside the cave with a wild Xuanwu that while appeased, is still a threat to them. (the same happens here, JC & co. go get help now with the added bonus of not being pursued by the Wen)

WWX’s guilt starts to simmer, “if you had not come to my aid you’d still have your core intact, Lan Zhan, why would you do something like that?”, he whispers, tears streaming down his cheeks and onto LWJ’s cheeks, LWJ face pressed against WWX chest as he softly streaks his hair while his other arm keeps their bodies together.

“Is it not apparent?” LWJ asks, words strained from the effort that takes not to lose consciousness.

WWX trembles, throat thigh, tears still not stopping, “You are a stupid, stupid, man, Lan Zhan. Has nobody ever told you that? A stupid, noble, too good man” he finishes as the presses their lips together for the first time. LWJ kisses back, he has dreamed about this moment for months now and it’s everything he ever hoped for, his only regret that it has happened in the worst circumstances imaginable.

Flash forward to the rescue, they can’t really kill the Xuanwu of Slaughter but its hunger is quelled enough for it to not come when they get them out. JC is there and so is LXC and enough disciples to form a small army (Both Yunmeng Jiang and Gusu Lan sect forces intact and ready for action since the attract on Lanling Jin)

The state of LWJ’s core is kept secret since only WWX and WC & co know, everyone else too distracted fleeing the cave to notice.

Plot happens and the war starts, WWX being the former Yunmeng Jiang head disciple and married to the second young master of Gusu Lan goes to war too. (Also, hello there guilt, we love some self-sacrificing WWX that has not been able to cope much with the knowledge that his husband was defending him, therefore, in his mind, him being the reason he lost his core, even if LWJ has told him repeatedly that no it’s not his fault).

So as the war drags on, his husband not coming back and in a desperate attempt to help him and some convenient plot sprinkled in the way, LWJ finds himself at burial mounds, flash forward to three months later and ta-da! Yiling Patriarch! LWJ.

Let’s say the first supervisory office he goes to is the Yiling one, he meets WQ, and remembers how fondly WWX spoke about WN that time they met at the Qishan Wen discussion conference, so he does not kill the elders and healers, a-yuan’s mother probably in early pregnancy. But since this is a nope AU he does kill the rest of the cultivators, (probably a-yuan’s father amongst them), ordering WQ and what’s left of her people to try to leave somewhere far away or to renounce the Wen name or something. Then WC & co meet the same end as the novel canon.

So, the sunshot campaign is won thanks to LWJ, JGS is dead and JZX is sect leader, engaged once again to JYL and JGY being his right-hand man or something. LWJ is now cultivating resentful energy (probably in a more moderated way) and WWX still in love but now feeling more guilty than before, since now his husband is walking the path he used to abhor. 

There’s tension between LQR and LWJ because of the heretic path and all that, it becomes worse since LQR makes it clear that he thinks LWJ’s decision to help WWX all the way back in the cave was foolish. WWX pours himself into researching a way of cultivating a golden core again, he sneaks into the forbidden section of the Library pavilion but is found by someone (Su She?) and then heavily punished by LQR.

This leads to a big argument between LQR and LWJ, WWX intervenes, they get punished, LQR rasping out when is finished “This is your fault, know that my nephew who I have raised as my own is now walking this path because of your insolence and arrogance. His pain is your doing.” Guess what, it’s super effective, more guilt piling onto WWX. But at the same time that’s when LWJ snaps, he takes WWX and leaves for Yiling, he’ll create a home for them where nobody will reproach his method of cultivation, where the hollowness of WWX’s eyes disappears into the brightness he fell in love with.

They find WQ’s group at the bottom of the burial mounds hiding. After LWJ’s attack, the cultivation world believed all the Wen at Yiling died. Together they form a settlement at BM. And they’re happy for a while, LWJ limits the use of resentful energy, WWX researching with the input of WQ and all the nice and soft interactions between them and the Wen remnants.

That is until they’re invited to JL’s 100th-day celebration, the ambush, both JZX and LXC appear here, but something goes wrong, LWJ loses control of his powers when he tries to use the STS, and just when the people brought for the ambush are about to shoot him LXC steps in the way. The arrows were poisoned, and struck vital points, he dies bleeding out in LWJ’s arms.

It’s all a blur, next thing he knows he’s kneeling inside the demon slaughtering cave, WWX speaking softly to him, almost in a pleading way, holding him and petting his head, “come back to me” “it wasn’t your fault” “I love you” “don’t leave me,” LWJ breaks down again, the death of his brother a pain too hard to bear.

The siege happens (Lead by Gusu Lan and Qinghe Nie) and LWJ, still too distraught for any clear thinking, uses the STS once more. Not without making WQ use her needles on WWX to make sure WWX and, say, A-yuan are out of harm's way. There’s a goodbye and one last kiss. He tries to hide them but he’s not fast enough and WWX catches LWJ being struck by LQR’s sword, the pain in the elder’s eyes apparent even if he’s trying to hide it in righteous fury.

JC finds them, WWX now free from the needles is holding a-yuan as if his life depends on it, he tries but he can’t help his brother. WWX married into Gusu Lan and he’s now being taken as a temporary prisoner by LQR, the older man still takes pity on A-yuan, so he brings him back promising no harm will be done to him.  

WWX heart is in shatters, everything, the downfall of his husband, the death of his brother in law, the mental breakdown that took away his Lan Zhan even before LQR did, everything was his fault. If he had not married Lan Zhan, if he hadn’t told uncle Jiang that he was more than fine with marrying LWJ, everything would’ve been fine, Lan Zhan would be alive, the Wen probably too.

Months later JC is at Cloud Recesses, demanding WWX to be brought back to LP, but he refuses, he refuses to taint something else, better to be a prisoner there than a free man endangering the lives of people he loves.

Thirteen years pass and there’s a distress flare signal shot from Mo village. There’s no second thought, WWX will be dead before something bad happens to a-yuan.

I was not able to make it a tragic tragic AU (of an AU), so here’s a hopeful ending at the last moment xD Also! Thank you so much for reading the original AU, it makes me so glad you enjoyed it c:  

[gryffindormischief]

pedagogy chapter 4 - December

A/N: First update of my 12 days of AU!  Hope you like this chapter :)

Also on FF and Ao3!

_____

Lily’s third class of the day is somewhat less enthusiastic than expected given that the class is what she’d call “soft.” Although attendance was still mandatory, they’d already taken exams, so none of the information would really become vital until the new year. In deference to what are likely overtired, taxed young brains.

She can still teach and today is all about Muggle-style holidays. Monday, she’d asked each student to interview one of the muggleborn students she’d invited to participate for extra credit and her everlasting gratitude.

Plus, in Lily’s own experience, it would have been nice to have the opportunity to see her pureblooded peers as confused as she’d felt her first day at Beauxbatons.

Early on, it had been a little bit of a petty feeling. Now, it’s more about changing their perspective, helping them understand just how wide the world is. And maybe slightly petty.

Now, her fifth years are here and they half-assed the assignment, except for a handful including unsurprisingly Berry - perhaps the most Hufflepuff Hufflepuff to ever Hufflepuff. Smirking at the silliness of her thought and the very heavy influence of one James Potter on that thought process, Lily concludes her circuit of the classroom where productive discussion is allegedly taking place and returns to her place at the chalkboard.

Lily clears her throat and a few pause long enough to glance her way, but nowhere near her expectations so she grabs volume twenty-three of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from her desk and lets it fall to the floor with a loud smack .

It pains her a bit to abuse any book in such a way but ‘Energy Forces and their Effects’ through ‘History of Western Literature’ sacrifice a bit of dignity to salvage her class.

“Anyone have an answer?”

There’s a moment of hesitation and then finally little Kendall in the back sticks up his hand and looks like he might piss himself.

Lily does her best to smile encouragingly as she gestures to Kendall. “Yes?”

“Who is Rudolph?”

Jorgins snorts. “Jeopardy was last week you numpty.”

Berry shoves Jorgins so hard he nearly topples to the stone floor. “Don’t be an arsewipe.”

“ Anyway ,” Lily says, loud and clear over the rising din, “You are correct, Kendall. And I’m glad to see you’re recalling past lessons. Two points to Hufflepuff.”

Kendall grins and holiday trivia continues with slightly more excitement for the remainder of the hour.

After trivia day, Lily offers extra credit for students who volunteer to assist with preparations for Christmas at the school - without using their wands. Ornaments are carefully lifted from their wrappings and draped over bows sagging with garland and popcorn strings. Tiny cakes are baked without assistance from the house elves - who seem to fall on the spectrum between amused and gutted at the thought of not helping. And for those assisting less for credit and more for “please don’t send me to Filch” purposes, the entry hall does seem quite damp with melting snow and muggles do sweep without magic and live to tell the tale.

Overall, it’s festive and does make Lily a bit homesick, especially when the students have mostly cleared out and she’s left alone in the kitchens with one final Jiffy Pop package to munch by herself.

Or at least she assumes until a tall, dark, and bespectacled someone saunters into the kitchens and stops dead. “Why are you here?”

“I work here.”

“Kitchens?”

LIly rolls her eyes. “I figured my current activity,” she jiggles the little pan and gets a few satisfying snaps, “Would be fairly self explanatory.”

“No - it’s winter hols,” James says, blinking at her with a slight flush rising on his cheeks.

“Family - well it’s complicated and I figured I’d just stay here with the students who’re around. Keep Dumbledore in line while I’m at it.”

James laughs. “Once he’s dipped into the mulled wine and opened his crackers it’s open season.”

Lily lifts the popcorn from the hob and wanders over to one of the scrubbed clean tables, not looking back to confirm James following in her wake.

Nonetheless, he settles across from her at the table and waits while she carefully pulls at the bubbled out foil wrapping. “So are posh British wizards as afraid of the casual at home popcorn consumption as the posh muggles ?”

“Wouldn’t know - I’m not posh,” James says with a wink, tossing a piece sky high and catching it with what really shouldn’t be a surprising level of expertise. She can just imagine James, Sirius, Remus - even odd little Peter - lying about in their dorm room, tossing tiny food projectiles and catching them in their teeth. “D’you know how much better these are with chocolate?”

“Not posh? I’d like a moment for rebuttal Mr. ‘I Need My Mail Order Tea Leaves not the drivel of the masses.’

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to - that sneer spoke a thousand words,” Lily grabs a few popcorn for herself and crunches down, tossing a stray piece at James. Which of course, he catches. “So, what’re you doing for the holiday?”

“Heading home to mum and dad. We basically just eat for the entire week - pre holiday, Christmas Eve , and Christmas Day . Plus we’ve got leftovers of it all .” His smile is soft, eyes crinkled and distant as if he’s already picturing it.

“Sounds lovely,” Lily laughs, “And very - filling.”

“They spoil me a bit too,” James adds, “Though Sirius being around helps a bit.”

“Oh I can see that. Spoiled little James surrounded by piles of gifts and stuffing his little chubby face.”

“Chubby? I was and am a carefully honed athletic specimen.”

“Nothing wrong with it - bodies are for using not to fit some societally promoted stereotype - “

His hand finds hers - the one that’s not flailing wildly - and he pulls it down to the table. “Evans, I was teasing. No need to talk me out of a bad self-image,” his thumb brushes the back of her hand and Lily’s really trying to stay focused, “In fact I could probably use a couple of blows to my confidence.”

“Nah, you’re alright,” Lily teases, “Though I couldn’t imagine what you were like as an adolescent, taking your first little steps into the world of adulthood and romance on your shaky fawn legs.”

James blinks at her for a moment, then grabs one last handful of popcorn and rises. “If you get bored, write me, yeah? Me and the boys’ll come by or you could - ”

“Thanks, James,” Lily says as he flounders, “See you after the new year.”

He ruffles his hair and waves a little awkwardly. “See you, Evans.”

When the Hogwarts Express leaves Hogsmeade Station, Lily watches it, watches the trail of smoke disappear into the Scottish countryside. The air is chill and icy . Like nothing she ever felt at Beauxbatons, but it feels like Christmas .

Hogsmeade is fully decked out with garland, sparking fairy lights that twinkle without electricity, and as Lily wanders into the Three Broomsticks, Lily notes Rosmerta’s cheeky streak has come out in full force as charmed bundles of mistletoe float about the barroom.

The barroom which is full to brimming, just like the frothy butterbeer Lily grasps in her hand. Warmth runs through her as she takes a tentative sip and licks away the foam that lingers on her lip.

Rosie winks at her from her place across the bar, swiping away streaks and stains while orders fly in - both literally and figuratively. Every time someone uses the loo, cheerful little bobbing Saint Nicks burst into song, clashing with the carols already being sung with lyrics Lily’s fairly certain weren’t traditionally quite so bawdy.

It’s warm, comforting, to be surrounded by the holiday and lose herself in it. Though it’s mainly in the capacity of a casual viewer, Lily finds herself more in the spirit of the season by the time she’s travelled back to the castle and tramped up to her room.

The whole classroom decoration assignment they’d completed on the last day of classes had been a bit of a self service, if Lily’s honest. Sure, setting up as an average, Christmas celebrating muggle family would is a valid exercise to empathize and understand their culture. But it also gave Lily a little taste of the family holiday she’s craving more than she’d realized. Last Christmas, everything was still so fresh, she hadn’t even had time to properly mourn her parents, let alone realize how lonely it was to celebrate by herself. Not celebrating at all will do that.

Petunia’d offered a half-hearted invitation back in October, ‘if you really have nowhere to go’ and ‘feel the need to come up to occupy yourself’ - which might have been a cry for help. But at some point, Lily has to draw a line and she had. If Petunia wants her around, needs the family connection or friendship of a sister she used to love. Well she’s got to come out and say it rather than putting it all on Lily.

Which is the long, tragic backstory that led to Lily sipping eggnog - with a little something else - in oversized long johns, and a crooked fuzzy cap. When viewed from the outside, she’s sure doing so before ten in the morning seems like a bad life choice but she’s celebrating . Besides it can’t be that bad if she’s half dressed like St. Nick, right?

Her musings and casual perusal of old family albums she’d brought out in a mix of nostalgia and glumness are interrupted by a few sharp raps at her window. Raps she’s fairly certain, after enough years in the wizarding world, result from the beak of a determined feathered friend.

Carefully, she makes eye contact with the horned black owl, the bird’s own yellowy orbs widening as she opens her beak in what almost looks like a smile. The owl shuffles aside, claws clacking on the windowsill, and allows Lily to open half the glass before flitting inside.

“Well hello there, aren’t you gorgeous?” Lily purrs, giving the bird a gentle scratch between the ‘horns.’

She ruffles her feathers and shrinks her head back a little, as if embarrassed by the compliment.

Once Lily accepts the missive, she wanders toward her office to find owl treats and a letter opener, her new companion bouncing from place to place with a little clack as she follows.

The treats seem to satisfy Lily’s guest who cuddles up next to Circe comfortably, eyes drifting shut one, then the other.

Then Lily slides the sharp edge of the letter opener through the thick parchment envelope addressed to:

Professor Lily Evans

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Muggle Studies Classroom

And then the address gets quite messy, blotted, and water stained so it really is quite a testament to the delivery service that her temporary roommate found the correct location. Her correspondent is still a mystery, and it would seem the only way to solve it is full perusal of the letter, which Lily slips from the envelope and begins to read.

Lo Evans,

Hope all’s not too boring without the usual diverting company of me and the lads bouncing around the halls. Not to worry, we’ll be back soon enough to entertain the population. Sirius says we go home to spread our glorious gifts to more of the world. Mum smacked him and said he sounded like a prat. I personally need a few days without McGonagall’s ever-watchful eyes following me through the halls like she expects me to make something explode at any moment.

The owl’s mine by the way - Edwina. I say it’s because I’m a traditionalist who loves to recall times past and enjoy historical daydreams. Remus says it’s because I was and still am and odder bird than good ol’ Edwina. Regardless, she’s a good little thing and if you spoil her with treats she’ll love you forever.

I guess by now you’ve either tossed out this rambling thing or used your detective skills to at least narrow the possible authors to either Peter or myself. Which if you hadn’t guessed, I assume now you have, being clever as you are.

Anyway, just wanted to wish you a proper Happy Christmas. D’you know I think you were made for this season, Evans? That red hair with those green eyes, it’s like talking to a poinsettia named Lily. Great stuff.

Now Sirius has begun reading aloud over my shoulder and I need to turn him inside out from the belly button so I’ll say ta-ta -

Then, things get quite messy and scribbled except a slash of his signature at the bottom, a sharp, looping James .

The note makes her realize two things - first she has neglected to purchase gifts for the boys and second that she really is a bit lonely. So she dresses, downs a strong cup of tea, and heads for Hogsmeade.

Once she got it in her head to pick something up, it’s easy enough to decide. Honeydukes beckons from the far end of the high street and James was such a little - something about his oh so original chocolate popcorn combination. And since it seems the boys are all together, buying one overlarge family sampler should cover it.

Fresh snow begins falling on her walk back, soft flakes landing on her lashes and tickling her nose. Halfway there, with the castle looming dark and cheery with golden light spilling through the windows, Lily pauses and lets her head tip back. Her knit cap nearly slips off into the slush, as she opens her mouth and lets the flakes melt on her tongue. Christmas .

By the time she’s back in the castle, her cheeks are rosy with cold and laughter after racing Hagrid and Fang from the front gates. It’s only when she’s back in her rooms that Lily considers her impromptu run might have jostled her cargo.

Tentative, she jiggles the box and it sounds as though all’s well, so she sets about wrapping it with leftover paper from her classes and then there’s the card.

With looping letters, she writes James’ name and then a short note,

So the popcorn suits your posh refined tastes. Enjoy, boys!

Lily

P.S. if the chocolates are a bit shaken up, know it was in pursuit of ultimate victory over a certain half giant and his four-legged friend

After, the wait ‘til Christmas passes quickly and before Lily knows it, Boxing Day has come and gone and a new year is waiting in the wings.

McGonagall of all people invites her to join some of the faculty heading into Hogsmeade for New Years Eve celebrations and Lily accepts readily. They take the carriages down and though it’s still quite early yet, the village residents have already begun releasing fireworks into the inky night sky.

The evening has a buoyant feeling before she accepts a few celebratory ‘congrats on your first semester’ rounds and then she finds herself dancing with each professor in turn, from Flitwick to McGonagall to - James?

She’s just spun out of McGonagall’s arms - possibly the best dance partner she’s ever been lead by - and directly into the arms of James Potter.

He catches her easily enough as the music blares on around them. She feels someone give her a pointed shove and then they’re dancing, his arm on her waist, her hand in his, and the other itching to toy with his wild curls. Hells she’s had too much to drink.

Which is a lot to be thinking about while he’s grinning at her and apparently attempting to communicate.

Lily leans in close and shouts, “When did you get here?”

His hand at her waist tightens and his lips brush her ear as he answers, “The boys and I - who knew Hogsmeade got this wild?”

James swirls Lily away from him and she spins back into his chest, even closer than before and she really is in no condition to be this near to him. Apparently a bit of deprivation and an upped blood-alcohol level severely diminishes Lily’s James-related thoughts filter.

And he’s still grinning at her. It’s just too much.

Which is why the beginning of the countdown to midnight is either ill-timed or a godsend. 10...9... Though when James doesn’t really release her, just loosens their dance form to a more comfortable, cozy snuggling Lily comes down firmly in the ill-timed camp. 8...7… Because if it hits midnight and he’s this close and she’s this uninhibited. 6...5…

God those eyes and his warm arms and that stupid laugh. 4...3…

His hands are in hers and he’s leaned close, and preemptive noisemakers area already adding to the din. 2...1

[theshatteredrose]

Turquoise Lotus Father (Treasure Seekers Saga 2) - Chapter 6 - Etrian Odyssey 5 Fanfiction

AN: Slowly working my way through these chapters. They’re not difficult, but sinus problems have been making things difficult, if you know what I mean. Anyway, hope you enjoy reading~!

Ao3 | Wattpad | FFNet

Chapter 6:

Drayce was about to ascend the stairs when a light, almost awkward knock at the front doors pulled him to a stop. He immediately turned around and hurried to the door. The stained-glass panels did not allow him to see who was on the other side, but he had a small hope that he knew who stood on the front porch.

Sure enough, as he opened the door, he was face to face with two familiar figures. Salim stood with his arms folded across his bare chest, while Tokala stood next to him with his hands folded behind his back and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet.

“Hey, you came!” Drayce greeted the two with a smile. “I’m relieved.”

“Yeah, well, we…sorta owe you for yesterday,” Salim explained as he sheepishly scratched the back of his neck. “Tokala…was safe with you guys.”

Tokala’s energetic personality dimmed slightly, his ears folding against his head as he turned to give Salim a soft look. “Sal…”

Safe? And the look of apology from Tokala. That wasn’t the normal breed of protectiveness. Something must have happened to cause Salim to be suspicious of others. And for Tokala to feel the need to apologise, yet won’t say the words.

“Why don’t you come in?” Drayce offered as he opened the door further to allow them to step inside. “We just finished having breakfast, but we can whip something up for you if you haven’t eaten.”

Tokala soon plastered a smile to his lips as he moved first to step inside, with Salim close behind him. As they moved into the foyer, though, Tokala looked around in genuine surprise.

“Wow, this place is huge!”

“It looked big on the outside, but it’s bigger inside,” Salim commented as he looked around, too. “The hell?”

“I ask myself that every day,” Blayke said as he walked from the dining hall, no doubt lured out by the sound of new voices.

Salim immediately turned to give him a confused look. “Eh?”

“We haven’t even discovered all the nooks and crannies of this place yet,” Blayke explained as he folded his arms across his chest roughly, his expression in his usual scowl. “It’s like a labyrinth of its own.”

Drayce chuckled to himself and closed the door. “No monsters, though. Inside at least. The back garden is a little…uncharted right now.”

Tokala laughed good-naturedly as he walked around in awe. “This place sounds awesome! Right, Sal?”

“Yeah, it kinda does,” Salim muttered. He appeared rather stubborn and didn’t want to outright show he surprise.

But Drayce was fairly certain he knew how to win him over. “There’s a training room in the basement.”

“Aww, yes, sounds really awesome!” Salim immediately cheered, earning another laugh from Tokala.

Drayce had to have a laugh himself. They were an interesting pair. Tokala appeared cheerful and energetic. Very supportive of Salim. And in turn, Salim seemed single-minded and full of energy. Yet there was a sense of supportiveness in his actions, too. He wasn’t just protective of Tokala, he was determined to see him safe.

Prompted by the noise, the other members of his guild ventured out of the dining hall. Faelen spied Tokala and a bright smile appeared on his face and he hurried over to him. It seemed that there was something about Tokala that drew him to him. Perhaps it was the kinship between Therians?

“Tokala, you made it!” Faelen greeted happily.

“Yep!” Tokala returned just as cheerfully. “Said I would, didn’t I?”

“Ah, so we have company,” Ashton greeted politely as he cast a precautionary glance over their new guests.

Salim turned to regard him but did a double take. Even going as far as to reel his head back in surprise. “Eh? Are you a pugilist, too?” he blurted out.

Ashton arched an eyebrow. “Hm?”

Drayce felt confused by the question. Ashton as a pugilist? Sure, the guy was strong, but Drayce hadn’t seen him throw a punch at anyone. Never looked like he wanted to. Oh, sure, he had gotten frustrated with Drayce and his family’s work ethic, but he had never been angry.

“Huh? Ah, this is Ashton. He’s a scholar who works with my father. He’s also the guild dad.”

Salim frowned deeply. With a heavy dose of scepticism. “Just a scholar? Huh. You totally felt like a pugilist.”

Ashton regarded Salim with an unreadable expression on his face. He soon folded his arms across his chest, however, and smiled politely. “Flattering. But these muscles are from dragging around treasure hunters and archaeologists who are abysmal at taking care of themselves.”

“Ashton is really good at throwing Drayce over his shoulder,” Faelen added with a cheeky flourish of his tail.

Drayce spluttered and flushed. “Y-you saw that?!”

Faelen found great amusement in his reaction, it seemed.

Even Kamali had a soft chuckled before he introduced himself to their guests. “Hello. My name is Kamali. Faelen and Caelem have told me about you.”

“O-oh, it’s nice to meet you,” Tokala said in response, surprisingly shy or perhaps intimidated by Kamali. He was probably just embarrassed because Caelem and Faelen had gossiped about him or something.

Kamali suddenly tilted his head to the side as his brow furrowed lightly in concentration. “Hm? I detect a faint sense of mana.”

“Yeah? Where?” Drayce asked, though he had a feeling that he already knew the answer.

Kamali raised his hand in an attempt to narrow in on the source of mana. His hand soon moved toward the Therian before him. “On…Tokala.”

“H-huh?” Caelem was the one to react first. React with a sense of fear at that. “He’s not-?”

“No,” Kamali whirled around to give an anxious Caelem a reassuring look and word. “I don’t believe it was like…what happened with you.”

Caelem’s ears relaxed and he uttered a short, shaky sigh. “O-oh, that’s a relief.”

The trauma he had experienced when he was the vessel for the Moon Legacy still affected him. And he did not want anyone to go through what he had. Honestly, no one including Drayce himself did not wish for anyone to go through that pain again.

Tokala stared at Kamali with a subtly fearful expression on his face. His hands had reached up to the collar of his shirt and clutched the material tightly. “…It’s my necklace, isn’t it?” he asked, softly.

Kamali turned around to regard him again with a curious tilt of his head. “Necklace?”

So, Drayce was right. The necklace did have some significance. And was likely the core reason for Salim’s protectiveness. “That’s also the reason you’re in the labyrinth?”

“So, what if it is?” Salim immediately snapped defensively.

Tokala’s ears flatted sadly against the top of his head and he turned to give Salim that sad look, exactly like the one from before. “Sal…”

Drayce immediately attempt to pacify the protective pugilist. “Hey, no need to be defensive. We’re not a threat.” While he had been told not to go around discussing his resume, he felt it best in this situation. “I’m…a treasure hunter, also. If you’re looking for something, I can help. And…I may have already found it.”

That immediately gained Tokala’s attention. “What do you mean?”

Drayce paused for a bit as he thought about the best way to approve the situation. “Can you please show Caelem your necklace?”

“Huh?” Caelem blurted out in surprise and pointed toward himself. “Me?”

Tokala was equally confused. “Ah…ok,” he said after a moment of hesitancy. He reached beyond the collar of his shirt to reveal the red gem of his necklace and walked over to Caelem. With the chain still around his neck, he shakily showed the pendant to Caelem.

The moment Caleme saw the pendant, he stiffened. His ears perked straight up atop of his head and his tail bristled. “That’s-! Th-that lotus. It is the same as the symbol of my village!” he half stuttered, half yell.

Caelem’s reaction rightfully startled Tokala and he took a half step back in surprise. “Y-your village?”

“The village of the Turquoise Lotus Father,” Caelem explained, calmer this time.

A faraway look appeared in Tokala’s eyes. “Turquoise Lotus…?”

Caelem whipped around to face Drayce excitedly. “W-wait, Drayce, that pendent-”

“Yeah,” Drayce replied with a nod of his head. “I think it’s what we need to open that treasure box.”

“I’ll go get brother,” Kamali said before he turned on his heel and rushed up the stairs. His brother was likely to be in the library. His usual residence, it seemed.

“Let’s wait in the seating room,” Drayce suggested in an attempt to calm Tokala’s anxiety.

Tokala was understandably nervous as he clutched his red lotus pendant in both hands. But nodded his head, his curiosity of the mentioned treasure chest and whether his necklace was indeed vital to opening of said chest.

Drayce kept close to Tokala in order to give him some reassurance as Ashton and Blayke attempted to placate Salim’s protectiveness.

Not long after everyone who was curious gathered into the seating room, Shashi appeared with Kamali behind him. In Kamali’s hands rested the wooden chest.

As Shashi’s gaze landed on Tokala, Kamali placed the chest upon a table close by. “So, you’re the one I had sensed.”

Tokala was startled once again, the poor guy. “H-huh?”

“This is Shashi,” Drayce introduced. “He’s a scholar and sigil specialist. He’s been inspecting that chest I told you about.”

“May I see the necklace?” Shashi requested. As Tokala unfurled his hands around the pendant, Shashi leaned forward to visibly inspect the piece of jewellery. “This mana is similar to the one that the chest has been emitting.”

“Only one way to really prove it,” Drayce said as he guided the nervous Therian over to the table. He then motioned toward the small lotus shaped indentation that resided in the very centre of the wooden lid. “Tokala, when you’re ready, please place your pendent here.”

Tokala took a moment to study the treasure chest. “This…looks the same,” he murmured.

He reached around to the back of his neck to unlock the chain. With the chain free, he held the red pendent with his fingers. And though he was hesitant, worried about any possible reactions, he slowly and carefully placed the jewel within the indentation.

It clicked into place. Pressing in like a button.

A pulsing red light suddenly radiated out from where the pendent rested and spread out like a spiderweb along the wooden treasure chest. The ruby-red light pulsated for two heartbeats before dissipating as quickly as it had appeared.

The unexpected reaction caused Tokala to jump back a step. “It…s-something happened.”

Drayce pushed forward to lay his hands upon the wooden lid of the box. As he touched it, he immediately felt lighter than it did previously. That meant; “It’s been unlocked.”

Caelem immediately huddled against Drayce’s back. “W-what’s inside?”

Good question. Time to find out!

Being careful, Drayce lifted the lid and placed it upon the table next to the chest. Inside was a folded piece of parchment. Quite old, it seemed. Frayed and yellow around the edges. That piece of paper was all that the small chest contained. Other than a piece of green velvet lying the bottom.

“Hmm,” Drayce murmured as he carefully unfolded the parchment.

“What’s that?” Tokala asked as he also huddle close.

Instead of written words upon the parchment, there were just lines. A gridded system. “It seems to be…a riddle of some kind? No. It actually looks more like a map. But without any sketches or markings.”

“I sense more mana,” Shashi stated as he pushed his way through the small group to lay eyes on the parchment.

“Ah, could this be similar to that of the Moon Legacy?” Drayce mused.

Shashi kept his gaze upon the parchment as he held his chin in thought. “Invisible to the naked eye? Perhaps.”

Drayce handed the parchment over to Shashi to inspect further as he was indeed the expert in that area. If Drayce can’t see anything other than the gridded system, then he wasn’t of any use.

“Is this…connected to Caelem’s village?” Tokala questioned in a quiet voice.

Caelem turned to him and slowly nodded his head. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but that lotus crest is the one that adorns the altar in my village.”

Tokala’s gaze travelled down to the floor and a passive expression appeared on his face. “I could…be from there? So maybe I wasn’t abandoned…”

Drayce paused when he heard Tokala’s soft voice and Caelem’s ears perked up, having heard him, too. “Abandoned?” he repeated.

Tokala tensed, as if he realised that he had said those words aloud. His ears deflated slightly and his shoulders hunched forward. “Oh, I was…” he sighed and looked down toward the floor. “I was found wandering outside of an Earthlain village when I was a baby and Salim’s family took me in. We were raised together. But this necklace…”

He glanced over to the treasure chest where his necklace rested with the wooden lid. “I’ve always had it,” he continued. “They said that I had it tied around my neck when I was just a child. I don’t know what it means, but…I thought that it might lead me to my birth parents. Or something.”

Wow. Drayce hadn’t any idea. He immediately wanted to help him, though. Sure, he wanted to help him before but he was more determined now.

“My village raises masuraos,” Caelem explained. “Whenever someone reaches the age of seventeen, they are encouraged to leave the village and set out on a journey to become their own masurao warrior.”

Salim finally pushed his way from Ashton and Blayke and immediately glued himself to Tokala’s side. Tokala granted him a smile that was both of relief, and reassurance. “Is that so? You think someone could have taken Tokala with em?”

Caelem stilled as he pondered that possibility. “It’s…possible that someone, an older sibling perhaps, took Tokala with them when they set out on their journey. That isn’t unheard of, especially if there was no family left to take care of their younger sibling.”

“I see…”

That offered a small ounce of hope, and yet that led to the possibility that something had happened to said older sibling. If they existed.

“The labyrinth?” Kamali asked as he approached Tokala. “What brings you there?”

“There’s something written on the back of the pendent,” Tokala enlightened as he motioned toward the red jewelled necklace. “It just says Yggdrasil. So…”

Ah, that made sense.

“The Turquoise Lotus Father was believed to have fought in the Legendary War,” Caelem explained readily. “So, it makes sense that the pendent would lead to the labyrinth.”

“So Tokala could really be from Caelem’s village,” Faelen summarized for everyone and turned to give Tokala a comforting smile. “That’s amazing.”

Tokala glanced over at Faelen before he shyly looked over at Caelem. His gaze quickly shifted to the floor in front of him. A small smile soon appeared on his lips. “It…is.”

Drayce sincerely hoped that he was. The knowledge that he was part of a community would ease some of his concerns. Not all of them, however. But maybe help him feel that he wasn’t abandoned.

What really happened, though, they didn’t know. And in all honesty, they may never know. That may not be satisfactory for Tokala. Unfortunately, unless his possible sibling or other participant stepped forward with their words, finding the truth themselves would be extremely difficult.

“So, this treasure chest and potential map has strong connection to this Turquoise Lotus Father,” Shashi mused as he carefully folded the potential map and placed it back within the chest. However, he did not replace the lid, instead keeping it in one hand. “Best to start with gathering information on them, then.”

Ashton just had to utter a sigh as he folded his arms across his chest. “So back to the library then. Might as well put a bed in there.”

Blayke snorted. “It still wouldn’t be used.”

That brought a half smile to Ashton’s lips. “Ah, very true,” he said before he turned to follow Shashi and Kamali as they both made their way to the stairs and eventually to the library.

“Um, can I see the library?” Tokala requested.

“Of course, you can,” Drayce immediately replied. He had nothing to hide up there, after all. “It’s on the third floor. Fae, Cal, why don’t you show him?”

“Sure,” Faelen immediately agreed and took a hold of Tokala’s wrist. “This way, Tokala. We’ve got a lot of stairs to climb.”

“Kay,” Tokala smiled before he turned to regard Salim with a peculiar look. A silently questioning one. “Ah, Sal?”

Salim blinked, as if pulled from his thoughts. “Eh? Nah, don’t mind me,” he said as he made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go on. I’ll find you there later.”

“Ok.” That cheerful smile of Tokala’s made a swift comeback. However, this one held a more grateful tinge to it. “Thanks, Sal.”

Salim folded his arms behind his head. “Nah, forget it.” He sounded dismissive, nonchalant. Yet it was easy to tell that while Salim was still protective, he was supportive as well. And if Tokala wanted to visit the library, he wasn’t going to stop him.

Though, Drayce got the feeling that should Tokala held the most subtle of reluctance, Salim would step up and put up a fight. Verbal or physical.

With Faelen leading Tokala out of the seating room and Caelem close behind the two, Salim watched until he was certain they were out of sight and out of hearing range. After he was satisfied, he lowered his arms from behind his head and turned toward Drayce with a rather…serious expression on his face.

“Hey.”

Drayce regarded him with curiosity. “Hm? What’s up?”

“Tokala is…” Salim hesitated as he attempted to find the right words. “Is safe here, right?”

There it was again. Safe. Tokala’s safety was extremely important to Salim. Perhaps the most important thing to him. It made Drayce curious as to why. Though, the fact that Salim was protective made Drayce’s own protective heckles bristle.

There was always a reason for someone to be so concerned for someone’s safety.

“Yeah, he is.”

“Faelen and Caelem had told him about how you helped them out, too,” Salim continued, eyeing Drayce off curiously. “Rescuing others is your thing, huh?”

Drayce scratched his cheek with his index finger. “Seems that way, doesn’t it?” He dropped his hand to his side and returned Salim’s pointed gaze with interest. “So…you’re very protective of Tokala. That’s really obvious. Did…something happen?”

Salim’s expression darkened considerably. “That necklace…has caught a few people’s attentions before,” he muttered, his tone as dark as his expression. That soon smoothed out, however, and a satisfying and cocky smirk. “Took care of them, though. Hah, never saw my thunderfist coming!”

“Good.”

Apparently, Drayce sounded protective himself as he caused the smirk on Salim’s lip to turn into a sincere smile. “So, Tokala is…really safe here. That’s good.”

Drayce was relieved that he managed to gain his trust.

“You want to stay the night?” Drayce offered. After hearing what Salim had to say, he was genuinely worried for the both of them. Sure, Salim could protect the both of them. But he couldn’t be on guard all the time.

“There’s plenty of room. Tokala is likely to be up for hours in the library, anyway.”

Salim just looked at him for a few seconds. “…Yeah, alright,” he answered before he muttered something under his breath. Likely talking more to himself than to Drayce. “…odd guy, huh?”

Drayce didn’t quite hear everything he said. But he did hear something about someone being odd. Was he talking about him? “Huh?”

“Ah, nothing,” Salim quickly dismissed as he folded his arms casually behind his head and began to move. “Just going to check on Tokala. Later.”

Drayce didn’t press him. He simply nodded his head and let the pugilist go on his way. The library was easy to find so he was certain that Salim didn’t need someone to show him the way.

He would need someone to set a room up for them. They’d likely share out of sheer habit.

Blayke approached him and pulled him from his thoughts. “What should the rest of us do?” he asked, subtly edgy.

“I guess we won’t be heading into the labyrinth today,” Drayce replied, though he himself felt edgy, too. The need to do something to help in somewhere was always there. Especially now that they had a possible lead to go on.

“Not yet, anyway,” he continued. “I’m…going to head up to the drawing room. I haven’t fully inspected that room yet, but that parchment kinda reminded me of a map so maybe there’s something of interest in there.”

Blayke nodded his head. “I might snatch Nashoba and go for a walk around the perimeter. Just in case.”

“Sure.”

That should ease some of his tension. Hopefully, there was nothing untoward out there. Drayce still remembered that feeling of being watched while in the labyrinth.

He hoped he was, that the both of them where just being paranoid.

“Should we tell Ramus about any of this yet?” Blayke suddenly asked.

Drayce glanced up at the ceiling in thought. The little prince would be interested in their latest find, but he didn’t have much to offer him at current. “Let’s leave it for the day. I want a little more information.”

Again, Blayke nodded his head. “Sounds reasonable,” he said before he moved to leave the room. “I’ll catch you later.”

“Yeah.”

[lowcarbnutrients]

Why 80% of Us Are Deficient In Magnesium

Magnesium shortage is typically misdiagnosed because it does not prove to up in blood examinations - only 1% of the body's magnesium is stored in the blood.

Most physicians as well as labs do not even include magnesium condition in regular blood tests. Hence, the majority of doctors don't recognize when their clients lack magnesium, despite the fact that research studies prove to that the majority of Americans are deficient in magnesium.

Consider Dr. Norman Shealy's statements, 'Every well-known ailment is related to a magnesium deficiency' which, 'magnesium is one of the most essential mineral required for electric stability of every cell in the body. A magnesium deficiency could be accountable for even more illness compared to other nutrient.' The fact he mentions subjects a gapping hole in modern-day medication that discusses a good offer about iatrogenic death and condition. Since magnesium shortage is mostly forgotten, millions of Americans endure unnecessarily or are having their signs alleviated with pricey medications when they could be cured with magnesium supplementation.

One has to recognize the indicators of magnesium thirst or cravings by themselves because allopathic medicine is shed here. It is truly something a lot more subtle then appetite or thirst however it is equivalent. In a globe though where physicians and people alike do not even focus on thirst and crucial concerns of hydration, it is not hopeful that we will certainly find several acknowledging as well as paying focus to magnesium thirst and also appetite, which is a significant way of sharing the idea of magnesium deficiency.

Few individuals understand the enormous role magnesium plays in our bodies. Magnesium is without a doubt one of the most crucial mineral in the body. After oxygen, water, and also standard food, magnesium might be the most essential component required by our bodies, critically important, yet barely recognized. It is more crucial than calcium, potassium or salt and also controls all three of them. Millions endure daily from magnesium shortage without also understanding it.

In truth, there takes place to be a connection in between just what we perceive as thirst and shortages in electrolytes. I remember an individual asking, 'Why am I dried out as well as parched when I consume alcohol a lot water?' Thirst can imply not only lack of water yet it could additionally imply that a person is not obtaining adequate nutrients as well as electrolytes. Magnesium, Potassium, Bicarbonate, Chloride as well as Salt are some principle instances and also that is one of the factors magnesium chloride is so useful.

You know all those years, when physicians recruited to inform their individuals 'its done in your heads,' were years the clinical profession was showing its ignorance. It is a torment to be magnesium lacking on one degree or one more. Also if it's for the passionate sport individual whose sports performance is down, magnesium deficiency will certainly interrupt rest and background tension levels and also a host of various other things that mirror on the lifestyle. Medical professionals have not been using the suitable test for magnesium - their lotion blood examinations just distort their understandings. Magnesium has actually been off their radar displays through the years that magnesium shortages have snowballed.

Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency

The first signs of shortage could be subtle - as a lot of magnesium is saved in the cells, leg aches, foot pain, or muscular tissue 'twitches' can be the initial indicator. Various other very early indications of shortage consist of anorexia nervosa, nausea, throwing up, fatigue, and weakness. As magnesium deficiency worsens, numbness, tingling, seizures, personality adjustments, unusual heart rhythms, as well as coronary convulsions could occur.

A full overview of magnesium shortage was perfectly provided in a recent post by Dr. Sidney Baker. 'Magnesium shortage can affect practically every body organ system of the body. With respect to skeletal muscle mass, one could experience twitches, pains, muscle mass stress, muscle pain, consisting of back aches, neck discomfort, stress migraines as well as jaw joint (or TMJ) dysfunction. Also, one may experience chest tightness or a strange sensation that he can't take a deep breath. Occasionally an individual might sigh a lot.'

' Signs and symptoms including damaged contraction of smooth muscle mass consist of constipation, urinary system spasms, menstruation cramps, difficulty swallowing or a lump in the throat-especially provoked by eating sugar, photophobia, particularly trouble adapting to oncoming brilliant headlights in the absence of eye illness, and loud sound sensitivity from stapedius muscle tension in the ear.'

' Various other signs and symptoms as well as indications of magnesium deficiency and also review laboratory screening for this common condition. Continuing with the signs of magnesium deficiency, the central nerve system is substantially impacted. Signs include sleeplessness, anxiety, attention deficit disorder as well as uneasyness with consistent movement, anxiety attack, agoraphobia, and premenstrual impatience. Magnesium shortage signs and symptoms involving the outer worried system include numbness, prickling, as well as other irregular experiences, such as zips, zaps as well as vibratory sensations.'

' Signs or indicators of the cardio system consist of palpitations, heart arrhythmias, as well as angina because of convulsions of the coronary arteries,  high blood pressure and mitral valve prolapse. Be mindful that not all of the signs and symptoms have to exist to presume magnesium shortage, however, a lot of them often happen with each other. As an example, individuals with mitral valve prolapse often have palpitations, stress and anxiety, panic assaults and premenstrual symptoms. People with magnesium deficiency typically seem to be 'high-strung.' Various other basic symptoms include a salt yearning, both carbohydrate desire and carbohydrate intolerance, specifically of chocolate, and breast tenderness.'

Magnesium is required by every cell in the body including those of the brain. It is among the most vital minerals when thinking about supplements due to the fact that of its crucial part in numerous enzyme systems as well as functions associated with reactions in cell metabolic rate, in addition to being necessary for the synthesis of proteins, for the application of fats as well as carbohydrates. Magnesium is required not only for the production of specific detoxing enzymes yet is additionally important for energy manufacturing associated to cell cleansing. A magnesium deficiency could impact basically every system of the body.

Like water we require magnesium everyday. There is an eternal requirement for magnesium in addition to water when magnesium exists in water life as well as health and wellness are enhanced.

One of the concept reason medical professionals write millions of prescriptions for tranquilizers every year is the uneasiness, irritability, and jitters largely caused by inadequate diet regimens doing not have magnesium. Persons only somewhat lacking in magnesium become cranky, highly-strung, and conscious noise, hyper-excitable, concerned and also hostile. If the deficiency is more extreme or extended, they may create twitching, tremblings, irregular pulse, sleeping disorders, muscular tissue weakness, jerkiness as well as leg and foot cramps.

If magnesium is significantly deficient, the brain is particularly influenced. reasoning, confusion, disorientation, significant clinical depression as well as the distressing hallucinations of ecstasy tremens are largely induced by an absence of this nutrient and corrected when magnesium is provided. Since huge quantities of calcium are lost in the urine when magnesium is under provided, the lack of this nutrient indirectly ends up being accountable for much rampant dental caries, bad bone development, osteoporosis and sluggish recovery of damaged bones and also cracks. With vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), magnesium assists to minimize and also dissolve calcium phosphate kidney stones.

Magnesium shortage may be an usual element related to insulin resistance. Symptoms of MS that are additionally signs of magnesium shortage consist of muscular tissue spasms, weak point, twitching, muscular tissue atrophy, an inability to manage the bladder, nystagmus (rapid-eye-movement sleep), hearing loss, and osteoporosis. People with MS have higher prices of epilepsy compared to controls. Epilepsy has actually additionally been connected to magnesium shortages. [1]

Another excellent list of early caution symptoms symptomatic of magnesium insufficiency:

Physical and mental fatigue

Persistent under-eye twitch

Tension in the top back, shoulders as well as neck

Headaches

Pre-menstrual liquid retention and/or breast tenderness

Possible manifestations of magnesium deficiency consist of:

Low energy

Fatigue

Weakness

Confusion

Nervousness

Anxiousness

Irritability

Seizures (and tantrums)

Poor digestion

PMS and hormonal imbalances

Inability to sleep

Muscle stress, spasm as well as cramps

Calcification of organs

Weakening of the bones

Abnormal heart rhythm

Severe magnesium deficiency could cause reduced levels of calcium in the blood (hypocalcemia). Magnesium deficiency is additionally related to reduced degrees of potassium in the blood (hypokalemia). Magnesium degrees go down during the night, causing inadequate REM (Rapid-eye-movement sleep) rest cycles and unrefreshed sleep. Frustrations, blurred vision, mouth ulcers, exhaustion and anxiety are also very early indications of depletion.

We listen to constantly about how heart illness is the number one health crisis in the country, about exactly how hypertension is the 'silent deadly', and concerning exactly how ever before raising varieties of our residents are having their lives and the lives of their families ruined by diabetic issues, Alzheimer's disease, as well as a host of various other persistent diseases.

Signs of serious magnesium deficiency consist of:

Extreme thirst

Extreme hunger

Frequent urination

Sores or swellings that recover slowly

Dry, itchy skin

Unexplained weight loss

Blurry vision that changes from day to day

Unusual exhaustion or drowsiness

Tingling or pins and needles in the hands or feet

Frequent or recurring skin, gum tissue, bladder or vaginal yeast infections

But wait a min, typically aren't those the same signs and symptoms for diabetes mellitus? Lots of people have diabetes for concerning 5 years before they prove to solid symptoms. By that time, some people already have eye, kidney, gum tissue or nerve damage created by the weakening problem of their cells because of insulin resistance as well as magnesium shortage. Dump some mercury and also arsenic on the combination of etiologies and pronto we have the disease problem we call diabetes.

Magnesium deficiency is associated with diabetes mellitus and goes to the origin of lots of otherwise all cardiovascular problems.

Magnesium shortage is a forecaster of diabetes and also cardiovascular disease both, diabetics both need even more magnesium and also lose even more magnesium than most people. In 2 brand-new studies, in both males and females, those that ate the most magnesium in their diet regimen were least most likely to create type 2 diabetic issues, according to a report in the January 2006 issue of the journal Diabetes Care. Until now, few big studies have straight analyzed the long-lasting impacts of dietary magnesium on diabetic issues. Dr. Simin Liu of the Harvard Medical School and College of Public Wellness in Boston claims, 'Our research studies offered some straight evidence that higher intake of nutritional magnesium might have a long-lasting safety effect on reducing danger,' said Liu, that was associated with both studies.

The thirst of diabetic issues is component of the body's feedback to excessive urination. The extreme urination is the body's effort to obtain eliminate the additional glucose in the blood. This excessive peeing causes the enhanced thirst. But we have to look at just what is creating this level of disharmony. We need to probe deeper into layers of reason. The body needs to unload sugar since of enhancing insulin resistance which resistance is being fueled straight by magnesium deficiency, that makes poisonous insults more damaging to the cells at the same time.

When diabetics obtain too high blood sugar level, the body produces 'ketones' as a spin-off of breaking down fats. These ketones trigger blood level of acidity which causes 'acidosis' of the blood, bring about Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA), This is an extremely dangerous condition that can bring about coma and also death. It is also called 'diabetic acidosis', 'ketosis', 'ketoacidosis' or 'diabetic coma'. DKA is a typical means for new Type 1 diabetics to be identified. If they fail to look for clinical advice on signs like urination, which is driving thirst they can pass away of DKA.

Oral magnesium supplements minimize erythrocyte [2] dehydration. [3] As a whole, optimal equilibriums of electrolytes are essential to keep the best feasible hydration. Diabetic thirst is initiated especially by magnesium shortage with family member calcium excess in the cells. Also water, our the majority of fundamental nutrient begins having a difficult time entering the cells with even more heading out via the kidneys.

Autism as well as Magnesium Deficiency

When dealing with autism spectrum and various other neurological disorders in children it is crucial to recognize the indications of reduced magnesium: troubled, cannot maintain still, body shaking, grinding teeth, hiccups, noise delicate, poor focus period, inadequate focus, irritable, hostile, prepared to take off, effortlessly worried. When it pertains to youngsters today we have to presume a big magnesium shortage for a number of reasons.

1) The foods they are consuming are removed of magnesium since foods generally, as we shall see below are declining in mineral material in an alarming way.

2) The foods lots of youngsters consume are very refined fast food that do not provide actual nutrition to the body.

3) Since a lot of children on the spectrum are not absorbing the minerals they require also when existing in the gut. Magnesium absorption is dependent on intestinal tract health, which is endangered completely in dripping digestive tract disorders and also other intestinal tract issues that most of autism syndrome disorders.

4) Due to the fact that the dental supplements medical professionals count on are not quickly taken in, since they are not in the best kind as well as because magnesium in general is not provided conveniently orally.

Modern medication is expected to assist individuals not hurt them, but with their nearly total ignorance of magnesium physicians end up hurting even more than they assist for a number of the clinical treatments drive down magnesium levels when they ought to be driving them up. Numerous otherwise most pharmaceutical medicines drive magnesium degrees right into extremely dangerous zones and also surgical procedure done without raising magnesium degrees is a lot more dangerous then surgical procedure done with.

The foundation of clinical arrogance is actually clinical ignorance and also the only factor lack of knowledge and also conceit regulation the playing area of medicine is a greed longing for power and money. Human nature appears to be at its worst in modern-day medicine when it ought to go to its ideal. It is sad that individuals have to suffer needlessly and astonishingly tragic that allopathic medicine has actually turned its back on the Hippocratic Oath and also all that it means.

[the-real-xmonster]

The Takeoff: Loop

Yes, it is here, girls and guys, the next part in my takeoff analysis series *throws confetti*

In case you are a new visitor to this blog and have no idea what I’m talking about. The quick rundown is that, once upon a time, a trillion years ago, I decided to initiate a series of discussion on takeoff technique, focusing on the differences among the top skaters, their strengths and weaknesses, that sort of things. I got as far as talking about the three toe jumps, and half a trillion years after that, about the Axel, and I’ve been procrastinating ever since (I am very sorry...)

So, today, finally, finally, let us talk about the loop jump, which is also known as the Rittberger in Europe, after its inventor Werner Rittberger.

The loop is an edge jump and its special feature is that it’s taken off and landed on the same foot and edge. A skater who rotates counterclockwise would use their right back outside edge for this jump and a skater who rotates clockwise would use only their left back outside edge. To avoid confusion, as usual, throughout this post I will mostly talk about the more popular counterclockwise direction. For the opposite type, just remember that the skater’s left and right are reverse.

The loop is different from its cousin, the toe loop, in that it must be taken off with no assist from the free foot. In a toe loop takeoff, the skater’s weight is supported by both their edge and their toe pick, whereas for a loop takeoff, their full weight is borne by the skating foot only. The force for the takeoff in a loop must be generated entirely by their right side: edge, knee, and hip. Because the jump is landed on the same edge, the stress on a skater’s right hip is doubled and this is why the loop jump is quite a dangerous move and is known to increase the risk of hip injury, especially when practiced frequently in combination.

Standard Technique

As demonstrated by Javier and Carolina above, the triple loop is taken off from a deep outside edge on the skating foot. The free foot is placed very lightly on the ice at either an inside edge (Javi), or a flat to slight outside lean (Caro). Immediately before the takeoff, the skater will bring the shoulder of their free side (left for Javi, right for Caro) inward, opposite the rotational direction. Together with this motion, the skater will get their skating knee into a deep bend, resulting in their body assuming an almost seated position before takeoff, a feature which you will not see in any of the other jump types. The push-off from the knee bend creates the jumping energy which propels the skater into the air, and the release of their shoulder from its inward twist is what allows them to rotate instead of simply shooting up in a straight line.

Now, because of its mechanics, the loop takeoff is one which comes with an inherent degree of pre-rotation. Have another look at Javi and Caro above and notice how both of them performed a sweeping motion with their takeoff edge before launching into the air, which means that their edge traced an on-ice arc of roughly 90 degrees for Javi and 120 degrees for Caro. That motion is absolutely vital in creating the momentum for the takeoff. Without that angle and that pre-rotation, the twist in their upper body alone would not be enough to kick start the rotational phase.

However, that pre-rotation can and should be controlled so that it does not exceed 180 degrees. One, because PR of 180 degrees and beyond means a cheated takeoff and, if the technical panel does their job properly, such error will cause the jump to be downgraded. Two, because excessive PR in a loop will swing the skater’s free side too wide open and makes it harder for them to bring their legs into a tightly crossed position, which will slow down their rotation and make their loop both smaller and more prone to under-rotation. See the case of Satoko below for an example:

The way to control the PR in a loop jump is demonstrated by Javi above: by making sure that (1) your upper and lower body move together (notice how Satton swung her upper body way before she pushed with her right leg?) and (2) the push-off is contained in your edge instead of spreading to your toe pick (notice how, compared Javi, both Caro and Satton pointed their toe down more and let the tip of their blade rotate on ice for a fraction of a second longer? It’s basically the reverse error of a full-blade takeoff for a toe jump.)

How To Do a Triple Loop in Combination

A triple loop as the second jump in a combination is one of the most challenging things in figure skating. In order to perform this feat, the skater must first alter the landing position of the first jump so that their free leg is kept in front instead of swinging backward into the usual check position and then, from that precarious position, they must maintain their balance, deepen their landing edge, and push off the ice immediately without putting their free foot down. This is an example by, of course, Alina:

The key to a triple loop in combination is the balance: it is crucial that, after landing the first jump, the skater can maintain their weight on their right foot long enough to prepare for the push-off of the loop. This balancing act has to be done entirely on one foot without any stabilizing help from their free leg. In fact, the free leg placed in front will further skew the skater’s center of gravity and make it even harder for them to keep their balance. This is the main reason why, historically and currently, you always see more ladies attempting a triple loop combo in competition: women are born with a superior sense of balance compared to the men.

Needs more evidence? One of the very few men on the circuit who can perform a decent triple loop in combination is Adam Rippon, a skater who is known for his layback spin, a technique which also requires an excellent sense of balance, and is almost exclusively performed by the ladies:

Even with the right balancing skill, it is still incredibly hard to get your loop off the ice in this setup. In both Alina and Adam’s cases, you will see them having to resort to letting their right edge pre-rotate more than usual, just to generate enough force for the takeoff. In fact, since Alina has a habit of taking off for her Lutz with a full blade, her Lutz and loop takeoffs are nearly identical, only she needs to pre-rotate her loop more because in that jump her left foot provides her no support:

How To Do a Quad Loop

The secret of Yuzuru’s quad loop seems to be in 3 key points: (1) a much deeper right outside takeoff edge: compare the angle of his body before takeoff with what you see in all the triple loops above (2) a more pronounced twist of his left shoulder: see how his left arm is drawn all the way inside the takeoff circle, and (3) the placement of his free foot at an outside edge that is much deeper than in the standard technique, which serves as a momentary but highly important counter-balance and stabilizer. Because his right outside edge is so deep and his center of gravity so low, his body is twisted like a rope before takeoff. The sudden release of this energy, facilitated by the complete unison of his body movement, is how he boosts his rotational speed to the point he can complete his 3.75 rotations in the air (not a full 4 revolutions because his push-off is at a 90 degrees angle).

When Yuzu does a triple loop, his body is a lot looser before takeoff and his edges (both on his skating foot and his free foot) are shallower:

Out of all the skaters who have tried a quad loop in competition, Boyang and Nathan take off for their jumps following almost exactly the same method:

See those deep edges on both of Boyang’s feet? The only difference from Yuzu’s, which might explain why he couldn’t fully rotate this jump, was that his left shoulder was not drawn deep enough into the takeoff circle.

Here’s Nathan’s much more successful attempt, which followed the Yuzu recipe to a T: deep edges on both feet and a pronounced twist in the upper body:

(I am very very sorry for the crappy quality of this gif *cries*)

Shoma is the only exception to this case: his free foot is placed on the ice at an inside edge and his upper body relatively loose.

However, because Shoma’s loop takeoff is done with excessive pre-rotation (the example I chose was one of his better attempts so it’s not that much over 180 degrees, but you can still see how compared to Yuzu, Boyang, and Nathan, his takeoff was clearly more to the forward side), his free side is swung way too wide (wider than even Satoko’s loop) and for the first two revolutions, his rotation is done with his legs crossed at the knees instead of at the ankles. This significantly affects the height of his quad loop, increases the risk of under-rotation, and can often also throw off his axis - which is the reason why when Shoma falls on a quad loop it’s invariably a horrible fall with twisted ankle and his body smashing into the ice (check out his attempts at the OG and at WC this year. I can’t gif those because they’re too painful to look at.)

Now, because of the pure edge takeoff with no assist and the inherent pre-rotation, the loop is a jump which doesn’t lend itself to a lot of height. See this side-by-side of Yuzu’s quad loop and quad Salchow and notice how on the Salchow he’s got significantly more elevation. I’ve marked and slow-mo-ed his last revolutions to show how much sooner he finished his rotations and how much more relaxed he was on the landing of the Salchow:

This effect can be seen in triples as well, here are Kaori’s triple flip and triple loop side-by-side. Look how much higher her feet were off the ice at the apex of the flip compared to the loop:

Unlike in a toe loop, Salchow, flip, or Lutz, the force for the vertical takeoff in a loop originates only from your right foot, so there’s not much you can do to improve its ice coverage and gain yourself extra flight time. In order to get from triple to quad with a loop, the main thing you have to rely on is only an increase in rotational speed, using the depth of your edge and the efficiency of your air position. This, IMO, is why it is much more difficult to perform the loop in its quadruple version compared to all the other jump types (except the Axel), why among all the quads, the loop was the latest jump to be landed in competition, and why, even now on the current circuit, the number of men attempting it is extremely limited.

Bonus: About the Half Loop

The half loop, or the Euler, is, contrary to its name, a jump with a full 360 degrees of rotation. The difference between an Euler and a single loop is the landing: the Euler is landed on the left back inside edge. Because of this feature, it can be used as the bridge in a jump combo. Remember than in order for a series of jumps to qualify as a combination, the takeoff foot of the subsequent jump must be the landing foot of the jump preceding it. When a jump is landed the normal way, on a right back outside edge, only a toe loop or a loop could realistically be performed next to make use of that edge. The left back inside landing edge of an Euler allows the possibility of following up with a flip or a Salchow, demonstrated below by Yuzu and Shoma:

Now the main reason why I pick these two combos as examples is because I want to show you guys that there are two different Euler techniques, which are more or less equally popular. The first type is what Yuzu does, where the skater keeps the toe of their right leg pointing upward for a large part of the turn, which results in an open body position and a relatively low jump. The second type is Shoma’s technique, where the skater aims the toe of their right leg downward, which results in more twist in the upper body and a much more pronounced hop. Nathan and Javi are in the same group as Yuzu, as are Mikhail Kolyada, Jason Brown, Karen Chen. Boyang and Caro are in Shoma’s group, as are Maria Sotskova, Anna Pogorilaya, Dmitri Aliev, to name just a few.

The ISU doesn’t specify which technique is preferable, and the choice doesn’t depend on whether the skater will do a Salchow or a flip as the subsequent jump, so this is really just a fun fact to know :) I thought I’d point it out because I’ve received a couple of asks on why the half loop looks different depending on which skater is performing it.

*wheeze* So that’s 5/6 jumps done now *wheeze* Thank y’all as always for putting up with my monstrous text posts and I promise to take less than half a trillion years to produce the final post on the Salchow.

[poppyknitt]

ERROR 404- A JSE Egos fanfic: Winter Holidays special pt. 1

Recap: Our Marvin has finally returned from the dimension he was hiding in, and he regrets every single bit of his prior actions, however, he is forced to spend the next few months in the hospital for while his severe injuries heal. Meanwhile, however, it was discovered that another, much stronger Anti, from a separate universe, has found his way here, and allegedly plans to conquer ours, in his attempts to conquer as many worlds as he can. But, all hope is not lost, as his world’s version of Marvin- whom goes by the name ‘Merlin’ as to not cause confusion- has also come to this universe, in attempt to stop him, and bring him back to the pocket dimension that they apparently came from.

Previous chapter

Next Fic

[December 25th]

Marvin opened his eyes, and let out a short scream as he realized where he was. He was in yet another vision, and this time, he was falling very fast. He flailed around desperately for some sort of way to catch himself, but to no avail.

After a few solid minutes of falling, he was suddenly picked up by the talons of a bird, and quickly flown somewhere, only to be flung forwards, as the bird turned away and the world dissolved to darkness.

“Marvin, thank god I found you!” The child’s voice from his previous visions spoke.

“You again? What- What’s going on? Who are you?”

“My name is Liam. I’m a different version of your Jackie’s newborn son. It’s a long story.”

“Wait, newborn son?! When- When did Jackie have a kid?!”

“Two.”

“What?”

“I have a twin. We were born almost an hour apart, but on separate days. I, the 15th of December, and him, the 16th.”

“... On the anniversary of Overnightwatch, no less..”

“Yes, but for my universe, that would not happen for a fair amount of time.”

“Well, anyways... Why are you contacting me? What do you want?”

“... To warn you.”

“Warn me? About what?”

“About him.”

“Him? Who’s ‘him’? You’re not making any sense, kid!”

“... My Anti. Currently, you are in stasis. He captured you quite a while ago. He.. replaced you with a false. You were the first to go. Now, only Seán and your universe’s version of my father remain untouched by his strings.”

“What?! Wh-How?! Why?! Why tell me?!”

“You’re the most important factor to work against him. It is your kindred nature and determination to fight for the others that will ultimately prove most vital if we plan to save your universe, or at least you and the other egos. Wake up, Marvin! You have to wake up! We need you now, more than anything else! Merlin needs you!”

“Wait-!” He began, but it was too late. The vision had already begun fading.

~~

Marvin shot up, eyes snapping open as he gasped for breath. He looked around. Oh god, it was true! The other egos..! They were here, too! He stared in horror at the sights before him- Schneep hung from an unseen object, green strings wrapped around his wrists tight enough to keep him suspended. JJ was lying on the floor, his movements completely hindered by strings, too. Robbie was partially dismembered, with his body sort of spread across a small area on the floor. Worse yet, Chase was propped up against an unseen wall, a small line of blood trailing from his mouth. The vlogger’s shirt had a fresh patch of blood in it, and he knew in the back of his mind that Chase had been the most recent one to suffer. Then, he saw the children, and his heart sank with dread. Grayson and Samantha were cuddled up against each other, their faces stained with tears and blood, while two little baby boys, whom he assumed to be Liam and Brandon, were huddled in their lap for warmth. This Anti... went after the children?! Oh, how it pained to even think about what he could possibly even have done to them. He looked around more, and his heart sank more and more as he took in all of his surroundings.

He got up after a while, and attempted to shake the egos awake, one by one. He didn’t bother with Schneep, though, because he knew it was probably too late for the doctor. Schneep’s chest was almost entirely covered in blood. He slowly approached the kids, and shook each of them. Only Grayson stirred, but he just shifted. The poor boy didn’t have the energy to open his eyes, and it hurt Marvin to know this.

He sighed dejectedly, and turned, going over to where his now partly bloodstained mask rested on the floor, picking it and his cape up. Opening a portal, he looked back one final time, feeling his heart on the verge of shattering as he gave one final goodbye to his real family, and stepped through the portal, silently praying he had managed to get the coordinates perfect this time.

As soon as he exited the portal, however, he tripped, and smacked into the ground with a loud thump!, sighing in annoyance as he realized he’d put it a little bit too low this time.

~~

Merlin could feel the world shifting, and, despite his hopes, knew this was the final hour for his new friends. He swiftly ran back to Jackie and Ava’s place, his heart racing as his mind spiraled into a mad flurry of not-so-positive “what if”s. If he was going to save someone, he knew, deep down, that it had to be Jackie and his family. He couldn’t let them down! Not like this!

The thought only made him run faster, and, not even bothering to go inside, he used a few trashcans and the outcropping over the entrance to the apartment complex to jump up to their balcony, and opened the door quickly, yelling for Jackie and Ava to “Get ready for shit to get really fucking bad in a few minutes!”

~~

Seán sensed something in the world change, but he couldn’t place exactly what. He quickly went to one of his windows, trying to see if he could tell what it was from there.

A yelp of surprise, followed by a slightly quieter crash and a loud thud, caught his attention, and he turned to see Marvin on the floor behind him.

“Marvin?!”

“Oh, hey Seán. Didn’t know you’d be here.” The magician stood up, rubbing his head.

“What the hell are you even doing here?! I thought I told you I never fucking wanted to see you again!” He spat.

“Wait- Wh-What?!” Marvin stuttered, backing up a bit as his eyes widened. Seán stared at him, as he realized the shock was genuine.

“How do you not remember?! It- It happened right after you forced Jackie to nearly kill Anti!”

“Wait, what?! I-I never did that! I-I’ve been stuck in another dimension for ages! I don’t even know what day it is!”

“What?! But- Then- Who have we been chastising for betraying our trust this entire time?!”

“I-I don’t know-“ The light sound of a foot hitting the floor interrupted his speech, drawing both adult’s attention.

“A copy. You’ve been interacting with a copy of him for several months now.” Seán looked to the source, shocked to see what looked like a hologram projection from one of those old sci-fi shows of a child. Not to mention that the kid looked a bit like Jackie, too.

“Liam?! What are you doing here?!” Marvin exclaimed as the kid stepped closer, the hologram effect fading as he seemed to cross into their world.

“Liam- Wait, what’s going on?! Marvin, what the hell-?!”

“We don’t have any time to discuss this! My world’s Anti is going to kill you all if we stall any longer!”

“Shit, you’re from his world, aren’t you?!”

“Come on!” Liam yelled, as he grabbed Marvin by the sleeve, and gestured for him to follow as he practically dragged Marvin back through the portal he must have used to get into Seán’s house. Seán sighed inwardly as he followed, not wanting to risk getting killed because he didn’t listen to the kid with obvious superpowers.

~~

Chase woke up, and groaned quietly in pain. His wounds still ached, but the blood on his shirt was drying. He wiped as much of the blood on his lower jaw away, and shakily sat up, trying to remember what all happened. All that he knew was he had been ambushed by two Anti’s on his way back home. Raising his gaze to look around himself, he froze, horror wrenching his gut as soon as he saw the scene before him.

Schneep hung from above, his body limp, eyes closed, and work scrubs covered in blood. He looked... He looked like how Robbie had described him looking after Anti almost gutted him, back on the glitch’s birthday! Oh god, how long had he been here, like that?! His eyes finally managed to break away from the doctor, and with each new ego he saw, his heart shattered more and more. JJ was on the ground, his head bloodied and partly cracked open, like it had been after Marvin attacked him. He shuddered at the memory, which was still freshly scorched into his mind. Robbie was nearby, his arms and a leg detached from his torso, with his right arm being in three pieces.

Chase checked the area for signs of either Antis’ return, and when he saw nothing, took his chances, and made the agonized dash to JJ’s side. He had planned to take the mute back to where he had been prior, but his eyes fell on his and Jackie’s kids as he looked up, and his heart stopped.

Making sure he didn’t drop Jameson on the ground as he made his way to the kids, he practically dropped to his knees by their side, and, placing JJ on his other side, checked to make sure they were still alive.

To his relief, he could definitely feel their hearts beating, and, despite the circumstances, began to cry in relief. He hugged his poor babies, wondering why Stacy hadn’t told him they were missing. As he sat where he was, his biological children and nephews held closely by one arm, his dearest brother Jameson hugged by the other, while tears slowly fell down his cheeks, he smiled faintly to himself. Something, almost like an instinct of some kind, inside of him told him that this was it. The world was ending. But, yet... He didn’t care. As long as he got to spend his final moments with JJ and his kids, he would be happy to die.

~~

Marvin had no clue what the hell was happening anymore. Everything was a blurry mess at this point. Liam was cowering fearfully behind him and Seán, as they used a protective spell to hold back the out of control glitch before them, who was too focused on trying to break down the spell to realize he could probably just warp behind them and attack from there.

Their magic briefly faltered, and the terrified look on Seán’s face confirmed that they had detected the same thing. Not a moment later, the world started quaking, and he could feel their reality beginning to break. A bright light erupted from somewhere in the distance, and the last thing he heard and saw as the world was enveloped in white and he slammed painfully into the ground, was Liam shouting his name and running to him.

~~

Merlin was using his magic to put a barrier between his Anti and Jackie, Ava, the babies, and himself. He knew it was probably game over, since the glitch had them cornered, with no visible means to escape anywhere between them and their attacker.

Then, a flash of red streaked past his barrier, as he felt the world beginning to crumble, and he screamed for Jackie to come back. The world began to go pitch black as the last thing he saw was this world’s version of his oldest brother getting brutally cracked in the face by his greatest enemy, while all he could do was trip while attempting to run after him, forgetting he was supposed to be protecting the hero’s family, screaming for him to turn around. The last thing he heard was Ava shrieking in pain-

...

You blink, wide-eyed. Oh, god, what the hell happened?! Where was the universe?! Why were you cut off from it? You bang on your monitor a couple times in confusion, attempting to see if it’ll reboot. The monitor just glitches briefly, and presents you with the dreaded Blue Screen.

You sigh, and turn your attention to the WorldView monitor. Blank. Nothing of importance was happening right now. Shit.

Swiveling around to the only other monitor in the room, you turn it on, and access the Error Logs.

[...]

[....]

[.....]

[Error... Camera Viewpoint connection lost.]

Damn it.

[<Attempting to reconnect...>]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[<Attempt failed. Try again?>]

[Yes]

[No]

You put your hand on the mouse, and swivel it over to the option you intended to click.

Now, it’s up to you, dear reader! Which do you choose to do- Sacrifice your ability to view more stories from World Initiative, or do you try again, hoping desperately to restore what you’ve lost? Respond with your choice via an ask, a comment, or a reblog!

——————————————————

Next Chapter

@antis-loyal-puppet @tiny-septic-puppet @rorald-spooks @septic-dr-schneep @ihaveanunhealthyteaaddiction @insaneangel18-blog