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myreia · 5 months

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wip wednesday

tagged by @lilas, ty beloved! 💕 tagging @roguelioness @tsunael @fourteenthz @ardberts

@birues @impossible-rat-babies @galadae @thevikingwoman uhhh so this fic which was supposed to be a quick prompt has spiralled and is now a three-parter. anyway. ARR setting, aur just joined the scions and what should be a happy moment is devolving in her and thancred having a fight disagreement. she's prickly and dragging her trauma around like someone in an airport who packed an excessive amount of luggage she's fine she's fine she's fine.

“You certainly know how to make an exit,” a familiar voice behind her says.

Aureia stiffens. No matter how frustrated she is with him, she can’t stop the little bubble of hope from rising in her chest. That he came to find her in the midst of everything means something she can’t put a finger on. “I needed some air,” she replies.

Thancred chuckles. “And, once again, I cannot fault you for having the right idea. A touch suffocating down there, is it not? I daresay Minfilia could do with some sun, but alas, she is as glued to her work as Urianger is to his books.”

The bubble pops. “Bookworm, is he?”

“You could say in abundance, aye. Incorrigible scholars, the lot of us. Fervour for knowledge and understanding knows no bounds for the typical Sharlayan, but for archons? Consider its intensity thrice fold.”

The lot of us… She hates how the phrase stands out to her. He has never spoken so candidly of his origins—or the people involved in them—before. For all the months they have known each other, he has been tight-lipped about his involvement with this organization. Perhaps he didn’t trust her yet. Perhaps he did but was instructed not to tell her. Regardless, it would be hypocritical to blame him for that, gods know she has kept a number of her own secrets, and yet this irks her. After all these months in Ul’dah, considering him a close friend…

It hits like a slap to the face.

“You never said you were from Sharlayan,” she says.

He shrugs. “I’m not.”

“Then where?”

He nods in the direction of the sea. “You’re looking at it—or in the direction of it, more like.”

“Then how…? Never mind.” Folding her arms, she shoots him a glance, her gaze lingering on the marks on his neck. She had wondered about the symbols, but never struck up the courage to ask him. “Do those make you an expert in aetherology, too?”

“No. I assure you, my area of expertise is not so abstract.”

“Not so abstract, hm?” she prods, trying to keep a straight face. “I wonder what that could mean. Of all the subjects that could attract your eye, what would you choose?”

He catches her eye, an amused smile on his lips, and bows theatrically. “My lips are sealed, fair lady, and you will never guess.”

“Unfortunate. I shall have to defer to process of elimination, then.”

“Oh?”

“I know what it isn’t. Music and bardship for one. Philandering, for another.”

He wheezes. “Oof,” he says with a painful wince. “I’m no stranger to low blows, but I didn’t expect one from you.”

She grins. “You should know better by now.”

“I should.” He returns her grin, hazel eyes bright in the seaside sun. Her playful jibes never seem to bother him; if anything, he seems to enjoy it. She has a sneaking suspicion that he sets himself up on purpose. “But enough of me. Here you are. Vesper Bay. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Now you know the truth of it.”

A lump forms in her throat. Nothing has changed between them—if anything, one could argue that they can only grow closer because of this—and yet she feels so unsettled. She would give anything to be back in Ul’dah, walking the Gold Court or wandering the Sapphire and Ruby Exchanges, moving to the rhythms of the city. She could talk with him about anything then. Now, out here in Vesper Bay, she feels… limited.

Stuck.

“Here I am,” she murmurs. “And here you are.”

“I am glad for it. And I am glad that you and Minfilia have had the opportunity to meet. She has been so eager. Charmed, one could say, by the tales of your exploits. I may have overexaggerated certain events in the moment, and before you give me that look, I can say it was all in good faith and spirited storytelling—”

Aureia bites her tongue.

“But all that aside, you should get some rest. We have quite the task ahead of us. And I do believe it would do you well to get to know the others. You should speak with Y’shtola when the opportunity arises. I am certain she would appreciate it.”

The suggestion chafes. “Why?”

“Overlapping interests, for one. And I suspect you will get along well, for another. I can think of no mage as well-versed in the practice of arcane arts as she, save for Papalymo. I’m sure she can provide a guiding thought or three.”

“You think I need help? More training? Better training?”

“I—” He pauses, caught off guard by her tone. “Certainly not. I merely thought—”

“Because right now you’re implying I do.”

“That was not my intent.”

“I’m sorry my non-Sharlayan education doesn’t live up to the standards set by Minfilia’s brave and noble souls. Then again I don’t need tattoos on my neck to tell the world I have mastery.”

“And I know where your talents lie. I’ve seen them first-hand. You have nothing to prove, not to Minfilia, not to the others, and certainly not to me. You do not need to be an archon to have a place with us.”

Aureia forces back a grimace, her jaw clenching painfully. On any other day his words would be comforting, but here and now they fill her with dread. Anxieties creep across her mind, irrational and persistent, their spiderlike touch feeding her discomfort.

“Then tell me this honestly, yes or no. Would I be here at all if not for the Echo?”

The question is blunt. Forceful. She’s given him no room to maneuver, no way to escape. There is only one way to answer this.

Thancred closes his eyes. “No,” he says finally. “I do not believe that would be the case. It is the gift that sets you apart. It is what caught my attention. Without it, you would not be here, for without it—and a long line of other convoluted coincidences—we would never have met.”

A lump forms in her throat. “And I’d be just another adventurer on the streets of Ul’dah.”

“Aye. I suspect as much.”

A wave crashes against the dock, throwing up a spray of salt and water. Aureia turns away, her eyes stinging. She can feel Thancred’s gaze on her, watching closely.

“That is not the answer you wished to hear, was it,” he says.

It’s not a question.

She wets her lower lip and tastes brine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Would you have preferred I lied?”

“No—”

“Then why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry!” She turns sharply, rounding on him, and meets his eyes. Most would step away from the look she gives him, but not him. He knows her well enough not to be intimidated. Not that he was ever intimidated by her. And judging from his expression, just as she is unwilling to put up with his bullshit, so he is with hers. “I am...”

He raises an eyebrow. “Seems to me the word you are looking for is angry.”

She curses.

He smiles.

“Don’t,” she says bluntly. “Just… don’t. Please. I’m not in the mood for this.”

#ffxiv #this needs... so much editing sdfsdfsfd #writing tag

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animationforce · 4 years

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Helen McCarthy and the importance of women in anime and manga fandoms

(This interview took place in 2019, now published for the first time in a two-part series. Read part one here.)

A longtime fan of Japanese comics, British writer Helen McCarthy was determined to showcase women’s place in art and fandom.

Before she achieved acclaim as a manga expert, McCarthy experienced significant sexism in the world of publishing. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, comics and cartoons were considered “kids’ stuff," therefore no specialized knowledge was required to review or write about them. As a result, publications reviewing manga often gave assignments to male staff instead of paying a specialty (or female) freelancer.

“My personal issues with sexism really aren't different from anyone else's, and sadly things haven't changed enough in almost 40 years,” McCarthy said via email. “Patronizing, condescending gatekeepers, both male and female, remarks about my appearance, questions about my personal life, uninvited chat-ups, the lot. I had no physically unpleasant experiences because despite being small and apparently defenseless, I am sarcastic, loud and threatening when necessary.”

To combat this sexism and gatekeeping, McCarthy made Anime UK gender neutral as a matter of policy. It made sense to do so, as very few writers at the time had working knowledge of Japanese animation. Today, however anime and manga news sources like Anime News Network (ANN) are typically open to hiring anyone who has the skills they require.

But despite that inclusivity, McCarthy added that “women starting out in the field seem to face more active hostility and negativity. It baffled me that those attitudes come both from a section of the male anime community and from women who collaborate with patriarchal views, or men impersonating women online.”

While women have always existed in the world of anime and manga, as artists, fans, or anything in between, they have never been the majority. In recent years, women have claimed space for themselves in manga fandom, and are “very feisty, very vocal and very well organized,” McCarthy noted.

McCarthy recalled a group of young teen women who created an anime-focused zine, developing a space for girls like themselves. A number of those artists are now scholars, professionals, and “just astonishing people.” There is also a cohort of Western manga artists who were teenagers when McCarthy began writing about Japanese animation in English. Among those remarkable women are Leah Holmes who is working on her PhD and studying the unrecorded early history of anime in the UK, as well as artists Laura Watton, Emmeline Dobson, and Mary Beaird whose Elephant, Elephant, Hippo, Rhino…? comic strip is a favorite of McCarthy’s.

More than 30 years later, McCarthy sees the fandom as a much more inclusive place where women can not only claim their right to be there, but have their own space. Sites like Crunchyroll, My Anime List, Naruto Forums, as well as a long list of fan-made forums and social media platforms, have provided anime and manga fans with the space to get together and discuss the things that they love without fear of being ostracized. This space has allowed female fans to showcase their prolific commitment to the genre.

“Now I see young women claiming their rights, staking their claim in anime and manga fandoms,” McCarthy said. “[They’re] producing amazing artwork, producing amazing costumes. And the great thing is that there are now more and more young men who are willing to work with them on their own terms."

Despite the strides that women have made in the world of anime and manga fandoms, there is still significant misogyny and sexism within the genre. Although some stories feature a strong female protagonist (and sometimes multiple female protagonists), problematic, sexist tropes exist throughout manga/anime. As user Zylania noted on the forum Amino, women are often portrayed as stupid, defenseless damsels in distress. Their breasts are often oversized, distracting focal points for male characters and, in some cases, the women don’t even have heads or faces to differentiate themselves. In some anime and manga, females are never shown above the neck. Additionally, the increasingly popular Ahegao shirts — a term from hentai (Japanese pornography) for a woman’s often exaggerated orgasm face—are sold at manga/anime conventions, which puts female sexuality under a distinctly male gaze.

“Japan is a modern, developed society like America, Russia and Europe, and racism and sexism are not exactly dead in any of those areas,” McCarthy explained via email. “It's a combination of centuries of male privilege and prioritizing the male gaze and male concerns. The attitudes and history that gave the Internet the Captain Marvel trolling incident are alive and well all over the world. Most Japanese people have very good manners, which can make it seem as if outdated attitudes like that couldn't possibly exist there, but Japan isn't some fairyland where everyone is magically polite, reasonable and politically correct, except in our dreams.”

However, feminist women and works do exist in the genre, though it can be difficult to find them. San from the film Princess Mononoke and Major from Ghost in Shell are two characters often referenced by fans who are looking for strong, iconic women. McCarthy said Princess Mononoke is Hayao Miyazaki’s best example of a feminist character, since San does not rely on a man (Ashitaka) to rescue her and exists independently from male characters. San is free to live as she pleases and does not ultimately “belong” to Ashitaka by the end of the film.

So how can a feminist watch anime and still be empowered? McCarthy encourages women to watch everything they can. “Women in the fandom have to know what’s going on outside of what they’re watching. If you don’t know what the men in the community are watching, you can’t combat the concepts they are being given about you as a woman,” she said.

McCarthy encouraged feminist anime fans to be fearless. “You decide what's feminist and what isn't. I hope that that encourages a few other young feminists to go out and do what they do so beautifully, which is just be great women.”

After decades spent writing books and articles, and making appearances, McCarthy has spent the last 10 years slowing down. McCarthy is most concerned that the work she’s doing is worth being done—and being done well.

She has devoted her life to advocating for inclusivity in fandom and hopes to pave the way for other women to follow in her footsteps. McCarthy encourages other women to embrace their potential, especially as men become more in tune with the equality presented through feminism.

“My response to anyone who tells me they can do better work that I do — and trust me, there have been and are a lot of them — is to say, ‘Please, do it,’” McCarthy wrote. “I absolutely love reading great work by other people. I will be delighted to read yours, either right now or when you stop wasting your time sniping at other people and get around to writing it.”

READ PART ONE HERE

Amanda Finn is a Chicago based freelance journalist who spends a lot of evenings in the theater. She is a proud member of the American Theatre Critics Association. Her work has been found in Ms. Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, the Wisconsin State Journal, Footlights, Newcity and more. She can be found on Medium and Twitter as @FinnWrites as well as her website Amanda-Finn.com.

#anime #manga #japanese animation #women in animation #helen mccarthy #amanda finn

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sabraeal · 4 years

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(don’t go) making something out of nothing

Prologue | i. the first woman he ever loved | ii. the first to make his heart race

Another piece of @infinitelystrangemachinex‘s run away birthday fic; many thanks again to @bubblesthemonsterartist and @claudeng80 for beta’ing this chapter!

iii. the hands molded to fit his own

“You know, Your Highness--”

“No.” Papers sprawl across the desk, covering every inch of wood, but yet it’s Zakura himself that makes the prince’s mouth pull thin. “I don’t. But I’m certain you’re about to tell me.”

His teeth flash at the back of the boy-king’s head. Well, man-prince now. He can’t help but wonder if it might be man-prince forever with the way he keeps pushing off any talk of a coronation. “I was just thinking.”

“Should I throw a parade?” The royal chin cants toward a shoulder by a hair, focus never wavering from his work. “Perhaps decree a national holiday to commemorate the occasion?”

“Ah.” Zakura slaps a hand to his chest, letting his back rattle the panes behind him. “So you mean to wound me with your fabled razor wit, Highness?”

“If I meant to wound you, it would not be with words.” A noble cheekbone rounds. “I never strike a man unarmed.”

“Death--” he punctuates the word with another smack, grinning at the prince’s grimace-- “death by a thousands cuts.”

“If you are quite finished--”

“Oh, Highness,” he gasps, “there is more life in me yet--”

“If you are quite finished,” the prince attempts, firmer this time, “I believe you were about to inflict an unwelcome opinion upon me.”

He hums, the precise pitch that makes the royal hairs stand on end. “Mm, but how can it be unwelcome if you just asked for it?”

Now that gets his attention. Izana turns, his expression a study in disinterest save for his eyes. Those spark, the same way they do on the piste. “Do you mean to tell me, or would you prefer to continue on in the lady’s part for this little reel?”

His mouth twitches, just slightly. Wouldn’t do to let on that he was having fun, after all. “I only meant to say, it’s been a while since you’ve been north.”

Izana turns sharply to his work, his back the most eloquent answer. “Mother has everything well in hand.”

“Of course she does,” Zakura scoffs, arms folding over his chest. “But she still asks for you to visit, doesn’t she?”

“She does.” His pen hardly hesitates as it crawls across the parchment. “For the solstice, mainly. The queen mother is quite sentimental.”

He grunts, frowning at the royal cowlick. Or he would be if there was one, the lucky bastard. “You got some reason not to?”

His Highness hesitates. Not in a way another man would see, oh no, but Zakura is too well versed in the subtle language of his silence. Every muscle of his back stiffens, pulling his already impossible posture closer toward perfection. The muscles of his hand spasms, the feather light grip on his pen tightening to a clench.

“Why do you care so much?” His tone is light, playful, but there’s a tightrope Izana walks beneath it, wavering between anger and worry. “Whoever will you kiss if there is not a woman for whom I have a tendresse to sweep off her feet?”

Zakura grins, feral. “Ah, you admit it-- you did fancy Gazeld.”

“I admit no such thing,” Izana informs him loftily. “I am merely referring to your perception of events, however erroneous.”

He arches his brows with as much skepticism as they can hold. “And even so, you’re not going to go.”

All the prince’s good humor evaporates, leaving only tension in the air. “It’s not the time. There’s things I can’t leave--” his breath catches, rattling in his chest-- “untended.”

Zakura hooks his hands behind his head with a grunt. “How long has it been since we took a holiday, Highness? Two years, three?”

“We just rode to Laxdo last summer.” His pen scratches harshly against the page. “Or have you forgotten, in your old age?”

“That was barely a day trip.” And no girls to kiss anywhere. “And we haven’t gotten out of this palace for more than a handful of days since...”

Since Lowen cleaved that Lido brat in twain. No matter how much the maids scrubbed the stone, they could never quite get the traitor out.

“As I said.” Izana’s tone dries to a crisp, like a leaf off the tree. “It’s not the time to keep the capital untended. And certainly not for some...holiday.”

“Funny,” he hums, watching the prince through the net of his lashes, “I don’t remember the palace needing this much grooming before.”

Knuckles crack; the prince’s grip chokes his pen. “Things are different, now.”

Zakura measures the scant inches between Izana’s shoulder and his ears. He’s lost this battle. “You know, if you don’t visit the queen soon, she’ll invent a reason.”

Izana huffs out a breath, shoulders easing to their usual horizon. “Is that so. Like an allergy?”

“Nah.” His mouth curls into the faintest grin. “Like a wife.”

A laugh bursts from the royal lips. A surprise to both of them. “My, then you really would have a reason to go north.”

Fate arrives under a familiar seal: a lone snowdrop inside the jeweled Wisteria star.

Zakura chucks his chin at the parchment, swaggering across the room. “From your mother?”

Izana hums, brows quizzically drawn. The Queen Regnant had already sent her usual missive this month, full of all the regular details-- early snows, sending servants out to sneak her some Scholar Street fare, her usual teas with her ladies. But for a second to arrive so soon on the heels of the last, well...

That last time that had happened, Arleon had been consigned to the stones of his ancestors. Shuffled from this mortal coil. Pushed up daisies, weather permitting.

The prince breaks the wax with a single sweep of his knife, unfolding the parchment, and stares.

“Well?” He shifts, weight balancing towards the balls of his feet; a useless reflex. Whatever threat that paper contains isn’t something he can fight with his fists. Though it might be cathartic to slice it into scraps. “Is everything all right?”

Izana hums again, this time at a far different pitch. “Yes,” he manages, fingers falling bonelessly to his side. “My mother has someone she would like me to meet.”

Wirant is just as he left it: cold as tits.

“Couldn’t you convince Her Majesty to brood regally somewhere warmer?” Zakura blows into his hands, breath misting the air as it plumes over his fingers. “Like Yuris. Yuris would be nice.”

Izana lifts a mild brow. “Perhaps, if they invented a history of political dissidence.”

“Ah!” He lifts his frozen hands skyward. “From your mouth to their ears.”

“Are you wishing strife upon Clarines?” the prince inquires. “That would be treason.”

Zakura grins. “Me? Never. Just saying that it might be nice to see beaches and bare skin when we go on holiday.”

“And miss your opportunity to kiss women?” His Highness is above such petty concerns as the cold, but he does shift, drawing his cloak more tightly over his shoulders. “Perish the thought.”

A laugh rumbles right up from the bottom of his toes. “See, Highness, the thing is-- I don’t need a reason to kiss them.”

Not so long ago-- three years, by his count, give or take a month or two-- that this very man had worn the motley of a fool so thoroughly and so well that his own court had whispered behind their hands as he passed, calling him a profligate dandy and worse, but now, oh now--

Now it’s Izana who glares at him, frown pulling taut across his face. It’s his mouth that opens, the scolding written clear in his eyes--

“Izana.”

Haruto, Queen Regnant, First of her Name stands upon the courtyard’s cobbles, as lovely and spry as the woman in his memory. Like the flower she’s made her crest, Zakura bends toward her sunlight.

“Your Majesty.” The words bound out of him before he can rein them in; heart careening about in his chest like a hound off the leash, refusing to heel. “You haven’t aged a day.”

Her hand is soft against his lips, and ah, it’d be nice if he could see her once without turning into the wet-eared boy he was when she first took him under her wing. “You’re too kind, Sir. As always.”

His Highness has earned every degree of his ice prince reputation, but in the presence of his mother, he thaws. Genuine feeling blossoms in his expression, like flowers in spring. “Mother. It is good to see you.”

Haruto tilts her head and returns his smile, warm, wide, and true. “It would be better if it was more often.”

Izana stiffens, jaw hanging just a tiny bit slack. Zakura muffles a cough into his hand. The prince might be known for his razor wit now, but the years hadn’t dulled the queen mum’s either.

“I...” He clears his throat, lowering his voice to its natural, lower tone. “You said there was someone you wished for me to meet, didn’t you?”

Haruto raises a single, elegant brow, and in it there is more polite derision than her own son could convey with both. “Yes. Although, I suppose you have already met...”

It’s rare that a detail escapes him, but despite her position two steps back from the queen, Zakura’s eyes had glanced right over the woman that steps forward. A pity; having a lady as handsome as this one to look at was a pleasure he rarely got to indulge in following around the royal arse. Tall without being intimidating, slender without being skinny, rounded in all the places a woman ought to be-- she’s a catch any red-blooded man would be happy to reel in.

That, of course, leaves out the ice prince. Izana stares, and it doesn’t take an expert in the royal expression to know: he doesn’t recognize this woman at all.

“It has been a long time, Your Majesty.” Her lips-- attractively full and pink as the petals they left behind in Wistal-- curl into a faintly self-deprecating smile. “Long enough that a reintroduction may be needed, I think.”

“Apparently,” Her Majesty murmurs, bemused. “I trust you remember that Duke Arleon had a daughter...?”

The prince might be above goggling, but Zakura sure as hell isn’t. This woman? Arleon’s little shadow of a girl?

Her head tilts, and from the depths of her hood, a long loop of rosy gold emerges. A nicer pelt than she’d sported years ago, when that mop had been a muddled strawberry-and-straw.

“Haki,” Izana says after far too long, a polite smile frozen onto his face. “A pleasure to see you again.”

Pearly teeth flash between those lips, gone before he’s even realized he’s glimpsed them. “Please, Your Highness,” she says, a hint of dryness in her tone. “The pleasure is all mine.”

The plan was to stay a week, two at most. Meet the girl, please Her Majesty, and leave long before the prince needed to dodge promises of kisses at midnight.

It’s been a month. No matter what protests His Highness makes, they aren’t lingering because of his mother.

“Arleon’s girl,” Zakura hums, the thick leather of his glove muting the feel of the hand beneath it. Haruto shifts on his arm, and he doesn’t need to look to see she’s pleased. “Quite a coup.”

“Ah, it is far too premature to say.” Her gaze pitches over the balustrade, to where the prince and his companion pace through the garden paths. It’s all snowed over now, a graveyard more than a garden, but the scenery hardly matters. “A trick is more apt a name. For now.”

“For now.” He squints, and in the glare of the sun, her hair takes on a vixenish gleam. “You’re sure that’s the right girl? I hardly recognize her, and you know I never forget a face.”

Haruto presses a pair of slender fingers to her lips. “She was a child when you saw her last. Faces change.”

These Wisterias never give away a thing, but Zakura knows when he’s being laughed at. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Three years. They change quickly at this age.” Her eyes slant up at him, her smile following suit. “That reminds me, sir. I have not had the chance to say that I am glad to see you two made peace.”

His shoulders round into a hunch. “I said as much in my letters.”

“A anyone can say anything in letters.” Her gaze lifts, fixing toward the horizon, her mouth canted in a rueful twist. “They may even pass for an entirely different man. I am happy to see your reports have not been embellished.”

“Your Majesty.” He gives her his wickedest grin. “I might exaggerate some things, but I’d never spin you a tall tale.”

Her lips twitch. These royals never like to give away a thing, but-- it’s a smile. At least, as much a one as she can give to an up-jumped, dirty-mouthed commoner, no matter what title he’d earned himself.

“That means more to me than you’ll even know, sir. Now--” she fixes him with her sternest glare-- “you’ll behave yourself tonight, won’t you?”

His palm presses flat to his chest; the effect is somewhat dampened by all the layers. “Your Majesty, whatever could you mean?”

“I think you full well know what I mean.” Her shapely brows raise in an insinuation it would take a dead man to miss. “My son would not thank me if I forbid you your fun, however...I would suggest you think wisely upon who you spend your midnight with.”

His grin stiffens like a corpse left too long in the drift. “Why, Your Majesty, am I not spending it with you?”

She laughs, a rough bark of a thing, not meant for a queen. “Oh, sir. I am far, far too old for midnights.”

Well, here’s the thing: he doesn’t mean to do it.

Izana may sit in his solar, half-dressed, still reading the days-old paper that arrived from Wistal as the sun set, but Zakura-- he’s far too low on the pecking order to arrive at a time later than prompt. Not early-- that’s for the eccentrics, like Forenzo, or the men far too eager to climb up the ladder-- but on time. He’s not a man to be announced, but one meant to be announced to. It’s a distinction he’s only just coming to understand, and one he’s already cultivated a deep dislike for.

So he’s there when Arleon’s girl is announced.

She really is a pretty little thing; taller than he remembers, but just the right height to simper prettily on a man’s breast. Not that she seems the kind, oh no; she holds herself with the same steel and silk that the queen does, alighting down the stairs with both heavenly grace and earthly presence. There’s nothing natural about how these nobles dance around each other, all manners and masks and lying out one side of their mouth, but Haki Arleon--

Well, Haki Arleon makes it look like it could be. Izana would have to be a fool to let her go.

Which he must be, considering how it’s only minutes away from midnight, and the prince hasn’t deigned to show himself. The girl’s too well-bred to show worry-- too many wrinkles, to risk it-- but her eyes keep darting to the stair, lingering on the grand entrance that never opens.

A young buck circles close, a shy smile curling his lips. His hair’s appropriately floppy too, the way the girls like it now-- but Haki demurs, chin ducking as he tries to make his bid. Zakura’s seen it a half dozen times at least now; a boy rolls the dice, and before he can get another word in, one of her ladies intercepts him with a smile and a dance. This young man is no different, a pretty doe bounding in to steer him away with a flutter of long eyelashes, but--

It’s her last. There’s no more to protect her from the advances of ambitious lordlings. After all, this thing between her and Izana is nothing more than an inclination. Wirant’s rumor mill may be just as vicious and twice as fast as the one in Wistal, but Haruto’s grasp on it is absolute-- and clearly, she does not want to spur on any but the most idle speculation.

Childhood friends reunited, a maid had told him this morning, straight-faced. Did he think a romance might kindle?

Zakura frowns, fingers drumming on the mantel. It certainly wasn’t going to if the royal ass didn’t drag itself down to this party.

At five minutes to midnight, wide eyes land on him, and he sees the question in them, plain as day. For all her lessons and regal grooming, she’s still a girl, barely bloomed, waiting for a boy to love her. Or make a fool of her.

He doesn’t mean to. He certainly doesn’t tell his feet to carry him across the floor, or to stop right in front of Arleon’s daughter. But they do, and he does, and he’s just going to have to live with that.

She really is just the right height for simpering. Pity she’s not the type.

“Sir Zakura.” Her head bows politely, the precise degree for a man of his station. He sees the way her hands tremble in her skirt, the hopeful glint in her eyes as she raises them to him. “Did you come here with your liege?”

Did I miss him? He hears the question plain as day.

“I came ahead.” It’s a tepid reply; one that snuffs out the spark in her eyes. “His Highness had...issues to take care of. He did tell me he planned to attend.”

Her mouth curves, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sure.”

“Come now.” He puts on his slyest grin, the one so wicked that good girls like Haki Arleon can only smile and shake their head. Incorrigible, they said. As if nobles didn’t appreciate consistency of character above everything else. “You remember-- the prince never misses a Solstice, even if he does show up minutes to midnight.”

She hums, but oh, there it is, a tell-tale flush of pink over pale cheeks.

“Don’t tell me--” his brows give a salacious wiggle-- “that you were our fair prince’s solstice kiss? And on such an auspicious night.”

“No.” Her voice thrums with words unsaid. “He said he wouldn’t kiss anyone. Not when it is so easy for fires to be started and grow out of control.”

Zakura bites down on a sigh. Any other man would mean desire, using those words to parlay a night between the sheets, but His Highness--

His Highness was talking about gossip. Not that he could blame the kid; seventeen with a kingdom on his shoulders and a hundred debutantes willing to lift their skirts for a chance to be queen. Lady Haki hadn’t been old enough to attend the soiree itself, her presentation still months away yet, but Arleon had allowed it anyway.

A shame to have her miss it when her oldest friend is in attendance, he had said, ambition glittering in his eyes. They see each other so infrequently...

For all the good it did him; with full grown women throwing themselves at Izana’s feet, a girl barely old enough to be spotting sheets couldn’t have garnered more than a pat on the head.

Her hand raises, absently brushing at the smooth round of her cheek. Ah, so the idiot spared a brotherly peck for his childhood playmate. And now here she was, three years later, staring at the doors and wondering if she’d receive the same.

And his princeliness couldn’t spare her an evening to ease her nerves. Zakura’s hand clenches at his side. Wheels within wheels. Games within games. That’s how these nobles worked. The more that little prick changed, the more he stayed the same.

It’s seconds to midnight, and the horns sound, announcing that Prince Izana Wisteria, First of His Name, had finally deigned to grace them with his presence. He glides down the grand stair, enigmatic smile on his face, gaze skimming purposefully over the crowd, and, well--

Midnight chimes. Old habits die hard.

Her face is turned from him, drawn to the theatrics like a butterfly about to be crushed on the wheel, but his murmured, “Excuse me, my lady,” brings her attention back into his orbit, and that’s all he needs.

He crowds in, body pressing against hers, and she has all the time in the world to move away, every chance to balk, and she--

She rises onto her toes.

Her gasp is lost as their mouths meet, swallowed whole by the hunger of his own. Nails scrap along his scalp, pulling him closer, and he’s all too pleased to find her following his lead, letting her lips brush against his own in a way that would be tantalizing, if she’d known how.

With cheers pressing in around them, he pulls away, grinning as she settles on her heels. “Fair Solstice, my lady.”

“Fair Solstice,” she echoes. Her bowed lips curve as she glances past him. “I do hope it was worth it, sir.”

The court may call him half-wild, hardly tame, and he gives her a grin that proves it. “With a kiss like that, I don’t know how it wouldn’t be.”

Her laugh chimes like sleigh bells. “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

She casts a pointed glance over his shoulder, and all he can do is follow it: first to His Highness, whose glare he expects-- it was half the point, after all-- but second--

Second is to Makiri’s, Arleon’s heir. And Haki’s older, much less good-humored brother.

“Ah.” Air hisses through his teeth. “Maybe I’ve made a...miscalculation.”

“I told you,” Her Majesty says, really yucking it up. “This little rivalry of yours would get you in trouble.”

“Yeah, well...” He grimaces as she shifts the ice over the swollen ridge of his jaw. “I always thought you meant it would be with the man himself, not someone who knew how to throw a punch.”

“If it’s a brawl you want,” drawls the lanky shadow darkening his doorway, “you may keep holding your breath until you choke on it. It’s far more amusing to watch you get pummeled by vengeful relations.”

He scowls, watching His Princeliness glide across the floor. “Coward.”

“And break my knuckles on your hard head?” His brows lift, amused. “Who would do all my paperwork?”

He nearly gets up right there, ready to see just how easily those delicate little cheekbones would break, but Her Majesty presses firmly on his shoulders. “Perhaps if you did not have such a penchant for kissing above your station, my son would not have so much entertainment.”

Izana blinks. “A penchant?”

The queen’s nails bite into the wool of his coat. “Ah, it’s quite late, isn’t it?” It’s a miracle she’s made it this long among the vipers, considering how every word trembles with guilt. “Or rather...early! I should really, ah...perform my ablutions. Before breakfast.”

The royal brow furrows, mouth taking a terrifyingly thoughtful bent. “Dawn is hours away, Mother.”

She stands, bobbling the rag into his hands. “Ah, well, you know. A woman’s toilette...”

The prince’s face is torn between suspicion and mortification; fortunately he’s young enough for the second to win out. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

Her Majesty has hardly left when those eyes turn on him, as blue as the night itself. “I was looking for you tonight.”

“Oh really?” It’s hard to keep a playful tone through a grimace, but Zakura likes to think he manages. “Can’t say I’ve ever done something like that before, but you’re pretty enough with your--”

“Not that.” Izana’s mouth twitches in a downward direction; a poor sign for his continued employment. “I wanted to talk to you of the future.”

A hard pit of dread lodges in his stomach. He’d finally kissed a girl too far. “Is that so?”

The prince draws himself to his full height, peering out the snow-limned windows. “It is. I have been thinking...”

He hesitates. Zakura stares. He’s known the boy too long to believe he could be bashful, but, well--

It sure looks like what this is. “I thought we might come north more often. For mother’s sake of course.”

He hardly knows his jaw’s dropped until it aches right back to the joint. “...Of course.”

“She seems lonely.” His lender shadow wavers at the window. “I thought I might provide her with more regular company.”

Zakura puts the ice right to his chin, if only to find something to do with himself. “So you’re serious then.”

Long fingers flex, knotting behind the royal back. “I...intend to be.“

“Well then.” He clears his throat. “I’m almost sorry I kissed her.”

Izana turns, arching one of those cultured brows. “Almost?”

“Well, in my professional opinion, someone’s been practicing with some stable boys.” The cloth slips from his fingers, ice skittering across the floor. “Fuck.”

In a moment the prince kneels before him, holding up a hand. “No, let me. You’ll only hurt yourself, and then my mother will think I’ve maimed you on purpose.”

“Now what would be the point of that,” Zakura drawls, “when I’m the only one who can tell you that she’s really worth her weight in gold.”

His Highness heaves a sigh, long fingers plucking chips off the floor and into the rag. “It’s not her dowry that interests me.”

“Treaties, then.” He gives the prince his best leer. “She’s worth reams of them.”

The ice burns even through the cloth, but it’s Izana’s eyes that make him twist. “Whatever will you do now that there’s no other woman you can kiss that will peeve me?”

He shrugs, hunching down over his knees. “I hear you have a brother, don’t you?”

#zakura/haki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #ans #with some hakizana because i am a lady of taste and discernment #if it isn't clear this is the first big time jump we've had #four years from part ii #and there's destined to be an even longer one from this to the next #for REASONS >:3c

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beloved-judged · 4 years

Text

The inexpressible

This is going to be a bit... fragmented.

I should say, up front, that one of my degrees is an MFA--poetry and creative non-fiction. I have a license to poet, to be abstract and playful with language, and training in recognizing the internal structure of meaning as it is presented in language use.

I also took an absolute ass load of rhetoric courses, eventually taking Greek coursework (in addition to the mandatory Latin) in order to read the texts left us by various rhetors and their historians side-by-side with their translations.

I do language. It’s a different brain than I use on the daily in programming (and in fact, they’re oppositional for some subsets of use), but I’ve proved to the satisfaction of an academic committee that I can language just fine, even convincingly.

A confluence of events today: my papa releasing a blizzard of podcasts in the last two days, re-reading Snow Crash, and a bunch of random events have lead me to spend the last few days contemplating language.

It’s going to be here because it applies to the things my papa has been talking about.

When you choose to speak, take for granted you have already lost a lot of meaning--to render a situation into language is to make decisions about what it is, how it is, and how others may understand it, all of which are bound to your individual understanding (as well as whatever social rules, ideas, etc you have absorbed, because we’re not islands.) To make those decisions is to decide what is important and relevant, what others may understand, and what you want others to understand.

And to make those decisions is to decide not just what’s included, but what is omitted. This starts the second words come into play and before it, in the language we are inculcated with.

The latest podcast my papa released is a parable about one of the founding fathers of Sufism, which I will spoil and say the moral of the story is that the presence of someone who has achieved enlightenment is just as important as any attention they might give you (and in some cases, to not give attention at all, so as not to feed the ego.)

The presence, without language--to exist within eyesight and hearing, without direct interaction.

In Snow Crash, the author plays with an old, old dichotomy: religions of the book (that is, legalistic religions which base their principles on a written text which is required to take a form which does not permit as much individual interpretation) versus cultic religions, in which enlightenment is achieved through individual experience and is not subject to being ruled or shaped by the contents of a text.

Christianity is, at best, a mixed bag by that criteria, but tends toward a religion of the book rather than a cultic religion--as it is practiced in many places, it has elements of personal enlightenment, but is checked (at least in theory) against the text of the Bible, which is considered the authority on what it is and means to be a Christian. Again, in theory. This may not be true of individual Christian groups, churches, or Christians and it does not matter if it is true. Christianity bases itself on the Bible as a general rule.

A religion of a central text, against which all things are (supposed to be) checked.

One of the most haunting reads in my rhetorical studies was The Phadreus--a dialog on the nature of rhetoric (the art of persuasion). In the book, which is arranged as a long dialog, Socrates is talking to Phadreus about the nature of language, persuasion, and what makes a good versus a bad rhetor. There is a whole section where he talks about the relationship between writing and speech in rhetoric, remarking that he does not trust writing to do what it is supposed to do (to serve as an aid to memory, to make the idea immortal). He remarks that to read and write a thing is inadequate to produce experts, and that expertise requires something more in terms of experience and inspiration.

Or to put it a slightly different way: you might be able to write down instructions on how to do a complex thing, but the instructions by themselves are not going to make someone capable of performing the task well.

And, as he remarked, all too often when we commit something to writing, we promptly cease to make the effort to remember it--remembering becomes a problem of the medium we write in.

We wrote it down, now it’s the paper’s job to remember it.

This can, as he points out in The Phadreus and elsewhere in the texts produced by Plato during that period, lead to the state where people can take their speech--that is, the things produced from their mouth--and treat it as if it does not belong to them, as if, because they are quoting, they no longer ‘own’ the words they speak, and thus are not bound to the consequence of them.

You can see an awful lot of this in white, academic, and main cultures: if I’m quoting someone else, it’s not my fault. If I am sufficiently careful to quote, I can get away with saying all kinds of things and have a reasonable expectation that I won’t be held accountable for it.

In primarily oral cultures, as a quick side note and by contrast, what you say (the promises you make) is a profound reflection of you as a person, and you will be held accountable for it. Everything that comes out of your mouth, you own, and there is no shield of ‘just quoting’ or ‘just saying’ to save you from suffering the consequences of your speech.

Magic, where it concerns speech, often appears to me to inherit from that understanding of the word. That which issues out of your mouth is a spike, affixing you to consequence, that you cannot wriggle out of.

Trusting in the written word also, as Socrates points out, tends to lead to the state where the writer thinks they have been clear, and the reader thinks they have understood, but neither are right: the written word does not lend itself to clarity, but to deceptive equivocation. The appearance of clarity, but only if both parties do not think deeply or ask much of the interaction, and part of the inability of the book to produce experts has to do with the absence of expertise and inspiration to enforce clarity.

I find that is much on my mind--where we find clarity. I have about twenty years of training in academia, in finding clarity in books. I would be hard-pressed to count how many books I’ve read, even by genre. It is where my mind is ... comfortable. A confluence of training and natural inclinations.

The experts with whom I might study to understand rhetoric, say, are dead and dust in the ground, in some cases for thousands of years. They cannot be present with me, and while there are plenty of modern scholars with whom I might study, I am unlikely to ever have the chance to do so.

There is something tied to presence, something which governs learning. In Snow Crash, which is very much propaganda for literate societies, the idea that there is a pre-verbal experience of understanding or something that defies the ability to be verbalized within literature structures, is a virus analogous to herpes: something that represents an invader of the ordered, literate body, which subverts it and irreparably harms the health of the body and the mind.

Without the book to govern thought, all is madness, and those who are trained in specific kinds of literacy (in the case of Snow Crash, technical literacy) are susceptible to a madness which burns out their ability to think and their identity, their ability to appear rational to the literate society around them. They become as individualized as an insect, which is to say that they have no individual identity.

That is where I am going--to that non-verbal place. It’s a thought that fills me with anxiety, but also with relief. I cannot touch rationality but to notice irrationality in it, the vital absences which compose the underpinning of rationality, both in language and in concept.

Language is a slippery bastard.

Vodou is a cult, by the definition of the majority religion (Christianity), and by definition in general, in that it has no centralized authority (no pope), no central dogma (a Bible, say), and relies on individual experience with the divine (in possession, inspiration, or through witnessing a possession.) It is also a community-driven religion: mutual support, mutual aid, mutual living. It has authority figures (the priests), but the authority structure is very localized. A priest is the priest for his or her temple, not for every vodouizant everywhere. Authority is recognized, but not universal.

Atop that, it is also very much an oral culture: you are absolutely responsible for your words.

In my experiences with possession so far, both partial (someone else was using my body and I could witness but not interfere) and complete (black out), it has been a place where all my literacy, all my rationality (and I used to teach logic), all the things I would call my identity, were pointless. Either gently but firmly pushed aside, or gone altogether with the rest of me. And I have never, in my experience of being partially possessed, spoken.

Moved? Sure. Expressed something? Yes. Performed feats? Yep.

Fully possessed, however, I’m told my body has done a lot of speaking.

But the literate qualities of myself, the parts writing this entry, were either absent or entirely beside the point. It is not an easy thing to flirt with the destruction of these parts of myself. It’s deeply, deeply discomforting to recognize that where I am going, I am not. Where I am going, all that I am now will be beside the point.

Existential panic, I think, is about right.

What am I, without language? What remains in those spaces?

I cannot enjoy the wine of oblivion without reaping it--I cannot enter the waters of the void in meditation and not expect to have to perform the work necessary to come back and swim it.

What words, what shapes, what law is written on me in such places?

I hope the lwa will forgive me for being afraid.

The more I see of what I will be losing, the more... frightening the cost becomes. The fear of becoming a babbling adept, the fear of losing my ability to appear rational in rational society, the loss of those years building expertise.

The loss of myself, those endlessly reflecting mirrors of structure so painstakingly cultivated, and I know my papa would say “no, not yourself. What you think you are” but it is not entirely comforting.

And if I lose this, this speaking self writing these words...

And if I lose...

I struggle at this price. Does it seem dramatic? Only because this is the bastion I have spent my life defending against the attacks of family, colleagues, and a world determined to tell me that women cannot be rational.

I have been beaten for knowledge. Repeatedly. For daring to ask questions. I have been forcibly excised from academia, because I could not find enough support to defend myself against harassment. I have given up relationships and exposed myself to constant, crippling criticism and the many cruelties of people who found my presence intolerable. I have given up meals, a bed under my head, clothes, love, children, and the acquisition of wealth to know. There has been no easy path to knowledge for me, no family poised to encourage and protect, no social matrix to provide support.

This is the next price I will have to pay. Just a pound of flesh from nearest my heart.

What will be left of me, this babbling self ironic in the drive to cage in language what ultimately dissolves it?

I do not know if I can pay it. I can only... make myself try because I will keep my word.

And because anything else will never be enough.

My love, my love, the crown of my soul, papa, patron, master--you scare me.

#vodou #language

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aatgeog2260 · 4 years

Text

I Thought Geography was Boring and Useless

I hated geography. My high school had a few required geography courses and this was my least favourite subject. All we ever talked about was maps and flags. Somehow I managed to receive a grade of 100 in each geography class so my teacher at the time talked to me about pursuing this subject. I said HECK NO! I thought it boring and useless.

As I came to Guelph I was positive about my decision to do a double major in French and Theatre! However, I had so many elective opportunities and one class that caught my eye was GEOG1220, Human Impact on the Environment. I decided to take it because I am very interested in and passionate about climate change - how we’ve destroyed our planet and whether or not it’s repairable. This class was awesome! (Anyone who is thinking about taking it - take it). In general, it was about the environmental consequences humans have caused and which people caused or are affected by this issue. In this class, I realized that geography was more than just maps and flags.

This class led me to take GEOG1200 Society and Space, and GEOG2230 Commodity Chains and Cultures of Consumption. I was truly blown away to learn that geography is connected to people, culture, religion, politics, feminism, the environment, globalization, food and agriculture, economics, urbanization, etc (the list goes on and on!). There is a sub-topic for just about everything. So I realized… geography is everything! I was fascinated that geography was about the world and how people and places are connected - it wasn’t just about maps and flags! After this epiphany, I decided to declare geography as a minor because I think it is so crucial to understand the world we live in.

Learning the subject of geography, or any subject for that matter, requires consuming knowledge. I used to trust anything I read or heard because I thought… Why would someone ever want to give inaccurate information? Fortunately, I’ve learned you can’t trust everything.

The first and foremost source that I rely on for information is people who are experts. Dr Hooykaas for example is a reliable source to ask questions about geography as she is an expert in this field and a professor at the university. Along with this, I trust academic textbooks published in libraries or required readings for courses as they are most likely written by experts in the pertinent field, and these books are also usually peer-reviewed and edited.

When it’s not as simple as asking your professor or reading your textbook, some more work has to be done. Of course, as a student in the 21st century, I rely on the internet for information. However, to ensure it’s reliable I always make sure it is a scholarly or peer-reviewed article where the researcher(s) share their name and field, and the article clearly shows a theory, argument, and discussion based on strong evidence. Some websites I like to use are Omni, Google Scholar and ResearchGate.

Finally, on an every-day basis, I consume information on the news or social media, however these sources are less reliable so it’s always important to double or triple check your facts.

What is your preferred way to get reliable information? Would you rather speak to an expert, read a textbook/article, or watch the news/scroll on social media?

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observantgal · 4 years

Text

Spies Tied by Love

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes (Stucky)

Rating: Teen And Up Audience

Author’s Note: This is part of bigger story. Hope you like it! Let me know if you did. Do come back for other chapters!

Chapter 1: The Meeting

It was one of those regular days at the facility, except for the new team of agents gathered in Meeting Room No 12.

Mr. Phil Coulson being a technical operative, and second in command of one of the most powerful intelligence agencies of the world, had called for his top choice of secret agents to discuss something, that he claimed to be grimly urgent and a matter of prime concern.

Mr. Coulson looked anxious as he ardently typed on his laptop. Sat across the table, Agent Peggy Carter worked on her phone, while Agent Natasha Romanoff tried to puzzle what the situation could have possibly been, that demanded their immediate attendance. Agent Sam Wilson was on his phone, pacing across the room near the door. From the tone of his voice and the speed at which words exited his mouth, he seemed to be extremely annoyed with the person on the other side of the call. They were all waiting for Agent Steve Rogers. A new face was in the room, sat quietly next to Mr. Coulson, sipping coffee.

A dozen of ceiling lights lit up the windowless room and the aroma of ground coffee, lemon tea, and honey mingled with the stale and dingy smell escaping the air conditioning vents. The odour creeped into their noses. The constant beeps from the PBX machine cutting through the deafening silence made the ambience more awkward.

After a few minutes, Agent Rogers rushed in, apologized for the delay and shamelessly blamed it on the Records Department. He had a reputation with the Records Department for being their top five annoying agents who belittled paperwork, waited until the last moment to turn them in, and somehow managed to do it incorrectly 75% of the time. They hated his guts, but that never stopped them from letting him escape, even if he was wanted by the second in command.

Noticing everybody present, Agent Wilson hung up the phone and joined them. Mr. Coulson pretended to have completed his work and slammed the laptop close. He clenched his palms over the table and took a quick look at each one of them. Being popularly known to be a No-Nonsense Man, getting his point across with zero reservations whatsoever, was his virtue.

Read on AO3

“I do not wish to waste any more time so I’ll come right to the point,” he said. “The operatives from our foreign intelligence department have reported a breach in our database system that holds codes for the ciphered government information related to identities and medical records of civilians.” He paused for a second for them to take in the news. Then he continued, “Our security system being equipped with numerous layers of firewalls and heavy encryption mechanism, the only possible explanation is that the attempt to access the database must’ve been made by someone from the inside. This is a matter of national importance and calls for immediate action. With prior permission from Mr. Lee Carper, the head of our organization, I appoint all four of you to investigate into this.”

Pointing at the gent next to him he continued, “This gentleman here is Mr. James Buchanan Barnes. He is an expert and a scholar, with experience in high-tech equipment, communication interception and cryptanalysis. He will be a part of your team in this probe.”

Barnes let out a nervous smile and slightly raised his arm and waved faintly, in an attempt to greet them, who were still trying to digest the facts.

Coulson continued, “If you do not have any questions, the meeting is over. Please remember that nobody outside the six of us can know about this. Thankyou.” Immediately after, he re-opened his laptop and started typing.

The four of them appeared to be have been lost in their mind palaces, scampering around, rescheduling assignments, prioritizing tasks, questioning time limits and scheming on where to start looking for clues. The incessant beeping of the telephone machine dragged them all back into reality and sighing almost together they got up and left.

Coulson ensured that they had passed the lobby leading to the meeting room and turned towards Barnes. With a radiant smile he said, “Mr. Lee Carper mentioned that you have had the privilege to work in some of the well reputed intelligence departments. I am sure you are aware that the conversation earlier was not out of spite and is quite normal here.”

Barnes trying to look calm replied, “Of course Sir! I completely understand”

“Well, in that case, allow to me show you to your desk,” he got up, buttoned his suit jacket and left the room with his laptop. Barnes followed him out the door.

To Barnes’ surprise, it was in no way just a desk. Huge screens, computers, servers, wires, high tech equipment and a desk with a chair in the middle of the room. It looked like a scaled down master control room, brought to life, straight out of a futuristic science fiction movie. He gazed around in awe. Amazement didn’t quite cover how he felt, as he brushed his fingers over the keys and buttons. He could only have ever imagined such a workplace, especially for a nerd like him, and that would have been one of his wildest dreams.

Coulson turned to him, “You report directly to me Mr. Barnes. I hope we see the end of this situation at the earliest. I wish you the very best.”

“Yes Sir!” were the only words Barnes managed to articulate. While he struggled to conceal his enthusiasm, his sparkling eyes and sincere smile gave it away.

Coulson shook Barnes’ hand and left. On the way to his cabin in the hallway, he noticed Carter, Romanoff, Wilson and Rogers discussing and decided to join them.

“Coulson, when did you find out about the report?” asked Wilson.

“The report came directly to me last night. Whoever did it, knows that they are under my radar now. Time is our enemy and apparently, our security systems need an upgrade.” said Coulson.

“Does Mr. Carper suspect anyone?” asked Romanoff.

“I am afraid no. He is obviously more terrified. But he puts his entire trust in us. So, you guys get to work quickly. Defer all the cases that you can and work on the leads Barnes will give you.”

They all nodded in agreement.

“Phil, are you sure we can trust the new guy?” asked Rogers.

“Well you see,” he said, “he is a direct recommendation from Mr. Carper. And he has had experience in other intelligence departments before. He is good with surveillance and tech support on field. Guiding agents in and out of dangerous missions is what he is known to be a master of. His records are clear too. We can trust him.”

“Alright, if you say so” said Carter.

“Okay, see you guys” Coulson waved them bye and walked towards his cabin.

They all had hurriedly made it to the meeting leaving their works behind, and with no leads in sight for now, they looked exasperated.

“So, where do we start from?” began Romanoff.

Before anyone could answer, Wilson burst out, “Alright listen to me, we all basically abandoned everything in the middle to meet up here and we don’t even know where to start. How about we give the new guy some time to settle down and figure out things so he can ‘guide’ us. And until then, we sort our craps out. I need to get this thing done immediately and the thought that every minute I waste here, gives my suspect an escape window of 2 hours is consuming me. So, let me know when you have accumulated some material leads. Until then, I am unreachable to all of you.” And he stormed off calling someone on his phone.

“I also need to complete my paperwork… you know… Charlie never lets me go… so I’ll see you guys later too,” Rogers added and left.

“Charlie?” asked Carter.

“Yeah, she is the new intern and helps him with the records and stuff” shrugged Romanoff and they too left to tend to their assignments.

***** end of Chapter 1 *****

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#stucky #stucky au #stucky fic #my fic #my writing #spy #secret agent #steve rogers x bucky barnes #steve rogers #bucky barnes #my posts

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huntress1024 · 4 years

Text

Crashing the Masquerade: (Tyril x MC)

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 2k

Summary: This is my first ever fanfic, and it’s just how I imagined the Blades gang getting ready for the masquerade! I love the dynamic of their group!! 😊 lemme know if you want to be tagged!

Taglist: @queerbrujas

Nia chatters excitedly as Adrina braids her hair, “Just imagine! The music, the lights, the magic!” She bounces up and down at the vanity and Adrina almost pokes her with a pearl hair pin as a result.

Imtura, already in her elegant forest green and gold ensemble, scowls from the window seat. “You do realize we’re on a mission tonight, right Nia? We can’t exactly dance the night away while simultaneously waiting for a murderer to strike.”

I expect Nia to blush in her typical fashion, but I am absolutely surprised when she turns in her seat to grin at Imtura. “You look too lovely to be so cross tonight, Immy. Has it crossed your mind that we can do both?”

Our orc companion gapes, before quickly recovering and muttering under her breath, “I am going to kill Mal.” She aggressively tugs at the dress’s waistline for the third time in five minutes.

I laugh and motion for her to stand and turn around. “You have to admit, it’s a cute nickname. And Mal says it with love.” My long, nimble fingers make quick work of the gold lacings at her lower back, loosening them ever so slightly. “Better?”

She breathes a huge sigh of relief. “Much.” With a wicked glint in her eyes, she gives me a pat on the back that leaves me winded from her orc strength. “Thanks, Zammy.”

Nia clamps a hand over her mouth, but a giggle escapes anyway. I roll my eyes at the joke. “That will never catch on.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s rather catchy.” Mal waltzes in the room unannounced, Threep perched comfortably on his shoulder.

He wears a dusty charcoal jacket with coattails, gold plating running along the shoulders, arms, and belt area. A marble mask covers half of his face, adorned with a gold wing. The look is distinctly Mal, bold and daring, but refined and noble as well. He winks at me, catching my eye. “Well? Do I pass for a snooty noble?”

I laugh, nodding appreciatively at his look. “I don’t think snooty is in your genes, but yes, you look great. Threep, did you help him with this?”

The nesper, smug as ever, flaps his wings in a haughty manner as he gives Mal a once-over. “Indeed. Perhaps you will learn to respect my wisdom, Valori.”

Mal scoffs, dropping Threep in Imtura’s arms. “That’ll be the day. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m gonna go check on elf boy.”

Usually I would laugh at the joke, but instead my heart clenches, thinking of the current state Tyril must be in. “Has anyone been able to talk to him yet?” Mal, Nia, Imtura, and Threep sadly shake their heads, and I sigh in disappointment. On our party’s trek back from the catacombs, I had tried to come up with something to say, but what could possibly have been said to erase the agony he was feeling? I opted for silence instead, staying by his side the whole time. He had brushed his fingers against mine before he headed to his quarters to prepare for the masquerade, and I have not seen or heard from him since.

Mal gives me a dry smile, trying to cheer me up. “I’ll just tease him about whatever the hell he’s wearing. His pompous, stick-in-the-mud attitude that we all know, and love will come back, trust me.” He snatches an apple from the bowl on the vanity before leaving the room. I turn away from Threep’s praise of Imtura’s dress and her mumbled retorts to join Nia and Adrina at the vanity as the Lady of House Starfury recounts stories from previous masquerades. “Last year, the gorgeous Lord of House Moonfall asked me to dance. Three times.”

Nia gasps, delighted. “Really? What was he like?”

Adrina chuckles, smiling at the faraway memory. “Oh, we hardly talked. I was so nervous to be in his presence that I couldn’t seem to get two words out. And he was such an excellent dancer, I did not want to say anything that would ruin the moment. I would have danced with him all night if I could, but Tyril scolded me, telling me it was ‘improper’ to not switch partners after an extended period of time.”

“Well, hopefully he’ll be singing a different tune after tonight,” I say, smirking. “I don’t intend to let go of him.”

Adrina tips her head back, cackling. “Oh, that will be a sight to see. Tyril is horribly proper when it comes to public appearances, but if anyone can help him loosen up, it’s you Zamira.” She places the final pin in Nia’s fiery braid, then offers her a hand to help her rise from the chair. Nia squeals at the sight of herself, twirling and letting the voluminous skirt fly around her. “I look like a princessss!!” She exclaims, dancing a little jig that has Adrina and me laughing.

“You look stunning, Nia.” The dress features various shades of blue, from sheer mint long sleeves to a cerulean corset, and indigo and navy skirts that give a starry twinkle when she moves. Embroidered flowers and vines grow along the dress, and her blue and gold mask compliments her lovely golden-brown skin. “Lords won’t be able to take their eyes off of you!”

She blushes delicately, giving me a bashful smile. “I do not know about that, but I’m flattered all the same.” Her meek mood dissipates as she shoots me a mischievous grin that is surprisingly more Mal Valori than Nia Ellarious. Perhaps he is finally corrupting her, I muse before Nia interrupts my thoughts. “Besides, you and I both know there is one lord who will be positively indisposed tonight when he sees a certain lady.”

Now I’m the one who is blushing, but I refuse to let a bloody priestess know she got the better of me. I feel my face trying to suppress the pleased beam that threatens to take over, but it’s no use as I reply, “Hmm. I don’t know who you’re referring to, but I’ll take the compliment nonetheless.”

“No one will be ogling you tonight if you go in that horrid potato sack of a dress,” Threep says matter-of-factly, sniffing the intimidating golden horns from the shoulders of Imtura’s dress. “Just out of curiosity, are these tipped with poison? It would make for an excellent weapon against Kaya tonight.”

Imtura gapes, outraged. “That was an option? Why didn’t anyone tell me?!”

“Can we come back to the ‘potato sack’ comment?” I snap, glaring at Threep. “Tell me, Oh Wise One, whatever shall I wear to satisfy you?”

Completely oblivious to the sarcasm, he straightens his posture in Imtura’s arms, studies me with that wide and unblinking stare of his, and definitively replies, “Butterflies.”

Okay, I was not expecting that. “Um, is that supposed to be a color?” I ask lamely.

“No, you simpleton. Butterflies signify transformation, renewal, light. For you, Zamira, I find it a very fitting concept.” Adrina immediately leaves the room, shooting me an excited smile over her shoulder while doing so.

“It’s true!” Nia chimes in encouragingly, taking my rough hands into her soft ones. “You’ve come such a long way from the girl I met in Riverbend who just wanted to escape and go on an adventure.”

I blush at her words and give her a playful push. “You’ve come a long way too, Priestess. I wouldn’t even know how to use my Light if it weren’t for you. Scholar Vash would be proud.” Her eyes brim with tears at my words, and I give her a hug, brief but strong. A light breeze brushes my skin, and I turn to see Adrina proudly holding a dress to me, and my heart stops at the sight. “Oh, Adrina…you shouldn’t have.”

She shakes her head, pushing the dress towards me. “Nonsense. You have done so much for my brother in these past few months, and I cannot properly express my gratitude for it, but this will have to do for now.”

If not for the excitement already bubbling inside of me, the hopeful spark in her eyes would have done me in. I gently take the dress from her hands, nodding in thanks, and duck behind the changing screen. The dress is easy to put on, and I am pleasantly surprised by how light and airy it feels against my skin. I step out shyly from behind the screen, and Nia, Adrina, Imtura, even Threep gasp at the sight of me.

The dress is composed of a faint sky-blue tulle fabric, the color strongest at the bodice and slowly fading to a white with subtle traces of lavender and pink when the light catches it so. It is sleeveless, but on each shoulder a flower in the very same shade as the lavender accents pin tulle identical to the color of the dress so that it flows behind me like a cape. True to Threep’s word, lavender and cerulean butterflies grace the waistline and front of the dress. I feel ethereal in this dress with the colors of a dawn sky, a delightful contrast to my dark skin, and I grin at Adrina, hoping it is enough to convey how much I love it. It works, for she smiles back and makes quick work of my white hair to pin it into a regal low bun, and adds the finishing touch to the ensemble: a lace silver mask inset with crystals that spans across my face and ends just at my nose.

Imtura breaks the silence first, lips curling in mischief. “I’m no fashion expert, but ladies…I’d say we’re ready to piss off some pretentious elves!” She lets out a cheer, passing Threep to Adrina before charging from the room, not even checking to see if Nia and I follow before she leaps onto the crumbling banister and speeds downward to the once grand foyer. I give Nia a shrug before linking my arm with hers, ad we say a quick farewell to Adrina and Threep before descending the staircase to join Imtura and, not originally noticing him from his veiled position in the shadows until we hear the unmistakable scolding voice belonging to no other, Tyril.

“While I am aware of your opinion towards my kind, I implore you to behave in a manner tonight that will not add to their suspicion of us. We will need as few eyes on us as possible if we are going to succeed in obtaining the Scepter.”

“You mean fewer eyes than the ones openly judging you for showing your face around here and bringing the riff raff into Undermount’s pearly gates? Gee, Tyril, you always ask so little of us, somewhat of a challenge would be appreciated,” Imtura snaps, words dripping in sarcasm from her fangs.

Tyril sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose before continuing, “Please. Just try. After tonight, you can drop kick as many of my people as you would like, but tonight, do try to be civil.”

“I think you mean our people,” I say teasingly, trying to lighten the mood once Nia and I have reached the bottom step. Tyril, completely unaware of our descent during his tense exchange with Imtura, snaps to attention and turns to greet us, lips pressed in a tense line before they part in a mesmerized “Oh” at the sight of me. Normally I would glow with pride under his stare, but I’m too busy trying to keep my own mouth from dropping in kind as I take in his appearance.

The outfit bears similarities in style to his everyday armor on our journey, but the colors are pure Starfury. He poses a striking figure in the royal blue and silver armor that extends from his chest to his abdomen, a magnificent steel belt with a royal blue gemstone in the center to accent it all. His shoulders and forearms are adorned in imposing armor the color of an angry sea, and a stormy grey cape clasped by a brooch across his chest. His mask is pure silver encrusted with sapphires and crystals, only accentuating his piercing blue eyes even more. Lord Starfury indeed. It wasn’t hard to imagine him hosting parties and being a prominent political figure in the Undermount hierarchy, not in this outfit where he was the embodiment of a lightning storm.

In a surprise reversal of roles, I am the one at a loss for words, and he is reveling in the idea. My blood rushes through my body as he bows before me, taking my hand and kissing it with such reverence and admiration before meeting my eyes and pulling his lips away, murmuring “My lady” against my skin in a manner that has me blushing furiously. I move to stand beside him, intertwining my fingers with his, grateful for his presence and leadership, despite everything he must be feeling after the catacombs. I squeeze his hand, hoping to express that and more to him, and when he squeezes back, I know he understands.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Mal calls as he saunters down the staircase, smirking at the sight of us all waiting for him.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the dramatic entrance type,” Imtura crows, sticking a foot out in an attempt to trip him as he steps down from the last one, which he deftly hops over.

“What can I say? I’m an insufferable ass.” He offers his left arm for Nia, and his right one for Imtura. “Hope you ladies can tolerate me as escort for tonight.”

Nia curls her fingers around his arm, giggling. “Of course, Mal the Magnificent.”

The rogue turns to me and Tyril with a triumphant glint in his eyes. “See? It was only a matter of time before it caught on!”

In typical Tyril fashion, my elven escort gives an annoyed humph. “I’d sooner be corrupted by the Shadow Court than call you that.”

“Ah. I see even a party can’t loosen up Tyril the Tyrant.”

Even hidden by the mask, I can see Tyril’s sculpted eyebrows rising in horror as he splutters, “Wha—How dare yo—”

Nia, ever the peacekeeper, gracefully interjects “Oh, look, there’s the carriage!” And with that, our party of five sets off into the night, ready to crash a ball.

#blades of light and shadow #blades of light and shadow fanfic #tyril starfury #tyril x mc #mal volari #nia ellarious #imtura tal kaelen #choices fanfic #playchoices

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ibijau · 4 years

Text

Burn it down AU // on AO3 // extras on AO3

The first few pieces of the puzzle are discovered, much to the dismay of everyone involved.

By the time Lan Wangji and A-Yuan reached the Cloud Recesses, Lan Xichen had long left for Lanling. It would have been easy to wait for his return to ask about that altered version of Cleansing which Nie Huaisang shared, easier still to forget entirely about this matter.

Instead, while A-Yuan was in class, Lan Wangji started perusing the restricted parts of Gusu Lan’s library. There was no need to bother checking more ordinary scores, he had quickly decided. If it had been a common song, he would have recognised it. Thus, it had to be one not ordinarily used.

The notion of a genuine mistake did cross his mind, of course. He did not linger on it. The melody, while clearly different from Cleansing, fit with it well enough to not bring direct attention to itself. There was a purposefulness to this that he did not like.

Day after day, Lan Wangji checked collections of songs that, for one reason or another, had to be kept out of reach of ordinary disciples. Aside from his investigation, it proved a rather fascinating exploration of his sect’s history, and of the different ways musical cultivation had been used over the years.

Between this, the morning reading of the rules to the juniors, and time spent with A-Yuan, his days were so well filled that he usually fell asleep easily, long before the hour where he felt the impulse to reach for Wei Wuxian’s soul.

It came as little surprise to discover that his time in the library had attracted his uncle’s attention. Lan Qiren was always interested in any research happening in the Cloud Recesses, and he still had little trust in his youngest nephew. The only odd thing, as far as Lan Wangji was concerned, was the fact that it took his uncle over a month to come see him in the restricted section of the library. Even then, he only did it under the pretext that Lan Xichen had sent a letter from Lanling, and some of the news concerned Lan Wangji.

Lan Xichen wrote to explain that he would be staying in Lanling longer than intended, to help Jin Guangyao settle in his new position. That his friend should be accepted as new head of Lanling Jin happened with surprising ease, which he guessed was due both to Jin Guangyao’s undeniable skills and his impeccable rhetoric. It also helped, of course, that the only alternative was a toddler. Jin Guangshan’s other recognised bastard, Mo Xuanyu, was apparently known all over Lanling as a particularly weak willed fool, and besides he was so utterly devoted to Jin Guangyao that he would never have gone against him even if he had understood what was at stake.

He mentioned, also, how worried he was once again about Nie Huaisang. The young sect leader had departed for Qinghe the instant the ceremonies were over. But while in Lanling, he had behaved very oddly, acting very panicked every time someone asked him his opinion about the situation and never really taking sides. Lan Xichen understood that his brother-in-law was still struggling to find his footing after being thrown into his position, but he still regretted that behaviour. He knew that Nie Huaisang was capable of being quite shrewd when needed, that he had a good head for politics, and so he hoped that Lan Wangji would continue supporting his husband and encouraging him to come into his own.

This struck Lan Wangji as peculiar. After the news of Jin Guangshan’s death, Nie Huaisang had immediately started analysing the situation and wondering how to support Jin Guangyao. It seemed that Lan Wangji was not the only one made suspicious by this very odd version of Cleansing.

When he was done reading, Lan Wangji returned the letter to his uncle, and waited for him to leave so he could continue his research. Instead, Lan Qiren picked up one of the scores he had been inspecting.

“You have been coming here a lot lately, Wangji. I encourage your will to study, but your material of choice seems rather inappropriate. There are no songs here you should ever use.”

“Hm.”

“I was happy to see you start to do better,” Lan Qiren said, dropping the score impatiently. “I rejoiced too fast. It seems your interest for darkness has not relented after all.”

“Hm.”

The accusation glided on Lan Wangji like water off a duck’s back. And yet, as his uncle turned to leave, he felt an impulse to stop him. Not because his opinion still mattered on a personal level. But whether Lan Wangji liked it or not, his uncle was a renowned scholar and an expert on musical techniques. If Lan Xichen was to remain absent, then it might be wise to turn to someone else for advice.

“A certain melody has been brought to my attention,” Lan Wangji explained as his uncle was about to pass the threshold. “I have never heard it before. It could be innocuous, but the circumstances were unusual.”

Lan Qiren stopped in his tracks.

“What circumstances were those?”

A logical question, but one Lan Wangji hesitated to answer in full until he had a better understanding of the situation. There was little point in throwing accusations at the moment.

“At a certain time, a certain cultivator used a spiritual melody that I know. I was not here to hear it, but a person I trust did. When later I played that melody for that person, they remarked that it was different from what they had heard from that other cultivator.”

“And you do not think it was a mistake,” Lan Qiren noted, walking back toward his nephew now that his curiosity was picked. “What was the original melody?”

“A Lan healing song.”

“I could have guessed that much,” his uncle retorted. “That person, were they able to describe what had been changed?”

Lan Wangji nodded, and hummed the song fragment that Nie Huaisang had shared with him. When he finished, his uncle was frowning. Without a word, Lan Qiren sat down and easily put on paper the notes of that song, his scowl deepening as he inspected it.

“I have never heard that played, but I have seen it before,” he announced. “It is definitely something that we have in our collection, but I cannot remember what it is exactly. Do you know if it had any specific effects when played?”

After careful consideration, Lan Wangji nodded.

“The healing song’s effect might have been cancelled by it,” he explained, recalling how little Nie Mingjue’s mood had improved after Cleansing was played to him. “It is possible it even inverted the effects. I cannot be sure. I am not close enough to the person on whom it was used to judge if their temperament was affected by this, or other events.”

“It might be interesting to interrogate that person. It is difficult to say for sure, not without the original score to show the manner in which the song must be imbued with spiritual energy, but it appears to me as though it could easily be used for nefarious purposes.”

“The person has died since then, and cannot be interrogated.”

His uncle’s eyes narrowed at the news, and he glared at the score.

“I see. If the person you are speaking off is the one I think… this could be a dangerous situation, Wangji. Continue your investigation, but do not speak of it to anyone until things are certain. Does your husband know?”

“Hm.”

Lan Qiren nodded and stroked his beard, as if that confirmed some of his suspicions.

“Tell me if you find out what that song is, do not make rash decisions and do not let your husband make them either. If there is need for action, your brother and I will do what is necessary.”

“Hm,” Lan Wangji replied, letting that simple sound carry all of his doubt. Even if that song truly had the effect suspected, the only proof that it had been used was Nie Huaisang’s memory of it, which was hardly any proof at all, considering whose word they would need to go against.

Still, he supposed he should have been grateful that his uncle was offering to help at all.

He refused to be.

It took a few more days after this chat with his uncle for Lan Wangji to finally learn more about the corrupted melody, and even then he very nearly missed it entirely. As he was browsing a collection of foreign songs, Lan Wangji encountered a passage that made little sense, with a score starting in a certain style and ending in a very different one. He almost dismissed it as being due to the very unusual nature of that particular anthology, filled with music that aimed only to disorient, hurt, or straight out kill those upon whom it was inflicted. Of course songs such as these might not follow the usual rules of harmony.

Luckily, one of the passages still caught his attention enough to be worth comparing to his uncle’s transcription of the corrupted song. It was not a match, not exactly, but there was a certain harmony between the two, a similarity that made it perfectly possible for the two to be part of the same piece. Indeed, after close inspection, Lan Wangji realised that a part of this particular book, named The Collection of Turmoil, had been very carefully removed, leaving almost no trace of the now missing page.

In such circumstances, it was too big of a coincidence to be ignored. Lan Wangji put back every other material he had prepared to research that day, keeping only the Collection of Turmoil with him and leaving with it.

His plans of showing the incomplete song to his uncle was, unfortunately, thwarted when he learned that Lan Qiren had left the Cloud Recesses, called by some urgent business in Gusu. The elder he had left in charge assured Lan Wangji that his uncle would return in a matter of days. It was inconvenient, but not overtly so. Lan Wangji did not mind waiting a little longer, and would use that delay to further study the broken melody.

The rest of the day passed rather pleasantly. His mind no longer so taken by his research, Lan Wangji was able to better play with A-Yuan when his son’s classes finished. They fed the rabbits together and, since the weather was pleasant, stayed a long while in their pen, watching them hop around. A-Yuan had given names to all of them and although they all looked very similar, he was particularly good at distinguishing between them and noticing their personalities. Due to his age he was still sometimes a little clumsy when catching and holding them, but it was obvious that A-Yuan was trying very hard to be kind to the rabbits. Lan Wangji hoped the animals knew how much they were loved. He hoped, also, that A-Yuan knew how loved he was. He doubted that it would ever be easy for him to say it with words, so all he had were actions.

On the way back to the Jingshi, he picked up A-Yuan in his arms and carried him, holding him with as much gentleness as his son had tried to show to the rabbits.

He hoped it was enough to show how much he cared.

Judging by the way A-Yuan smiled, it might have been enough.

The evening passed just as pleasantly. They had dinner alone in the Jingshi, as they often did when Lan Qiren wasn’t around to complain about Lan Wangji spoiling his son. When that was over, Lan Wangji tried to read a story to his son, only for A-Yuan to interrupt at nearly every sentence because he too wanted to try reading. He was starting to know quite a few characters, and Lan Wangji patiently provided him with those he could not yet recognise. When the story was over, A-Yuan went to bed and, owing to that sunny afternoon with the rabbits, quickly fell asleep. Lan Wangji, now alone, put order to a few things inside the house. He was thinking of joining his son and ending the day when there was an urgent knock on the door.

Lan Wangji barely had time to take a step toward the door before Nie Huaisang barged in, breathless and disheveled, as if he had run there. No, not just run. For the first time since his days as a student in the Cloud Recesses, Nie Huaisang had a saber at his hip, which meant he might have flown all the way from Qinghe.

“Huaisang?”

“They took him,” his husband hissed, his face distorted in a terrible grimace, his limbs trembling from both rage and exhaustion.

“Him?”

“Mingjue! Someone took him! His grave is empty!”

Lan Wangji threw a quick look toward the bed, where A-Yuan was fast asleep. He would not stay so if he heard Nie Huaisang’s voice, and his husband did not look in a state to control his volume.

“Outside.”

They went to the rabbits’ pen, where they were least likely to be disturbed by anyone, especially at such an hour. Lan Wangji sat down and gestured for his husband to do the same, but Nie Huaisang refused and instead started pacing in the grass.

“I kept thinking about that song,” he explained. “How you said there’s only one version of Cleansing. And as I was travelling toward Lanling and became more nervous, I kept thinking how when you played it, Cleansing always calmed me down perfectly well. I was a mess before you came to visit, but then you arrived, played a little music, and I started feeling better. So why didn’t it work for Da-ge?”

“Hm. On that matter…”

“It doesn’t make sense that he was so angry!” Nie Huaisang insisted, ignoring the attempt to interrupt him. “It doesn’t make sense that I was so angry! I know we’ve always argued a lot, but never like this, we were never so vicious toward each other! It makes no sense at all, but everything hurt so much after losing him, I was so upset all the time, I didn’t even notice until you started playing the song for me. And so I thought… I thought if something had been done to him, maybe his body would bear the trace. It’s not been so long, I was hoping if I checked, I might find something.”

He stopped his pacing and shuddered.

“I found something for sure. Or rather, I found nothing. The coffin was… it had been weighted down with stones, but that’s it. There was no body inside. Wangji, they stole his body! They… no. Not they. He. It has to be him. Who else would have had the occasion? He was the one taking care of the coffin and the tomb, we let him have free rein over that. He… I trusted him!” Nie Huaisang exploded, before breaking into tears and falling to his knees on the grass. “I trusted him, I fought with Da-ge on his behalf! I trusted him so much and he did this to him, to us!”

Awkwardly, Lan Wangji shuffled closer and patted his husband's shoulder. There were no words of comfort for a moment like this one. The best Lan Wangji could offer was validation.

“Cleansing was corrupted with a fragment of another song,” he announced. “I have found the work from which it comes, but the score itself was torn away. The book was in a restricted session. Even among disciples, few people are allowed there. But there are two strangers to our sect who were given unlimited access to all of Cloud Recesses, owing to their ties to Zewu-Jun.”

“And my brother wouldn’t have done this,” Nie Huaisang sniffled. “He… he did this. He really did this. He killed my brother and he took his body! He… I thought he was my friend. I thought he was our friend!”

Without warning, Nie Huaisang let himself fall into Lan Wangji arms, hugging him tight and sobbing against his shoulder. His first instinct was to push him away, disgusted as he often was by unwanted contact. Instead, Lan Wangji forced himself to relax and tolerate it. There was not much he could do for Nie Huaisang at the moment, but if his husband needed this, he would make an effort.

After a long while, Nie Huaisang’s sobs calmed down. He pulled back, dried his tears, and sighed.

“I must find Da-ge’s body,” he announced. “If it was taken, it must be because it contains proof of what was done to him. Jin Guangyao is many things, but not a fool. He would not have done something so risky if he had not been forced to. If I find the body, I might be able to demand justice. But first, I must find it…”

“It will not be easy.”

“Might not be so hard either,” Nie Huaisang replied, a little more collected already. “The Nie sect has always had an ideal of justice, so we have a few techniques for finding missing bodies. I’m not an expert at any of them, and with my cultivation being what it is, it’ll take some effort, but I’ll manage. I’ll find him.”

“We will find him.”

Nie Huaisang stared at Lan Wangji with wide eyes and shook his head.

“That’s not your business. I… I shouldn’t even have come here, really. I should have kept this to myself. Jin Guangyao has just become the most powerful man in the country, to have him as an enemy is… It’s better if you stay out of this, Wangji. I’ve already caused you enough trouble.”

“You are my husband,” Lan Wangji retorted. “You are my friend. I already left one friend to fend for himself against Lanling Jin. I will not make that mistake again.”

For a brief moment, it looked as if Nie Huaisang might start crying again, but he managed to contain his emotions and smiled instead.

“You are a good man, Wangji. If you are really willing to help, I’ll be selfish and accept it.”

“I would not have let you refuse.”

Nie Huaisang’s smile widened, and he even managed a short laugh.

“Rude. Very rude. I can’t see why people call you a gentleman when you’re so rude to this poor husband of yours.”

Lan Wangji smiled back. He knew better than to take Nie Huaisang’s laughter as a sign he was well, but if he could at least use his usual defence mechanism again, he had to at least be better.

Still, as they walked back toward the Jingshi, Nie Huaisang fell into deep silence, which he only broke when they reached the door of their home.

“Wangji, if you come with me to Qinghe to investigate, what do we do with A-Yuan?”

“He comes as well,” Lan Wangji replied, although he did not particularly like the idea of dragging his son into this.

“But it could be dangerous,” Nie Huaisang protested. “I don’t know Guangyao as well as I thought I did, but I still think I have a good grasp of who he is. If it really is him who stole Da-ge’s body, he’ll have taken every step necessary to ensure it is never found again, so there can be no proof of what he did. He’s learned the hard way to be careful about things like that.”

“Hm. We leave him here with Hou Tianjian?”

“It’s a better option, but won’t that bring attention to us? It is well known that you never part from him. It could be explained when we went to Qinghe together because you’ve never bothered to hide that you disliked my brother. But now that he's gone? If we travel together, people will find it very odd that we did not take him with us. We're known as quite the happy little family after all.”

“You said it was too dangerous,” Lan Wangji pointed out.

Nie Huaisang sighed in frustration.

“It is! But if he stays here, we need to find a good excuse to feed Hou Tianjian. This is too delicate to tell her the truth, I’m not trusting anyone except you. What to do… it’s really too bad you’re such a poor liar, or it’d be easy.”

“Hm.”

Again, Nie Huaisang sighed, and he started pacing in front of the door.

“How to make it work… the guard on duty at the entrance saw me, as did a few servants probably. I’ve been flying for a week straight, so I must look like a mess. And everyone knows I’m just a little idiot who’s good for nothing aside from badly painting landscapes.”

“You are not…”

“Hush, hush, I am, I don’t mind, I don’t care. I’ve worked hard to make sure I’d never be anything more than that. So here I am, an absolute mess, knocking at your door in the middle of the night, causing a scene… and I did, don’t deny it. I caused such a scene we had to go talk among rabbits, Wangji! That’s true, and that’s what you’re going to tell Hou Tianjian when you leave A-Yuan with her.”

Nie Huaisang finally stopped pacing, and instead played with the hem of his sleeve.

“You can tell her that I have been unwell since my brother’s death, which is also true. You can tell her that I’m faced with problems I can’t handle alone which…” he snickered. “It certainly is true, isn’t it? And if you tell her that right now you don’t think it’s safe for A-Yuan to be around me, that’s true as well.”

“Hm. I will do that.”

It would be unpleasant to paint such a portrait of his husband, no matter how true each individual statement was. It would be even more unpleasant to do it for Hou Tianjian, with whom Nie Huaisang had a certain friendship and who always seemed to have a good opinion of him. But if he was willing to sacrifice that for A-Yuan's safety, Lan Wangji would play his part.

“Great. And I’ll… find somewhere to spend the night,” Nie Huaisang decided. “It’s probably better if A-Yuan doesn’t see me, it’ll upset him if I’m here only to steal you away, won’t it?”

That, unfortunately, was true. A-Yuan very frequently asked when they would return to Qinghe, wanting to check both on Nie Huaisang and on the garden they had planted together. It would be difficult for him to understand that for a time, the adults in his life needed to have other priorities.

As to where Nie Huaisang might spend the night...

“Brother is still in Lanling. His house is empty.”

Nie Huaisang startled at the suggestion, and laughed nervously.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll sleep better if I go back to the rabbit’s pen,” he said. “The night isn’t so cold anyway. I’ll hide there until you come pick me up, when you have dropped A-Yuan with Hou Tianjian and Jingyi.”

“Your choice.”

“I never get much of a choice,” Nie Huaisang chuckled. “Not for this, not for anything else. Ah, well… good night, husband. Please hug A-Yuan for me tomorrow morning.”

“I will.”

Nie Huaisang smirked at his answer, but made no comment as he turned back toward the path that led to the rabbits’ pen.

#nie huaisang #lan wangji #mo dao zu shi #burn it down au #xisang #barely there this chapter but still lol #this is a lot of reveals for this we all know already so I hope it's still interesting to read lol #jau writes #mdzs

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qedavathegrey · 5 years

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Untangling The Witch

I have seen things and I have things to say. It’s generally not my policy to be inflammatory (even if doing so is justified), because this is the internet and I know some of y’all don’t listen, can’t read, and love to argue, but on this day I’m gonna say my piece. If you’re trying to start anything but constructive discussion, know that you are not worth my time, I’m am the manager and the customer is not always right. That being said — and in keeping with the (loose) topic of this blog — we need to talk about witchcraft, namely the term “witch” and its definition. That’s where we’re starting anyway. I’ll add that I’m not a scholar of witchcraft specifically (though I do have an applicable degree), I’m not infallible nor do I claim to be. But I do know some things. I’ve been around the proverbial block. And I’m familiar with some of modern witchcraft’s confusing nature. We’re not going to touch on all of that (it would merit a class, this is only a lesson), but we’re gonna broach the surface.

Let’s start with The Witch, uppercase.

Who is The Witch, you ask?

Historically and cross-culturally, The Witch is a scapegoat: the one who sows discord and misfortune. Your cows mysteriously stop producing milk, your garden withers and dies, your children fall ill with fever or seizures? That’s The Witch, up to their old tricks. In this capacity, The Witch is a (semi-)mythical figure, always defined by the culture which produces it. That being said, how The Witch is dealt with varies: sometimes charms or wards are remedy enough (as with most unsavory spirits), but some would seek The Witch amongst themselves, demand responsibility. They would root The Witch out, have them punished for their “imagined” transgressions, force personal responsibility and demand they face the appropriate consequences or make their reparations. That’s the most basic and encompassing breakdown, nonspecific because in this case it doesn’t need to be. I know what you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, so you’re saying The Witch doesn’t exist as a real flesh and blood person, only a mythical scapegoat?” A good, valid question. Yes and no. Yes, The Witch is mythical, but does that mean those who practiced magic did not engage in summoning up blights and misfortunes on their bastard neighbors? Unlikely. Was everyone accused of being a Witch engaging in malicious magic? Absolutely not. Did some? Almost certainly. To be clear, however, what we’re not discussing here is the Witch Trails. The Church complicates matters (shocking) and we’ll touch on that briefly later. Instead, we change course now so that I might make my most important point:

Any user of magic does not a Witch make.

In fact, the aforementioned process of rooting out a Witch usually employs magic in some capacity, be it shooting an effigy with a silver bullet or putting the victim’s urine in a jar (two methods that are culturally specific). The witchmaster — to use a specific term broadly; one whose function is to discover and undo witchcraft — is, obviously, not a Witch, despite his or her magical proficiency. Nor those who practice folk magic, folk medicine, etc. That is until the rise of the Catholic Church, undoubtedly the origin of the conflation we see today (then expounded by Gardner and his various successors). Why is this such an important fact? Besides erasing nuance and betraying a misunderstanding of the term historically, it can be offensive and often times racist. Someone who practices Hoodoo, Curanderismo, or any specific cultural practice is not a Witch (or “witch” lowercase, for that matter) and to deem them such erases the history which produced not only the practice itself, but those who have dedicated themselves to it. These practices are borne from folk magic, often allowing for the survival of those maligned and thus underserved by their oppressors. They are largely passed orally and as such are preserved from unwanted influence. That is not to suggest they are static or unchanging, but curated by the knowledgeable and shared with those who are invited and trusted to put in the labor required. Even those practices which borrow from the magics of Europe and folk Catholicism (popular during the colonial period amongst commoners and thus, transported to the New and Old World alike), are not Witchcraft. During the Inquisition, the distinction between magic and witchcraft was upheld (to an extent that was convenient for the Church). See the Sicilian trials, where the Church bitterly shrugged when they couldn’t place the Devil in their folk practice. In fact, the Church maintained a disbelief in magic and only when they could insert the Devil did they bother with formal prosecution. That, however, is not something I’m going to unpack. Do know that Witchcraft was and is often used to excuse persecution: it is invisible and convenient. Remember, not only The Witch is a scapegoat, but so too the one accused. This does not extend to modern witchcraft, but many of the aforementioned folk traditions are unjustly maligned because of their presumed association with Witchcraft. All the more reason not to include them in your discussions of witchcraft.

But this does bring me to another important point:

Religion is not Witchcraft.

Vodun is not Witchcraft, Santeria is not Witchcraft, just as Hinduism and Islam are not Witchcraft. They are religions, they have frameworks which define all that happens within and without, and without understanding that framework, what magic they produce is not for your consumption. Period. And reading half-baked internet breakdowns will not make you an expert, in the same way watching Jimmy Swaggart or Joel Osteen won’t make you a priest. Have some respect. And while I’m on the topic, please refrain from calling anything belonging to an extant religion “mythology.” The difference between religion and mythology is only one of assigned validity: “religion” is always valid while “mythology” has become coded to mean “interesting, but ultimately primitive ignorance.” Indigenous religions exist, are valid, and attempts to confine them to the past is insensitive, please be mindful. Additionally, the concept of “mythology” only works if you believe the myth (see what I did there) that we are somehow culturally superior to those foreign to us, separated by either space or time (or both). That’s ethnocentrism, baby. Check yourself. That goes for things like Greek, Kemetic and Mesopotamian “mythology,” as well. They were state religions and even if it is not as damaging to the living to refer to them as “mythology,” it does paint a misleading picture and is no less founded on ignorance. Not to mention many such religions have been reconstructed to varying degrees and are being practiced again with what information is at their disposal.

So then, if I can’t call anyone or anything I don’t understand a Witch or Witchcraft, who can I? This one is easy: Anyone who wants to be called a witch. And notice how I didn’t capitalize it this time. I’m distinguishing the modern definition from the historical one. As mentioned above, at this time “witch” has come to mean one who practices “witchcraft,” a sort of magical catchall consisting of traditional folk magic (predominately European, but not exclusively), ceremonial magic, New-Age rituals, etc. For this reason, further distinctions are often made, i.e. I call myself a Red Witch, but my definition varies from others who call themselves the same. In something as varied as modern witchcraft, even specific terms have little weight. Ultimately, “witch” is what we call ourselves because it captures our position well enough without requiring further definition. People understand it (and misunderstand it) universally enough. It’s there, and by looking back we can understand how it came to be the term used. That being said, simply because it has come to be a catchall does not give anyone permission to force the label on those who refuse it. Just because someone does magic does not mean they’re a witch, even if that’s how you’ve come to understand the term or even how the term has been fed to you. And given the reimagining of the definition as the result of ignorance and a series of misunderstandings, they have no responsibility to explain why they would choose to refuse the moniker. Instead, we — witches — have more a responsibility when it comes to outlining our use of the term and explaining ourselves. Or at least those of us who do not corrupt livestock, put blights on our neighbors, or sow inconvenience at our every turn. What justification have we other than its easy, familiar, subversive? Is that enough? You can decide for yourself and leave it at that. If you want to call yourself a witch, then do so, but recognize it is not your position to assign the term as you see fit to those who continue to be harmed by such insouciant associations.

And know that I write this because I have been guilty of all of the above. I’m sharing so that my own transgressions are ones you need not make. It’s called growth and I’m providing a foundation for you to learn the “easy” way. I have learned, I have resolved to be better, so can you. Life’s a journey, knowledge is power, yadda yadda, cliche cliche, don’t disappoint me.Be conscious, be mindful, recognize your privilege and check when your entitlement is showing. That’s what growth is about. It’s work, sometimes hard but rarely as hard as you think. So do it.

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ionizedyeast · 5 years

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Title: 0180304 - Workplace Relationship Part 1/2 “Statement of Nelson Briar, Head of Folklore and Legend Research of the Magnus Institute, and his relationship and events surrounding Michael Shelley prior to becoming the Distortion. Statement given --.”

“That’s enough, let’s get right to it, Jon. You know, I’m the reason Elias had to start being more lax about employee relationships within the Institute. It’s not like we had been keeping anything secret, though. Gertrude knew before anyone else and then Diane did. And as far as I know, we were close to being the primary reason for gossip. But you’re not here to listen to me talk about the watercooler chatter of the Magnus Institute. You want to know what happened with me and Michael before well. . . Before I lost him.

I came here from the States back in late 2006. I had just started a Master’s program and had been working in the Usher Foundation back in DC since I was an undergrad. My area of study was well received by the Foundation and thankfully the Institute was more than willing to have me as a grad student in residence. I would have the chance to utilize any of their resources for my studies. Well, not any. It’s funny, knowing what I know now about the Institute, I’ve got to say there were loads of red flags about me coming out here. Probably starting with the fact the Lukas family funded my transfer and were going to cover my education. But I didn’t know anything about the Lukases back then. We have our own cryptic families back in Washington and as far as we were concerned, the Institute had a keen grasp on whatever the Lukases were doing, and weren’t our problem.

You had just started around that time too, hadn’t you, Jon? Wasn’t I your immediate superior for a while? I forget, I still can’t quite figure out the hierarchy here. You’re Head Archivist. I’m Head of Folklore -- are we equals in the Institute or are were on completely different levels. Ah, nevermind, we can talk about that outside of the recording. Reminiscing can wait.

I was, I think I was the third in residence student-employee the Institute had taken in. My predecessors had long since finished their studies and moved on elsewhere. South Africa and Russia, if I recall. I never had the chance to meet them, but as far as what Elias had told me in during my orientation, that’s what I had gathered about them. Wonder what they’re up to. . . But I digress. I was the third, but I was the first that was actively using the archive statements as fodder for my research. See, my focus area was in covering unifying themes throughout world cultures through the means of folklore. Obviously we’ve got the standards -- creation myths, the afterlife, explanations of nature, harvest -- the usual. But my studies were taking me elsewhere. To concepts that overlapped and had uncanny similarities, even when the cultures were worlds away. Some could be explained as just the natural need for humans to find comfort in what they didn’t understand. Death and the dark were most common. I could always figure out ways to connect these points, even if the cultures were wildly different. What was the geography like? The weather during this time period. How were their relations with nearby enemy and ally communities? I could usually pinpoint what needed to be explained and tied together. But some things I never could quite get a grasp on.

You see, Jon, in my decade plus at the Institute, I’ve probably dug too deep for just a simple scholar. I don’t study to know things for a sense of omniscience. I study to satisfy my own curiosity. While it’s always a thrill to share my academic findings with anyone who will listen, it’s always been primarily a personal gain. So I suppose that was one reason why Elias ended up granting me permission to study the archives. With limitations of course. Gertrude wasn’t the most thrilled about it. But I was not prying through with the intentions of exposing the secrets I uncovered to the world. No, it was for myself. And somewhere down the line, well, I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means. But I did find myself very familiar with some common trends. Of course this wouldn’t all come in to play until some time after Michael, er, vanished.

Michael and I met sometime in early 2007. I had been here for a few months and I was bouncing between working as a shelver in the library and a research assistant -- we briefly were colleagues at this time, though back then we never really spoke to one another. What a shame. Imagine how close we’d be now if we had.

It wasn’t exactly what I would call a remarkable meeting. Gertrude had sent him to the library to have access to our private records for some sort of report but we didn’t have anyone to accompany him at the time so we just talked. I called him enormous or something to that extent -- I’m a small guy, Jon. I’m easily astounded at tall people -- he found my reaction funny. Somehow or another he mentioned the kind of research he was conducting for Gertrude and it was actually something I had quite a bit of experience in. I’d just had an article get published about the topic, so I talked his ear off for a bit before Diane came to take him to the back. Michael came back to the library at the end of the day and asked I’d like to get a coffee with him sometime. Didn’t realize it was a date until the third time we’d gone out for coffee and he started buying. It was casual dating, you know what I mean? The kind where you spend the first few dates just getting to know one another. Talking about what you had in common. What hobbies you had. Your friends. Family. Rather commonplace stuff just to test the waters. And while we had a few disagreements in interests, we kept coming back to the things we did have in common. You’ll have to forgive me, but when it comes to other people’s perceptions of me, I am very dense. Beyond the surface level of ‘this person likes me’, ‘this person tolerates me’ and ‘this person dislikes me’ I have an incredibly difficult time reading people. Even when Michael was holding my hand on our forth date, I still kept telling myself, “Oh Nel, he’s one of those people that uses physical contact to show he’s engaged in conversation.” And frankly it wasn’t until I started sleeping with him -- oh, christ, too much? Sorry, not really the right sort of content to be sharing. But you see my point. I didn’t realize Michael and I had been legitimately dating for nearly eight months. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I’d realized sooner, he wouldn’t have -- you know what, nevermind. There’s no use dwelling on it. Michael is dead. He gave himself up to stop the Spiral’s ritual and that’s all that matters. He did us a service but well, it put me into a bind. Kind of literally. I’ll fast forward through our relationship -- we were all but short of living together. My apartment was too small. Would you believe it was Lukas housing? And he was living too far for me to comfortably be able to commute after my longer days. He was something of a rock for me on my rough days where I’d be at the Institute well into the night. I didn’t like being there late. Always felt like someone was watching me. Heh, well, it wasn’t paranoia. And present me is glad to reassure past Nelson that no, he was not being an anxious mess. He really was being watched. Some nights Michael would stay with me until I finished what I had been working on. Other nights he’d make a point of coming back later in the evening to check on me only to have to wake me up and send me home. Sometimes I wonder if he had ever actually gone home those days. He’d become wrapped up in his own studies under Gertrude. It wasn’t my business so I never asked unless he chose to share.

That’s a lie, and you know it, don’t you? I was a snoop. I would hear Michael mentioning things some nights when I stayed at his place. Whatever it was Gertrude was having him do, it was eating at him. He talked about always being afraid he was taking the wrong door when he was going places. He’d started taking photographs of the doors he used most often. Told me to make sure it was so he wouldn’t get lost. He didn’t want to go somewhere he couldn’t leave. I suggested he put something on the doors he used most so he wouldn’t get confused. But it didn’t seem to reassure him. Some nights he didn’t sleep at all. He’d either just lay in bed with me until the sun came up. Some mornings I’d wake up to find him facing a wall, hand outstretched as if he were taking a doorknob. He would always be so relieved when I called out to him. He’d always settle into bed next to me and he wouldn’t speak. He would just hang tight on to me and just remain still and silent. Now, trust me, Michael was not mentally ill. I mean, your standard depression and anxiety like nearly everyone our age, but he wasn’t unmedicated, nor was he struggling with anything else. Or maybe he was and he just didn’t know. But I genuinely believe -- no, I know -- that how he was acting was not a sign of mental illness. Something had him. I can only say now that I know something had him, because I know what happened now. He only started acting himself again in the days before he and Gertrude left. He was excited. Talked about how thrilled he was to be needed for something so important. He loved his work and he was very dedicated to aiding Gertrude in her work as well. And he was himself again for a short while. We’d been together I think a little over two years at this point. Longest I’ve ever been with a man. Most men get turned off by me being trans so early in the relationship, but Michael didn’t mind. He just liked me and I have to say, hiccups in his health aside, I think we were very happy together. He was so optimistic that week before -- said that he thought that it was time that we moved in together properly. He said he’d seen some places for rent a bit closer to the Institute that on our combined income would be a walk in the park. He wanted to know if my parents were ever going to be visiting London again because he felt he was ready to meet them. After two years together of us being content in our stations, suddenly he was ready to make more of these commitments with me and honestly. . .I couldn’t have been happier. I was half expecting him to mention marriage at some point, but it still seemed a bit soon for that. But I wouldn’t have said no. We were happy. And when he woke me up before leaving for his flight, kissed me and told me he loved me -- I was sure I had such a bright future to look forward to. I was absolutely in love with Michael Shelley, and. . .

You know how the Spiral is the concept of the fear of lies and deception? You know how it alters your perception of reality? You know how it twists and writhes and fills you with doubt and frustration? With how it makes you question anything and everything in your life? Imagine all of that culminating at once. Imagine suddenly being stricken by the anger and betrayal of whether or not this man you absolutely adored was lying to you. Betrayal of ones feelings I think might be the absolute worst thing you could ever experience.

I had eagerly counted down the days of Michael’s return. It was all I could hope for. I had found a few places I wanted to look at with him. I’d even called my parents back in Massachusetts to tell them the good news. And when Gertrude came back alone? She pulled me aside and told me at the very least she owed me some sort of answer. I had thought Michael maybe had just gone straight home and gone to bed. He probably had some sort of jetlag and needed to rest. But all she told me was that Michael would not be coming back. And she wouldn’t say anything more.

I found out what happened on my own. Though I think Elias may have had something to do with it. Who am I kidding, I know he had something, maybe everything to do with it. My access to the archives was cut off after Michael left. I wasn’t allowed in unless Gertrude saw it absolutely necessary and I was under strict supervision. In the past she’d noticed that I’d swipe the occasional statement for a few days before returning it and she wasn’t...too fond of that. Or me in general. I think her general dislike of me is half the reason, if not all the reason I never joined the archives team, despite being a perfect fit for the position. No, it wasn’t just Elias. Michael I think left me hints too. I had gone to his apartment after a week thinking maybe he might have actually needed some space before we moved in together and that’s why Gertrude was being cryptic because she didn’t know herself. But when I got there, the apartment had been untouched since I’d left for work the morning of Michael’s departure. Everything was in its place. I spoke to his landlord, mentioned that he had disappeared and that the place needed to be cleaned out. But as it were, before he left he’d put my name on the lease somehow. It had seemed he might have actually prepared for this. I mean, I know now that he had. But back then I was so angry. But I couldn’t just express it. I felt like nothing made sense. I felt like he had abandoned me, but in such a way where he wanted me to be taken care of in his absence. I didn’t understand any of it. Rent had been paid up for the next few months and I was able to use this time to take care of my own affairs. I moved in to Michael’s apartment. I kept his name on the least just in case. I decided I’d rather have a longer nightly commute home than live in that lonely apartment of mine. I’d like some sort of company even if it was in the form of Michael’s belongings. The unfortunate side was that the apartment now had twice as much stuff and I had to do some cleaning. It was while I was cleaning, I found some of Michael’s hints. Statements that I had never laid my eyes on. Photocopies of ones that were likely still in the archive. In truth, Michael had been lying to me. More than he let on. But now I realize it had been a lie to protect me. He could only do so much for me while he was around though, ‘cause before you knew it, I was absorbing as much information as I possibly could about what he’d left behind for me to read. It was astounding. What he’d left for me perfectly summed up so many of the connections in the study I’d been finishing for my grad studies. Who would have guessed that my own boyfriends disappearance would have led to me completing my degree! I say this happily, but it’s breaking my heart to do so. I really loved Michael, you know. I couldn’t really bear the idea of being without him. Maybe that’s what pushed me to start breaking into the archives late at night. Maybe that’s how and why Elias started watching me. I don’t know if it was because he disapproved of what I was doing, or if he was just curious. I, uh, I don’t know if you’ve caught on. But Elias doesn’t watch all of us. Just those he thinks have some sort of weight. It probably had to do with how much I buried myself in what Michael left behind for me. After I obtained my degree all I could do was start researching. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have signed the proper employment contract. 20/20 as they say. I was obsessed, Jon. The moment I found out Sannikov Land wasn’t real, I lost myself. I tore apart the myths and legends I’d been studying my entire life to find some sort of hint or connections between what Michael left for me and the truth of it all. You’ll um, have to forgive me a bit if the rest sounds a little disjointed. Between Michael’s disappearance and Gertrude’s death, my grasp on reality started to. Slip? None of my memories connect smoothly. There’s patches. Blanks in time. I can only take a guess that these were from periods where I was lost in my own mania.

I wouldn’t say the Spiral had me yet. But it was definitely effecting my daily life. Like Michael, I started to see the doors. I started to find myself caught in lies and deception and doing whatever I could to find answers. I was living to deceive as long as it benefited me and my search. And like it had always been. They were selfish pursuits. It was knowledge I had to know for myself. It was knowledge I needed to obtain because I needed to find out what happened to Michael. Elias never intervened. He never tried to stop me. I have a couple memories of him pulling me aside and supplying me with some information that might help steer me on the right path. Or maybe the wrong one. I don’t know. Like I said. Those years were hazy. But he always seemed so pleased by my progress. He knew then. He had to know. This is Elias we’re talking about. He had to have known where I was headed. Jackass... I don’t have much clarify until shortly after Gertrude died. I had been in the halls. I was staring at something on the wall -- probably a door. I passed Elias. He didn’t look right. He looked like he was staring through me. Said something about how someone should lock the archives. Gertrude had passed away and he needed to make sure the room was locked up until someone new was hired. He handed me a key and sent me on my way. I think he was telling me to take what I needed if it would help me in my search for Michael. Whatever it is I had found, that was when I think I had finally succumbed to the Spiral’s influence over me.

You know the funny part about this. . .We didn’t hear that Gertrude passed away for another three days. I suppose that’s the funny thing about being touched by the Spiral. You just accept the falsehoods, even when you know they’re falsehoods. And in the end? It benefited me. Just as I always wanted.

Since I’m being honest here. Being in that labyrinth was the first time in years I actually didn’t feel like I was losing my mind. I wasn’t scared. In fact it felt like taking a walk in the park. I held a large armful of folders of statements in my arms. And all I did was walk. I passed countless doors and passages and turned through winding corners and corridors and nothing about it filled me with any dread or unease. It felt like I belonged there. I say this knowing full well that my comfort likely had something to do with being in the domain of what had been driving me those past few years. I don’t think the Distortion liked my reaction, though. At one point, I found a dead end. There was only one door, and when I opened it, I was back in my office. I didn’t imagine it, of course. That wouldn’t be the first time I ventured there. I usually went in of my own volition. I don’t know if the Distortion found me to be a nuisance or not. But whenever I saw a new door, I simply would knock first and announce I was coming in. And whenever I went in, it was just the same. An odd comfort like I belonged there. I felt like a visitor in someone’s home. It was like when I first started to spend the night at Michael’s. It was as if the halls were no harm to me, even though it was not my dwelling. I was allowed to be there. Perhaps I was even being invited. But if the Spiral disliked my presence, it never did so in such a way that caused me any fear or harm.

It was my third time within the Spiral that I started calling out.

I had done enough research by now and learned enough to know what the Spiral was. What it could do. Where it was leading me. And to know all about Michael’s connection to it. And I started to call his name, hoping I might hear him respond. I didn’t want to believe he was dead yet. I wanted to believe he was somewhere within these halls and he needed to be found. Even at the cost of myself, I wasn’t going to leave him. And then, it hit me. The more I called for him, the more welcoming the halls became. The more I began to find that I wasn’t just comfortable. I was welcome. I was able to spend more and more time in the Spiral each time. I knew quite well that I was likely losing more and more of myself with each trip. I would talk to no one, or perhaps someone, whenever I was there. I would have conversations with whatever was residing in the halls. Like I was spending my time with a friend. Like I was talking to Michael. Maybe it was something I did to keep myself grounded the deeper I ventured. When I came out, I often could not sleep. I wouldn’t show up to work for days at a time, either due to the passage of time itself in the Spiral, or just because I couldn’t find the strength. My visits only began to slow when I started to notice the door in Michael’s apartment. It had stopped appearing anywhere else. Just Michael’s place. There had been something etched into the door. The method I had given Michael about how to be sure the doors he used in his regular life were the right ones. There had been a slight carving around the doorknob. I had etched it into the door of Michael’s apartment back when he first started to show signs of concern. It was his door. But he was not here to open it. It sat across from our bed, like it was waiting for me. It wanted me to open it. But this time, I was not invited to come inside. So I did something else. I just opened it. I opened the door and I left it open wide. And I said that whatever was in there that wanted to see me so badly could come out. This was a new behavior. And I welcomed it, just as it had welcomed me. That was when I met the Distortion.

It didn’t look like Michael when I first met with it. It looked like a young woman, maybe late teens. Dark skin and hair but her shoulders were unnaturally hunched up and her hands. They were so long and spindly. She was dressed in gym wear, a loose, cut up t-shirt and yoga pants. And she sat on the bed in front of me. I left the door open. Day in, day out. I had left an invitation for the Spiral to come in to my residence and it took a week or so before it took form and visited me. I had managed to be sleeping that night, but something stirred in me and caused me to wake up. And I found it sitting cross legged on the bed. Just staring at me. I don’t think the Spiral had decided to use Michael’s form yet when it came to mingling with people yet. Maybe I was the reason it started to, but I wasn’t sure. Still not.

It asked me a question. It’s voice unnerved me and it smiled at me as it spoke and there was something so wholly unsettling about that smile. Like my head was aching from just looking at it. And it asked what was so important that I was always coming in its doors. It told me it was quite bothered by my coming in and making no means of trying to escape, or find its center. It didn’t like that I was searching for someone rather than something. I told it that I was looking for my boyfriend. He was inside there somewhere and I was going to bring him out. I’m not sure if it liked that response but it left after that. Not for good, because a few nights later the same thing happened. But this time, it sat in the form of a man. He was about forty or so, olive skin, light hair with a stern, crooked nose and a scruffy beard. It asked if this was the person I had been looking for. And I said no. And it was gone again. This went on every few nights for, god, close to a year. Each time I would give it another bit about how Michael looked. I tried to show it a photograph before but when it looked at my phone, the screen just went fuzzy and I had to restarted it in order for it to work right again.

Until one night it got it right. It spoke in the same voice, although there was a different, almost feedback like twang to the way it spoke to me. And when I awoke, the Spiral had gotten it right. I saw my Michael sitting on the bed in front of me and the sight of him was enough to get me to throw off my covers and kneel in front of him, hands upon his face. I must have been crying or maybe it was looking straight at the Spiral, but I couldn’t get a clear look at him. I told it that it was right and this was the person I was looking for. And I needed him back.

And you know what it said?

‘No, I don’t think so.’

I don’t think I had ever been so scared to see Michael’s smile. It just smiled at me and it ran the tip of one of those long, spindly fingers under my chin and I hadn’t even registered that it had made me bleed. And it just said ‘No, I think I shall keep this one a little more. See how far you’re willing to go to get him back.’

And it went into the door again. This time it smiled the whole way. And when the door closed. I was immediately on my feet to run at it to chase it down. But the door was gone.

I took something equivalent to a sabbatical a few weeks later, Jon -- it was around the time you started as archivist. Tim had been working beneath me before my sabbatical and I think that’s part of what drove him to join your team. I was going to be gone for a few months and I wouldn’t have the chance to give him any work to do. Elias was more than happy to give me the time off, but he did something to me. I think as assurance I wouldn’t go running away forever. I think I had started to become a threat to him in some way. Not sure how. Still not. Part of me is somewhat convinced that Elias was planning on using me to get the Spiral to touch you, but I don’t things went exactly as he expected. Especially considering the Spiral had plans of its own.

I was on leave for about three months. I took a few weeks to fly back to the States to visit my parents and check in with the Foundation. I checked in with the archive staff there to see if I could scour some of their resources for what I had been experiencing. But we were never as well equipped with statements as the Magnus Institute. I found a lot of my efforts there weren’t really worth my time. Although I did learn a little about a few groups in North America that had their eye -- Jon, keep an eye out on the Codley family of New York. They’re a cult family, but I wasn’t able to pinpoint of what exactly. If I find out more, I’ll let you know. I only met one person back at the Usher Foundation that knew anything that might help me. In fact, it was their own archivist, man by the name of Warren Chase. I’m actually still in touch with him, if you ever want to meet him. He seems to be following your accounts pretty intensely. Said that he’s been having duplicates of your statements and recordings sent to him. We know who’s to blame for that, obviously. Truth be told, he’d asked me to come back to the Foundation. He wanted me to join his team, but I had to decline. Work here is far too time consuming. But, you see, Warren hadn’t been touched by the Spiral, but he’d been touched by the Stranger. Stranger apparently is very tied in with the Foundation. Something to do with the number of secret organization and secret government activities happening back in the States that there are people within our own organizations that are not what they seem to be. Now, Warren seemed to be far more optimistic about my situation than I was. Told me that if one can keep their head when dealing with these entities, you can retrieve someone lost to them. I mean...you were able to bring back Daisy. I’ve had no such luck.

Jon, I know Michael’s gone now. The Spiral swaps its forms whenever it so chooses and I know it discarded Michael’s form when I. . .When I took too long. I’ve met it as it is now. Helen is the name of the woman it appears as. It’s told me that I knows me, but it has no attachment for me now like it had when it was Michael. It knows Michael had loved me.

But it was the time that the Distortion was Michael that was what ultimately brought me to where I am. I’m just one foray or so away from becoming its next avatar at this point and I mean it when I say that I am absolutely fine with that. I spent the time of my leave looking for those doors. Looking for how to get into the Spiral from other entrance ways and other methods to get myself lost in those halls again. This time from a new vantage point, from a new perspective. I was going to find Michael and I was going to bring him home! And I like to think that I nearly succeeded. It might sound absurd to you but, I think I had become something like friends with the Spiral by the time I had figured some things out. It probably started when I had encountered it behind a bar during my last few days in the States before returning to London. It was preying on this young woman who was trying to tell her friends about this store she’d kept passing each day on her home from work, and each time she would try to take someone there it was always an old butcher’s shop, long since closed down. I had noticed the Spiral lurking around and when I found myself in the men’s room looking at what appeared to be a door to the outside, I stepped out of the room and found the actual entrance to the back of the bar. The Spiral had been waiting for me, wearing Michael’s face as it had grown fond of doing. And I told it that I had figured one thing out. I knew that just because it looked like Michael, it was not Michael. And I think that curried my favor with it a bit. It liked that I was playing its game and calling its bluff. And it became just that with me and the Distortion. A game between the two of us. The Spiral in its own way was entertained by my dedication. And somewhere down the line, I think we became, well, I like to think we had become friends. Or as close to friends as you can be wit the entity of Deceit.” And Nelson stops, and he stands up and smiles at Jon. “I think this is where you say ‘Statement ends’ isn’t it?” The recording does not stop, but Jon looks up at the researcher who has now raised to his feet and offered a smirk to the archivist. “You’d be surprised how many of us can be touched by our host without losing our wits. Maybe I’ll indulge you with the rest sometime. Take care, Jon.”

#tma #the magnus archives #OC fanfition #evan talks his ocs #nelsoncore

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seigephoenix · 5 years

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DA OCs

Questions from this post: http://gothzenyatta.tumblr.com/post/145321138317

My Elaina Cousland, Guinevere Hawke, and Niyra Cadash for this one. Under a cut because of length.

1. What would your Warden generally think of your Hawke and your inquisitor?

Elaina Cousland - I have met Guinevere Hawke. I doubt she remembers me, it was just after the events of Kirkwall. She's… Best taken in small doses if you dislike crass personalities.

Niyra Cadash is a practical businesswoman who I respect. While she's not the most diplomatic leaders, she knows her weaknesses. And Lady Montilyet is a lovely woman to speak with.

2. What would your Hawke generally think of your warden and your Inquisitor?

Hawke - The Warden lost everything, was a wanted criminal, and rose beyond that to become Ferelden's fucking queen. Hell yes I respect the hell out of her. She's got a very nice ass too.

Niyra Cadash wouldn't have been my choice for Inquisitor. I mean, this is supposed to be a religious organization, and she's not only a dwarf but a Carta dwarf. Impressed with how she runs things. Don't get into a drinking contest with her. Skyhold is really cold, don't ask how I know...

3. What would your Inquisitor generally think of your warden and your Hawke?

Niyra Cadash - The Warden has my respect. She's helped turn that country around and deals with whining nobles all day without stabbing one. Impressive.

As for Hawke. Can't hold her liquor for shit but after what she went through? Hard not to respect a woman trying to atone for past mistakes. Plus she's Varric's best friend. The man may have questionable taste in certain things but he can judge a person very well.

4. What would they think about each other’s love interests (if they romanced someone of course)

Cousland - I've no doubt that Fenris is a lovely man. He's definitely an impressive warrior. And as for Isabela? *smiles sweetly*

Hawke - You've slept with Isabela too? *laughs* Well, I mean. It's obvious the King of Ferelden is still head over heels for his queen. Ball and chain my ass. As for Cadash's love interest? I still wanna know the story from Varric. He's kept his lips shut regarding his relationship with the Inquisitor.

Cadash - The King of Ferelden is still a fierce warrior who loves his queen. What can I say? I am a closet romantic. Fenris and Isabela compliment Hawke, and I think their relationship works for them.

5. Is your inquisitor jealous that both the warden and Hawke have a mabari hound?

Cadash - Nah. I have my own pet nuggalope. And a dracolisk. Kinda hard to top those.

6. What would they think of each other’s combat skills/techniques?

Cousland - Hawke's impressive on the battlefield. Have you seen her lift that bastard sword? As for Cadash, she's as in your face on the battleground as in the ballroom.

Hawke - Cousland's still a top notch archer. She didn't train to be a Bard for nothing. And Cadash hits hard with that shield. Enemies underestimate her and she takes full advantage.

Cadash - Hawke's hot on the battlefield with that sword of hers. Cousland's never gone soft on the throne. Pretty sure most of the nobles know it too. *laughs*

7. Are all your protagonists the same combat class? And what specializations did they take?

Elaina Cousland is a rogue archer that specializes in Bard.

Guinevere Hawke is a two handed warrior that specializes in Reaver.

Niyra Cadash is a sword and shield warrior that specializes in Champion.

8.What would your inquisitor and warden think of what happened in Kirkwall? Would they have supported Hawke’s decisions?

Cousland - Was there ever a right answer? Too much has happened to say if what Hawke did was right or wrong. She says she had no idea Anders was going to blow up the Chantry. I believe her. I cannot publicly make a comment you understand, but I don't see how she could have been wrong. She did what a leader does, stepped up and made a choice. Then lived with the consequences.

Cadash - Hawke made whatever decision she felt was right. No one else was going to step up and do it. She did it and lives with the guilt. She's endured enough. I would've supported her in Kirkwall for sure.

9. Would your warden or Hawke have actually accepted the role of inquisitor if Cassandra had located them as she’d planned to? Would they have been a good leader for the Inquisition?

Cousland - I'm afraid not. Alistair would likely have a fit if I did. But I wouldn't regardless, my time is done. I'll lead my country until it's time for the next generation.

Hawke - You're joking right? Me as the ‘Herald of Andraste’. *dissolves into laughter*

10. Do your protagonists share the same opinions on the Chantry?

Cousland - While not perfect, it gives believers hope and guidance.

Hawke - It can kick rocks. Though I'm okay with how the new Divine is running things.

Cadash - I'm a dwarf�� *pauses* Let Leliana rule that department. I've got nothing to say on the matter. The ‘Herald of Andraste’ isn't exactly that religious anyway.

11. Do your protagonists share the same opinions on mages rights?

Cousland - We freed the Circle in Ferelden. The mages govern themselves with scholars from universities and the Chantry alongside them. It's worked for us.

Hawke - If I hear mage rights one more time. *shakes fist* Look, no one deserves to be shackled. No one. But without some way of keeping balance corruption happens. On both sides.

Cadash - Eh. I let Viviene and Leliana handle that. As long as it's balanced and fair I stay out of it.

12. Do your protagonists share the same opinions on blood magic?

Cousland - There are certain benefits if it is used without malice or a lust for power.

Hawke - Too much temptation. Glad it's outlawed. Nothing good has come from it that I've seen.

Cadash - I imagine it can be used like a tool. In experienced hands, it can create masterworks. In inept hands, disaster strikes. I can't use magic so I prefer to leave it to the experts.

13. Do your protagonists share the same opinions on The Game?

Cousland - *sigh* a necessary evil if one wants to barter with Orlais.

Hawke - Fuck the ‘Game’.

Cadash - I hate it. I'm not a diplomat so it was a disaster in Halamshiral. Josephine almost throttled me after the incident in the garden.

Hawke - WHAT INCIDENT IN THE GARDEN!? DID IT INVOLVE VARRIC!? TELL ME WOMAN!

14. If they’d been in each other’s places would they have made the same or different choices? And who would they have romanced, if anyone?

Cousland - I believe I would in Cadash's shoes. We both tend to look at the bottom line before making decisions. *whispers* I might also have flirted with Cullen. *clears throat*

Hawke - I dunno about Cadash but pretty sure I'd make similar choices regarding Cousland. Though I'd go for the witty assassin myself. You're sure Morrigan isn't into woman?

Cadash - Who knows? I probably would have in Hawke's shoes. But my tastes run towards sarcastic dwarves that have a tendency for bad puns.

Hawke - Maker's balls, tell me how you and Varric got together!

15. Would your protagonists have the same character alignment?

Oh definitely for all three. That's who they are. Though Niyra would be a bit more rough around the edges. She'd have been 27ish in Origins and no one fucked with her at that age.

16. Would your protagonists have the same Hogwarts house?

Hahaha no.

Cadash - Slytherin.

Cousland - Gryffindor

Hawke - Slytherin

17. If Origins and Inquisition had the 3 personalities (Diplomatic, Sarcastic, Aggressive) which would your warden and inquisitor have predominately been? And what one did your Hawke have?

Cousland - Diplomatic for sure

Cadash - Sarcastic/Aggressive

Hawke - Pure purple baby.

18. What is the biggest similarity between your protagonists?

Err their gender? There isn't much too similar between all three really.

Cadash and Cousland are slightly more diplomatic than Hawke, so they share that in common. They see potential benefits to making nice with nobles versus telling it like it is.

Hawke and Cadash both prefer to just say what they need to say. Cadash's is tempered a bit with diplomacy and knowing the opponent.

19. What is the biggest difference between your protagonists?

How they view the world and deal with problems.

Cousland has seen war and what it does to men. She's been betrayed and didn't let it destroy her ability to trust in people. She's not the whole epitome of sunshine but she's definitely not the burn it to the ground types.

Hawke is a burn it to the ground types. She's bitter about the events in Kirkwall and the betrayal from Anders was a slap in the face. Carver had almost been a casualty of the Chantry, if he hadn't late thanks to Varric he would've been in the Chantry that night. So she's got some major bitterness leftover. It makes her less inclined to play nice. Her found family in Kirkwall are the only exceptions to this.

Cadash balances diplomat and smartass. Sometimes she prefers to be the smartass over the diplomat regardless of the outcome. Overall she isn't a burn it to the ground unless all other options have been exhausted. Then? Then you'd better watch the fuck out because you won't see her coming.

20. Who handles responsibility the best? And who handles it the worst?

Cousland handles it the best. She's used to it at this point.

Hawke the worst. She isn't the best at handling it, and never wants anything heavier than what's for dinner anymore.

Cadash hates responsibility and pawns it off whenever she can if it doesn't benefit her.

21. Do they share any of the same hobbies?

No.

Cousland - is a musician

Hawke - has learned how to forge weapons.

Cadash - writes in her spare time. Don't tell Varric.

22. Would you ever ship any of them together?

Ah no. They're too different to get along in a ship.

Hawke - Mmmaaayyybbbeeee a one night stand.

Cadash - Well considering I'm the only one that hasn't slept with Isabela, I think that should be rectified.

Hawke - Don't tell Varric. He'd write it into his books.

23. How old were each of your protagonists at the start of their respective games? Do you think their age affected the choices they made? Looking back would they have done any major action differently?

Cousland - 19 at the beginning of Origins

Hawke - 24 at the beginning of DA2

Cadash - 38 at the beginning of Inquisition

24. How do each of your protagonists handle loss?

Cousland - She's lost so much that she's learned to keep it inside until in private. She mourns by having a good cry and then talking about it. Even if it is just to her faithful Mabari when Alistair isn't there.

Hawke - Doesn't deal with it well… She likes to pick a fight with someone and just lash out as if a physical wound can help replace the emotional one.

Cadash - She gets quiet and retreats to a safe space. Only a few trusted individuals are allowed close when she's grieving.

25. What is/was their relationship with their family like?

Cousland - was close to her family. Is still close to Fergus.

Hawke - is close to Carver and Bethany. Wasn't as close to Leandra, she always felt like a disappointment to her mother.

Cadash - is as close as you can be in a Carta family. Her mother and grandmother are the two matriarchs of the family and found it fucking amusing their grand/child was the head of the Inquisition. She keeps in touch regularly.

26. Do any of your protagonists marry and/or have children?

Cousland and Alistair marry. They have one child together after six years married. A complete surprise.

Hawke never marries her partners but they all remain together. No kids though. They don't feel like kids belong in their little family, they each have too much baggage.

Cadash and Varric get married eventually. He has to talk her into it because at first she thinks it's a joke. No kids as they claim to be too old at that point for kids.

27. What would their fears on the graves in the fade during Here Lies The Abyss be?

Cousland - Betrayal or Succumbing (to the Taint)

Hawke - Failure

Cadash - Loss of Self

28. What is their favourite location within their own game and what would be their favourite in each others?

Cousland - Castle Cousland. It's home. But away from that? Virgil's Keep. I'd love to visit Skyhold.

Hawke - The Hanged Man, end of story. The Herald's Rest in Skyhold.

Cadash - Skyhold for sure. Though Varric tells me The Hanged Man doesn't serve mead that tastes completely like piss. So we'll see.

29. How do they each feel about the Deep Roads?

*crickets* Probably better off not talking about that one with them.

30. Out of your Warden, Hawke, and Inquisitor, who is your favorite?

I can't decide. I really can't. Elaina was going to be my sunshine OC but she developed into a strong leader. Cadash is my older OC (I'm 34 myself), so I can identify with her. Hawke though… Hawke is the closest. I made her when I was in the depths of hurting and just wanted to lash out at how unfair my life was. Then she stayed because I wanted to see if she could get out.

So Hawke out of these three.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age inquisition #female warden #female hawke #female inquisitor

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gadegaard06lynge-blog · 6 years

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