#we eventually had no choice but to go back because it was winter and below freezing outside

[tittyinfinity]

Sometimes I forget about the time I was almost killed by a sniper because of a fight between two other people

[lostbetweenthepagesofthesebooks]

"Night Triumphant - and the Stars Eternal." (A Court of Wings and Ruin, Maas, p. 394).

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2 Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Plot: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Okay I’m trying a different direction when it comes to these reviews. I’m spending way too much doing a play by play of the book, and that should really be on ya’ll, ya know. I wanted this blog to basically be a journal of these books I’m reading. A place to pour out my thoughts and feelings, criticisms and praises. There will still be somewhat of an overview of the book, for those that are looking for that with some minimal commentary, and then below the cut will continue to be full on commentary that will include spoilers. So here we go…

Ya’ll. For me. This is the one that really did it. But this is more of a commentary on me more than anything. I love some action, I particularly love some action when abilities/powers/supernaturalness is in play. I love seeing full frontal super powers. Not that ACOMAF didn’t have a good amount, but there’s so much more in this one, and more from other characters.

So we start back in the Spring Court, and Feyre is playing her part as the woman had her mind messed with by Rhysand, and attempting to appear in love with Tamlin, but secretly plotting as the High Lady of the Night Court (which no one but the Dreamers are aware of just yet). Spring Court is working on their now unfortunate alliance with Hybern. Tamlin continues to think the alliance will be good, and his people will be safe. Hybern is clearly using the Spring Court to get close to the wall that divides the Fae and Human Realms, and start making frequent visits to the court to inspect the wall. We get Ianthe, Jurian, and two Hybern commanders here. Eventually, Feyre plots the perfect revenge, and executes it very well (for the most part, anyways). 

Feyre manages to escape out of Spring, along with Lucien; slightly out of his choice, slightly out of force, and slightly out of his need… to see his mate. Unfortunately, Feyre and Lucien get completely tapped of their powers, so they must travel on foot, through the different courts. Autumn Court is first, and we get to see just how “horrible” Lucien’s brothers are. We briefly get into Winter Court, and here we have a fun little brawl because Cassian and Azriel arrive just in time as Feyre and Lucien are again dealing with his brothers. 

We get back into Night Court, and this is where more plotting kicks in. Feyre continues to train in fighting and her powers, and attempts to learn to fly as she learns she also gained shape-shifting powers from Tamlin, notably in the form of batwings, just like our batboys. We also learn of Nesta training with Amren. Because spoiler Nesta and Elain came out more than High Fae. Nesta is described as seeming to have an immense, dark power. Elain’s come in strange visions. 

At some point all the High Lords, and Lady, have a meeting in order to come together to deal with Hybern. And I do mean all the Lords. They do all agree to work together. Feyre forms a few more alliance’s in order to deal with Hybern because their armies are that vast. As well as some human alliances. 

Eventually we get into a whole lot of fighting. There are multiple battles before the actual war. Plenty of action with abilities being used. There’s a lot during the battles too that are important to the overall plot. During the actual war, there are also major events. There is a death as well… not really major for the reader, if I’m being honest, but major for some of the characters. And… I think I’ll leave it at that….

I do recommend this one, obviously haha. I loved the action sequences and the plotting so much. We got more of all the characters, characters mentioned, and characters hinted at. We got to explore a little more of the Fae world. We get some beasties. And for those that like it, there’s plenty of smut. I for sure got what I wanted out of this book.

Remember ya’ll this WILL contain spoilers. I need to vent!!!

This is the book where I finally started falling in love with the characters, especially Feyre. It didn’t feel like she had much of a character before, and now she really comes into herself. The plotting and scheming in the Spring Court I absolutely loved. It was clever and a bit stressful as well, but it definitely felt like Feyre, if this makes sense. I enjoyed that Tamlin not only got what he deserved for being an idiot with his thoughtless alliance, but I liked that Feyre got her piece of revenge out of it as well. I still do not hate Tamlin ya’ll, and it was almost sad. But I do think if Feyre hadn’t manipulated his court a bit, they would’ve been way worse for wear. Hybern would’ve destroyed the Spring Court. To me, Feyre just pulled the curtain from their eyes. As for Ianthe? I do hate her, actually. And she deserves the literal battering Feyre gives her, and then her eventual death that Feyre leads her to via The Weaver. Also the Hybern commander's death? Amazing. 

Traveling through the Court’s was fun for me. I’m really dying to see more of all the courts. We mostly see Autumn as Feyre and Lucien are traveling, and if Beron wasn’t just the absolute worst, I would love Autumn Court. It sounds so beautiful and calming; then again, I just love fall so. We get to see some of Feyre’s fire abilities here, as well as Lucien’s brothers using their own. And you know me by now… I love seeing powers/abilities and I’m a little bored with Feyre not tapping into more of all of her abilities. But speaking of this… when Feyre starts to train with flying, it’s irritating to me that she is clearly grasping the concept quickly. I mean in the end she still isn’t that good, but Cass and Az make it seem like it took them forever, and Feyre grasps it just enough to actually be beneficial when she needs it to. I don’t like this. I don’t like it when books or even movies/show make it so the main character is inherently really good at whatever thing or makes it so they grasp it quickly. It just feels lazy to me. 

We met the monster that is the Bone Carver in the last book, we get more of him. I love him. He’s witty and clever. We meet another little monster that is living in the bottom of a library: Bryaxis. An adorable, absolute fear monster. I love these awful little monsters! Speaking of little monsters, please tell me I’m not the only one that nearly cried during the Suriel’s death???! Why was that oddly so fucking sad? Bone Carver made me sad too. I found that rude. I wanted more from him. The Weaver? Meh. The King of Hybern just casually snapping her neck was a pretty cool visual though, I can’t deny that.

The other major court we get to see is the Dawn Court, which sounds so splendid. Not my ideal court, but I’d love to see it regardless. Just hearing Feyre’s description of these courts makes me want a TV show or movie series…. But with a good producer, director, cinematographer, and actors. I will be highly disappointed if they do make an adaptation and it’s so painfully green screen. The meeting of the High Lords and Lady was honestly everything I expected. We had painfully prideful men, but also different personalities on display, which I do think SJM did a decent job with. Even Tamlin’s appalling diss towards Feyre was kind of epic… I mean… you can’t necessarily blame him for hitting a low blow ya’ll. Anyways. Mans get what he deserves. 

I’m not necessarily mad about Nesta having extra abilities, which we get some on display in this book right… but I just find it kind of lame that not only does Feyre get to live with her sisters now for an extremely long amount of time because they’ve been made into Fae. But now they too have these incredible abilities… just like Feyre. I mean their abilities did add into the plot, their abilities are fun to see so far, but I was just kind of like “....really?...okay…”

Anyways, during the war, seeing some of Nesta’s power face off against the King was fun to watch, and I am glad here that SJM didn’t outright have Nesta come into her full power. I do also like that Elain is the one that lands the killing blow. There was something almost poetic about Nesta and Elain managing this. 

And whoever thought Amren actually betrayed Feyre and the Dreamers… ya’ll ain’t right for that. I liked what SJM tried to do here. But she wrote Amren’s love for the Night Court and loyalty to Rhysand too well. It was clear as fucking day that Amren would never have truly betrayed them like this. At least some of ya’ll had to see that, and had to know that Amren had a trick up her sleeve. I was a little disappointed in her true form though. It just didn’t sound quite as badass as SJM hyped her up to be. It also got ruined when there was another fire-like being on the battlefield. Andddd I think that’s all the opinions I really had on this one. The ending didn’t necessarily surprise me. Of course Rhys wasn’t going to actually die. That would be ridiculous… at least just yet. But… I mean… I am a little disappointed there wasn’t a major death. There’s been no major loss in 3 books thus far, with major battles. I don’t know anything about SJM and her characters, but if she can’t let them go, I’m gonna be disappointed is all I’m saying.

Read on beautiful people. 📖🤘

[archinform]

Life is…Life

"A plate is a plate. A man is a man. Life is ... Life."

Reflecting on Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie

[I originally published this post on September 4, 2009, in my blog Running Into Myself, while living and teaching in China.]

"...I don't think there's any better way to fight off the chill of winter than a big bowl of carbohydrates swimming in melted butter." David Lebovitz, Wed., Dec 31, 2008 Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with our busy thoughts. Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still. And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds but this one vision which ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy, so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination which leaves us breathless. Saint Augustine

Anna Karina in Vivre sa vie

Among my obsessions lately have been all things French; witness my continual references to David Lebovitz' blog about food and Paris.

I've also been watching a bunch of French films recently.  Is it my imagination, or am I understanding more of the dialogue, since the downloads and DVDs don't include English subtitles?  Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962), which I watched again last night for the third or fourth time, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite movies. 

Nana in a cafe, opening scene of Vivre sa vie

I was mesmerized by the unusual, voyeuristic camera placement that often photographs conversations showing the backs of people’s heads; by the informal, everyday atmosphere of Paris in the early 60s; and, most of all, by the images of Anna Karina (then married to Godard).  The film, above all, seems to be a meditation on her face in its many expressions and moods.  It's a many-layered evocation of life, living, choices, and death, through masterful use of sound, silence, symbolism, dialogue, and camera work.

"The film was made by sort of a second presence," Godard said; "the camera is not just a recording device but a looking device, that by its movements makes us aware that it sees her, wonders about her, glances first here and then there, exploring the space she occupies, speculating."

Anna Karina

The streetwalker's endless beat begins

The story in brief: a young woman's loss of income leads her to become a prostitute; she hooks up with a pimp, eventually finds love, and finally, er, suffers a tragic and abrupt end. Can you even imagine an early 60s American film dealing matter-of-factly with prostitution? (Vivre sa vie includes a voice-over, clinical dissection of the facts and daily routine of a prostitute's life) Yes, I know Shirley MacLaine played a whole series of hookers-with-a-heart-of-gold, but the word was never used. Nor did money change hands. Nor did we ever get a great shot like this:

Some things are slightly less obvious, though:

Anna Karina as...Louise Brooks?

Louise Brooks, 1920s

Compare the expression on Karina's face above with with that of actress Ellen Andrée in Degas' painting of L' Absinthe below:

Edgar Degas, Dans un café (L'Absinthe), 1875 -1876, oil on canvas,H. 92,0 ; L. 68,5 cm. Musée d’Orsay

This has always been one of my favorite paintings, maybe because of the deep alienation and sadness in the woman's downcast eyes. She also reminds me of my mother, who had a lot of her own sadness.

Enough said. You'll just have to watch the film, or read an excellent interpretation here:

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2000/cteq/vivre/

Oh, and don't let the conversation about the chicken confuse you:

 Nana's lover tells her about a homework assignment submitted by a little girl to his father the teacher. In this essay, the little girl writes: "The chicken has an inside and an outside. Remove the outside and you find the inside. Remove the inside and you find the soul."

Criterion trailer for Vivre sa vie

[generalb]

DREAM TIME

Earliest remembered events of the dream:

Someone is interviewing this ancient form of obi wan kenobi, different from the movies. He looks old but his hair is long and brown, and his eyes glow orange. He talks about how he doesn’t regret how it went down with Avalon, even if it was to this apocalyptic like world. The interviewer scoffs the old man, but he warns him that he can still get around the “cans” if he needs to(presumably, “cans” is slang for some type of robot. I don’t know if he said it with the plural or not).

MIDWAY

me and my friends are in this kind of island, same island as obi wan is on(for this and next segment, I think my form changes a lot. At first I’m obi wan, and then I’m this random woman during the hiding scene in THE ROBOT.). It’s snowing, and we’re breaking into Chests that belong to the main controller of the island. The content in these chests look a lot like technology from some kind of Minecraft mod, and the way we’ve been breaking into them is using some kind of cheat code that overrides the password on them. One chest unlocks, but triggers an alarm, and we debate running or hiding from a robot we know is going to be there.

THE ROBOT

We decide to take the loot because we need it, and we treck a little ways up the mountain(?) we were on to a vantage point that looks below. I then pull out a golden blanket that covers all of us, likely meant to be camouflage despite the fact that it was winter. Either way it worked. The blanket btw looked like the golden Snuggie my mother owns. Anyways, on to the robot. I can’t fully describe the robot, other than it had a lot of limbs, and coudl poke with them hard enough to kill. It walked all around, and eventually walked right over us, being able to sense the slightest movement from snow, and attacking every place it sensed it. It was like this anxiety for a minute, but thankfully there were few animals, and it continued on its way.

THE HIDEOUT

We make it back to base, where we are all suddenly kids, around 10. The base interior is all I know, and it looks a lot like that one lodge hotel inside, with polished wood everywhere. There’s these lovely rooms where I can sleep with my best friend in one, or take the nice bed all to myself in another room. I was debating this choice I think when the base got found out. We end up running through this door that gets closed by our biggest member of the resistance, a practical giantess. The pov goes onto her from here on out.

THE FIGHT

As she is closing the door, and pushing a lot of rocks in front of her of the door so they couldn’t follow(the rocks were very similar in look to coco puffs), there is a loud banging on the hanger door at the other end of the hangar. The giantess knows it’s the robot. Then, silence. A voice speaks out, in a bored tone “can you please just open the door already?”. This sends a jolt of fear through the woman, and also me who is watching in dream third person. It’s her brother, who works for the bad guys of the island. She pulls out her sword, and opens the door a nudge before she is attacked by an invisible source. Now here is where it gets weird. The brother starts singing about his foolish it is to fight him and it sounds really weird and 70s and definitely inspired by David Bowie, and we find out that he’s shooting this weird purple sphere from nothing. We find this out just as she breaks her sword blocking it.

THE BEFUDDLEMENT

Now I don’t remember what happened next, but there definitely was an extra 30 or so seconds of dream tape before I woke up. I think there was something to do about Luffy? Or maybe some of us had come back to save her. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what happened. All I know is that I woke up.

[amoveablejake]

Colds, Christmas Trees and (World) Cups

This Sunday’s Tri-Force. 

I promise that I am going to move into my end of year round up pieces and my looks ahead to 2023 but that day, its not today. I have planned what my next few pieces will be and I will stick to that writing plan for once I’m sure and in the space for today it was a blank space meaning that, you better believe, it can be one of my more random, conversational pieces. So. Here we are. Over the past week I have had some sort of winter bug which has resulted in today my voice abandoning me. I can still croak a little bit but its not quite husky enough more strained so I’m practicing my miming skills instead to great effect. It is that time of the year, when the temperature has at times fallen below zero on this little island, when illness is paramount and so hopefully this will be me done and dusted for a little while at least. As I’ve been off from my day job I have been reading a lot and I finished ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ which being set predominantly in a freezing vision of Sweden, felt apt for this time. I did really enjoy the novel even if the ending left me feeling a little bruised. I have now moved away from the series with my next book choice due to the slight upset that came from the ending however, I can already feel myself being drawn back to Salander and so I’m sure that as soon as ‘Fletch’ is done I’ll be back in Sweden with my favourite hacker. 

Today my Mum and I took a drive through the forest which was white with all the frost to a local garden centre to get our Christmas tree for the year. Getting the Christmas tree has always been one of my favourite Christmas activities, in part because I do feel like I am a part of a Peanuts episode, and this year’s tree is particularly special indeed. Bringing the tree home always feels very hygge and today there was also a walk out in the forest which again was very picturesque due to there being a blanket of frost everywhere that the sun hadn’t yet reached and even some places where it had because it is that cold at the moment. At the moment it still feels like Christmas is quite far away and I suppose it is as its a couple of weeks away and there is still work inbetween however, as more and more presents for people are arriving and that buzz fills the air it will soon be here in no time and a certain Vince Guaraldi track will play. Then again, when does it not. 

Yesterday evening England went out of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar against France. The thing that is most disappointing about this is not even that England lost but that the match at the end was so close and that it was a missed penalty that meant France went through. Either team deserved to win and the France team has many fantastic players, they deserve to be in the semi finals but also, so did in England and to go out like this, well, its not the first time an England defeat stings and it definitely won’t be the last. The funny thing is, a lot of my sports teams don’t win or rather haven’t won trophies in more recent years. I’m still waiting for the Packers to reach the Superbowl again, I would like it very much if United did win a trophy sooner rather than later, England, well, maybe one day and as for the World Series. I don’t know where to begin. But really, as much as I joke about the losing, I don’t mind. I don’t mind because really I am an optimist and the losses mean that when my teams do eventually win that victory is going to be even sweeter. I hope. I’ll tell you when I get there. 

See, not if but when.

-Jake, a man waiting for this cold to make him sound like Batman, 11/12/2022

[mrs-hollandstan]

More Than Perfect || Sam Holland

Warnings: mentions of nudity, mentions of childbirth and the complications afterwards, self-doubt, language?, babiessss, Sam just being a supportive cutie

Word Count: 1,720

Author’s Note: Hopefully you guys enjoy a little bit of dad!Sam. Lemme know :) Also, huge credit to @/marsbudge on Instagram for the picture on the right. She’s amazing in expressing her beauty and is the whole reason I created this piece. Moms/ women in general are fucking superheroes. 

My Masterlist || Add yourself to one of my taglists

There was nothing like having a baby. You were told that once you had a little one, your life would change and you would never understand the absolute love you have for this tiny human you'd made. When you and Sam got pregnant with your daughter, he was infatuated with your naked body. The tummy and the thick thighs and the ever growing breasts. Not that you yourself particularly minded being nude around your fiancè or just in general, especially when it just so happened that in the worst weeks of your pregnancy you'd be in the middle of summer. 

When your belly popped towards the bottom, blossoming up the further you got in your pregnancy, Sam lost his mind. He loved the bump and when his hands wandered, it's often where they ended up. More than anything, Sam appreciated the changes your body went through, especially the stretch marks around your thighs, hips, and belly. The boy was obsessed. That's why his Instagram blew up with pictures of your belly, pictures from the baby shower, of the nursery, of her closet, her name board above the crib, and eventually her when she arrived in the beginning of August. 

Virginia Elizabeth was what you named her and Sam, just as much as when she was in your belly, was obsessed with her. She was constantly in his arms and he admired each one of her little features on the daily, dressing her, feeding her (if you couldn't of course), changing her, rocking her to sleep. He was an all around great father. 

Especially because of the pain and exhaustion he inevitably and guiltily felt he inflicted on you. Your bump remained for a few weeks, but what it left, Sam saw, made you slightly depressed. Your feet were still swollen, your breasts were huge but your belly was starting to sag, and the bleeding was ridiculous. You slept most of the time because of the constant milk production and late nights, but Sam didn't mind taking Virginia out into the living room and kitchen, especially if his brothers were over to see their baby girl. 

However, after about a month you'd gotten somewhat used to being a mom and feeding her late at night with Sam right there at your side, giddy smile on his face the entire time at the look of his girls. He loved introducing you as his girls and going to see family and friends with your bubbly little girl in his arms. But something that seemed to remain after all of it was the nudity in your house. 

Sam found that most times he came to find you napping, you were nude beneath the blanket. Not that he minded. Easy access to the skin of your back and belly and thighs. He actually loved the sight and hoped that when he went back to culinary school and eventually went to work as a chef in one of your local restaurants, you'd still be like that, something to look forward to when he climbed into bed with you. 

With a day off from work but not from school, Sam was off in the afternoon and back before the sun started to set, walking up the stoop with a smile on his face. Even a few hours spent away from his girls was torturous. Shouldering the door open, he drops his bag just inside, kicking his shoes off just beside it, 

"Babe?" He calls. There's no reply, a frown covering Sam's face as he walks towards the nursery. He pauses in the doorway of your bedroom when he sees you, smiling to himself. You stand just before your bed, nude with your little girl, only clad in a diaper, in your arms. Your eyes are closed as you sway from side to side, the little one whimpering softly. Walking into the room, Sam stands with his hands on his hips, 

"Look at you two." He says softly. You open your eyes slowly, glancing at him. His smile is so wide you don't know how it fits on his face. He takes a deep, breathless like breath, looking you over, "You two are so perfect." He mumbles before he walks forward again, coming to stand behind you. His hands rest over your hips, lips pressed to your temple, 

"You smell like biscuits." You murmur softly, not faltering in the swaying, even as you lean back against his chest. He chuckles softly, 

"Orange cardamom biscuits. They'd go good with your tea, I'll have to make them sometime for you." He explains softly. You nod, lips pressing against Virginia's cheek. Her little face is turned up towards the ceiling, mouth hanging open as she fights sleep. You sigh, 

"I uhh, I took a shower, put her in that little bouncy thing just outside the shower and she got fussy cause it was hot in the bathroom. So I took her out of her onesie and was holding her and I just... her skin on mine felt amazing. Like yours does. And I miss her. I miss..." Sam can see the tears in your eyes now, "I miss my baby bump and being in the hospital smelling that newborn smell and all that." You tell him. He nods, 

"Its the postpartum peach. You know it'll pass and you'll have so much fun with her when she's older. Plus... the older she gets, the closer we are to havin another one. More of that newborn smell." He reasons. The look you throw him over your shoulder makes him swallow, 

"Alright... yeah, still traumatized from her birth, got it but... you don't have to be so upset. She's still little and perfect... both my girls are, and for the next... what, year, that won't change. She'll get nice and chunky and when she changes, we'll so be ready for it. She'll get giggly and fun and you'll love it. I know you will babe." He reassures. You nod, 

"I know I just can't help it. It feels like someone else is controlling my life, my emotions. I'm sorry." 

"You don't have to apologize Y/N. Your body, your mind are going through a lot of changes. You're maturing and all that. I'm not upset about it. The crying, from you or her doesn't bother me. At least there's some need for me." He half jokes. You smile, looking down at your baby girl. He sighs, 

"I'm really likin this naked thing with you though." He mutters, kissing your shoulder as he molds your hips in his hands. You hum, 

"Sometimes I'm just too lazy to get dressed, other times it's just too hot." You reason. Sam nods, 

"I like it." 

"Oh yeah?" He nods when you glance up at him, "Maybe you should join the party then. I wanna stare at her and she likes daddy's chest." He doesn't even need you to finish the before he's stripping from the grease and oil stained shirt and pants, leaving them in a pile on the floor as you sit at the edge of the bed. You scoot to your side, letting Sam lay down before you before you lay Virginia over his chest. He mumbles incoherently down at her, kissing the top of her head as he strokes down her back. He purrs which makes her whimper, the motion further lulling her to sleep. He glances over at you when you prop your head up on your hand, 

"You're a great father Sam. You've always been an awkward little bean but... when it comes to V, you do amazing." He chuckles softly, 

"Thanks Y/N/N. You two... mean the world." He admits, rubbing up and down your baby's back softly. You sigh, brushing his unruly curls aside, 

"I'm just glad that I don't have to cook. The food you make is excellent and you like doing it and baby loves it too." He laughs again, 

"And that's all that matters is making you both happy." He murmurs. There's a silence that permeates between you for a moment before you stand, finding the thin robe you wear all the time if it genuinely is too hot to wear anything else, 

"What was this... thing you were saying about orange cardamom biscuits?" You ask with a cock of your eyebrow. He smiles wide, tip of his tongue caught between his teeth, 

"I'm starting to think ALL you use me for is food." 

"I feed your little girl from my own body like eight times a day. The LEAST you could do is make bomb fucking food Holland." He hums after a moment, eyes averted from yours and to the little girl laid across his chest. He glances back up, 

"Can we just... have a little longer of this moment? Just a pretty little family before I'm whisked away to slave over a stove." He jokes. After a moment of staring at each other, you sigh, trying to fight your smile before you near the bed again, sitting at his side, 

"Fine Samuel. But only because you're pretty." You lean in to kiss his nose, kissing your baby girl's head just below his chin, "And you too little miss. I just hope you at least get something from me for all the pain and suffering I went through getting you here." Sam reaches up to tuck hair behind your ear, 

"You're a great mumma already. I have no doubt that she'll be witty and perfectly perfect. With a mum like you she'll always know she can never disappoint us with whatever decision or life choice she makes. You'll make sure of it and that's what matters. Raising a decent fucking human being." He says with such passion in his eyes you think you'll faint. You stare at him for another moment before sighing, 

"I love you more than anything on this earth Samuel Holland. Our little family is just perfect right now." You tell him. Leaning up to kiss you, he sighs, 

"Love my girls in all of their beautiful nudity. Love skin to skin." He murmurs. You lay your head against his shoulder, watching your girl sleep. Of course pregnancy and motherhood was difficult, but your fiancè made it so much better and your baby girl was everything and more for the both of you.

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Sam Holland Tags → @in-a-lot-of-fandoms-tbh // @stuckonspidey // @sarcasticallywitty15 // @hopeless-romantic-baby​ // @kharshsti // @hyungaway​ // @robertpattinson-th​ // @ilovemypolarbear // @haleemah​ // @capital-koreasofia​ // @mayra_preciado20 // @randomstufflol29​

[fulltimemoaner]

Zhongli is prosecuted for giving his Gnosis to the Tsaritsa, leaving him and Childe no choice than to flee to Snezhnaya.

Basically, some thieves cut Zhongli’s hair and Childe slaughters them because he really liked his hair.

Childe’s warm hand had felt comforting on his waist, even if he was hidden in a cloak under the warm sun of Liyue, being sneaked out of his homeland like the fugitive that he had become, like the land below him had forgotten the gentle rumbling of his energy and the security of his spears. He had fought back the urge to cry, thousands of years of protecting his safe harbour pointing their treacherous fingers at him. Yet, unlike Azhdaha, there was no bitterness, no disgust towards his beloved humans that had so willingly shunned him after news of his contract with the Tsaritsa had surfaced. In fact, the adoring citizens of Liyue had issued a warrant for him, for the Archon’s head that had wished to sign with the Fatui and sell out their safety.

Zhongli did not wish for the dominion of his beliefs, nor for acceptance, because mortal life was too brief and brittle to understand the gamble of him keeping his Gnosis when he could feel the claws of erosion leeching into his sanity. To their eyes, he had been their loving and protective God, who couldn’t be wrong, who would continue to reign for the millennia to come. The rusty floorboards had creaked underneath his feet, and he had caught the last traces of his homeland’s sun before he had been ushered to the basement of the ship for the first few hours, until they had been a safe distance from Liyue.

The adepti had weeped for this outcome, yet he had begged them not to rain down their vengeance on the mortals, to be gentle and understanding. He had entrusted them with the continuous protection of their harbour.

And the next air he breathed was that of Snezhnaya, the first light he saw was cold and fragile. He had emerged from his murky cabin in the early morning and had approached the railing that separated them from the freezing ocean. The rippling wind whipped back the hood of the heavy coat Ajax had provided him with, and now his hair waved in the wind, his eyes staring emptily into the distance as his skin itched from the cold. The Tsaritsa had accepted him as a fugitive asking for protection, and now, as his hands gripped the railing, he realised he hadn’t been that far away from home since the Archon War.

He looked up, feeling the soft tears that clung to his eyelashes freezing over, the sun obscured by a thick layer of clouds. How he missed the gentle breeze already.

The same went for Snezhnaya itself, it was cold enough to make his breath catch in his throat and his lungs ache. Ajax had taken his scarf off and wrapped it around his neck at the sound of his laboured breathing, then adjusted it to make sure it was covering his mouth and nose. Zhongli’s eyes had been curious as to why the ginger had been so gentle the past couple days, even the snark and edge having left his voice. Perhaps he felt for him. At least the gaze of the locals was gentle and welcoming, for the most part, offering him local delicacies and flowers before he and Childe could even reach his home. The Harbinger had been welcomed back like a hero, with huge bouquets and a massive meal prepared by his family.

Zhongli had been catatonic, at best, but at least, he had found some comfort in talking to the children, who were, as always, excited and easily impressed by his stories of dragons and extinct creatures.

He had stayed indoors for the first couple of days, too reluctant to go exploring on these foreign lands, but eventually, his confidence started building up again, so he picked up the small bag of money that Childe left for him every morning. -Zhongli had given his allowance of the two previous days to the little kids, since he hadn’t gone outside and concepts such as saving were nonexistent in his brain-

The attire, that he was getting used to. He wasn’t a huge fan of wearing boots, but he could say their smooth leather sealed him from the snow pretty well, and that the heavy coat felt strangely comforting around his shoulders. More than once, he had overheard people calling him the golden devil, which he considered to be quite endearing in its own, clueless way.

He stepped by a merchant’s booth with imported stones, including what they described as Liyuen Cor Lapis and Noctilucous Jades. He leaned in a bit closer for observation, and the merchant seemed to shift uncomfortably, which pretty much told Zhongli that these were, in fact, fake. He straightened up again, unable to resist teasing the merchant. “Are these imported straight from the chasm?”

The shopkeeper’s eyes seemed to go wide, and he quickly tried to dodge the question. Thankfully, for him, a whistle tore through their ears and made the young foreigner turn, his eyes narrowed.

“Lovely accessory you have there, good sir.” A young man smiled, accompanied by three others. “Looks like the real thing too.” The Snezhnayan man caressed the piece of jewellery that held Zhongli’s hair into a neat ponytail in a leery way. The ex archon didn’t move, only observed with caution, his piercing gaze saying more than words ever could. “Say, you aren’t, by any chance, the Tsaritsa’s guest from Liyue harbour?”

The other men chuckled and Zhongli glanced at the merchant, who started packing up his items hurriedly, seemingly intimidated by the gang. “Why, yes, I am.” He said neutrally, his voice a notch lower than friendly.

“Huh, you have nerve, saying that so openly.” The Snezhnayan’s fist twisted around the half-golden ponytail and pulled Zhongli’s head back. “You owe us, since we so willingly welcomed you here.” The stranger smirked, reaching behind his back for a folded knife. “I’m sure we could sell Morax’s hair for quite a fortune.” Another yank to the head and Zhongli blinked apathetically. “Aren’t you fighting back?”

“I have no interest in fighting mortals.” Zhongli shrugged. “My hair is my hair. Three years to grow them back is like the blink of an eye to me.”

The man’s eyes flickered with fury at the stranger, and he brought that dagger into his coal hair, severing the strands roughly. Zhongli’s eyes stayed unmoving, hostile, hateful, in a way. The lump of hair fell into the snow unceremoniously, and one of the others scurried to grab it.

“Yo,”

Zhongli’s eyes flickered from the thief to the source of the familiar voice. Relief washed over him at the sight of ginger hair and ocean blue eyes, that slender figure hugged in his winter attire that Zhongli rarely saw him in. A primal sense of grounding gripped him, almost like the essence of his home, which he had eternally bound to Childe’s smiling face. Unorthodox, he knew, but he was like an oasis of familiarity that the weather hadn’t manage to freeze over yet.

“Where is your Snezhnayan upbringing, picking on the Tsaritsa’s guests?” Ajax sighed, walking leisurely towards Zhongli. “I have eyes and ears where my hands can’t reach, and right now, mr. Zhongli is under my supervision.” His hand found its familiar spot on the God’s waist, his eyes scanning for any traces of harm’s way on him. His hand reached the back of his head before his eyes did, and they narrowed dangerously. “Ah, is that what you were going for? It’s a shame.” Zhongli felt uncertainty creep up his spine at the shift in the Harbinger’s tone, still wishing for no harm towards the mortals.

“Ajax,”

“It’s a shame,” Childe continued, cracking his neck to the left, then to the right with a relieved smile. “Because I happened to love his hair, and I don’t take kindly to things being taken away from me.”

“Ajax, let’s go home.” Zhongli grabbed his wrist, the whole group of thieves frozen in fear at the sight of the Fatui.

“No, no. We can’t do that. When someone kisses you, they expect a kiss back, no?” Ajax stepped forward and stretched his arm out, his hydro dagger appearing into his hand. “You might not want to shift the tides here, mr. Zhongli, but these rascals are my own.”

“Run!” The leader of the thieves screamed, but they didn’t stand a chance. Childe threw the dagger first, hitting the middle one between his shoulder blades. Blood gushed out in waves and Ajax laughed joyfully, running to the gurgling body to pull his weapon out, then join it into a larger pole-arm. A jump and a couple of spins and heads went flying, legs were severed, and the snow was painted an abysmal red. Childe leaned his head back, feeling the wind swipe his hair back and freeze his smile in place. The weapons vaporised in his hands, and he slowly lowered his gaze to Zhongli, stood meekly by the scene of the slaughter. Childe wrestled the hair out of the dead man’s grip, for the sake of retreating the luxurious clip that his lover favoured since he first met him. “Measly thieves. Someone has to be the sacrificial lamb, the subject to teach the others a lesson,”

Zhongli’s eyes eased shut when Ajax closed in on his space, leaning close to his face and pushing the small accessory into his gloved hand. “I love you.” Ajax whispered, pressing a gentle kiss into the corner of Zhongli’s brow. “And I intend to keep you safe here.”

“They wouldn’t kill me, Ajax.” Zhongli sighed deeply, leaning into Childe’s neck. “They wouldn’t be able to.”

“No one will dare to try anymore.” The Harbinger’s hand nestled to the small of the ex archon’s back, pulling him close to his body. He started to caress the back of his head with his free hand, trying to feel the roughly cut strands through the fabric of his gloves. “I’m sorry they touched you.”

“You’re more sad about that than I am.” Zhongli smiled gently and pulled the Harbinger’s head down to press their foreheads together. “It will grow back in no time.”

“I’m a mortal like they are.” Ajax whispered sadly, his eyes easing shut. Zhongli pressed a fleeting kiss to his lips in response, trying to ease the pain in his lover’s voice.

“And I’m eroding, so let’s try to outlive each other.” Zhongli chuckled, making Childe squeeze him close, a neediness evident in his touch. “I want to live like mortals do, with you, Ajax. That’s why I’m here.”

“Please, don’t say such things to me.” The Harbinger breathed deeply, trying to choke down a few stray tears. “I promise I will make your stay worthwhile.”

“I know.” Zhongli kissed his jaw quickly. “You can start by taking me somewhere, I’m freezing.”

“Right.” Childe laughed, reaching out to grasp the ex archon’s hand and pull him away from the bloodied grounds. “I’m taking you for lunch. I will tell some underlings to clean up the mess.”

“You could had been more clean about it.”

[vyeoh]

this is your chance: wax poetic about an Empires or DSMP character of your choice to a fan who is new to both. Explain why I should love them. I need guidance in this new and meme-populated land.

okok this is a lot of pressure haha. Spoilers for EmpiresSMP and DreamSMP below, obviously. I wrote a lot so prepare yourself, anon

I watch a lot of empires POVs but the ones I most anticipate every week are Scott and Sausage.

c!Scott (I'll call him Smajor for the sake of simplicity) starts off the series chilling, not really getting involved with the rest of the server, and staying aggressively neutral. After all, he's an elf. He has lived far longer than most of the other rulers already, and will most likely outlive them for many years. So, the best thing is to stick to his mountains and not get invested in the dealings of mortal affairs, maybe sometimes causing problems on purpose and dipping because what's life without a little spice right.

But then, this demon comes to the server, Xornoth. He's going around causing havoc and wants to send the world into an eternal winter, but he doesn't bother the kingdom of Rivendell much so Smajor stays tentatively cautious but ultimately unbothered. But then, the puzzle pieces start falling together. The first thing that the audience noticed was was Xornoth sounded like Smajor, but we mostly thought that this was just due to cc!Scott voicing both of them and there was nothing more to it. However, then, the people the demon starts possessing start chanting in elvish. The demon hates mortals, and the elves are conveniently one of the two confirmed not fully mortal races in Empires.

This culminates when Smajor stumbles across a cave that contains the backstory of the patron god of Rivendell, Aeor. Basically, there's two opposing forces, Aeor and Exor, and both have a champion. In a previous life, those champions were two brothers, where Aeor eventually prevailed and banished Exor. In this life though, the champions are - you guessed it - Smajor, and the demon Xornoth.

So now Smajor is like. Well fuck. It's my literal god-given destiny to be responsible for defeating this demon who is technically my brother, and if I fail the server gets plunged into an eternal winter. And I have no fucking clue what is happening because I've just been here on this mountain actively trying to stay out of the issues outside my kingdom. We watch him panic and teeter on the verge of spiraling for an entire episode, and when the followers of Xornoth go to the End to kill the dragon, releasing Xornoth's full powers, he fails to stop him. Smajor is a character who was used to being the smart one, the prepared one, the one who has the least deaths on the server. But he's also a character who runs away from his problems and ignores them. Before and during the dragon fight, we hear the desperation in his voice, as he's thrown into a situation he is wholly unprepared for, and it's bigger than him going to the Cod Empire to kill their king, or assisting in other people's plans to kill the codfather. He can't run from this. cc!Scott plays this scene so well as well, as I've said before, one of the best parts of Scott's acting is how he's never super dramatic, but he's so effective in the little things like inflection to make you feel, viscerally, the panic and dread.

So after the dragon fight, Smajor realizes, I can't do this on my own. I've tried and failed. So he gets allies. We watch him, someone who has so strongly been an isolationist, learn the benefits of allies and watch him learn to trust others and watch him learn how to get that trust in return.

My favorite thing about Smajor's characterization is that he's an incompetent protagonist, but not in the way of the "plucky young adventurer". He's capable skill-wise, and fairly jaded and very pessimistic. However, his issue is that up until recently, he did not care about the rest of the server at all, and by the time he learned to, it was way too late.

Also, in 3rd Life, cc!Scott and cc!Jimmy were canonically married and they reference it sometimes in Empires. Like, Scott goes over to the Cod Empire every so often both in and out of character to kill and/or flirt with Jimmy, the ruler of the Cod Empire, which may develop as a secondary plot into the future who knows. So ty Scott for giving the gays what they want o7

Now onto Sausage: his is a story of Icarus, his hubris and ambition being his downfall. He's one of the two followers of Xornoth, who promised him endless power in exchange for his servitude. He started the series being eccentric, but not outright unhinged, but slowly gets more and more extreme as the series progresses, as he gets brought more and more to Xornoth's side.

One of the best parts of Sausage's character, in my opinion, is how his gradual corruption affects the people around him. Initially, he got into a conflict with the Cod Empire and was allied with two other people in the Witherrose alliance. They were allies, but also close friends. The fandom liked to joke that the three had sibling energy, and I'm pretty sure the ccs played to that even more lol.

It was painful to watch the other two members, Gem and fWhip, watch Sausage get corrupted right in front of them, and see them desperately clinging on to this old idea of Sausage in their head because if they faced the truth, it would mean that their friend was gone. Eventually, they do finally cut him out of the alliance, leading him to fully commit to the side of the demon. Sausage felt very clearly betrayed by this, and declared the remaining two Witherrose alliance members to be enemies.

He gets more and more possessed, and we even see the other Empires, his enemies even, slowly realize that something is very wrong with the ruler of Mythland. He starts doing more and more evil things, like killing people more, making sacrifices to the demon, and eventually helping to kill the dragon to free Xornoth. So things are good for Sausage, for a bit. He won, and is more powerful than ever. Then he finds out: he's going to die. Xornoth's possession is slowly killing his soul, and eventually, his body going to be fully taken over and he himself is going to be trapped in the spirit realm. So how do you react to this? Over the next few episodes, we watch Sausage struggle between "the demon is literally killing me" and "the demon has given me so much, and I love it", all while Xornoth takes over more and more of him. We hear him exclaim that "don't worry!! I'm still about 15% there!" while trying to downplay every time Xornoth completely takes over his body. We watch him willingly oppose anyone who is trying to end the thing that is killing him.

My favorite thing about Sausage is that he is undoubtedly evil and proud of it, but he's also undoubtedly human. If you like to watch evil characters go absolutely feral, he's the guy for you. He makes the deal with Xornoth in the beginning, knowing and fully embracing the evilness of the demon, but at the same time he knows what he's doing is detrimental to both himself and everyone around him, but he's gotten in way too deep at this point, and to be fair the demon has held up its end fo the bargain, right?

Also, I would be damned if I don't talk about cc!Sausage's editing. Every one of his videos is like a movie. The way he does camera angles and uses music is so skillful- every lore scene feels like something out of a high fantasy action saga (think: LotR). Every big lore event I always wait in anticipation for Sausage's ep because his editing truly takes lore to another level.

I'm just generally very excited to see where this series goes. Empires is such a good mix of talented builders and good lore. Part of the reason why the series is so immersive for me, beyond any other lore smp, is that they have the settings to back it up. There is a certain charm to the DreamSMP's objectively terrible builds (with a few exceptions) but in Empires, the settings help sell the plot so much.

Another part of why I love EmpiresSMP is how much the ccs are involved with the fan community. I'm sure you've seen the memes about Scott being on tumblr, and Sausage regularly goes through the EmpiresSMP fanart tag on Twitter and likes art, even ones not related to Mythland. Most of the ccs, in fact, have brought up tumblr content on stream at some point or another. Like, several ccs have said that they read tumblr lore theories and hcs and stuff and sometimes take inspiration from them. Fun fact: Rivendell's church was inspired by my pinned drawing; confirmed by Scott Smajor himself. It's just such a good cycle of ccs and fans being excited about each other.

As for DreamSMP, I'm gonna be honest here, the only person I really am invested in in Technoblade. I started watching when he joined the server, and he's the only person whose lore I keep up to date with.

Techno's fun to watch because he's like the Deadpool of DreamSMP. Virtually unkillable, very skilled and scary, but consistently cracks jokes and breaks the 4th wall during plot. His POV is just fun. Like, he does wild plans and gives speeches and some of the stuff that happens to him should be called deus ex machine if it wasn't for the fact that Technoblade is the one who's doing it, and all the stuff is grounded in the fact that cc!Techno is just that good at the game.

However, the fact that he rarely takes anything seriously makes the few times Techno is 100% serious so much more impactful. His whole character has a basis in being perceived as inhuman and being treated as such, and therefore in return trying to hide his humanity. So, when he shows that humanity, whether that's fear, anger, or genuine love for his friends, it really makes you go "oh shit."

Techno's often said not to have character development, but I'd argue that while he remains steadfast in his moral code, he develops leaps and bounds as a person. Like, at the beginning, he's brought onto the server to help Wilbur and Tommy overthrow a government; them knowing he's 1) an anarchist and 2) very very powerful. His character was more of a plot device at that point and was treated as such in the canon. Wilbur and Tommy straight-up lie to him about their plans to establish another government after they overthrow the current one, while he was led on to believe that they were abolishing all governments in the area. But he isn't a plot device. He's a person, as much as he only shows the terrifying, blood god side of himself.

After the establishment of New Lmanburg (the new government its a long story), his friend Phil joins. And for the first time, we see him be fully human with someone and we see someone treat him like a human. Like, we saw glimpses before, with Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, but Phil is the first person we noticeably see he trusts 100%. Then Doomsday happens, and Techno essentially retires to the tundra. During this time, we see Techno learn to be more human, first with Ranboo, then Niki when he establishes the Syndicate. In fact, the two of them, along with Phil, canonically throw him a birthday party, which is a far cry from his treatment in Pogtopia.

Techno's development is one of a god learning to be human, and I just think he <3

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

JK Day 2021

...and what a day it was. I know we’re a bit late with this when looking at KST but in our time zone it’s still September 1st so it counts, right? Besides I wanted to wait until the day was over for them so I could have everything the members would post for JK so I could put it in this post as memory for us to look back on in the future.

Furthermore, as extension for the celebrations, I want to finally sit down, write and post our post about JK and his bonds with the hyung line since it’s been so long since two anons asked us about that so what better time than the weekend after JK day, right?

Anyway, let’s get into it, shall we?

The day before JKs birthday he came onto Weverse and posted three different things, including a cute selca:

Everyone of course turned up their creativity to post something for JK and also wondered among themselves what he planned on using those lyric comments for, and if he would use them for anything at all.

Sometime later before the new RUN episode aired, Seokjin appeared on Weverse and, for whatever reason, commented birthday wishes for JK under the Weverse post about the upcoming RUN episode. Because of course he did.

More than an hour before midnight KST everyone got a notification from vlive that JK had gone live:

And truly, considering it was about to be his birthday, I love how it felt more like it was ours with the gift that kept on giving that this vlive turned out to be. 

Lots more below the cut:

Remember those posts that JK made in the morning on Weverse? As many, including myself, had guessed, JK gathered some of the lyric comments he liked most, or thought would work best, and proceeded to turn them into an actual song right before our eyes. The instrumental was gorgeous with a acoustic guitar and ballad like melody and it was truly fascinating watching him figuring out how to sing the lines, record them, redo them whenever he felt he could do it better, add adlibs in some places, and slowly but surely a song was created with lyrics in both English and Korean.

This really was the content I’ve always craved and I’m so, so happy we got to watch JK do this instead of him just showing us the final thing. You could see him having fun, even when he got a little frustrated at times or he wasn’t quite sure how he wanted to continue or how he wanted the words to sound like, and that he really knows what he’s doing. So many claim that Bangtan have no idea about producing and recording songs, which truly is such a stupid argument to make considering Yoongi is literally Producer SUGA and we know that, if the members want to make mixtapes they have to do them themselves, which we know Namjoon, Yoongi and Hobi have done. So JK doing all of that in the vlive? Checkmate against those idiots. Especially since it also isn’t the first time we’ve seen members work on tracks, like the behind the scenes of rap line working on DDAENG or Hobi working on songs, or even JK with Stay, even if we didn’t know it’s Stay at the time.

Once the song was finished JK went on to show us several more instrumentals he could’ve worked with, each one with a different vibe, before switching to singing a song by Justin Bieber saying he really loves his songs a lot. And then it was nearing midnight so he unpacked the cake he got, white icing/fondant with purple lettering spelling out STILL WITH YOU JK, very cute.

Right as midnight hit someone started to bang on the door so JK got up to see who’d come and, surprise, it was a very excited Hobi wishing him a happy birthday including singing the birthday song for him upon JKs request while JK lit up his golden heart shaped candle.

Hobi again returned two minutes after he’d left (between when at 1:18h JK mentioned that, for the first time that night, he’d do one more song to finish off the vlive, ha) to give him an ice cream cake he’d prepared, but also to get his phone which he’d accidentally forgotten in the room JK was in.

Once Hobi really left and JK got a taste of his ice cream cake, as well as the white cake which turned out to be chocolate flavored, the vlive concert began and, at the time, none of us knew what we were in for since we all thought he’d really do one or two more songs and that would be it. And yet that very much is not what happened, at all, and I’m so grateful for it.

This might just be the funniest screenshot in existence (please take note of the time stamps):

No wonder that, eventually, Seokjin decided to come onto Weverse to post wishes for JK a second time while also saying this (the picture is from their unit photoshoot for Winter Package):

The imagine of Seokjin just sitting in bed or whatever watching JKs vlive and hearing him say last song every like ten minutes and every time he just kept going...and going...and going while Seokjin is just waiting...and waiting...and waiting? Hilarious. But it’s also really cute how he’d wanted to wait until JK was done to not interrupt him or pull ARMYs attention away from the vlive. Truly I adore their bond, it’s adorable and chaotic and so wonderfully them.

Yoongi also posted his wishes for JK while the vlive was still going.

The one who waited until it was over was actually Namjoon who, with what he said in his tweet, actually revealed that he’d watched JKs vlive as well. In his vlive JK said that at the end of their concerts Namjoon used to always give his speech like a (school) principal, as in his long ending ment speeches, and that’s why Namjoon ‘signed’ his tweet with principal as well.

Truly I love how JK was just having fun singing their songs, taking requests from ARMY, rediscovering songs, like him wondering if they really have a song called Paradise (since the Korean title is different) and finally fulfilling ARMYs wish of hearing BTS sing it live, as well as being surprised and confused by requests for Heartbeat asking himself if them really have a song like that. But since ARMY kept asking for it, he finally looked it up and his reaction to realizing that, yes, it is a real song of theirs and also that that’s the song we were talking about which he’d completely forgotten about? Hilarious but also kind of heartbreaking for all the Heartbeat enthusiasts.

Here is the full list of all the songs he sang, some for longer, some shorter:

One thing that this vlive showed really well was just how amazing of a singer JK really is. It’s easy for people to dismiss his talent during concerts or performances, since they could always argue that him and the others get help due to the backing track etc., but here we had his raw voice singing along to their songs much the way any of us do. And he sounded stunning beginning to end. He’s such a talented singer and he’s worked so hard on his technique and voice and it’s really showing. Thinking back to what he said in his BE comeback Weverse interview about how he’d like to one day he brave enough to do a three hour concert on his own, I’d say this vlive shows that really shouldn’t be any kind of problem at all. If ARMY can listen to him essentially do karaoke for one and a half hours, then attending and enjoying a full on JK concert would be no issue whatsoever. It’d actually be amazing, I’m certain, and I’d totally be down to seeing that potentially become a reality one day in the future.

After two and a half hours, the vlive ultimately came to a close and JK said his goodbyes.

Hours later Hobi appeared on Weverse wondering what pictures of JK he could/should post for his traditional picture “spam” and everyone was immediately super excited. Hobi’s gallery holds some wonderful treasures so we all looked forward to what he would end up posting, though it would take a few hours until it would happen.

The funny thing is that he posted the first twt twice since the picture with Namjoon in it had Hobi’s iPhone in it which, as good Samsung representative, was a no, no, so he deleted the twt and posted it again with some stickers covering the phone. So cute. And his picture choices are wonderful. I particularly love that picture of JK in the white room dressed in black from back in 2019 when they performed Boy with Luv. And also their picture from a dinner the two of them went on together back in 2018.

In the meantime before Hobi posted his pictures, as requested in the picture that BH had posted for JKs birthday on the staff BTS account at midnight, one of the members posted his meal though it’s unclear which one of them it might’ve been. Looks super yummy though, wow.

And eventually the final member to come and wish JK a happy birthday was Jimin (and yes, I know Jimin’s twt came before Hobi’s but considering Hobi already wished him a happy birthday at midnight, that makes Jimin the last one):

Trans (cr. haruharu_w_bts):

our maknae happy birthday  i wish <you a happy birthday> a lot and a lot #KkookieHappyBirthday #JIMIN #HAPPYJKDAY

Taehyung didn’t post anything but considering his track record of doing something for the members off social media for their birthday, like giving Namjoon a forehead kiss, sending birthday wish videos to Seokjin (including roping others into doing it as well), or wishing Jimin a happy birthday as part of the MOTS ON:E exhibition, I wasn’t all that surprised by this.

And with that JK day 2021 came to a close. It started with a surprise (as in both the song based on ARMY comments and also the concert afterward) and ended with one as well, as in the In The SOOP Season Two announcement.

I hope JK had a wonderful day, celebrated happily with his members, friends and family however much that’s possible in these times, as well as with their busy schedule, and that this new year will be a happy one for him full of success, personal but also career wise. I’m curious and excited to see what will happen.

[growup-thatbeautiful]

drive is out now!! It’s a Post Season Harringrove Hurt/Comfort and I’m pretty proud of it. Read it on ao3 here or below the cut. Likes and comments are very very much appreciated :))

Billy doesn’t drive after starcourt. Something about being behind the wheel makes him sick with memories that he can’t understand. They’re abstract and totally unreliable.

But it’s kind of always been like that for him. He's used to having gaps in his memories, except most of the time it’s because of trauma. Or that’s what Joyce tells him and the rest of them whenever they have nightmares about things they don’t remember happening.

He's been living with the Byers and El. He tries to be useful around the house, doing whatever he can because he really doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s hard, though. It seems like everything he does, he does wrong. He never had to learn how to fold sheets or clean dishes. Not only was neil hargrove terribly homophobic, but also misogynistic, which is a word joyce taught him because she teaches all her kids that stuff. And he’s one of her kids now. So, yeah. Neil never had Billy do the chores because “he’s not a true man, but he sure as shit isn’t a woman.”

It's alarming how quickly this odd family replaces his old one. Neil seems miles away. Neil doesn’t try to look for Billy, and that’s fine as far as Billy's concerned. He's got scars to cover up the ones Neil made. no need to dwell on that when he has so much other trauma to process., right? Kind of.

He does check up on max. Asks her if neils pulling any of the shit he used to get from his dad. double checks for bruises hidden under makeup or long sleeves, and never finds any. Good.

Joyce is good. great, even. She doesn’t blame him when he breaks a dish because he heard a noise. She listens when he says he needs some alone time, and she knows when he’s just saying that. She gives good hugs and has no problem giving him Jonathan's old room to stay in while he’s off at college. leaving Hawkins behind him, calling every night anxiously awaiting the return of It. Nothing happens, and eventually they relax. Or they try to. That part of billy’s been broken for a long time, though.

So Joyce starts fading into memories of his mom, and he tries not to blame her.

Again. He's never had a great memory anyway. He does remember his mom telling him that boys don’t marry other boys when he was five and told her he wanted to marry his best friend. Then she told him never to tell his dad. It's strange, because he can’t remember her saying that she loved him, even though he’s sure she did. Did she? Huh.

At least the painful memories he gets to keep. Neil beating’s. Beating up on Harrington that night he didn’t know what was going on. The car crash before his mind was taken from him. Max’s terrible scream of “Billy” mixed in with the ear-ringing pain. Waking up in a hospital with starburst scars across his body. Skin that isn’t his. They remind him not to get to comfortable, remind him that the kindness he’s being shown isn’t well earned.

Because Billy knows he wasn’t worth those hospital bills and sleepless nights. All he’s done to the people here is hurt and scar and he’s seen them with the deepest kind of fear in their eyes. Fear because of him.

Everytime he goes down a path like this, he tries to stay clear of everyone. Because. They all tried to hide how much hurt he’s caused. They don’t blame him like they should.

He didn’t know any of them well before. But he knows El didn’t always carry around that police badge or look up at every siren, praying for a familiar face only to be disappointed and try not to show it. Because if Billy survived, couldn’t the more-deserving Hopper? Apparently not.

He knows Joyce didn’t always search for Will in every setting and have those folded up pictures of the two men that died because of all the shitty things that happened. Because she can’t stand to forget their faces or not carry that burden for just a second.

Will didn’t always get quiet every time a draft went through the room or refuse to go out that front door first. Because so many things have been ruined for him.

The rest of the kids didn’t always jump at every noise or bunch together for every corner, carrying lucky momentous and items. Because God forbid they have a break.

He doesn’t see them a lot, but Nancy and Jonathan definitely didn’t carry around an emergency kit everywhere they went, packed with medical supplies and Nancy’s choice gun. Because they’re going to be there to help if anything tries to take another person they loves away.

Some part of Billy reasons that it’s not all his fault. He wasn’t one of those scientists or government agents that started the whole thing.

But he did enough. Enough to warrant all the shit that he’s going through. It’s not the healthiest way of thinking, he’s aware of that, but it helps him get by.

No matter how hard he tries, though, there’s always someone at the house that finds him. Curled up into a ball, dry hitching sobs and no tears because “Hargrove men don’t cry.” Billy gets damn close sometimes, but the fear that Neil’s going to come out from the cracks in the wall and kick him where he lays is too real.

There are usually soft words.

“We don’t blame your here, honey. That wasn’t you, that did all that stuff. And I’m not going to let anything else bad happen to the people under this roof.” Joyce’s strong and sure voice, only breaking at the edges.

“I know what it’s like to have him control you like that. I know better than anyone else, and I know how scary it is. Mom says it’s over now, though, and I can’t feel It anymore. I would tell you first if It came back.” Will never says anything more than that, which is comforting in itself. It’s nice to have someone else.

“They lost. You’re here. I’m here. Will’s here. It is safe.” El’s statement is simple, but she makes it easy to believe.

He believes them until he gets another new memory of what he did. The Mayors blood on the floor. Heather’s petrified screams. Standing before that thing and feeling nothing but a perverse sense of but awe and, buried beneath that, a screaming sense of horror and the constant feeling of slipping in the sand.

There are times, like right now, when he doesn’t want someone to make him feel better. He wants someone who can drive him away from here and sit in an empty parking lot and smoke away the thoughts. Someone like Steve.

He would do it himself. He would. But he can’t. Can’t get over that fucking gas pedal. So he calls Steve.

They’ve done this enough times for it to make sense for Billy to have Steve’s number memorized. And his work schedule. And to know when he with Dustin or Robin or any of the others on one of those group outings Billy can’t bring himself to go to. There are too many sad faces, too many broken homes.

It doesn’t matter what he wears. It’s just Steve, and they’ve gotten past the point of caring about things like that.

Which. Is obvious to anyone who looks at Billy, not that he sees anyone. He’s lost a lot of weight. Muscles that used to be defined are gone, replaced by scars. He can’t get them back yet, because he’s not strong enough to lift any of them. And because muscles like that can hurt and hit. His eyes are surrounded by heavy bags, bloodshot and tired. The new callouses on his hands are mostly scars from anxiety ridden breakages, and the pained nails are because El wanted to try the new dark blue out. His hair is greasy and flat, nowhere near what it used to be. It hangs around his shoulders in curled waves, so far from where he used to be.

He doesn’t even try to smile to the sad reflection in the mirror.

Steve doesn’t honk when he arrives. The first time he did that and the noise sent Billy spiraling, and Steve had felt terrible, cussing up a storm that actually helped Billy out of it. Luckily, it was just Billy home and no one else was there to witness they’re collective train wreck.

Before he leaves, Billy grabs something from the bathroom and stuffs it in with the rest of the random shit he brings.

Billy slides into the passenger seat, leans his head back against the headrest, and says, “So, Harrington, how you been?”

Steve, mercifully, looks the same as always. He looks good, the asshole. It’s a relief that he’s still able to feel that fire Steve lights up. Different than all the other King’s from California. A few more scars, but they all have that. His shades are pushed through his hair, brown strands flopping over lazily.

“Same as usual, so fairly shitty and on the brink of breakdown. You?” It would be a normal conversation if Steve wasn’t completely serious, corners of his mouth only ticking up when Billy reaches over and bats at the band-aid charm hanging from the mirror. A joke from Billy to say sorry for, you know, almost beating him to death for no real reason.

“Oh, you know.” He doesn’t need to say more for Steve to get the idea. It’s the same way they’ve been feeling for months now.

“Yeah.” The car ride over isn’t far from the Byers’ house, and they spend it in almost silence. Some pop station is playing low on the radio.

“This the shit you listen to, pretty boy? I expected more than this.” It’s an attempt at normalcy, something that they’ve slowly been working up to.

“At least I don’t blast out my eardrums every time I want to listen to music,” replies Steve quickly, smile evident in his tone.

And it’s normal. It’s them. The way they were before it all got so messy. For that brief moment, there’s no winter night or july 4th. For a brief moment Billy can entertain a reality where he went to the find Steve instead of a fight. A world where Steve, with those pretty eyes and snap remarks, could hold his hand and stop him from doing all the bad things in the future.

But the moment passes. Steve clears his throat and looks forward at the road.

They arrive to the quarry, water at the bottom glinting, tossing, teasing. The car doors slam shut, and they slide up on to the front of the car. Billy pulls his last minute grab out of the bag and hands it to Steve.

“I want you to cut my hair.” Steve takes the scissors and towel in his hand, looking at Billy.

He doesn’t ask if Billy’s sure. Billy figures that Steve knows at this point he wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t real. If Billy wasn’t sure. Steve cards a hand through Billy’s hair. It feels. Good. Real good.

Steve starts cutting, and Billy winces at the sound of the scissors closing around his hair. His past.

“I like to think it isn’t just part of me.” The comment comes out of nowhere, surprising Billy more than it surprises Steve.

“What?” Steve’s voice is calm, the sniping of the scissors is methodical.

“The anger. The aggression. The tendency to hurt. I like to think it’s not in my nature, but my nurture.”

“I don’t think you’re violent.” It’s a laughable statement.

“You’re joking. Did you forget most of last year? I’m the one with the bad memory here, Harrington.” Billy can practically hear Steve’s disapproving mother’s frown behind him.

“That wasn’t you.”

“Right, sure, whatever, bullshit. But what about…you know. Last winter.”

“What happened before that?” asks Steve patiently.

“Jesus, you’re worse than Joyce. My dad sent me after Max. Found her at Byers’ place with you. Hurt you a whole fucking lot.”

“Is that all he did? He just told you to go after her?” Billy ignores the way his stomach does flips when Steve runs a hand through Billy’s hair, straightening it out.

“So you’re my fuckin’ therapist now? What do you want me to say? He kissed my head and sent my on my merry way? That’s now how he works. I’ll admit, I was saved by his new wifey. He can’t use me as a punching bag when she’s standing right there, not like he did with mom. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Nothing worse than what you’ve done to me. And the insults weren’t too bad either. He forgot to call me a fag.”

“Oh. Shit, Billy, I-“

“It’s fine,” cuts in Billy, hating the pity in Steve’s voice. He’s not the one who should have it.

“You didn’t deserve that.” This time it does make Billy laugh. It’s a hollow and haunting sound, an echo of his charming boyish laugh.

“Sure I did, dipshit. You’re probably one of the people who knows best why I did, in fact, deserve it.”

“So then I’m the best person. to tell you that you aren’t that person. You haven’t been that person since you left him and all of that shit. Let me ask you something. Do you want to hurt people now?”

“No!” Billy startles himself with his sudden enthusiasm, and Steve jumps a little behind him. Steve is quicker to recover, though, and he runs a hand through the hair he hasn’t cut yet. It’s soothing. Billy barely resists the urge to lean into it. Ask for more.

“Did you ever want to hurt people? Like really, truly want to see them hurt?” Billy has to think about the question. Steve deserves an real answer.

Flashes fly through his mind, bringing on too familiar emotions. Anger, a need to make someone, anyone, feel the way that he’s feeling. Fear that not having this power over people would make him weak. Horror at what he’s about to do. Detachment, painful as he grinned and laughed.

“I just wanted to have control. Take some of the hurt I was feeling and give it to other people. It was a rush that I was addicted to. The thrill of the fight, the feel of flesh against my fist, the look of blood on my knuckles. I liked fighting, still do. I didn’t like hurting people.” Steve puts the scissors down on the car hood, fluffing Billy’s hair and sliding down next to him.

“I’ve been on the wrong side of the fists of two people I’m now okay with,” admits Steve. “Believe me, I know now to take a beating. I’ve been heartbroken by two other people I’m close friends with. I forgive too easily.”

“So you’re a compulsive truster and I’m a compulsive fighter. What a pair we make, huh Harrington?”

“Yeah.” agrees Steve, bumping his shoulder against Billy. “What a pair.”

Maybe it’s the haircut. Maybe it’s the sunlight confessions. Maybe it’s how carefree and happy Steve looks. But Billy feels lighter. Like there was this unspoken weight he had been carrying around that no one knew about. Or everyone knew about, but couldn’t help.

The thing is, Steve didn’t even say anything. He didn’t promise a better future, he didn’t say that he was safe. He shared some of the personal pain they all carry around.

“I don’t think I ever said sorry. I am sorry, you know. I. I didn’t-“

<i>Mean to hurt you. Want to hurt you. Mean to let you see how much I hurt. Want to need you.</i>

“I know. I’m sorry too. Someone should’ve known. About you.” Steve leans closer, and Billy chalks it up to the night chill as the sun settles below the glistening rocks.

“I was good at hiding things I didn’t want people to see.”

“Yeah, well you’re not alone there either.”

“You good at hiding, pretty boy?” Billy’s eyes flick down to Steve’s lips, and, is Billy imagining it or is Steve looking at him the same way?

“Apparently not good enough,” jokes Steve. His smile falls off of his lips, and he leans minutely closer. If Billy wasn’t paying attention to all of Steve…

The way his hair glows white and gold in the sunset. That wrinkle between his brows. The way one of his eyes is a little darker than the other. How he smells like cigarette smoke and that fancy hairspray, even when his hair is blown from the wind.

The way he looked that night. Cool and collected, then terrified and fighting for his life. So beautiful in the harsh starlight and then so abstract in the broken kitchen light.

Before he knows what’s happening, Steve is filling that gap. Kissing Billy like he’s trying to sooth the pain from their past. Maybe he is. Billy wouldn’t put it past him.

His hand finds a way to Steve’s hair, the same way Steve’s been running his through Billy’s now shorter hair. He curls it into the strands, holding on tightly. Soft.

The way Steve sighs his name takes Billy away from it all. The pain. The memories. The lack of memories.

They lay out under the stars for a few minutes, but Billy knows Joyce will freak out if she can’t find him. Not because she doesn’t trust him, he has to remind himself, but because she doesn’t trust others.

On the drive home Steve plays that pop stuff again, and Billy gives him the appropriate shit for it, a smile on his face the whole time. His fingers laced through Steve’s.

They arrive at the house, and Steve declines to come in. Gives the excuse that his parents will be waiting up when they both know it’s not true. Billy can’t blame him. Billy understands needing to be alone, needing to get away.

Billy leans through Steve’s window and wished that he could kiss him goodbye. Well. The teasing will have to do.

“Night, King Steve.”

“Goodnight, Asshole.”

If Joyce gives him a knowing smile at the door, Billy doesn’t smile back. Probably.

He definitely does. Maybe he deserves the smile. If Steve thinks he does.

[itsclydebitches]

Vine’s death/sacrifice really kinda messes with the “themes” of this volume, the idea of not sacrificing anyone to save others. I guess self-sacrifice is considered ok because of Hazel and Penny, but I just think about their conversation with JRY, with their talk of doing everything possible to save a beloved teammate.

Yeah, self-sacrifices are a whole different ballgame in RWBY. It’s framed as heroic to do everything possible to save an individual, or for an individual to sacrifice themselves for everyone else. However, it’s not framed as heroic for others to sacrifice an individual to save the whole. So the idea of saving Oscar at any cost is presented as the unambiguously good thing to do... with the show largely ignoring the reverse question of, “So it’s okay to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of people--and the safety of an entire city housing the majority of the city below--for one?” 

There are admittedly differences in terms of the presumed fatality of each situation. Meaning, Hazel, Vine, and Penny are framed as having to die or lots more people will definitely die: Salem will get JRYOE, the Ace Ops + Qrow will perish, Cinder will get the power and do horrific things with it (even if this supposed inevitability isn’t executed well. Example: there apparently just isn’t time to heal Penny). In contrast, Oscar is presented as a case where they can still save him and keep others alive. Obviously it all turned out the best it could--because these are the heroes and the plot ensures things go well--but the show doesn’t grapple with that risk, despite RWBY naming an episode after it. We don’t engage with the fact that JYR were 100% willing to let an entire city perish to save their teammate. It’s a heartwarming characterization from one perspective, absolutely, but the flipside is that they’re licensed huntsmen in a position of authority and their willingness to abandon the vast majority of a nation for one guy is... arguably horrifying. These issue is only exacerbated by this decision not being a one-off thing. Ruby’s desire for a perfect solution led her to trapping most of the Atlas/Mantle citizens there and then prioritizing two other teammates--Nora and Penny--over helping the people, despite her inability to do anything to assist those teammates. She isn’t defending them from anything (prior to the Hound’s arrival), doesn’t have the skills to heal them, they’re not even conscious to ask her to stay with them... she just decided that sitting at her friends’ bedside, doing nothing, was more important than helping the people who were currently in life threatening danger. Oscar was in life threatening danger too, but JYR were still in the same position of being official protectors of the people who said, “No. Our friend is more important than the whole nation. We’ll let it burn for the chance to save him.” 

Since I just started Voyager (side note: I WOULD DIE FOR JANEWAY) I’m reminded of how often Star Trek as a franchise emphasizes these moral questions. Not just in the classic “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” but also when it comes to any position of authority. Captains and Commanders have to grapple with whether they’re able to send an individual--likely a friend--into a deadly situation to help the rest of the ship, like ordering your Chief Engineer into dangerous territory to fix something. They also have to grapple with whether they’re able to leave people behind for the sake of the ship and how much danger it’s ethical to put the whole crew in to continue trying to save the few (something that takes center stage in numerous episodes). Star Trek, though far from perfect as a franchise, largely achieves a great balance between having characters be hopeful, pushing the odds, upholding the importance of every life... but also recognizing that, as the authority here, they cannot put the life of one individual over the entirety of the ship (not unless the entire ship agrees to take that risk. Hence, The Search for Spock). They cannot prioritize their personal desires and needs over that of their crew... but that’s precisely where the RWBY group has ended up. Frankly, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the show had just made them into rogue entities, rather than licensed huntsmen who are very much using their authority to gain power over the people they’re not prioritizing (Ruby starts her video by telling the world she’s a huntress, Jaune uses his credentials to get people to follow him). It’s the authority that’s the problem. If a civilian that happens to have a talent for fighting decides to defend their friends instead of helping the people, fine. We may not personally agree with that decision, but it’s theirs to make. The problem is our heroes are huntsmen. They have a duty and they are continually ignoring that duty despite reaping the benefits of their position. Someone with the authority of a huntsmen can sacrifice themselves to save the people, or to save a friend. They cannot, however, willingly sacrifice the people for themselves, or a friend. And yes “sacrifice” includes not just active harm (keeping Atlas trapped), but also increasing the risk of harm (not wanting the whale to be bombed) and passiveness (sitting in a mansion) when it’s their responsibility to protect others. 

What was it Weiss said at Mountain Glenn? 

“It's a job. We all had this romanticized vision of being a Huntress in our heads! But at the end of the day, it's a job to protect the people and whatever we want, will have to come second.”

The characters have completely forgotten that... and the writers have too. Now, “whatever we want” is framed as the heroic thing to do. Ruby wants a miracle despite all evidence to the contrary, so all the people they’ve successful evacuated have to remain in danger until she gets one. The JRY group want their teammate back, so the army will just have to keep dying until they get him. (The fact that they eventually agree to the bomb going off whether they’re still in there or not--something I quite like--doesn’t erase that they initially wanted the Ace Ops to not drop the bomb at all.) Ruby doesn’t want to have to choose between Mantle and Atlas, so both cities just have to lose out on three of the very few people who exist to protect them while they’re torn apart by monsters. “Both houses deserve to be saved!” says the firefighter, standing there and refusing to help either. Inevitably, both burn down. 

The willingness to leave behind an individual for the whole--something which, I should point out, exists in the “Are you willing to leave the few in Mantle for all of Atlas + a large number of refugees?” question-- isn’t just the sacrifice of the individual, it’s also a sacrifice of the authority. Are you willing to live with the guilt of this decision? Are you willing to sit with that choice and accept any consequences that might come your way, including others’ hatred of you for failing to achieve perfection? Ironwood was. He knew he was hurting Mantle, knew no one had been able to come up with a perfect solution, and decided that helping the whole world was worth it. Others despising him was worth getting communications back up and (he thought) defeating Salem. That’s a sacrifice, one that makes Winter’s “You sacrificed nothing!” line sound particularly ridiculous. What has the group sacrificed lately? I don’t mean what they’ve lost--what’s been taken from them--but what they’ve willingly given up to help others. I can’t think of much, especially not in Volume 8. Ruby never even made the choice at all, let alone accepted the drawbacks of it. 

RWBY wants to be a complex, morally gray show, but you cannot write that and have heroes who insist on that fairy tale ending. Something has to give and, inevitably, RWBY keeps supplying that ending instead of forcing the characters to grow. If they want a dark, imperfect world then they need protagonists like Ironwood. No, not crazy, murderous, keep-him-away-from-me Ironwood, but the Ironwood of early Volume 7 who was willing to acknowledge that sometimes perfection is impossible. Sometimes it’s your duty to just get the best outcome possible, not the best you’d hoped for. Sometimes you have to make incredibly hard decisions and shoulder the weight of that because you accepted this responsibility when you took on the role of leader. The group hasn’t accepted a thing and Ruby absolutely didn’t accept the responsibility of seizing power and presenting herself as the world’s leader. Instead, they’ve reverted to their characterizations at the beginning of Mountain Glenn. What do you mean I can’t make the world perfect by wishing it was so? Fine, if I can’t have perfection than I won’t accept anything at all. 

[hallothere]

I broke down and wrote the essay. No, I did not and will not proofread it. I don’t waaaannaaaa

There’s Only One Winner For Isengard

In a perfect world, in a world with no meta requirements that could bend to the will of the player, we would roll up to Isengard level-capped, no debuffs, with one quest-marker on hand: Ruin Saruman’s day. But this is a pre-written sequence of events in which we are only along for the ride. We, the player, and a Ranger are shipped off to Isengard with only one conceivable goal: survive. On a meta level we know what Saruman is capable of. At level 70 or 80-something at best, even we are aware that we are no match for a wizard with a canon fate. Not to mention our Ranger companion! The Grey Company has been through enough (though we don’t know the half of it yet) and we are reasonably distraught at the possibilities.

This is why we, the player character, will lose the game of Isengard.

Beyond the meta rules of the game, where quest objectives are whatever the devs wanted them to be (looking at you, Mordrambor) the player character can not defeat Saruman in any way that’s meaningful. And (again on a meta level) in order for us to get to experience the action at Helm’s Deep and Rohan at large, we have to get out of Isengard. We’d get bored of waiting for Theoden and Co. We’d hurl insults or slap fish at Saruman and realistically incur wrath. Honestly, with the set of circumstances presented to us, who could survive imprisonment in Nan Curunir?

Only one of the Company ever could: Lothrandir of Suri Kyla. 

To begin with, none of the Rangers we have any real information on could have done it. Anyone who’s spent time in Angmar is at a disadvantage due to the prevailing dread (game mechanic or otherwise) that can be manipulated by Saruman. Any Ranger that has a major traumatic past is at a disadvantage (sorry Mincham) because if nothing else, Saruman has proven to be a master of illusion. Even Halbarad for all his leadership ability has a pretty exploitable weakness: eventually Saruman can crack the code with a vision of Aragorn’s demise, the one end Halbarad must fear above all others. Or what bond could more easily be exploited than that of a leader and his men? Lheu Brenin’s in the gang now after all. All Saruman would have to do was send for a few more incentives. 

But Lothrandir comes built with a few key advantages that make him the only Grey Company Ranger qualified to come out of this battle of wills on top. His specific strengths, mindset, and personality traits combined with the circumstances that the game sets up going into Isengard make him the clear choice of Rangers- if a Ranger you must have- to stay behind in Nan Curunir. 

Lothrandir wins because he changes the game. From ‘go’ our co-prisoner does something that either puzzles the player character or sends them into an anxious fit. Lothrandir declares himself fearless and sprints recklessly into the ring. Any way you figure it, this seems like a poorly calculated move. He doesn’t stop to survey the enemy. He doesn’t gather intel. Heck, he doesn’t even bide his time to see if he’ll be killed before he even reaches the dungeons. Lothrandir sprints right in without so much as a thought or a plan. Saruman doesn’t know it yet, but from that moment on Lothrandir has him on the back foot. 

Consider for a moment Saruman’s MO. He’s a wizard, and he uses a great deal of magic, sure, but time and time again we are reminded of the power of his voice and his words. He calls down a storm on Caradhras (in the movies for darn sure), he via-Wormtongue whispers poison into the ears of King Theoden. He doesn’t lead with any kind of grandiose display when trying to sway Gandalf. No, he leads with a persuasive argument. Later on, he nearly talks Theoden back around, after failing to wipe out all of Rohan. After killing the man’s son for goodness sakes. He nearly talks himself out of that one!

But Lothrandir has already changed this from a game of wits to a game of wills. There will be no vying for favor, or biding time, or compliance, or even giving Saruman a chance to ‘talk it over friendly’ first. He’s already spitting on the shoes of everyone he sees. The accomplishment in this is twofold, and it makes a major impact on the rest of his time in Nan Curunir. 

Firstly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir sets Saruman up for a whole lot of assumptions. He does not display any signs of diplomatic ability, wisdom, or even common sense. He very intentionally projects an attitude of reckless disobedience. In the player’s own eyes, it seems as if he ‘doesn’t know any better’. This gives Saruman a clear path to take regarding Lothrandir. He assumes you can’t reason the typical way with someone who has shown zero inclination for listening. The player character demonstrates that the Grey Company (or least their associates) are capable of compliance. For all intents and purposes, this Lothrandir doesn’t appear to be. He’s contrary, fool-hardy, and evidently dumb enough to dive in headfirst and get himself killed. You beat that kind of guy into submission… don’t you?

But Lothrandir has changed the rules of the game. Saruman is no longer fighting with his best weapon, but with a tool to be found in any old villain’s arsenal. When he took the approach of reasoning with the player character and disregarding Lothrandir, he set the victor’s foundation on our snow-pilgrim’s greatest strength. 

Secondly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir makes this a battle of physical endurance. Unbeknownst to Saruman, this is the one thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the Grey Company. He has walked through the frozen north lands and the fiery south lands and come out unscathed. He has mastered the unarmed combat style of the Lossoth by joining in mid-winter wrestling matches in a place that took down many Elves, Angmarim, and notably one King of Arthedain! Lothrandir has conceivably spent his entire life training for this matchup. Any endurance he has built up, any fighting he can do without access to a weapon, all are assets to the kind of game he just made Saruman play. Lothrandir is uniquely built to survive any physical torment Isengard can throw at him, or at least, better equipped than any of the others. 

To say Lothrandir is the best choice, we also have to rule out the others. Corunir was thwarted by the Rammas Deluon and for all he learned from that, it’s a weak spot in his proverbial armor. Golodir too, resisted a fair degree of torture (palantiri based, even!) in Carn Dum, but it won’t be hard for Saruman to suss that one out and make our old man’s life a living nightmare. Even Radanir, serious and seemingly unattached to any social bonds now that his good pal Elweleth has gone sailing, would be a poor choice. He is too serious, (for lack of a better term) too genre-savvy, and even if he is spitting blood and delivering a witty one-liner, that’s Saruman’s foot in the door! ‘I’ll never betray my friends and kin, you kaleidoscope hack’? You’ve just told him your weakness, Radanir! No, he can’t keep his mouth shut to save his (or Saerdan’s) life. Radanir is the wrong choice too.

We don’t know a significant amount about the others (except Ranger death would move Calenglad to tears, we can’t put him through this) in order to pinpoint their fatal flaws in the Isengard encounter. But, the game puts us in the incredible position of having seen Lothrandir’s Achilles’ heel and letting us take that disadvantage away. 

Lothrandir of Suri Kyla is uniquely equipped to survive any physical encounter that Saruman throws his way. Now, who’s to say the wizard won’t change his tune and go back to his old tricks? In an incredible twist of fate, we are. The game sets us, the player, up to play Saruman’s game from the get-go. We keep our pixelated head down, try and fly below the radar, and express just enough concern over the fate of our fool-hardy pal to get Saruman to cement his estimation of Lothrandir as a pawn in the game in stone. By making ourselves the better target for the words of a wily wizard, Saruman decides that the best way to deal with the spare prisoner is by playing right into his hands. As we all know, the player character escapes. While that might seem bad for someone who Saruman has earmarked for corporal punishment only, it covers Lothrandir’s one weakness. 

Aside from being the only significant unarmed fighter, Lothrandir is also never painted as a loner. He spends his time in Suri Kyla, hanging out with the Lossoth and sharing their campfires. In the new questline in Forochel, he jumps at the chance to make a new Dunedain friend and takes to King Arvedui like a duck to water. They’re instant best pals. It’s minutes before Lothrandir is telling him Aragorn’s life story and pledging to go with him on a buddy adventure to seek peace for a regretful shade. And if that’s not enough canon for you, Lothrandir bears the brunt of the Falcon clan aggression on the way to Isengard. He does it for you, his friend and companion in suffering. It’s a bit meta, but we have to assume in the internal universe he knows you a little. You’ve run your merry adventures to a degree where, were this not a video game, Lothrandir would at least consider you an ally if not a friend outright. 

He exposes his weakness unwittingly to the Falcon clan, but he leaves it at the gates of Isengard in an extremely well-timed move. By sprinting through the gates without a care as to what’s going on with you or anyone else, Lothrandir establishes an emotional distance between you both in the eyes of any onlookers. Whatever affection you have for him, it doesn’t seem reciprocated. This isn’t a major weakness for Saruman to exploit, then. You’re not one of his kinsmen. If he did want to pursue that line, he could always send to Tur Morva for one, right?

This is where the game comes back in to shift the tide in Lothrandir’s favor. We escape. We play the game, we nearly lose the game, and had we not been given an out the power scaling makes it difficult to conceive of an outcome where we the player can win Isengard. Sure, we’ve been released from prisons before (Delossad to name one) but this is the climax of Dunland. We make a daring escape, and move south towards the Gap of Rohan and all sorts of bad times. 

Back in Nan Curunir, Lothrandir is getting the daylights beat out of him, and taking a victory lap. He’s cemented his position as ‘the prisoner we’ll break with violence’. The uruks have seen him insubordinate and disorderly. In the Lothrandir interlude, there’s not only the canon (stated outright!) reality of past and present torture. There’s also zero hesitation in Lothrandir taking that one on the chin. There are no other objectives on his mind than making the next few minutes as miserable as possible for everyone around. He has no other goals. And he doesn’t need them. Nobody is surprised that Lothrandir is signing his death warrant within nanoseconds of being presented an offer to comply. He spits on the offer. He tips over the slop bucket. He beats bloody any orc (and gameplay purposes aside there are very few that dare come forward) that actually tries to kill him for it outright. 

He’s built up a non-rapport with Gun Ain. She talks about killing him and he doesn’t say anything. They’re all playing his game and he’s winning. In the conversation with Saruman, we’re not given the opportunity to watch Lothrandir ‘resist’ in the same fashion the player character did. We don’t need to. Saruman has bigger and better things to worry about- killing a prince, wiping out a nation- than one Ranger who he’s just going to order well-flayed again. By setting himself up as the punching bag, Lothrandir has managed to fly beneath Saruman’s priority threshold. He’s been relegated to the responsibility of Gun Ain, and still with somewhat protected status because they haven’t wormed anything useful out of him yet.

All of these moves have culminated to an impasse. Saruman is not winning points in the game like he expected. One ‘meathead Ranger’ has managed to resist all the torments of Isengard, and he’s gained nothing from this. The other prisoner escaped, word had doubtless reached him that the Tur Morva Thirty-Odd are free and raring to be a thorn in his side again. He has no external leverage to apply on Lothrandir and it’s become increasingly obvious that our Ranger friend is not engaging like the player did. But still, Saruman has his pride. It’s his downfall in the end, and it’s his downfall in his fight against the one Ranger who’s already beating him. Lothrandir can’t be killed outright because Saruman hasn’t won yet. And with that guarantee of protection, Lothrandir can coast all the way to the conquest of Isengard. 

He can keep playing the game and stalling for time. It’s morbid, but what better way to waste someone’s time and energy than convincing them slow, drawn-out torture is the way to go? A little extreme, Lothrandir, but it’s still his game to lose. He wastes Saruman’s time. If he is eventually rescued, total victory. If he’s killed in the end, he definitely didn’t give the wizard the satisfaction, so a less resounding victory but one in the win column nonetheless. 

With a little help from our usually Ranger-cidal devs, Lothrandir reprograms Saruman’s game of chess to a boxing match. He takes out all his disadvantages, gets Isengard to attack from a point of... if not weakness then at least neutral ability, and then devotes his every waking breath to violent disobedience.

Sure, you could have taken any of the Grey Company with you to Isengard. Lheu Brenin could have swapped out for Braigar or Amlan or Mithrendan or Culang- but only one of these guys has the brute strength, commitment, and sheer audacity to pull it off. 

You take Lothrandir to Orthanc. There’s a different prisoner of Nan Curunir when he leaves.

[kettlequills]

how the dragon chases his tail

Miraak the Dragon Priest was not always a man haunting the halls of Apocrypha. Once, he was a little boy, and he had a terrible choice to make. On A03 here. For TESFest21, prompt: change.

CW: brief self harm, indoctrination, mention of castration, explicit references to violence and character death. Also, the Dragon Cult.

The boy that would be Miraak thrusts out his chest in pride when he sings. (He has another name, then, one that tastes of sweet snow and young summers. But that name is never written in any book and fades even from its bearer under the press of centuries, so the boy he shall be.)

 He is only young, but he knows he is the best singer in the cult choir, probably in the whole temple. The priest that directs the children always gives the boy solos and arranges the whole choir to compliment his voice. Not every child born in the village below gains the chance to serve out their due to the temple so quickly, and the boy is very sensible of the good fortune his lovely singing wins him.

 He is devastated, therefore, when his voice cracks halfway through a pure high note that should be      easy.  

 “It is natural – quite normal, a maturation process, of sorts,” Frinaar says hurriedly. Frinaar is an absently devoted man, but he lives for his choir pleasing the ear of his dragon master. (In five years, this love will not save him when his master grows bored and rends him chest to groin with one swipe. His organs will fall soft and pink from his belly, and he will be dead before he hits the ground.)

 But for now, the priest cranes his head around the corners before he takes them, ushering the boy along with sweeps of his voluminous, incense-stained robes, like he is quite afraid of anyone with less than perfect control over their voice to be found in the temple. “Quite normal – only so unfortunate – right before our master should return – so unfortunate. The display will not be the same without the lead and that understudy…”

 Frinaar clucks his tongue, ringing praise for the boy’s young rival, Jyric. (Older, and jealous of the boy’s special treatment by the priests, Jyric is resentful and bitter. He will not mourn the fate he hears the boy earns for himself, when the boy is a man. But he will not long outlive it either, for he will be seized with a terrible wasting disease that will take the strength from his bones, and abandoned by his kin, will succumb to it in shivering fever alone.)

 “Master may be displeased – so many of the choristers eaten, at recent, and…”  He pauses, sweeps down to look at the boy beneath one bushy brow. “You do not think – you do not think that you could      delay    it? Your voice breaking?” he asks hopefully.

     “Yes,”    the boy cries at once, desperate for any chance, and his voice cracks.

 Frinaar winces. “Get gone.” He brushes the boy vaguely towards the temple doors, muttering to himself. “I knew that we should fix them when we get them, then this would not happen! Or only permit girlchildren, but it’s ‘ah, Frinaar, how will our village grow, if you prevent our boys from becoming fathers and our girls becoming mothers?’ Well, I should like to see how our village will grow when the choristers are all off and the master is displeased!”

 Disappearing in a whirl of mumbling and swishing robes, Frinaar leaves the boy to it. For a moment, the boy stands there, hoping against hope that there is some mistake, and that Frinaar will come back to fetch him.

 The iron doors, carved with beautiful depictions of the dragons the temple serves, remain stubbornly closed. And the boy that would be Miraak is brave, and he is strong, but he is only a boy, and he is suffering the bitterest disappointment of his life.

 He bursts into tears, and the shame of it is enough to send him to his knees.

 Sat on the steps, knobbly knees drawn up to his forehead, he cries silently with the experience of any child who has lived every night of his life since his sixth winter in a crowded dormitory. He is lucky, he knows, because the boy has family in the village. A mother, and siblings; he sees them sometimes when the temple children are allowed to go down to the village to celebrate festivals. They are good people. His mother will be coming to get him.

 Not everyone has a mother to fetch them when their temple years are served. Some go to beg for an apprenticeship, a trade, or remain at the temple to join the ranks of warriors destined to guard the temple and barrows beyond. But the boy does not feel like it is luck now.

 Anything that takes him further from the temple and all that he has come to know feels like a curse.

 Eventually, though, he runs out of tears and instead dips his fingers in the snow, rubbing the cold water under his eyes to reduce the swelling. This too, he has practiced, how to look as if he has not just been crying. He straightens his spine and assumes a bored posture, like he has never been more confident and calm in his life. He is aware, after all, of the slits cut into the walls of the temple, for the guards to see approaching intruders on the temple steps where he sits.

 This is how his mother sees him, when she, huffing, reaches the top of the temple steps. She glances around, a little uncertainly, her smile tentative. (Her name is Sinawen, but the boy will not remember it all, when he is a man looking back through muddled memories. So, we will call her Sina, because her story is sad enough without the grief of eroded memory. She will burn in agony for the crimes of her son, having outlived all of her children save one, whose fate is murky to her on her deathbed, but whose suffering is assured.)

 “My son?” Sina says, and calls him by that name, that name that the boy would forget.

 “Mother,” he says back, determinedly keeping his voice at a low, even tone, and her whole face crinkles into a sunbeam of joy.

 “My boy!” she says, and rushes towards him, and quite before the boy can do anything at all he is enfolded into a huge hairy hug. She smells like peppermint and the winter trees she tends in their beds of snow and ice for the village. (It is important work. It is why she has only had to give one child to the temple, her lastborn, who takes most after his long-distant father.)

 The boy that would be Miraak hangs there in his mother’s arms and wishes that the ground would swallow him up on the spot. He hopes his rival Jyric has not found a slit to watch through, and laugh at the boy being coddled by his mother like a child. Humiliation makes rosy apples of his cheeks, and he pushes at her.

 (He is a child, still. How quickly do they wish for what they do not understand. Does he know that this will be the last time he gets such an embrace, steeped in a mother’s love, uncomplicated and clear as ice? Of course he doesn’t.)

 She releases him, used to the pride of the young, but she holds his hand when they go down the temple steps, and he lets her. Her black claws are like his, though the boy’s are clipped short so he will not tear the papers he works with, and when he looks up he sees her cloud of hair swaying in the breeze, salt-flecked cream, and this is the image he will hold of her in his heart, looking off towards the home the boy had been born in with a smile on her lips and tear-tracks on her cheeks.

 (Would it change anything, if he did know?)

 “I am so glad you are coming home, my son,” she says, “We have all missed you.”

 The boy says nothing at all at this, because there is a flicker of shame in his heart. Of all the children in the dormitory, he has been the quickest to scorn the homesick, the swiftest to pledge every thought in his mind to devouring whatever scraps of knowledge the priests have seen fit to grant their charges. He has not thought of coming      back,    in that vague way of inexperience, thought then that this heady time of learning would last forever.

 (He will learn, unfortunately, that there can be too much of such a good thing.)

 The village is not far from the temple, and Sina’s home not far from the village, nestled between cold white stands of frosty trees. A small shrine waits off the path, devoted to the owl-god Jhunal and the whale-god Stuhn, warding against demons drawn by the misty woods. It is well tended, but the boy still spots, hidden on the bark of a tree, a watchful carved eye that does not seem like it belongs with the rest of the shrine.

 The boy does not think anything of it.

 (Do you?)

 “Better things than that temple out there,” says the boy’s eldest brother, after they have eaten, and the misery on the boy’s face can no longer be attributed to hunger. He is wild and tangle-haired, spends his whole life to date out in the snows, and still feels constrained.

 (His name is Terren, and he will not survive a chance stumble into a bear trap, not far from the hunter’s path he had strayed from. A summer from this day, he will be a frozen corpse, found only the following spring when a lost hound tracks the wrong kill. The boy will remember him unnamed, as only as his shredded blue face, gnawed by animals, exposed bone pointing to the sky, and forget their relation, any sense of why this face hurts more than any other he has seen.)

 (It will be the kindest fate those with this boy’s blood meet.)

 “Yes!” pipes his second sibling, Minwen, a sister whose quick fingers at the distaff has won her valued approval, whose bright eyes look at the temple on the hill that swallows her brother with as much trepidation as curiosity. (She will die choking, and her quick fingers will not be enough to stem the blood warm and wet that will gush from her cut throat. The boy’s memory of her kindness will be taken from him, and of her all he will recall is blood-soaked snow and deep dragon-laughter.) “You could learn magic, at home with us.”

 “That’s stupid,” the boy snaps. His voice cracks and he sinks his head into his arms. “I’m      supposed    to be there now. I’m the best singer they have.      I,    ” he adds, venomously, thinking of Jyric, “      never    lose the beat.”

 It is true. The boy has a sense of timing that is as innate as it is perfect.

 (Any skill can be a torment, when cultivated by the right gardener.)

 “When you are a man,” his mother offers, quietly, mouth pinched around the edges, “couldn’t you go back?”

 “They don’t need any more apprentices,” the boy says glumly. “They have too many. Frinaar always complains. And that’s years, and      years    away. I’d rather die.”

 His siblings exchange glances. A depressing silence has settled over the table. The boy takes this as his due, too young to realise his selfishness.

 (I would love to tell you that he learns.)

 Sina sighs. “It may not be what you want, my son, but we are very happy to have you home.”

 (But you know better, don't you?)

 The boy’s brother Terren scoffs, a little, muttering something about ungratefulness. Minwen next to him elbows him sharply in the ribs, hissing      “Think of mother!”  

 (Please do think of her. Sinawen’s suffering will be eaten by her god. Someone could at least remember she existed. Eventually, her son won’t.)

 The boy says nothing, grinding his forehead into the wood of the table. He is consumed in his own misery, everything he has worked for in his young life ripped away from him. It isn’t      fair,    he thinks jealously. He doesn’t      want    to be a wood-grower like his mother, or a spinner, or a scout, or to join the everlasting battle against the beasts and bandits beyond the bounds of the village that has taken his father from the guards.

 (It isn’t about what the boy wants.)

 He wants… he wants the feeling he gets, when he is tasked to sweep the courtyard and lingers close to the wall where the master roosts, eyes running over dragon-words scratched with dragon-claws. The feeling that swells, hot and bright, when he sees dragons overhead, chasing each other’s tails and immense in their majesty. The power that he feels, somewhere just out of reach, when he sings out strong and brave and the whole of the choir rises up around him like a voice of thunder. He feels – he feels alone, in the warmth of his mother’s house, the people that are his family all around him.

 He feels alone when he squeezes a carefully-rescued scale no one misses in his hand, so hard that it draws blood. And something in him looks at the blood that wells around his skin, warm and red, and is disappointed that it doesn’t burn like acid dragonblood. He feels alone then, too. But it is a different      aloneness,    something that feels like a secret whispered in a language he doesn’t know.      Set apart,    instead of      left behind.  

 But, the boy thinks mulishly, he could learn another language. He can’t fill the gap that has grown after years away.

 (See how proud and foolish he is! Can you imagine yet how much the boy will regret this?)

 Dinner is eaten quickly, and Terren is out the door to roam the stands of ice-trees, trail hard claws over the bark. Minwen braids her mane around her fox-ears with ribbons. And his mother draws the boy outside, and takes him to stand beneath the tree with the watchful eye. Sina goes to her knees in the snow and holds her son’s face. Her eyes are deep and warm, crinkled with laugh lines at the edges.

 “You have the look of your father,” she tells him, “And his spirit, apparently.” She clucks her tongue. “He was insistent that we go to a temple village, for the winged ones. I see Kyne in his hawk-eyes like yours.”

 (Do you think that Kyne cares?)

 The boy is watching the sky, not paying attention. Something in him is itching. “You’re not supposed to say that,” he says. “You’re supposed to call them masters.”

 “When the priests can grow wood from ice alone, they can correct how I speak,” Sinawen says firmly. “You are not in the temple, any longer. I can teach you my art. How often did they even let you out? You were not made for stone tombs, my son.”

     “I    am a priest,” says the boy.

 “There are other gods,” Sina says, but his mother’s reply is drowned by the sweep of mighty wings overhead. Sina grabs her son as he lurches towards the temple, eyes tracing the shimmering, bluer-than-blue shape, the joyful roar of frost. It shakes his bones. He knows, without knowing, that the dragon is greeting its roost, crowing its mastery over the mortals that serve it.

 Something in the boy that will be Miraak aches to roar back.

 His mother’s amulet brushes his cheek, freed from the neckline of her shirt. It is carved of a single emerald, one eye half-hidden between two branching leaves. The eye looks at him steadily. (How soon a seed is planted.)

 The boy tugs impatiently against his mother’s arms.

 “I need to go,” he says, “I need –”

 He is aware of a distant, enormous sensation, somewhere in the place that knows without looking at the sun where the planets are, and how long it has been since he last looked. He is aware that something about this is important, terribly important, as if the world itself is waiting, waiting to see what he will do.

 Sina’s shoulders slump. (She has her own choice to make here. How she will pray that she did not.)

 “May the Woodland Man reveal the answers you seek,” his mother says, face buried in the loose tumble of the boy’s hair, “and when you are satisfied, She-Wolf guide you home.”

 (The boy will not remember this, but the eye of the gods opens on him.)

 Her arms loosen, just a little, and the boy tears himself free. He races up the path nimble as a mountain goat without a backward glance. The enormous feeling only grows stronger as the boy runs, until it begins to feel like he is being crushed under the soulful, silent weight of monumental purpose. He gasps for breath, but doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop even as he flies up the vast stone steps and into the thick iron doors. They creak open, only a little, and the boy throws the entire impatient weight of his child body against them again, and again, causing hollow booms to reverberate through the temple.

 (This temple will not even survive as a ruin. Its rocks will be torn apart, its iron doors melted down, its servants slaughtered. Nothing lasts forever. Bormahu-that-is-Alduin is always hungry.)

 “Who dares –      You?”    It is Frinaar who pulls the temple doors open, his face furrowing angrily into confusion, but the boy does not stop.

 He bowls past Frinaar, following the inexorable drumbeat of his soul, hardly knowing where he is going but not needing to as his feet follow the halls he has lived half his young life traversing. Frinaar is shouting behind him, at first loudly, then with increasing urgency, his robes flapping like dragon wings.

 Dragon wings. The boy sees them again, white as snowfall against the curve of the sky, and pivots on his foot, crashing out the door into the open courtyard where the dragon of the temple holds reign.

 The singing breaks off as the boy bursts in, and sudden silence drops sharp as a death-knell. Snow swirls about his eyes, but the boy can still see the great icy-blue form of a dragon crouching on the Wall that commemorates its greatness, a vast treasure of gold and gems spread out beneath its shading wings. The tribute of the temple.

 (How many fingers bled and bellies cramped for a master’s vanity this year? How little things change.)

 The boy has interrupted the ceremony.

 The dragon roars. “Why have you stopped?”

 Its voice is huge and rumbling, shaking the boy’s bones. (I won’t tell its name. The fate of this dragon is whispered in soft horror even amongst its scaled, cold-hearted brethren. There are some things simply too brutal to record, some fights too desperate to be remembered in the mind. The boy’s body will remember, though, and he will carry the scars of this dragon to his grave.)

 The choir looks at each other. (None of them will make it out alive.) The boy can see Jyric, moon-faced and trembling, staring at him like he is a daedra. (Maybe he is.) The dragon swings its great head and catches sight of the boy, a lone figure at the door. It leaps and lands with a crash that shakes the earth.

 (Is Bormahu-that-is-Akatosh even looking?)

 “Fool!” the dragon cries, “This is my temple! You will find no nest here!”

 The boy says nothing, seized in the grip of enormity. A choice is happening, vast and terrible, and he can feel it resounding down into his earbones, blocking out the dragon’s threat.

 (Is it his? Was any of it ever his choice at all?)

 Its head rears back as it draws in breath, and the choir scatters, diving nimbly out the way. The boy watches numbly, mind screaming to follow their suit as they have all practiced, but his body is still and firm. It knows, with granite certainty, that the boy can withstand the dragon’s Shout.

     “IIZ!”    The dragon roars, and ice barrels towards him. It strikes with the weight of a warhammer, and the boy staggers. But he remains standing, instinctively protecting his face with his arms. His hair is crusted into crystals, and ice cracks down his arms when he lowers them. They burn, distantly, with horrible pain.

 (Did it always have to end this way?)

 The dragon looks bewildered that the boy is not dead. The choir rustles as they slowly raise their heads. A shocked murmur runs through the courtyard. Some have frozen solid, unmoving lumps that quickly become dusted with the light snowfall, those that were huddling too close to the boy where he stands, garlanded with frost like a princeling at the epicentre of the blast.

 “I have to be here,” the boy says, “I-“ He struggles, wordless, for a way to convey the inexorable exhortations of his soul. “Take me with you. Burn me – claw me – but let me with you!”

 (We can’t stop this. It’s already happened.)

 He thinks of Sinawen, her hand tugging his, as if nothing is more natural in the world.  The strange pull – it has to be like what he has seen in his brother and sister. In the other children, who weep for their families, when the boy pretends he does not. He thinks of the words of his mother, how easily she folds him into her, as if there has been a place for him all this time, as if she has been waiting for him.

 The boy cries, helplessly, unable to name what he is feeling, the strange and intense kinship he feels to the dragon, the unbearable sense of loss when he thinks of that scar around that family table where a boy with a name like summer snows had once lived. Claw to claw, ice to ice, eye to sky. Is it love?

 (Maybe it even is, then. Is a boy a son because of flesh, or spirit? What about a boy whose heart is kissed by the dreadful Wheel of the Creator-Destroyer of Time? This boy has always had the look of his Bormah. He has the hunger, too.)

 The dragon pulls its head back again, but not to Shout, the boy knows, does not know how he knows. For a moment, there is no sound but the snow, soft as sighs on his shoulders. And then the dragon laughs, low and gravelly.

     “Geh,”    says the dragon. “Would that all took you as a guide for their service.”

 (Oh, they will. The boy will learn how little choice matters, will learn how to take it from his masters. He will teach this lesson on a firm Voice, and when they listen, and when they see, they will remember, because the boy is the son of his father, and there is no choice in orderly, eternal grind of the doom-driven.)

 The dragon lowers its head, amused, to regard the boy with one gleaming blue eye. Deep in its chest, it makes a strange clicking sound, ticking like a Dwemer time-piece. Then it snorts, and turns its great scaly body. Making for a tunnel cut into the cliff, its tail sweeps carelessly, nearly bowling over a dumbstruck Frinaar.

 “Come along, Miraak mal-sonaaki,” says the dragon, not looking back.

 (What is will, fate, if not another prison? This is a farce.)

 The boy hesitates for a moment, and then realises all at once that the dragon means      him.    He blinks, feels a small smile stretch his lips, wreathed in the warm glow of burgeoning confidence.

 (The mask this name gives him will become as part of him as his skin. It’s too late now. Fate has decreed that this boy’s hope must die to win his service.)

 Miraak runs after his master and feels each step ring with the hollow promise of fate. And though nothing simple has changed, for he is back in the temple and everything is right in his young world, he knows, blood-and-soul deep, that nothing is ever going to be the same again.

 (The gods are watching. Do you think they laugh?)

Gloss:

Bormahu - Our father. Dovahzul that when used by dragons means Akatosh, father of dragons. Also the Creator (Akatosh) and Destroyer (Alduin) of Time.

Woodland Man - Hermaeus Mora.

She-Wolf - Mara. God of love, handmaid to Kyne. 

Hawk-eyed Kyne - God of storms and sky. Compared to Kynareth. 

Whale god Stuhn - Warrior god of ransom, brother of Tsun. Compared to Stendar.

Owl-god Jhunal - God of wisdom, runes and mathematics. Compared to Julianos.

Frinaar - Eager Servant.

Miraak - Allegiance Guide. 

Mal - little or small. 

Sonaaki - my priest. 

Iiz - Ice.

[anauthore]

Not Much of A Partygoer (Kenny McCormick x Reader) {SERIES | Two}

Summary: (Y/n) drinks to forget her parents. Good thing Kenny is great at handling drunk people.

Pairing: Kenny McCormick x Reader (she/her pronouns) - South Park

NOTE: Every part of this series can be read as stand-alone, or as part of the series itself! If you don’t want to read each part on Tumblr, feel free to check out links to the work on the below websites:

Wattpad | Quotev | AO3

Fic Below the Cut | Previous Part | Next Part

The door slammed. You didn’t flinch because, unfortunately, you were used to things like that. Your door was ajar and your earbuds were in. Even though one side was quieter than the other, they did a good enough job blasting music into your ears and drowning out the noise of arguing and yelling.

* * *

The night, again, was cold. It always seemed like it was chilly here in Colorado, but you didn’t really mind. You liked the cold, anyway. You’d always thought that being cold was better than being hot.

The wind was surprisingly absent as you walked toward the address you’d scribbled on a piece of paper, squinting to search for the numbers on each mailbox in order to ensure you were in the right place. When you did eventually get there, though, the abundance of noise and flashing lights in the window was all you needed to confirm that you had indeed shown up at the party that you had, for some reason, been invited to.

You walked up the walkway, your feet gripping the stone easily as it had both been shoveled and salted. You naively knocked on the door before realizing there was a doorbell. You ringed it a couple times, waiting for an answer, but when none came, you leaned toward an opened window to peek inside.

Just as you focused on two dark-haired boys chatting in the corner with cups filled with what you assumed was alcohol, the door opened and the noise rushed into the open like waves crashing over you.

* * *

You had been in the middle of switching songs. The angry music you listened to only exasperated your feelings, and you weren’t in the mood for sad sounds. To your dismay, you never got the chance to hear whatever it is you were searching for.

Your door, already propped open so that your mom could see you were diligently working on your schoolwork, slammed against the opposite wall with enough force that you jumped. You looked up and locked eyes with your mom’s boyfriend- he was standing in the doorway and gesturing wildly, still in his Winter jacket with his tie peeking out from over the top.

His voice boomed as you were well accustomed to, but even then you couldn’t keep his words from drowning you.

“And your daughter, this little wench, she’s probably a slut just like you! Look at her; look at her room! And the clothes she wears, it’s completely unacceptable. If I were anyone else I’d be after her right now.”

You furrowed your brows in disgust and anger. What the fuck was happening? You opened your mouth to say something, but you couldn’t get a word out before he stood to the side and pointed into the hallway, looking directly at you as he commanded you toward the kitchen.

* * *

In the doorway was the silhouette of someone you recognized, and though you wouldn’t consider her a friend to you, she sure was a sight for sore eyes. 

Wendy Testaburger waved to you and smiled happily, as she always did, and then beckoned you inside. You couldn’t help but smile back at her as you climbed the steps, and, like she did with almost every girl she saw, she enveloped you in a tight hug before she let you go.

“I’m so glad you came! I was starting to think you’d never show.” She closed the door behind you and instantly you were a hundred times warmer. You almost felt suffocated.

“Yeah, well, I had nothing else better to do.” You shrugged it off.

She rolled her eyes playfully and picked up a cup from the side table that you assumed was hers. You didn’t have to peek inside to know that the liquid that sloshed around inside the plastic barrier was not alcohol. Wendy didn’t drink.

“Here, follow me,” she beckoned you over and started walking through the sparse crowd in the living room. You glanced around and recognized some kids from school, but obviously none of them were your friends. 

“So, this is the punch, and this is the punch.” She chuckled softly, shaking her head only slightly and handed you a plastic cup that looked like both hers and everyone else’s.

“Choose wisely.”

* * *

“(Y/n), do you mind telling me what the fuck you think you’re doing?” 

You looked to your mother for comfort, but she was just as angry as her partner. You had no idea what to say, so you shrugged.

“Don’t shrug at me! You know damn well what you’re getting into, sleeping around and doing drugs. Don’t act like you don’t know!”

You reached your breaking point. You felt your own voice rise up out of your chest and scream, all the words that were bouncing around in your brain finally forming into something other than thoughts.

“I’m not doing fucking anything! You’re so preoccupied with blaming me that you forget you’re dating a crackhead with a daughter who hasn’t done jack. shit. You think I wanna end up like her, dating someone like you?”

The cold slap that stung on your cheek froze you. This time, your mother was fuming, her fist balled up as tight as she could make it.

You scoffed, tears threatening to fall from your eyes as you pushed back your chair and slammed the door shut behind you, welcoming the wind as you strode toward any direction at all. Anywhere that would take you away from here.

* * *

  The moment the punch touched your lips, you were instantly warmed. You sighed and watched Wendy walk away, waving as she departed and fazed into the crowd. It was quiet where you stood; the tiny nook in the kitchen where the two bowls sat are the only thing that drew people into the room. You thought about leaning against the wall and staying away from everyone, but you were cold, and it was warmer where all the action was, so you headed towards the living room with an arm wrapped around your frame and your hand gripping your cup.

Music vibrated the floor through huge speakers stationed in the corner of the room, and you were grateful that it wasn’t any louder than that. Some kids sung to themselves while others were swaying to the rhythm; everyone was congregated in some sort of group, leaving you to be the odd one out. As always.

Or at least, you were for a moment or two before one of the boys in the corner came over to recruit you for a game of beer pong. You shook your head, and he nodded, stalking off to find someone else- behind him trailed a familiar blond, probably looking for the same thing. Your gaze met his for a brief moment; you don’t know what you expected, but he left as quickly as he had come.

You took another sip. And then another. Two more trips to refill your cup later, Wendy once again met you in the kitchen.

“Hey girl! Having fun?”

You smiled politely, and muttered a reply, but of course she knew better. 

“C’mon, (Y/n)! It’s not a party unless you’re enjoying yourself. Actually- wanna join my team? We’re playing beer pong, we need one more person for it to be even.”

You hesitated, but you didn’t get a chance to answer before she walked off, expecting you to follow her.

And that you did. You caught up and followed her like a dog, not wanting the crowd to close in on you and trap you in the sea of strangers. You barely paid attention to her, your eyes glued to her feet as she weaved in and out of rooms and obstacles until finally, finally, you reached the garage.

The draft made you shiver. There were significantly less people here than inside, but the atmosphere was playful as the small group of beer-pongers whooped and cheered for Wendy, having made the score even. You smiled nervously, finishing the last of your drink before setting the cup down on whatever clear surface available.

Wendy stood with you and two other girls who you didn’t recognize at all, while the opposing team was made up of Kenny, the black-haired guy you saw walking around earlier, some redhead, and the ever infamous Cartman. You had an opinion on at least a few people here, but your facial expression gave nothing away. You just watched, and when it was your turn, you played.

You missed your first few shots, with jeers from Cartman and the telltale mumbling of Kenny, followed by laughter and kind words from Wendy. The fifth or so time around, one of your teammates was getting fed up with you.

“Fuck, why can’t you make a ball! We’re getting obliterated! Are you already that drunk?” 

“Bebe! C’mon, she has as much of a chance as anyone here.” You could tell she was holding back a smile just to be polite. The boys snickered and your face turned red, but that could also be the alcohol settling in your empty stomach. 

"Hey, make another shot.” One of the kids opposite to you nodded his head in your direction, glancing at your hands before he tossed a white ping-pong ball toward you to catch. You did so in the palm of your hand, looking at Wendy for approval. You prepared yourself once more, planting your foot and squinting an eye to aim. Then, the ball that had been grasped so gingerly between your thumb and forefinger was released, and unsurprisingly, you missed any and all cups in front of you. You sighed and stepped back, but then your opponent spoke once more.

“Now, drink. Here, take mine.” He searched around and handed you his cup full of punch, which you had no other choice but to take from him. Cartman snickered and you stared into the liquid’s daunting face before drinking. Around you erupted clapping and laughter.

“Alright, so (Y/n)’s gonna drink every time she misses? That’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”

Wendy tapped Bebe’s arm and shook her head, then whispered something into her ear. Bebe rolled her eyes and seemed to drop the subject, though her attitude didn't waver.

Not many more rounds later, and everything started to spin. The walls were moving back and forth like you were on a boat, and your feet couldn't feel the floor underneath you anymore. Your mind buzzed as you fumbled with the ball and tossed- you didn’t see where it went, but you did hear the crescendo of ‘ooo’-ing rise around you. Wendy moved in front of you, taking hold of your shoulders and shaking you, a huge smile on her face. Her voice was shrill and easy enough to focus on; “You did it! You made the shot!”

“I- what?” You looked behind her and saw the sea of red cups half-filled with liquid, and in the midst of one, an unmistakable white orb. A cheeky smile spread across your face and you laughed. “I did it- holy shit, I did it! I get to drink!”

Wendy stepped out of the way and watched as you stepped forward and plucked the cup of alcohol off the table, tossing the ball to the side and chugging it. It burned, especially on the edge of your lips, but the warmth spread throughout your body and you quickly forgot about the burning sensation. You sat the cup down- the empty plastic fell to the side and you wiped your mouth and neck with your sleeve, cringing at the stickiness the drink left behind. You swayed, smiled, and gave two thumbs up to the other team, who started to laugh at your antics.

“Woah, okay, (Y/n), look at me.” 

Wendy’s hand supported your back as you stumbled. The muffled party music had somehow infiltrated your brain, and you swear you could feel it. In your chest, your hands, your… toes.

“Look, guys, she’s fuckin’ trashed. Who wants to bet on when she’ll dance topless on the table?”

Someone elbowed Cartman in the side and he glared back. Wendy shot him a dirty look and nudged you toward the garage door, but your drunken state was clearly something she was not used to handling.

“(Y/n)- c’mon, we have to get you some food. Or at least to lay down, okay?”

You nodded, but then shook your head. “No, no I wanna play, I’m just getting good!”

Wendy opened her mouth to speak, but someone else interrupted her before she could.

“Hey, here, let me help.” 

Kenny stepped around the white, pop-up table and ignored the nudges from Cartman and Stan. Wendy turned to look at him, sans his orange parka, with a raised brow. He, of course, completely understood the implications his demeanour had on this sort of situation. In any other case, Wendy would not let someone like him near a drunk girl such as yourself, but in this instance, he was way better at handling these situations than she was.

He put his hand around the small of your back, with the other hand on your shoulder to steer you. He pushed you toward the door and said something to Wendy. It was apparently the right thing to say, because she nodded and went back to the game, though not after she made sure you were safely in the other room.

The lights were darker inside than in the garage, so you found yourself depending on Kenny to guide you around. Your closeness allowed the telltale scent of cigarettes and musk, and now alcohol, to find its way to your nose, and immediately you were taken back to the night however many weeks ago that you’d been with him.

He steadied you as you swayed back and forth, nudging you up the stairs and into a room with a bed. You laughed, and he said something that you couldn’t quite make out before you realized he wanted you to lay down. You tried to shed your jacket, but the material felt disgusting to your senses, so you gave up and collapsed into the blankets. Your whole body buzzed, like every nerve ending was set on fire but at the same time lulled to sleep.

Kenny closed the door. The old floor underneath you creaked as he approached, and his hands found your body- they were surprisingly warm, and you got lost in his touch. It made you suddenly seem cold, and you tried to push toward him before you realized what could be happening and let the alarm bells go off in your head.

He pulled off the other arm of your windbreaker and threw it to the floor. You looked up, though unable to focus, and found him, back turned to you as he searched for something. Your pulse picked up, and you wanted to run. You knew how this would end- you were drunk, you could barely move, and it was so easy for him to just-

A warmth covered you that was definitely not there before. It was fuzzy, and so soft, and then you realized it was a blanket. You smiled and rubbed your skin against the faux fur, shivering as your heat spread out underneath the cover. You tried to thank Kenny, for being better than you thought he was, but your voice was both muffled by the blanket and by your drunken haze.

Kenny sat next to you and watched you drift in and out of sleep. He stared at a wall, or sometimes at you, but either way he was sensible enough to keep anything or anyone else from coming in to disturb you.

You’d grown used to him being next to you. You’d half-dream, being alerted by the prospect of him moving, and then comforted to find that he was still sitting there, at the end of the mattress, lost in his own thoughts.

Right before you fell to sleep, you’d opened your eyes to find that he was slipping out of the door. You’d spoken, almost pleaded, to him.

“You’re leaving?”

He turned to you with a gaze that you couldn’t place. You could also barely see it. “Uh, I- yeah. I’m just getting a drink.”

You nodded. You didn’t hear him leave, but then again, the buzzing in your head was hard enough to hear past on its own. 

“Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Kenny. Ken. Thanks.” You couldn’t help but smile at his kindness.

You didn’t know if he heard you, but you didn’t care enough to check. With that, your last words of the night, you were out, succumbing to the cocoon of sleep you desperately needed.

[achliegh]

Bronze

Alright, I had this wonderful idea come into my head about Clayton, honestly he deserves his own fic. So here is his version of events! Lots will tie together with Golden so I recommend you read that as well. But you don’t have to of course.

Explaining:

Before Letter is the present.

Letter is updating the lives of the people back home, of whoever wrote it mostly.

After Letter is memory.

The first few letters will be very awkward because writing letters and not being sure what to talk about and what not to talk about is hard and confusing. Stick with me! Yes, this prologue is just a letter.

TW/CW: Discussions of death, military training, smut, cringy jokes, underage drinking, dumb choices, swearing, hospitals, injuries and death caused by someone close, domestic abuse, blood, unfair treatment from police, false allegations.

Beta: @walking-crisis

Some Characters belong to @lumosinlove

Chapter 6:

In Color

“I don’t think you’re ready for that.” Grev was leaning against the door frame, cigar in his mouth and dressed in a casual yet expensive suit. “It will mess with your head.”

“Are you allowed to smoke in here?” Grev snatches the book from his grasp and raises a challenging eyebrow at him. Putting his hands up in surrender he starts walking back towards his bed. Ass out.

“How did you get up?” Grev took his normal seat and put his ankle on his knee to get comfortable.

“I stood up… why is that some miracle or something?”

“A little, you did get shot in the back of the head.” Grev goes back to puffing his cigar, oddly enough it doesn’t smell like a normal cigar. His dad would have one every holiday, he knows what they smell like. Clay is about to sit back on the bed when he hears Grev clear his throat, looking up Clay makes eye contact with the older man for a moment.

“Fine, I changed my mind… you can look. But, only if I get to explain the pictures to you.” Clay sits down and pats the mattress next to him. Grev grumbles under his breath and walks over to sit next to him. He opens the picture album to the first page.

“Is that you?” Clay points to a picture of two small boys looking happy with smiles on their faces, but their eyes told a different story. Even in black and white Clay could see how scared they were.

“That's my twin brother Clark and I, we were 12 years old, working in a factory during the Great Depression.” Clay looks up at him confused, Great depression… but Grev doesn’t look that old. Shaking his head thinking maybe he found the fountain of youth, Clay kept looking at the pictures. Flipping through happy and sad pictures as he turned each page.

“You are in the military?”

“Was, and yes. That was my battle buddy, his name was Gerald Kinzie. He was a high school teacher in San Antonio… I wonder where he is now.”

They turn the page and Clay can’t help but awwwwwww out loud. A picture of Grev with a beautiful woman, he’s kissing her cheek and they appear to be in… wedding? Attire.

“That’s your grandmother and I.”

Dear Clayton,

I know you are deployed a little longer than we were told you would be, but it’s okay! As long as you are safe somewhere then I don’t mind! You’re someone I can spill the beans to and not get in trouble.

You obviously remember the Sheriff, well he has passed away. I know it is terrible to celebrate someone's passing but he and his family made your life a living hell. Ashley scarred your beautiful face.

Yes, you may look more devil's advocate but it doesn’t make me sad.

A bad thing to come out of his death, besides his death of course God Bless his soul, is that Leo was investigated for it.

Now this happened a few months ago, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry about your brother, he is just fine now. Him and his boys came to visit not long ago.

First it was Leo by himself and then his boys came down a few days later. He was the happiest I have seen him since you left. He really misses you baby. So does your Daddy.

I think I am close to convincing him to write to you! He was asking for a pen and paper the other night when he had his night smoke on the back porch. So, look out for that letter.

I got a call from Noelle, she is just a peach you sure got lucky with her, she called to ask me if I had a box or a basket of little things you would find and give to me and your Daddy. She called you a penguin and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I told her that we have a room dedicated to everything you would find for us because the things you brought us vary in sizes. She didn’t say much about it after that, just talked about how Thomas and her were thinking about coming down in a month. After the last game of the season.

Of course I told them they can have your room, I’ve been cleaning it everyday just in case you surprise me like you like to do.

I love you baby, can’t wait for you to be home. xoxo

Love,

Mama

P.S

I already know.

It was humid that night, Noelle has been so excited for this date the entire week. They could only do this on a Thursday night because Thomas was leaving for an away game in Hufflepuff, Noelle was going to visit her other sisters, and Clay was going to get tested to get into boot camp this weekend.

So, driving Clay’s brand new truck up to the highest point in Gryff to watch the sunset. It was cliché but it was comforting. Noelle parks the truck after backing it up into the spot so they feel like they are floating over the cliff. They lay blankets and pillows down to be comfortable.

They turned on some low music, Thomas and Noelle laughed as Clay tried to mimic Finn’s dancing on the tailgate as the other two snuggled together. Clay stopped and stared at them for a moment, he didn’t realize how intensely he was staring until he felt two very different hands pull him on top of the beautiful two humans he was staring at.

“Hi…” Noelle snorts and gives him a small kiss on his scarred eyebrow. He feels Thomas lean over to presumably give him a kiss on the cheek. Instead he blows a raspberry in his neck, causing Clay to smack his neck and try to get away, only to be pulled further into the pile until he is being sandwiched in between them. Both looking up at him from where their cheeks are squished into his biceps. They are hugging him tightly and their legs are a tangled mess.

Eventually they all relax their grip on each other just a little, watching the sky as it starts to change colors. Clay notices how heavy his partners have gotten suddenly. He looks down to see that Noelle has fallen asleep with her mouth open and is starting to drool, and Thomas has fallen asleep looking more relaxed and peaceful than he has all week.

Clay knows they don’t want him to go into the military but ever since he moved to Gryff for the winters… he's been lost. Feeling useless while everyone else is out improving their lives. He needed a path of his own. He can’t just be the pretty thing that sits at home and waits for his lovers like a dog. He needs a purpose of his own.

Looking down at them, he smiles and traces the three little moles on Noelles tan cheek that make a triangle. He looks over to Thomas who has a small scar just below his lip. Noelle recently attacked his eyebrows with some tweezers and Clay can still see the little scab from where Thomas tried to move his head and she plucked his skin on accident.

Clay doesn’t realise how much time passed as he just memorised their faces, breathing pattern and the way they cling to him, until he realises the only light illuminating Noelles honey brown hair is the streetlight they parked next to.

He looks up at the sky and sees the stars for the first time since moving to the city… it just so happens to be his lucky night.

He makes a wish on the bright northstar.

He wants this forever.

[razorblade180]

Overall thoughts on V8? Assuming you didn't answer this already.

I meant to do a volume wrap up review but I got incredibly busy and it fell to the waste side. The thing about me judging RWBY I have to come at it from two angles or I won’t feel like I judged it appropriately. There’s the casual, first time seeing the episodes and seeing this through the lens as a casual watcher who probably only sees the episodes once or twice. But then there’s the other side to that coin. I review these episodes, write aus, theorize, check extended lore, listen to the music, etc; that means I have to go back and watch episodes several times for any given reason and that’s when you start noticing the holes or picking up on things you didn’t before.

As a casual watcher, I’d give this an 8/10. There’s plenty of moments where characters do things that got me excited and plot points I wanted explored. This volume actually gave a decent amount of things I wanted for quite some time and some things I didn’t know I needed. Certainly there are things I don’t like in this but I’m open and curious to see where RT takes their storie because it’s their story.

Okay, now as a someone who’s had to deep dive and take a step back multiple times for a variety of reasons. 6.5/10 maybe a 7/10 if I’m being generous. A lot of my problems with this volume are problems that aren’t new to RWBY and that’s just how surface layer portions of arcs are and how a variety of choices/bonds don’t exactly make sense with what we were previously shown, or they only make sense because the writers don’t want introduce other complexities even though they should be there realistically. I’ll give a couple examples of these and yes, I’m aware what I say doesn’t bother everyone but it bothers me.

Qrow was never angry at or brought up Robyn being the reason their airship crashed in the first place because she started the fight; which aids in Clover dying.

Emerald follows Cinder, not Salem. Even if Cinder is working under Salem, why would Emerald be so willingly to complete shift to the side that actively goes against Cinder? There’s been no grand revelation to make Emerald believe Cinder doesn’t give a damn about her. Leaving made sense because she was about to get tortured. Going full turncoat right now doesn’t. No change happened. Emerald always hated being near Salem but adored Cinder no matter the crimes and the show hasn’t done anything to switch that view point.

I’m happy Whitley and Weiss had a touching sibling moment that implies they’re okay and making/made up, but there was never a conversation about the actual problem and thoughts that had them at odds in the first place. Weiss saving his and Willow’s life shouldn’t be the thing that smooths things over. It would’ve been terrible if Weiss do something to save their life. Whitley helping Penny is okay I guess because he really had no reason to contribute but did anyways. Even so, a person doing a morally correct thing doesn’t automatically warrant the conflict between him and Weiss’s resolved.

We got Cinder’s backstory; it didn’t tell us anything about how she eventually came into contact with Salem. Honestly her back story felt more in line of her main goal through the series was an absolute freedom by the means of breaking down the systems that trapped and didn’t give a damn, rather than her quest for power. Yes you can argue gaining power means it’s easier to maintain her freedom to do whatever she wants but I personally think that’s a little off the mark when you gave her a story that involves her trapped by rules and time rather than being too physically weak to gain freedom.

This show has built up that the Schnee family has suffered various types of abuse because of Jacques and uses Weiss as a medium to build towards breaking free from that. Not just overcoming but confronting the abuse by cementing it’s place below you. We don’t really get that. There will never be a moment where the siblings and mother truly get to break out of Jacques grasps emotionally and then put him in his place because he’s dead! Yeah they never have to worry about him again but even last volume they showed Winter still having turmoil and being able to get strung along by him. We don’t even really know how Whitley perceived his father. It feels so lackluster. Then they care to mention how it’s Weiss’s idea to save him like it’s an empowering moment when in actuality, it would be against her character, values of a huntress, and morality to let a person die in cell when you’re the reason they’re in a cell! Letting him die in there would just terrible. I don’t even know why he wasn’t let out in that scene! He’s a coward! He’d follow their orders to save his skin. All he has to do is shut up and walk through a portal.

Ironwood and Oscar both knew they could remove that staff to use it and Atlas wouldn’t drop immediately. Why did nobody have any kind of compromise with one another since there’s nothing stopping them from using the staff for something and then putting it back? They had this morally gray thing going on which I liked but then they decided to make Ironwood go full evil. I’ve never had to say this before but the song he got in V7 and the character they made him be in V8 just don’t connect. I got upset listening to that song recently because I liked that Ironwood.

Clover’s importance. RT tried making a character who had no more than 9 minutes in the series and one meaningful line of dialogue into the cornerstone of a side plot. Clover is such a nothing character. Vine did more than Clover. They try to make him have such a profound impact to the people around him but we never see him bond with his team; Harriet specifically. We get one scene of Clover telling Qrow the kids are fortunate to have Qrow even if he doesn’t think so. First, I doubt Clover knows Qrow decided to get drunk in a ghost town and the kids nearly died and cellar while he did it so that compliment doesn’t hold much weight for me. Second, We see nothing meaningful between the two. V7 has a time skip and just expects viewers to be on board with Clover being this influential change on Qrow without showing anything outside of a witty remark and Clover flexing his semblance. I would’ve bought it more of Qrow almost relapsed and Clover stopped him then had a real meaningful conversation.

Ruby goes against Ironwood only to then want to do a plan that’s aligned to longer term thinking than even his, talks about how everyone should be working together, but then adds a part in her video to actively antagonize and vilify Ironwood. Afterwards, she wonders where everything went wrong and doesn’t think of a plan or do anything to immediately help either kingdom until the final hour between the ultimatum being made, to everything getting destroyed. The inciting incident was disagreeing Mantle should be left in favor of Atlas but the main character didn’t do anything to help Mantle 90% of the season and hindered Atlas’s safety up until the final plan.

Yang is used to be the devil’s advocate in a bunch of situations, but she’s wrong most of the time or her lines just don’t make any sense. They weren’t doing just fine before Atlas. They almost died every step of the way. The team didn’t beat a Leviathan; silver eyes and a robot take credit for that. Why would Blake think less of Yang for wanting to go save people immediately? Blake was never mad at anyone to begin with. Yang consistently calls out people for following orders as if it’s objectively wrong, but is never called out on the fact she hasn’t followed anybody’s orders but her own and added discourse to every situation. I get RT is making her ask questions because that’s what Raven told her to do, but all she’s really doing is picking fights and disobeying every order. Yang states to Ruby they accomplished more than they expected. That’s false, getting Oscar back is correcting a mistake caused by her own plan that she didn’t even complete.

It took 6 volumes before Yang had anything to do with the Summer Rose subplot again and 7 volumes before her and Ruby had a sister to sister conversations; 5 if you wanna count Yang telling Ruby to leave at the end of volume three. The reason I bring this up is because in V8 , they treat their argument as if it’s a big deal but then have every character say it wasn’t that big a deal; but then have two circle back to that conversation later after having neither character discuss to anybody that the argument actually did weigh on them. Yang doesn’t think about Ruby until she sees her again and the closest we get with Ruby is Blake reassuring her that people need her and how Blake admires her. I like that scene but it’s not the same as Ruby actually airing out the specific point that Yang said something that Ruby found hurtful. Vol8 in general people trying to comfort others but nobody ever actually addresses what made them uncomfortable to start with. Except Ren.

This one is a nitpicking but I’ll say it anyways. Penny getting hacked only served as a purpose to go to the vault, a thing Ironwood already wanted them to do. Nobody got her because she was hacked. You can’t even say her getting hacked is the leading factor to her actually dying because Penny became a vulnerable human afterwards that can’t be rebuilt. Pietro was gone, and already stated last volume he doesn’t have the aura to build Penny again. If she died as a robot then it’s still permanent death. No core, no Pietro, and no aura; hacking her was just to create a Hound reveal situation and make them go to the vault on a different set of terms. I’m not exactly upset with this, but I don’t understand why the extra steps. The Hound was hunting her anyways. I would’ve brought some kind of value if she hurt a friend and it caused them to potentially hinder the plan later on or remove them entirely. Penny could’ve rekt Yang and it only adds value to Yang getting one shot later. I don’t know. I’m rambling.

I think I’ve wasted enough people’s time. Honestly, I do like this volume. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of it. But there’s things that legitimately make me think it’s not as good others and makes V7 even worse.