#Except in a Goya painting where he looks awful | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fortunebuoyed · 3 years

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Daniel/ @sittimoranimiinterfectorem‘s Armand, mention of past Claudmand, 3.5k, beta read.

The music chasing after his fleeing feet paints Armand an altogether joyous thing. As he dances through the corridor, its high windows setting the streetlights to illuminate his hair like a blaze, the Vampire seems more a child than Daniel has ever seen him. Meandering after him, Daniel is led past a dozen eras, the Caliphate blurring into the Romanesque only a doorway apart, past a hallway offering glimpses of Velazquez and Goya standing at odds across from one another. This Spanish gallery offers a myriad of delights, if the pair have the time and inclination to discover them.

There are better museums in Spain, though. The terrible pair had not traveled so far just to settle on a speck of locked up art for its own sake. All that matters tonight is a single painting tucked away somewhere in a corner of the Renaissance exhibit. Peering again at the leader of their expedition, Daniel realizes too late that Armand has been talking, babbling about the piece they now seek. Words flicker through his pounding head, ‘furs’ and ‘silks’ and every decadent luxury that is a dozen lifetimes removed from Autumn 1982. Pulling his faded denim tighter around his frame, the mortal fishes in his pocket for the painkillers that will banish the previous night from the present..

The headaches come so often of late, spurred by a poor diet and endless adventures across his nights. In fact, the artisan of his migraines proceeds with an airy laugh through the empty gallery, offering a little spin of delight. These games always bring him joy. The sound of his laugh echoes inside Daniel’s beleaguered skull as he takes the pills dry. The things he does for love.

Armand vanishes through a doorway in a flash, before his name can properly form on the other’s lips. He calls it regardless, stopping adjacent to the path that had dragged the vampire away from him. “Armand--”

“I’ll catch up,” comes the reply. Violet eyes raise to study the placard beside him -- Romanticism. The soft lines and endless layers of the style seem ill-suited to the artist’s tastes, but Daniel proves grateful for the chance to let the pills percolate in his bloodstream anyway. Carelessly, he hounds the corridor for an out, ever obedient to the directions the sweet-faced woman at the desk offered him. Twenty minutes to closing, she advised, Castilian accent rounded out with matronly care. The words had chased him, Armand already tugging him along on their great quest.

As she had said, the Renaissance collection stood to the left of the endless stroll, nestled into the furthest corner of the first floor. He cannot fault the layout. The collection is worth the wait. His steps echo across the parquet flooring, shadow looming across the pale marble figure that stands guard over the paintings lining the wall. Harsh shadows and demure womanhood paint a fine enough contrast to soothe his aches. Snippets of frescos hang liberated above his head. He thinks, it is a pity Armand did not follow. Whether he feels at home or not doesn’t much matter. The exhibit is a feast for the senses, the kind that Armand’s breed so adores.

The boy ancient has a wall to himself, just as promised, his bare ass peeking out from between a silk-draped divan and the vibrant fur of some golden beast. The modern Narcissus stares spellbound into the mirror set before him, reflecting features that have remained unchanged in the long centuries since. Marius was -- is? -- a master of his craft, and the appearance is so accurate as to set the human desperate to touch the canvas, as if there will be flesh against his touch rather than pigment.

He is in love with himself, Daniel decides, studying the awed expression that stares back from the mirror. Scoffing, he digs his fists into the pockets of his jeans, fleeing the rooms in totality. There is nothing left in the display to compare, and besides, their twenty minutes is almost up. If Armand is to discover this portrait of his unending youth, then he must be led swiftly to it. He is not, in fact, catching up. Abandoning the Renaissance without a glance towards the neighboring Gothic and Neoclassical rooms, Daniel tells himself that he must still be a little drunk, that the effigies seem too lifelike through the door out to the sculpture garden.

He has grown too accustomed to marble flesh and unsettling gazes. Yes, the statues appear alive to him now, but never in the way that Louis has described. His nails form perfect half-moons around his palms.

Armand’s stillness is so complete that, for the briefest moment, Daniel mistakes him for part of the collection. The redhead has not made it past the first room, stagnant in appraisal of a piece. It’s not like him. The terrible, unmoving moment seems wrong to tread upon, wronger still to permit. Rocking to and fro on his feet, the mortal casts a glance about the collection, looking at the pastel displays of nature and portraiture. Among this ephemeral flood, what can there be to possess his companion so? Slowly, cautiously, he approaches the other. How long has it been since I’ve hesitated with him?

Her dress is carmine, her hair a dark coil of curls braided around the crown of her head. The otherwise pleasant expression stares defiant out towards her audience, night-black eyes fierce despite the distance. Settling beside Armand, he recognizes the style immediately. The former stands there a long, long while, studying her features, his own brushwork. Daniel comes to settle beside him, feeling ceaselessly awkward for intruding. The apparent youth is no longer Narcissus staring into his own abyss. This face is a stranger.

Unnamed Mulatto, the little gold placard reads.

“Who was she?” Daniel whispers.

“They were the last human I fell in love with,” comes the confession, comes the breath catching in Daniel’s throat. He studies her, then the chain of gold around her neck, clutches the locket against his shirt.

“She’s beautiful,” he says, because what else is he meant to say? This dark woman, frightfully made, defiant even in facsimile, gives him little else to go on. There is something discordant in that face which makes him a liar, her soft smile at odds with her sharp stare.

“You should have seen them swordfight.”

“I didn’t think women could do that back then.”

And he's already thinking, what in me will you admire after I am gone? He studies those dark eyes, which seem so lifeless to him, a dark abyss in a sea of white, a grave come to swallow him. She is dead. He knows that as surely as his own name.

“They weren't a woman. But at the same time they were.”

Daniel doesn't understand it. He can't, in the parlance of the era, except that she -- they -- are singular in Armand's eyes. Or perhaps they make a matching set, he and this lost muse. Her warm oval face, offset by the chill of his realizations, seems unfathomably more abhorrent in the ensuing silence. Her mortality is his. It sours in his pit.

He doesn’t recognize Armand’s absence, his searching around for something sharp enough that he could rectify some flaw in the presentation. All Daniel registers is the horrific scraping as the vampire scratches their name into the placard: Claudia di Montoya. The spell breaks. Autumn 1982 rushes back into focus. Inhaling, Daniel discovers that the room is suddenly too hot for him. Sliding out of his jacket, he forces a new purpose into the air.

“Right. So. we have less than ten minutes, if that, before security picks us up, and I have to show you where I finally found your ass in this gallery--”

Bloodless fingers trace the new marks carved into gold, lingering over the syllables of Claudia, brown eyes boring into their own. The hand drops, and Armand drags himself up from the depths of memory. “Alright, Daniel. Lead the way.”

He knows that he must have done so, that they stand studying the canvas depicting a then human boy. He knows that Armand does not react with his commonplace amusement, his rundown of the events leading up to the pieces creation. This is not like Naples, or Prague, or Ontario, where they have found similar depictions of his life as a muse. The most the immortal offers is a slow smile, a hushed “There it is,” and Daniel understands very well what the difference is between Naples, Prague, Ontario, and Leon.

Why are they always named Claudia?

The question hounds him on their escape, down the city streets, into the bar where Daniel carves out a small meal of hot tapas. The two of them remain quiet among the ebb and flow of locals seeking a snack between dinner, and it’s so unlike Armand. It’s unlike Daniel, too, to go without his customary drink. Armand has dragged him around the world so he could be a part of it, but he sits consumed, contemplative. In this walled world of smoke and voices, a dozen languages flowing like wine, Daniel imagines the other a world way. In his own mind, the vampire must still be in another room, far from Venice, long before this bar. She dances up to him, crimson swirling around her ankles as the band plays a waltz through a gilded palace. She’s staring his keeper down like a shark, that awkward smile a threat, and like any proper storybook villainess, she devours her target whole. Skin, blood, curls, and lace, Armand is engulfed into her, a wooden puppet fed into flames. Daniel holds his glass all the tighter.

That pensive mood fails to pass as they leave. There are no further stops along their walk to whatever passes for home, the rented room in a crumbling piece of ancient architecture. Daniel decides that he is tired of history, though he turns his question over until it is worn smooth.

It is the sole question he can tolerate. It is the only one without a clear or meaningful answer, and if he dares to branch out from it, he’ll be heading straight for bedlam. The overlap of names can mean nothing but coincidence. The golden chain, the choice of words, the melancholy that has settled inside of his jailer, these things carry far greater meaning. Thoughts, and his desperate attempts to block them, consume him so deeply that he hardly notices Armand slipping away when the moon is at his highest. In his absence, Daniel finds little to do but lean against the worn metal lining the balcony and smoke.

Armand returns, but not alone. Like an alchemist, he has gathered his tools, ready to perform some magic on the task he has chosen. He places the late beloved upon the desk with such care, the rags and chemicals he has brought along burning at mortal senses. His paints and brushes are at the ready, and Daniel feels fire build in his chest. Uncaring, the other begins his careful undertaking, hardly needing light to go about his restoration.

Daniel hates it, actually. hates this memento mori lurking under this rented roof, hates that this is all he will be one day. In another hundred years, will Armand point at some ash-haired man in a gallery and say to someone else 'That was Daniel, I loved him very much, he was a fool, but he was beautiful when he was in his right mind' ? His latest cigarette burns too close to his fingers. He drops it, careless, to the streets below, staring at the tiny, irritated mark it has left behind. Nothing is said, but the night grows cold, and his tactical retreat is pyrrhic. There is warmth within, yes, but also the ghost Armand chooses to set between them.

Shutting the door to the world outside, the pair become locked into that harsh company, the spectral Claudia with her hands around her lover’s throat.

Slumping into what passes for his chair, the human passes the next hour in silence, so pointedly ignoring the work that it consumes his every thought. Dexterous digits dance along the desk, seeking oils, seeking brushes, seeking that which will return his dead beloved to him. Daniel’s own hands twitch uselessly against the arms of his seat. Here, he is powerless, less than a thought, less than a long-dead stranger. The silence is broken at last by the devil himself.

“They never believed me, about any of it. I told them everything, Vampires, my past, and Claude always thought I was lying through my teeth. Even faced with proof, they blamed my theatricality and my staff’s skill with stagecraft. It never broke them, the truth, not like others.” Fondness colors his voice in spite of it. For every way in which this person might spite him, his voice is heavy with reverence.

Daniel must ask, in that soft, hesitant voice, “Is that why you never turned them?”

“No.” Armand does not pause as he speaks, a slip of a brush still swirling against the canvas. “They had a life. They loved someone else, their princess, named Haydee. They had children eventually. They had a human life, and I wouldn't take them away from that.”

How gracious, then, for the bloodsucker to show restraint with those that desired it. He’d never done a damn thing for those that actually want anything from him, after all. “Good for them,” Daniel says, and he reaches for his cigarettes, lights one. Standing, he resigns himself to the curiosity that colors his distaste, clears the distance between them to study Armand's undertaking so far. There's so much yellow paint. and he thinks, I am here, and I love you, only you. What does a human life have to offer me? But he simply exhales, silent, as smoke hangs in the air between them.

If he loves himself in death as he did in humanity, then Daniel need only reflect the vampire as clearly and coolly as Marius’ mirror. If he loved another and let them go, then there are no assurances between them, no safety net to catch Daniel as he struggles towards death or immortality. The architect of his salvation could choose to damn him instead, wholly untouched by his plight. He imagines the pitiless creature before him pristine as the white button up clinging to his form, absent of any trace of paint. The palette of Daniel’s desire for him, for everything he is, might never reach him.

Armand must feel the emotions rolling off him, but he ignores it in favor of continuing to fix the painting. The restorers cannot have ruined the original too deeply for as quickly as he rights their wrongs. The whole of his focus narrows to knifepoint over the abyss that had so captured his companion, which remain defiant in the dim of their quarters. Daniel watches her stare blaze to life under Armand's steady hands, gilded and bright. People have always spoken of his own eyes, like violets. Is this what the other likes best, the fire in eyes that give the rest of the world pause?

Once the golden irises are right, the master artist goes to refining the rest. The changes are small, but somehow urgent. Armand moves furiously to make the portrait as it should be, as it was originally. The barest twitch of his fingers transforms the image into something greater. Red curls slip free of the scrunchie that bunches his hair to a low bun against his spine, turning the vampire to a mess as he keeps at his artistic endeavors.

His lover might have kissed that pallid neck and drawn him from his efforts, were Daniel any more forgiving of this intruder and how Armand forces her into their life.

“She's not smiling anymore,” Daniel notes at last, when the change is finalized. Her face pulls into harmony as her mouth turns to a hard line. “Was that her mood then, or yours now?”

There’s age in the way he sighs, true age. For a moment, Daniel imagines himself catching a glimpse of what Armand should have been, had the chance to grow and dedicate himself to his first talents. Hunched over his workspace, world narrowing to his subject alone, the youth becomes a master. Daniel hates this, too, this thought that would mean his master’s death, nothing other than a historical footnote. He deserves more than that. He deserves more than this momentary obsession that tears at whatever trust the two have rebuilt in the months since Daniel’s return.

“They're not smiling because someone dared to touch their portrait that was not my hands. It's what they would want.”

Those hands dance smoothly across the stolen art, ensuring his vision return to the world. He must not want this ancient Lenore to return from her sepulchre to damn him for the mistakes of other artisans. Dead is dead, the mortal knows, and they are owed nothing. When had Armand last spared a thought for this loved and lost before the museum so rudely reminded him of her existence? She doesn’t belong here, this poorly lit room with yellowed wallpaper, because it is theirs, and she is worth far more than the entire building.

“Mm,” Daniel hums, and doesn't have much else to say. In spite of his mood, there is something riveting in this, actually, watching the master at work. He had been born far too late for the Palazzo, for the golden days when the boy in front of him assisted in his Master’s artistic pursuits. He’s only ever been left with the aftermath of that golden age, the pieces scattered across museum displays and private collections the world over. This should be a great gift, watching his lover keep at his ancient craft. But he's still so bitter about the shape his night has taken.

“What pendant is she wearing?” he asks, once he is properly braced for the possibility that the locket around his neck belongs to a cycle. He had once thought it was his own, a gift passed between lovers that said whatever else his keeper was, he was protective of what counted as his.

The other offers a comfortingly familiar shrug that sets his shoulders colliding with his ears, saying simply, “Some pendant. I don’t know. Perhaps a piece Haydee gave them.”

Daniel relaxes. Comforted, he steps away from their shared obsession, slumps into his chair, snuffs out his cigarette on its upholstered arm and flicks it towards a pile of books. Dragging a hand through his hair, he concedes there exist small mercies in Armand's presence.

He does not know what time passes in the euphoria of that small victory. He keeps time in the fact that it has been long enough for him to get lost in his thoughts, for the night to grow ever smaller. Whether it is minutes or hours later, Armand finishes his first phase of restoration and throws himself into Daniel’s orbit. The former’s body fits perfectly against his, straddling him, pushing him backwards with insistent hands as kisses the warmth from Daniel’s lips.

“You and Claude are not the same. For one, you love me back. For two, they are long dead. I loved them once, but that love is in the past. I only wish to honor them now by making sure their portrait is in hands that will care for it properly. I'll send it off to the Montoya estate in Sardinia once it's finished being restored.”

The mortal lays there, dispassionate, as he listens to these assertions. and what can he possibly say to that? God, his lover thinks he's jealous. If he compares himself to this fallen woman, it isn't in self-pity -- it is to outdo her, to look at where she failed and he might yet succeed. But he allows Armand to kiss him, kiss his lips cold as marble, and says nothing of how he refuses to be another portrait to be repaired. His mind is made. All that’s left is to make a plan of it.

Armand keeps up the kissing, down to his neck, to play at biting only to merely drag his teeth along pale skin. His hand reaching down to rub Daniel through his pants, falling into a pattern so familiar that it would be boring were it any less fulfilling. He recognizes what Armand thinks, mind gift or no. Perhaps sex will get his mind off of all this.

He lets Armand believe that it will. Lets himself give in, already deciding to make his stand, yet another escape. Tomorrow, perhaps, when the sun is up. Perhaps taking the unfortunate girl with him. It will be cruel, beyond any attempt he’s made in the past, to deprive the vampire of his companionship and a newfound project. It must be done, however, to speak what cannot be conveyed properly in words. There will be a statement in this even if he does fall again, consumed by the need for Armand, for his slender arms and white-hot blood.

He won't be content to be art.

#let's hear it for rock bottom [ DANIEL ; WANDERING ]#cutting each other without even knowing [ DANIEL X ARMAND ]#heaven sends and heaven takes [ claude & armand ]#drabbletagtba #this is the first longform oneshot i have written in.... years.

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beerecordings · 4 years

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i just read your piece about eric derekson on ao3!!! ahh!! i'm in love with all those big bad soft boys who love 1 very sweet and anxious boy 💚💚💚 ;w; especially google and dark! i absolutely love your take on them!! and host as well, the opening of the whole fic is just fantastic! do you have any future plans to write more of the iplier-egos? if you do i can't wait to read it!

ahh anon thank you this is so positive and sweet wow!!! i’m so glad you liked it because i actually still enjoy that fic so much and yes actually i think the iplier egos are so much fun. dude kskdngdf i do have this fic i’m working on that’s all about Google, kind of a sequel to the Newcomer - I would call it the Soldier because it’s all about him being Dark’s right hand (Dark is the only being he respects and he does whatever he tells him) but as he begins to feel more and more emotions he starts to get scared Dark will see him as weak and throw him out. but it’s also about him taking care of the twins and Eric and Host, him being friends with Ippy and trying to get along with Bing, and him and Bim fighting at every chance they get. but i really should stop even mentioning it because i can never seem to get it finished!!! but i hope i will someday :) it’s about 20,000 words so far. can i offer a sneak peek in exchange for your nice words? i’m excited to share it haha

“Do you think I've changed?” asks Google the next night, when the clinic is empty except for him and the doctor.

Iplier sets his pen down, turning slightly in his chair. “Do I think you've changed?”

The clinic smells like sanitizer and orange-scented handsoap and the piney, slightly over-powerful cologne that Google's come to associate with the doctor. There's a woodpecker working on a tree outside and it's a little too hot. Google sits stiff in the same spot he's sat for more than an hour, his knees drawn up to his chest as he bounces a stress ball at the wall.

Back and forth, back and forth. Iplier waits for Google to look at him, but he doesn't. He sighs and leans back in his chair, trying to figure out exactly what it is he's been asked.

The clinic is little more than a closet, hardly large enough to fit Doc's desk and a cot for somebody hurt. Google has never really understood why Iplier spends so much time in here. Then again, he himself spends a lot of time in here too, sitting tucked in the corner beside the desk while Ippy works quiet at his side.

“Yeah,” says Doc finally. “Are you asking me if you've changed from when you were created? Yeah, you've changed.”

“Hey,” he adds, when Google doesn't answer. He reaches out and shoves, almost playfully, at Google's head, making the android scowl. Ippy laughs softly, looking down at him with concern. “Hey, hey, come on. Stop throwing that, tell me what's wrong.”

Google clenches the stress ball in his hand, his teeth gritted tight in his mouth. “Nothing wrong.”

“Whatever, yeah.”

They sit together for a long time.

“Don't know what's happening to me,” chokes Google.

Fear in his voice.

Iplier is out of his chair in a second, Iplier's at his side in a second, and he's asking him, low and urgent, “what's wrong, are you hurt, what do you mean, I've never seen you act like this – ”

Google just hides his face in his hands until Iplier is calm again. Until they're sitting in silence again. They've spent long hours sitting in silence together, and it is because of that that Google trusts Iplier more than he trusts anyone else in the world.

“I'll kill you if you ever tell anyone this,” Google whispers, tucking his hair behind his ears and trying to stimulate breathing steadily. “I'll show you trepanation up close and personal.”

Ippy just laughs. His hands are warm on Google's kneeplates. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me anyway.”

He means to say something like, “I'm having a cognitive malfunction” or “my emotional processor is out of control,” or “yesterday I looked at a stupid Francisco Goya painting and decided that I hated it, that it was revolting and awful and I didn't want to see it again, and how can that be when I was made to know but never to understand?”

But what comes out is just fear.

And he says, “Edward, do you think the darkness would get rid of me if I stopped being useful?”

The clock on Iplier's desk ticks softly by. The air conditioner kicks on in the next room over and cool air filters down through the vents. The stress ball under Google's fingers has burst, and he just sits, and waits, for Iplier to speak.

He has dark eyes and a kind mouth. He's grown his beard out heavier than Mark's and he's wearing his lab coat even though there's no one to see right now but his friend.

“I don't know,” he says finally, reaching out to adjust the glasses fallen down on Google's nose.

They've never lied to each other once in their lives. Not on purpose, anyway.

“I don't know if he would throw you out.”

They sit together for a long time yet.

“But I wouldn't,” adds Iplier gently. “No, shut up, let me be here, okay? I wouldn't throw you out, Google. So you focus on figuring this out. On finding out who you want to be. And I'll be right here when you need me. Okay, buddy?”

Google sighs. “Don't call me buddy.”

Iplier ruffles his hair and makes him growl. The doctor laughs and Google manages not to smile, reaching out to shove gently at Iplier's chest, where his human heart beats fragile beneath twelve pairs of thin white ribs.

“Everything's going to be okay,” says Iplier, and Google, in an act that he knows is pure human, chooses to believe him.

#anon #feedback #the newcomer #the keep reading is not supposed to be there but i can't move it skdgjdg

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 2x16 Blood Must Have Blood, Part Two

And here we are, at the best episode of the show. The only other time so far that the show has been this good were the last three episodes of season 4.

When I first binged the show, I predicted most of the season 1 finale, but this one was really surprising, shocking, emotional, mind-blowing. The 100 really does love mass murder as a plot point and has 2-3 on average each season, and it’s put its protagonists in situations where they have nothing but terrible choices, but I really didn’t expect the show to push them that far. On rewatch, the surprise factor is gone, but this episode still made me cry, again, more than once.

I’m only going to be doing short write-ups from now on, due to the lack of time, but I cannot not write a long and detailed post about this episode.

Rating: 10/10 (obviously)

All season we were supposed to think that the alliance and relationships with the Grounders were crucial to the main storyline. In the end, it all came down to our protagonists from the Ark, mostly the same characters we’ve followed since season 1, left on their own and having to save themselves , (except for Lincoln – the only Grounder billed as the main character at this point). I don’t know how there are fans who saw season 2, or at least the second part of it, and got confused as to who the protagonists of the show are.

I don’t care how many times it’s said that Clarke is all “Head” rather than “Heart”, or was before season 5, she certainly was not in this episode. She was acting out of pure desperation and determination to save her friends – getting into the underground garage and shooting at the door to try to get into Mount Weather, without having any plan. Even Octavia thought she was being too impulsive.

I have mixed feelings about Octavia again blaming Clarke for things: some of it is justified – that she didn’t warn people in Tondc about the bomb and let them, including Octavia, die; but blaming her because “you trusted Lexa” makes little sense. (The same goes for Bellamy blaming her for the alliance with Lexa in 3x05.) It’s not like Clarke gave up any advantage because Lexa convinced her to, or even got them into trouble, and her trusting Lexa wasn’t even the deciding factor at any point. They needed Lexa’s support. Clarke was the one trying to make the alliance happen from the start, and convinced first Anya, then Lexa, because that – in combination with having an inside man - was their best option to defeat the Mountain Men, and probably their only option to do it without killing every single person in Mount Weather. Which is what they were trying to avoid – Bellamy was insisting that “we need a plan that doesn’t kill everyone”, and of course Clarke wouldn’t want to kill those children or people who were helping them, either. And how exactly were they to do that without an alliance with the Grounders? Secondly, it’s not like anyone could have predicted that the Mountain Men would offer a deal to the Grounders (and that also wouldn’t have happened if Cage hadn’t asked Dante for advice), let alone that Lexa would accept it – especially knowing how much Grounders believe in “Blood must have blood” and were pumped to fight the Mountain Men. Not to mention, even after Lexa’s betrayal, they were no worse than they would have been without the alliance – they were just left to their own devices as they were to begin with. And finally, at least the truce with the Grounders still held, and without the truce that Clarke negotiated in 2x07, Trikru would have attacked them or they would have had to leave the territory around Mount Weather, and would never get the chance to save their people from Mount Weather.

But in a way, I like the fact that other characters are always blaming Clarke for stuff and calling her out, even though it’s sometimes fair but often really unfair, because it makes me like Clarke more: The 100 does the complete opposite of that thing where the protagonist is always excused by everyone, whatever they do (and there are lots of shows that do that). Whatever any viewer may say about her, she thinks much worse about herself, and there are always people telling her worse than she deserves. It makes her look so much more human and relatable when all she can do is desperately yell: “I’m doing the best I can!” But in the following seasons, I starting getting fed up with the fact that it’s usually only Clarke and Bellamy who feel guilty about anything or get called out on their actions, while some of the supporting characters, oddly enough, get excused and insta-forgiven.

So many feelings about the reunion that happens when the door open: hug between the Blake siblings, the silent look between Clarke and Bellamy (what are they thinking? She is probably feeling both relief that he’s alive, thinking back to when she told him to go and that the risk is worth it, feeling guilty about Tondc and lying about Octavia and what she did when she realized she couldn’t take the risk after all), Monty and Jasper hugging Clarke ат the same time, Clarke mouthing a silent “Thank you” to Maya.

Indra has had some real character development, as seen when she allows Lincoln go back to Mount Weather to help Octavia, if he wants so. They made it clear to him that he couldn’t go back to Trikru if he did– under the terms of the truce with the Mountain Men, lands around MW are forbidden for Grounders - so he knew full well he could be an exile and decided “I cannot let her die”. So this is why Lexa later issued a kill order on him, as we learn in season 3 - to show she can’t bear disobedience.

The group of Arkers who were caught trying to mount a rescue mission is brought for more bone marrow. How convenient that it was all the redshirts who died fighting with the MW guards, so the only non-Delinquent Arkers in danger in this episode are Abby, Kane, David Miller, Monroe, Raven and Wick.

The idyllic image of people happily dining in the mess hall on Level 5, while horrible things are happening right in the dorm right next to them - people being tied up, drilled and their bodies thrown out like trash after the ‘useful’ parts of their bodies were taken – sums up what the Mount Weather society was like. Other than the children, who were really innocent, the people in the mess hall knew what was going on, just as they were aware of the blood draining, they just were OK with it as long as they didn’t have to see it.

Poor Fox got saved a few episodes ago just to die early on in the finale, after all. The show had to kill off a Delinquent that we knew by face and name and had some level of investment in, and there aren’t that many of them. Miller and Harper were still to play roles in the show.

Kane yelling desperately at Cage and the other guards: “What is wrong with you people?!” is one of the most relatable moments.

Kane also gets to be the voice of reason in a place with no reason, again, telling Cage everyone could live and they could donate bone marrow, but Cage says that will never happen. Well, of course it won’t happen now – but it could have if they hadn’t been so awful and had tried to help the Arkers and cultivate a good relationship with them all. There are hundreds of Arkers, so they wouldn’t have to kill anyone for bone marrow. But their default MO was always to treat others as cattle rather than human beings.

Raven gets tortured the first, again. The only thing that saved her was that Cage stopped her drilling midway when he decided to start drilling Abby to get to Clarke.

I love the way we go right from the horrific scenes in the dorm to Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his child, hanging on the wall of Dante’s room. The horror of the image is very fitting. But ultimately, it’s especially fitting because it’s the Mount Weather leadership that caused the destruction of their own people.

Jasper tells her “I love you” after their second kiss

Maya didn’t believe in good prospects for her future even if she survived. She obviously didn’t want to tell it to Jasper, but she did to Octavia, when they talked about how she could live, with Octavia trying to encourage her, telling her she could live in a cell with oxygen– which wasn’t much of a comfort. But I don’t know why neither of them thought of the option that some of the Arkers could actually donate bone marrow to her. I’m sure they would have done it for her and others who have helped them, and the children, probably.

I’m glad the show didn’t try to make Dante a good guy and that he was again an enemy here, telling Cage to not waver, even when Clarke was using him as a hostage and threatening his life. When Dante refuses to help them and defends his decisions, claiming his people wouldn’t survive if the Arkers got their people out, Clarke yells “Unlike you, we are the good guys!” But by the end of this finale, she doesn’t believe that anymore and tells her mother “I tried to be the good guy”. This is where she starts believing on some level that Dante’s (and Lexa’s) philosophy that it’s all about leaders doing everything “for their people” and that they’re all the same and, therefore, they’re all justified in what they do, and she’s just like them.

It’s interesting that “I bear it so they don’t have to” will become Clarke’s mantra – a line she heard from Dante (not long before she killed him).

Clarke killing Dante was not a good move – they lost a bargaining chip that way, and Cage was also acting in an increasingly unhinged way. But she was acting out of desperation and thought she had to prove to Cage she was not bluffing when she threatened to irradiate Level 5 and kill everyone. And Bellamy, who was being more rational, wasn’t able to come up with anything else when she was desperately asking him to tell her a better plan.

I forgot that Emerson was at the door of the Command Center and about to blow them up to kill them. Another reason why they felt the time was running out and they were about to lose their only way to save their friends and family. The image of everyone they care about there in the dorm about to be killed, on top of it the fact Clarke’s mother being drilled, all of it pushed her to make her decision. Bellamy was unsure about it until the moment he saw Octavia in the dorm. “My sister, my responsibility”.

The first time Bellamy and Clarke say “Together”. Iconic moment, with his hands on hers on the lever, their hands moving from the light into the dark. I cannot imagine what having to commit mass murder together to save your loved ones and yourselves does to a relationship. I was wondering at this point if they can ever be OK again, with so much baggage.

The picture of everyone dead in the mess hall is one of those visuals you can’t forget. We don’t see the dead children, but we do see a football.

Maya’s death made me cry all over again. She is such an underrated character. In a show full of people justifying their actions by claiming it’s for their people, she went against the society she grew up in to do what is right. Few people have done that. Lincoln is another. “None of us is innocent” is one of the most memorable lines in the show. (How can the writing on this show be so good as this… and then be as bad as it gets at other point in the show?) She’s both right, and not right. It’s complicated! I don’t believe in holding entire groups of people collectively responsible for crimes, that’s a disturbing way of thought that leads to bad things, but most of the people in Mount Weather were kind of complicit in everything because they were there doing their normal things even though they knew people were being tortured and killed, and they never tried to do anything. They’re not guilty in legal sense, but morally, it’s a different issue. But people like Maya, who fought against what their regime and society was doing, while treated as “traitors” and at the risk of being murdered by their people, definitely did not deserve punishment, let alone death. Of course, it makes her an even bigger person to acknowledge the culpability.

Jasper in tears, looking at his best friend Monty and asking him how he could do this, is heartbreaking. But his hopes of ending everything by killing Cage were never realistic – even if he had, as Bellamy pointed out, the others were not going to stop just because of their president’s death.

Another little Marper moment you notice on rewatch: when everyone is reuniting – while Nate Miler’s dad hugs him, Wick hugs Raven, Monty goes to see if Harper is fine.

Lincoln killing Cage – the guy who personally tortured him and turned him into a Reaper - is the most satisfying death in the entire show, especially with the way it happened – Cage hoping to control Lincoln again through the tone generator and the drug, and Lincoln killing him by injecting it instead and throwing back at him the same line Cage said “The first dose is the worst”. I’m not someone who’s into fictional revenge-killings all the time… but this one was really good.

Emerson runs away to return next season and become even more annoying.

“I tried to be a good guy” -“Maybe there are no good guys” – this is such a good scene. But it’s also kind of true and kind of not true. I do like the moral ambiguity, when understood correctly – trying to see things from various perspectives, having empathy, trying to grow and be better; I don’t like the way it’s often misinterpreted by fans and used by many of the characters on the show, and arguably by the narrative in some cases, to excuse people doing all sorts of awful crap for questionable or bad reasons with the argument that “well everyone has their reasons!” “Clarke/Bellamy killed a lot of people too and therefore they are as bad!” - so if everyone is bad, no one is bad and anyone can do whatever they like and get away with it, right? No. I’m fed up with moral relativism and false parallels. But I don’t think this is what this episode was trying to say, at all. But it’s great that there was a callback to that in season 4, where Abby made sure to reverse her statement to: “There are good guys” and tell Clarke she is one, even if Clarke had stopped believing that.

Is there such a thing as genocide in self-defense? There should be just for the purposes of The 100, because that’s what happens in this episode. Yes, I’ll say it: what Clarke, Bellamy and Monty ended up doing in this episode is terrible, but a justifiable mass murder, weird as that sounds. Anyone who disagrees has to answer the question: what was their other choice? The only other choice was: let Mount Weather win and kill all of them and their loved ones. The two sides in this conflict can never be equated. Even if there are no good guys in the world of The 100, there sure as hell are bad guys, and Cage, Dante, Tsing, Emerson and their society as a whole were definitely those.

The return to Camp Jaha – one of the saddest post-victory scenes in TV shows ever. Clarke leaving because she is broken and hates herself and can’t bear to look at any of the people she cares about, thinking about the awful things she did for them, made me think of the original “hero saves the day and then walks away to live anonymously because she can’t take what she did to win” season ending, Buffy season 2 finale, but I might like this even more (and that’s saying a lot, because Buffy is my favorite show and I adore Becoming part 2).

Another iconic moment and callback to 1x08: “If you want forgiveness, I’ll give that to you”. Bellamy and Clarke never ask each other for forgiveness, but offer it freely to the other. (A contrast to Finn, who asked Clarke for forgiveness for killing people “for” her, but she couldn’t give it to him.) But this doesn’t mean that Bellamy doesn’t hold any grudges, as we see in 3x05. He was hoping to do the same thing for her she did for him in Day Trip, when she helped him, supported him and made him stay with the group. But Clarke feels she can only deal with issues and self-hatred on her own, isolating herself from everyone. Maybe she feels she would just be a burden. In any case, I can see why Bellamy found that hard to understand and, in season 3, felt hurt that she left anyway, but I don’t like when people criticize Clarke for leaving and call her selfish. People have the right to deal with their trauma and depression any way they feel they can.

Bellamy trying to share the responsibility for Mount Weather and Clarke insisting that she will be the only one to bear it, is something that comes up in season 3 again. There’s so much to unpack here, so I’ll leave it for when it comes up in season 3.

I never noticed before that this is when Raven gave Jasper back his goggles. Did he ever wear them again?

Oh yes, there was another storyline in this episode. The Jaha/Murphy plot was really well done, too. Pretty much every time there’s some really comfortable place the protagonists find, it ends up being awful. This happens when Murphy finds the bunker and thinks he’s in paradise with all the food, drink, music, comfort, and then the doors close and he finds himself imprisoned. ALIE is far from my favorite plot, but it was actually really well done here. It’s an effective ending to the season: the revelation from the old video that ALIE caused the nuclear apocalypse, and her creepy introduction, greeting Jaha and thanking him for his “gift” – the missile he brought down from the Ark. A digital or artificial woman in red dress in a SciFi show is never good news.

Timeline: It starts right after Part One, and most of the action happens during the same night. They come back to Camp Jaha the next day. At this point, by my count, they’ve been on the ground for about 40 days or a little more.

Body count: Two Delinquents, which means that 46 remain; two other Arkers (who were with Jaha), and all of the Mountain Men except Emerson.

Chronologically and by location, people who died in Mount Weather:

Fox and another Delinquent died from bone marrow harvesting

Two guards were killed by Octavia

Dante was shot by Clarke

Maya, Lee (the guard who was helping the Arkers) and about 300* other Mountain Men, including children like the Lovejoy boy, killed by the radiation in Level 5 when Clarke and Bellamy pulled the lever after Monty had made it possible to happen (*There were 352 left after 2x14. When you deduce everyone that we know died since, it’s probably about 300.)

Cage, killed by Lincoln

Outside of Mount Weather:

Richards and Craig, two guys who were in Jaha’s party, were killed by a sea creature, But Craig was actually murdered by Jaha, who simply threw him to the creature as an acceptable loss for their mission, justifying that by misinterpreting Spock’s quote from The Wrath of Khan about the needs of the many being more important than the needs of the few. People, that quote does not sound the same when you’re talking about sacrificing yourself and when you’re justifying sacrificing someone else! (Agents of SHIELD also had a character use a quote that way, in its season 2 finale, but I found that really annoying because we were supposed to agree with that character. But on The 100, we clearly aren’t supposed to agree with Jaha – even Murphy was shocked and creeped out by what he did. Then again, it’s Jaha, who used to execute people for all sorts of things and did the culling, so why the surprise?)

I’m not sure if it counts, but a 97 years old suicide was recorded on the video Murphy watched – Chris, the guy who made the video to tell people about ALIE before shooting himself.

And last but not least, Jasper’s mental health, a big piece of Clarke’s and Bellamy’s souls, and all of Clarke’s moral certainly, also all died in this episode.

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years

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(ESSAY) The Ritual of Panic, by Rhiannon Auriol

Rhiannon Auriol situates panic in its personal, cultural and political contexts. With reference to fire festivals, witchcraft, film, visual art and literature, historical upheavals and contemporary crises, the essay considers the tensile, sometimes erotic, functioning of panic in relation to ritual, fetish, social boundaries and the pressures of adolescence.

> The opposite of an orgasm is a panic attack. It is also its twin. Both can leave you shaking. Breathless. Sweaty. You can have them in multiples (if you’re female-bodied), sometimes in a row for hours. There is a sense, to both, of a ritual release; once the last throes dissipate there is a violent shape of relief. And although the emotional aftermath of each is radically different, one thing is for sure – you always remember your first time.

> The ritual of panic is brutal and cyclical. I had my first panic attack aged 14. At school, they were reliable company. I would lock myself in a toilet cubicle when I felt one coming. I learned early on how to have panic attacks very, very quietly. Learned to carry all the right kit in case of an emergency rendezvous with my panic: tissues, makeup remover, water, gum, rescue remedy (I’ve graduated now to cigarettes and CBD). I have been panicking in this routine for years; all my life high-functioning anxiety has affected by ability to form healthy relationships with food, sex and work. I came of age nervously and erratically, swinging from confidence to collapse on a roughly six-month rotation. Terrified and in thrall to my panic, I was prepared to try anything to satisfy its crippling needs. And in this way my panic became ritualistic, a deity, pacified ineffectually by a private ceremony performed in bathrooms up and down the country. I got by without ever asking why I felt so trapped in this cycle, without examining what my struggle showed about the myth of worry that so many live by. Then I tripped over an essay by Fiona Duncan which struck home with its line, ‘Anxiety is a story I am telling myself’. My panic controlled me through my belief in it, I realised.

> Ritual, panic and sexuality are old lovers, intimate enemies. One of the definitions of panic is ‘of or relating to the god Pan’, the pastoral deity and mythological figure who has been portrayed alternatively as a kindly satyr or a sexual-Satanic symbol of ritualistic sacrifice. The myth goes that if the sleeping god was disturbed, panic would ensue, the flocks and herds of his slumberlands scattered by the resultant wrath. In order to placate the divine sleeper and avoid panic, animals were ritualistically slaughtered at Pan’s altars, ancient blood spurting onto stone in perfect harmony with the people’s nervous heartbeats. Pan’s association with nature also ties him to ideas of fertility and sexuality, to the rhythms of the seasons and their accompanying rituals such as the pagan celebrations of solstices and equinoxes. To an extent these festivals, as with many religious rites, are also sacrificial acts, alternative performances of homage to the power of the worshipped object (be it moons or gods) while also hoping for protection from fearful forces of change.

> There is something to be said for exploring the erotic element of these acts. As a child I regarded pagan celebrations in the same light as sexuality; they seemed mysterious and thrilling peaks of energy, climaxes if you will, strange and enchanting and (according to my Catholic mother) forbidden. When I moved to Edinburgh for university, I was free to go to the Beltane Fire Festival on Calton Hill, a ‘ritual drama’ and Gaelic celebration of May Day which throbs and flickers with sexual energy – from the raw allure of the dancing to the fierceness of flesh painted red, flowers of fire streaking the night sky. I saw how Beltane welcomed chaos and through this sense of liberation and lightness, the darker side of our impulses, panic, was staved off.

> It is possible however for the object of worship to become fetishised through rituals, symbolically distorted into something it is not. In the 18th century ritualism began to be associated more and more with notions of perverse sexuality, as did the god Pan. The goat-like form of the nature god began to take on a Satanic symbolism, largely due to Christianity’s moral panic over anything to do with sexuality and alternative deities, both of which Pan embodied. Consequently, people who worshipped Pan or Satan were denigrated by mainstream society as Satanists, pagans, witches. Demonstrating this shift in attitude with his Black Paintings series the 1798 Francisco Goya painting Witches’ Sabbath depicts a Satanic Pan surrounded by a coven of worshipping yet cowering witches. The great goat is garlanded and presides over the painting as if a priest in ceremony, the object of awe but also fear as indicated by its emphasised size and centrality to the composition, as well as the terrifying eye contact it maintains with the viewer. One of the witches clutches a baby, suggesting at first the Christian ritual of baptism, except the way the infant is grazed by one of the Devil’s hooves means it could also be a sacrifice, thus the baby is transformed into a signifier of both life and death. As a symbol of fertility, the baby also contrasts with the barren landscape of the piece’s background, which is littered with the skeletons of children. Such ominous depictions of Pan became rife, particularly in Europe at this time. And through such widespread portrayals, the concept of Pan was fetishised as the image became more powerful than the reality, especially when coinciding with proximity to moments in history such as the Basque Witch Trials. The tendency towards fetishisation taps into something fevered and feared stemming from how our societies are organised – the psychosexual release that comes for many with the mystery of worship is tempered by the craving to have control over a dominant wildness in our being, to shape power into a more limited comprehension.

Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Sabbath, 1789, oil on canvas. Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid.

> From witchcraft to devil worship and paganism (among a plethora of other beliefs and practices), people get nervous about what they can’t comprehend. Deviant sexuality makes people panic. In fact, anything considered out of the norm does – that is why ‘witches’ were hunted. Witch hunting was political panic warfare, of a kind we still see today and have done throughout history under different names and faces, from the Red Scare to the Satanic Panics of the 80s. A lot of the time politics is about Eros, not Logos, as evident from looking at how it is emotionally guided voting which underpins the rise and normalisation of extreme and dangerous political phenomena – 20th century fascism, Donald Trump, Brexit. Each of these things could be described as having been fetishised by its supporters, while creating a sense of extreme panic or doom in its opponents. Susan Sontag describes how ‘the fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets’ where the former requires placation and the latter worships or is punished. Sontag goes on to locate Nazi control within a cult-like eroticism: ‘the colour is black, the material is leather…’.

> On the 29th March 2019, incidentally the day that Brexit was supposed to have its chaotic way, I experienced a major depressive episode which lasted most of the following summer, triggered by a violent panic attack which woke me up in the night and made me see static. Mine was unrelated to Brexit (at least consciously) but others’ mental health is being disastrously affected by the Brexit cacophony, from counselling for MPs to the new term of ‘Brexit anxiety’ the uncertainty is eroding the country’s peace of mind. In failing to make sense out of public sacrifice – very literally, in the form of taxation, time and trust – the ritual of government has failed over Brexit, something which we are perpetually made aware of thanks to the fuel of media panic. Yet even amidst so much chaos, tradition and structure are clung to, the rituals repeatedly performed (Boris Johnson asking the Queen for permission to prorogue Parliament strikes me as a prime example), still hopeful of something changing, something miraculously being fixed. This is comparable to the more quotidian scale of ritual action. We seek control over things we cannot predict or see, all these things keep happening and there is no control over any of them, so we fill each day with things, with plans and schedules and jobs and lists to try and wrestle something back but only succeed in being so busy that we cannot breathe at night.

> As was the case with the mythological rites to Pan, vital things are sacrificed to my panic – relationships, money, time, happiness. The normalisation of the anxiety-inducing rites of passage which we describe as ‘coming of age’ is reflected in the documentary film All This Panic (2016) which follows a group of teenage girls through their Upper West Side lives in modern day New York, that city of anxious architecture and nerve-wracking streets. Throughout the documentary, directed by Jenny Gage, the girls exude a childish confidence which fails to mask their inner struggles with anxiety. ‘There’s all this panic…people are texting each other all the time… I’m petrified of getting older’ are just a few such indicative lines in the film which capture the sharp contrast between a mulled blasé outward attitude and the confusion within as the girls ricochet between casual crises. They are analogous characters to J M Barrie’s creation Peter Pan, a figure whose defining feature is eternal youth, a boy forever, fetishising the state of childhood. Peter plays the pan pipes, an instrument named after the god Pan, and in possessing the secret to flight appears to be a free spirit – and yet ‘he can never quite get the hang of [life]’.[i] Exaggeratedly careless, the iconic character appeals to the desire in readers to regain the laissez-faire boldness of youth. Today however, this idealised formative country is under siege. All This Panic portrays a post-wounded girlhood where beneath the ritual of performative femininity – make-up routines and coven-like cliques – is a terror at what may be waking, at what has to be covered up.

> What All This Panic highlights is how the milestones and expectations young people are expected to meet as they carve out lives for themselves are literally ‘rites’ exerting immense pressure upon the individual to follow them, to perfect each one: the correct clothes must be worn, the magic words that will make everyone want to be friends with you must be said, everything must be documented online, everyone must know when you start having sex for the first time, and you hide the 99% of things which don’t measure up to the pretty and perfected life – such as losing your mind. But what happens when these rituals fail, when the sacrifice is not enough, when things go wrong, and the sleeping demon is woken? Panic.

> The artist Laurie Anderson treats panic with a dose of hope in her video We Are In Constant Panic Mode. She would have us ‘try to see these great surges in a mode that’s not panic’. When a wave of anxiety approaches instead of drowning in it, we should ‘find a really good way to ride that. Fighting is a disaster’. What I took from Anderson’s observation is that perhaps the death of panic is found not in liberation from fear but in its acceptance. As the news that ‘The Great God Pan is Dead’ struck despair through the hearts of the ancient citizens of Palodes, they were simultaneously freed to explore new conceptualisations and interpretations of the world. We have a habit of killing our gods, of suffocating our emotional life, denying our desires. Perhaps after all it is not the panic which must be fixed, but the rituals we are restricted by. Rituals which are distancing us from nature and distorting our spiritual clarity – rituals which are creating, rather than placating, all this panic. But first there are more immediate things sufferers of anxiety can do – seeking medical help, taking (prescribed) pills, reducing intake of caffeine and alcohol, meditation and reconnection to the natural world. Like first figuring out how to have an orgasm, the body and brain must learn how to make positive joyful connections rather than repressing those pathways, and that is what anti-anxiety medicine can help create. The stigma around taking pills and the fearsomely described side effects led me to the most ironic panic of all – anxiety over taking my anti-anxiety medication. But I took it anyway and stepped outside the prison of my panic. And that is how the ritual ends.

Text: Rhiannon Auriol

Illustration: Maria Sledmere

Published: 19/3/20

[i] Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan. 2008.

#essay #essays #panic #Rhiannon Auriol #criticism

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