#Nobody has a monopol on themes

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

#The witcher #Sorry if its convoluted I just got reminded of something and it made me a little angry #and as I had this conversation a lot of times I've decided to put it into written text #sorry about being bitter #but these are some of my favourite books and I'm still upset when I get reminded how badly they were treated in the recent adaptation #I'm not saying you should never change anything #But it's good to have enough background to understand why some things are the way they are in the original #and to understand what the source material is about #we don't talk about particular character's looks or something (altough I feel they could care more about it too) #but central themes tropes and motifs #long post #it may seem like I'm talking from a high horse here #people are welcome to interpret literature however they want #Nobody has a monopol on themes #I just think that in this particular case the cultural context influences the worldbuilding #and if changed it doesn't have the same impact anymore #meta

[starberry-cupcake]

A lot of things happened between me making the Strange World poll and me looking at the results, then I sat on my hot take about it for a while, after which I ended up thinking about how it reflects Disney as a whole right now and how that impacts media and culture, and now here we are.

Basically what I got from it was 1) that a huge portion of the people who voted didn't know the movie existed, even if it's been available online (legally or otherwise) for a year now, 2) that the biggest amount of negative votes are from people who didn't see the movie (either because it's a Disney movie or because they heard it was bad) and 3) that a vast minority of the negative votes are from people who actually watched it and didn't like it.

So, most of the problems people had with it were not "movie problems" but "Disney problems".

I made the poll because I read that Bob Iger (aka the person people should have been dissing all these years instead of Eisner, who hasn't been in Disney for almost 20 years now) had said that the problem currently going on with Disney movies is that they're more focused on having a message than on being entertaining.

Strange World was, to me, the best example to test this, because it's a movie that packs a hell of a lot of important things for Disney to portray in a story, does it pretty well in my humble irrelevant opinion, and it did incredibly poorly in the box office (it apparently picked up in streaming, but it's still considered a "major flop").

Box office, even if still the way studios measure success, isn't really a valuable measurement of it anymore. After 2020 nobody goes to the theater as much as they used to, worldwide. People who pay for Disney+ always prefer to wait for the movies being added there and people who don't can find HD quality options elsewhere once it does.

Still, the general media perception is that the movie is "bad", regardless of numbers.

However, other animated films that came out at a similar time, which also tackled some important themes and representation, have been praised for those things by the same audiences that didn't acknowledge Strange World.

Why would the same people wax poetic about something like Nimona, for example, and hate Stange World with a passion? I mean, they're not comparable in plot or the fact that Nimona was an adaptation of a previously released source material, but why would something with the "message" Iger is talking about (mainly representation, especially queer representation, and a core essence about something socially or culturally impactful) be universally despised and another thing with it be universally loved?

My poll isn't representative of a huge portion of the viewership but it's telling me that the problem wasn't fully on the film itself but on Disney.

On 1) their lack of support for the film (and it's message, considering things happened without Disney acknowledging them, like teachers who showed it to students receiving professional consequences) and 2) of the image they currently have as a company because of all they've done.

I'm not the first to observe that Disney ended in a place between conservatives wanting it to be a patriotic beacon of oppressive values and reasonable audiences wanting it to be more aware of its impact and responsibility in representing stories (as well as the dangers of it, as a company, monopolizing media and treating employees with disrespect, something Abigail Disney, who doesn't have a place in the table, has called out many times and attempted to help with).

Caught in the middle of this are people trying to tell stories, some of them with more impactful messages than they get credit for, because they're reduced to be seen as cog wheels of the mouse. People who were trying to change things from within, even with the pressure put on them from outside, not only because of the company leadership wanting to be on the good side of every type of audience possible to get more money, but also because of the god awful production decisions they're forced to undertake upon this leadership's view, also to make more money (to make characters that can be marketable, to consider that they have to make dolls, munchlings, pins, costumes and ears of this character, to release the films at crazy dates, etc.).

Also caught in the middle of this is Jennifer Lee, who is the first female director of Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film and was chosen after Iger very reluctantly let go of known abuser John Lasseter who was immediately later employed by Skydance because being a known abuser is less bad for animation studios than making movies that flop. But we already knew that, in the past few years we've known of accusations against Aaron Ehasz (ATLA, Dragon Prince), Bibo Bergeron (Road to El Dorado, A Monster in Paris), Skyler Page (Clarence) and Patrick Mchale (OTGW), to name the first that come to mind (who people still wax poetic about and who are still releasing projects).

It took ages for Disney to actually fire Lasseter, even with everything going on against him, and having Lee stepping up was a welcomed surprise that very clearly has impacted the content and type of movies Disney has been making. Still, Lee herself has shown how insane the rhythm of work has been for them at Disney because of the deadlines and decisions pushed by the management, very clearly evidenced in the documentary they did about the making of Frozen II, which she co-wrote and co-directed, while being director of Disney Animation.

It would not surprise me in the least if Lee is blamed for this "chain of flops", since her addition has brought more of these so-called "messages" to the movies.

When I read Iger say his statement, I wasn't surprised, he has always been this way. His way of treating Disney has been to purchase IPs in order to use them to get box office numbers faster. To not care about the quality of a film but that it's part of a pre-made something that makes people want to see it in theaters or stream it day 1, not caring if it's good. Star Wars, Marvel, the live actions, the god awful sequels nobody asked for, even the ride overlays at the parks with 0 new narratives, it's all part of this plan.

It's easier to get people in theaters day one to watch the live action Little Mermaid people have been arguing about online for years than a new movie about a family in steampunk clothes that nobody knows about.

He doesn't care about the essence of a story or about what people like about it, it's about trying to get the attention of the most amount of people possible, especially people who wouldn't otherwise see this film or pay for this hotel or buy this merch (this is why the Galactic Starcruiser failed imo).

But, considering movies like Strange World did flop and people do regard them as bad, I had to ask. To see if, indeed, people just don't care anymore.

Iger says entertainment is the essence of Disney and I don't think it ever was.

A lot of the movies Walt Disney oversaw during his lifetime were considered flops (Pinocchio, Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, the package films...they don't remind you that very often) and he kept making them. He famously gave up his own money and belongings for uncertain projects and went bankrupt several times because of that. He ruined his Ford sponsorship because his team developed a non gasoline sustained transportation medium that Ford feared would compete with the automobile. If his aim had been purely entertainment with no other incentive, I don't think these things would have happened.

I think the essence used to be creativity, to be completely honest.

Disney is missing creativity, but not because it lacks creative talent in its ranks. It's because those creatives are stifled (and overworked and undervalued) by a leadership that is money hungry and has turned the studio into a company that eats what's in front of it like pacman.

The sad part is that when people look at the movies in which these creatives try to break free and have them mean something, what people see is the greedy face of the leadership and throw away the whole suitcase.

In tow, leadership uses that as evidence that these movies, the ones that mean something, are the issue and what doesn't work for Disney. They use people's dismissal of the movies because of the company as proof that the movies are to blame for it all.

So, basically, Strange World flops and we get announced Toy Story 5, Frozen 3 and Zootopia 2 while also laying off 7000 employees at the same time.

Whatever people might individually think about Disney (as a studio, as a company, etc.), they have been making media for 100+ years. Every generation alive today has existed while something by Disney was playing in a theater somewhere. Fairy tales and folk stories that used to be told orally or read to kids have coexisted with the Disney stories (originals or versions of the prior) for a century.

When people think of Snow White, chances are they believe the Grimm story ends with a kiss because the Disney movie has it. When people think of Cinderella, chances are they think she had mice helping her with chores because the Disney movie has it. When people are asked who is the antagonist in Sleeping Beauty, chances are they say 'Maleficent'.

A lot of people hate that, children's lit academics hate that with a passion, comments upon comments in youtube video essays blame Disney for changing things in their movies, for making stories less gruesome and yet not progressive enough, not historically accurate and yet not designed creatively enough, etc.

But the fact remains that they have been building storytelling we grow up with for 100+ years. And, to me personally, that means it's worth looking into and criticizing in depth, however extra it might seem (or maybe it's my line of work that's driving me to it).

The consequence of this century-long presence in storytelling, that is both inspired by folklore and provided to childhood in forming years, is that its evolution (in narrative, in depictions, in representation, in subject matters) not only is influenced by the vision of a society at a given time, it also influences society itself in tow.

You can study the evolution of anything in Disney movies (like princesses or villains or cultural settings) and see how changes represent a view of something at a certain point in time, as much as you can do with versions of fairy tales both oral and written.

At the same time, you can draw parallels on how the things that are not depicted, represented or done so in a problematic way can influence the perception of identity of a person since their formative years.

In this sense, like it or not, Disney has become a cornerstone of both media depiction of cultural storytelling and a formative narrative tool for people in their childhood. And that's a major responsibility to throw out the window by reducing its importance as "entertainment" alone.

Still, when a movie like Strange World tries and fails, and leadership uses it as an excuse to blame for any of their wrongdoings, it's hard to move forward and create steps ahead for cultural and social representation in what has become such an integral piece of narrative influence.

#disney #long post #I'm not including Wish in this because I haven't seen it #i may or may not leave this post up we'll see

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

Hi! Love your blog! I was reading the post "Ariana Rockefeller in her grandmother’s dress for the 2022 Met Gala" and i was confused about the tags. I'm not American and know 0 about fashion, so would you mind explaining? Sorry if it is something that is meant to be obvious

Thank you!

Just to recap, the post in question is a picture, as stated, of Ariana Rockefeller in her grandmother's dress at the Met Gala. It's less about the fashion(although there's a chance she was wearing a century old dress, which makes me mad because it's fragile and also size things, but I'm not sure how the timeline works out tbh) and more about the fact that she was there at all.

When I first read this I assumed that you stating you aren't American was because you aren't familiar with her name, so if you do know the name Rockefeller, I want to apologize because the reason I was screaming is almost entirely because she's a Rockefeller. But this made me realize that there are probably people who don't know who the Rockefellers are and they should because American or not, you have the right to be pissed af at the Rockefellers.

If you've ever heard the phrase "titan of industry" or "captain of industry" John D Rockefeller Sr was one of them men that phrase was about. He is possibly the richest person in modern history. He's one of the rich men from the turn of the century (the Gilded Age, in fact)that monopolized an industry, got their company broken up, and remained disgustingly rich. However, unlike other men from that era--Carnegie, JP Morgan, Gould--Rockefeller's business impacts all of us, every day, over a hundred years later.

The Rockefeller business is oil.

The company Rockefeller, Sr founded was called Standard Oil Company. This company doesn't exist today because it was declared a trust and broken up into companies that eventually became Chevron, Conoco, ExxonMobil, among others.

Nobody knows how rich the Rockefellers are because they don't let people in to see their finances. And you might research them and see how many charitable organizations they started and how much money they've donated (billions) and think, well, look, hey, why are you screaming about this rando Rockefeller? They seem cool.

The thing is, giving away billions is easy when you have billions. And that charity work is a great way to distract people when your company spills tons of crude oil in the ocean. It's a great way to misdirect people when they start pointing out that your companies are kind of destroying the planet, or that maybe you should pay more taxes.

Ariana Rockefeller had a fashion business for a few years. Okay. She does some modeling. Sure. She has not contributed anything of note in acting, or writing, or design, or sheer brazen self-promotion. She was there because her family is rich, and she is rich enough to get to sit on fancy museum boards while her family's companies build the Dakota Access Pipeline.

She was there because of her great-great grandfather. She has actively tried to distract people from the catastrophic harm her family is causing the environment by pointing out charity work. She could have spoken out against Exxon, like some of her cousins did. She could divest from her family's wealth as much as possible, as Abigail Disney has done. She could be pushing for higher taxes on billionaires, as the Ben and Jerry's founders do.

But she didn't, she hasn't, she's not.

She was at the Met Gala, themed on the Gilded Age, because of money her family accumulated in the Gilded Age, money that they got more of while the rest of the world struggled to make ends meet the past few years.

I have a lot of feelings about the Rockefellers so I'll stop while this is still relatively short. I hope this makes sense, or at least kind of answers your question? And if you already knew who the Rockefellers are I'm sorry for the history lesson you didn't ask for lol

#ariana rockefeller #met gala 2022 #eat the rich #rockefeller #you've got questions i've got answers #rockefeller dynasty #cos that's what it is folks #i respect kim kardashian more than a rockefeller and that is saying so much #stop letting billionaires get away with things 2k22 #lobby for tax reform and THEN maybe you get to go to the fun party i don't care if your daddy paid for the museum

[smartie-ya]

Ok aight ok aight I've caught up with Witch Hat Atelier so time to spill out my jumbled throughts past midnight before I pass out:

Art: 10 outta FUCKING 10. Like come on, you've seen the panels, it's just amazing. Character- and costume-designs, creature designs, environments, panelling - everything is top tier. Easily one of the most beautifully drawn manga out there. My only real criticism is that the characters veer a little too much into twink territory, but surprisingly enough there still is some decent variety among side- and background characters.

Characters: mmhhhh 7/10? I'm not blown away, especially by the child protagonists. Agott did grow on me over time but Coco as well as the two other apprentice girlies really aren't doing it for me tbh. The adults def are better, and yes I have become an Olruggio simp (we stan the resting-bitch faced male-wife with a secret soft spot for kids), it has predictably come to pass. Rn I'm still waiting on a proper Orufrey flashback and in general for Qifrey to be fleshed out a bit better. Like yeah we all know he sus as hell but I wanna know what his goddamn deal is.

Story: currently 8/10 with potential in either direction. There is a LOT of stuff being set up and ngl I am a bit worried that not all of it will be adequately addressed. I have been burned by similarly ambitious stories of this overall genre before (experiencing TPN flashbacks) so I am definitely wary.

Worldbuilding: 9/10. Honestly almost perfect! I absolutely love the themes being set up here with the completely arbitrary separation of people into witches and non-witches, the monopolization of power for the supposed purpose of the greater good, the question of how far humanity should be allowed to go in the pursuit of knowledge and progress... there really is some amazing stuff being laid out here. All this is not even to mention how great the magic system is, though sometimes I find it a bit hard to suspend my disbelief at some of the supposedly 'novel' inventions (like you're telling me that nobody before Coco thought of making a water-purifying jug?? And that people would not IMMEDIATELY want to have this kind of thing in their homes unless there's the added flourish of the water making pretty shapes?? Bruh)

Final verdict: I'd overall give the manga a final score of like 8/10 - very solid set-up so far but still too early to judge whether it will actually stick the landing. I'm def gonna keep following along and holding out hope

#also very curious about the anime adaptation #god I hope a good studio takes care of this #tbh it feels like a good candidate for KyoAni #witch hat atelier #witch hat atelier liveblog #smartie talks

[sugawarassoulmate]

jealous yandere!suga is hot as hell, his possessiveness increases tenfold and he gets so touchy with you 🥺 this man has my whole heart

galaxy brain!

words: 519

cw: fem!reader, yandere themes, jealousy, possessive thoughts, manipulation, implied violence/snuff

how could he be so stupid? you were only out of his sight for a second and now someone’s got you in their clutches.

you always go to sugawara’s practices. he loves being able to look up and see you in the bleachers doing homework, reading, or staring back at him and he always made sure to walk you home. it was his way of monopolizing all your free time. but practice wasn’t going so well today and daichi was in need of his co-captain’s help. for a brief moment, suga forgets you’re in the room and looks back up to find you talking to a boy from your class.

this never happens. everyone knows you belong to him. suga is constantly in your shadow, never too far away. his threatening glare is enough to keep most people at bay and for the few brave enough to ignore it are sure to come to school the next day covered in bruises. so who does this kid think he is talking to you? touching you.

suga swoops in, getting his fingers in your hair as soon as he’s within reach. he’s all smiles when you stare at him but when your attention is back on the classmate, suga’s shooting daggers at him. “who’s this, baby?” he already knows, suga knows everyone in your class.

your sweet voice tells suga that he’s a classmate who needed to get yesterday’s notes but suga doesn’t believe it for a second. this boy could’ve gone to anyone else, why you?

suga tells you practice is ending and you quickly tell the boy goodbye while grabbing your things. (but not before handing him your notebook to borrow) suga’s hands don’t leave yours for a second, pulling you close to him as you bid farewell to the rest of the team.

“baby?” he coos, noticing how red in the face you’ve become. you and suga weren’t dating yet, but he always noticed how you’d blush at pet names. so cute, he thought. nobody was ever going to take you away from him. he loops his arms around your waist. “can i come over tonight? i wanna cuddle while watching movies.” his pout and puppy dog eyes hide the desperation inside him. he needed to feel that you were his. that he owned you.

you stutter out that you should really get some homework done since you’re a bit behind on your assignments. but suga just presses a soft kiss to your cheek and says he’ll help you. it’s a lie, of course. you never get anything done because he wants all your attention on him. that’s okay, he can be the smart one for both of you. a high school diploma isn’t needed for you be his little housewife, right?

and of course, it works again. you mumble out your approval and suga is over the moon, lacing your fingers together as you walk to the bus. later that night, while your head is in suga’s lap, he makes a mental note to pay that boy a visit. people go missing all the time, don’t they?

#haikyuu #haikyu #haikyuu x reader #sugawara #sugawara x reader #yandere sugawara #sugawara koushi #sugawara koushi x reader #sugawara imagine #haikyu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #🍑 #🍑suga #asks #anon

[animeyanderelover]

Hey💖Can you do Tobirama,Hashirama,Madara,Itachi,Sasuke and Indra with a s/o whose giving them the silent treatment?

Whatever you wish for.

Tw: Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, obsessiveness, possessiveness, violence, harsh behavior, threatening, blackmailing, bribing

Silent treatment

Indra Otsutsuki

💜That will not work with Indra since he expects obedience and is controlling, terrifying much in that matter. I do see him not working very well with a very talkative or clingy darling to start with, he needs a lot of his own space and appreciates silence. So he wouldn’t be someone who would want to talk often with his s/o to start with. He is after all someone who does ignore them from time to time too, most likely when he’s stressed or with his thoughts somewhere else. But if his darling ignores him, that’s something entirely else. It’s disrespectful for him and will piss him greatly off. Not only that, but whilst not admitting it, Indra does feel the tiniest bit insecure about himself. He was after all rejected by his father for his brother who was a nobody, but still beat him and became the leader of the village. So ignoring him and not appreciating will give him some nasty memories coupled with a stinging reminder of his hurt ego and pride.

💜You won’t be able to do this for too long, the moment Indra gets what you’re doing, it’s already game over to say the least. You only get this one warning from him, you know? And it is maybe better to use this one ‘friendly’ warning before he decides to go with other ways which are far more painful and cruel and not worth the pain at all. If this is still whilst he’s part of the village, he wouldn’t be that incredibly violent, but he would end up monopolizing your time a lot and somewhat threaten you to talk finally to him. Who knows, his brother might try helping even though Indra didn’t want his help.

Madara Uchiha

🌑Whilst it is with Indra already a piece of horror, with Madara this is even more intense. He is just a lot more complicated and twisted than Indra is, not to mention a whole lot more controlling due to having lost his brother and having gone through the trauma of his whole clan who he respected betraying him for the Leaf Village. It led him to a literal war-starting paranoia and made him just so much more prone for any sort of disobedience. Different from Indra, Madara has a lot more confidence in himself so whilst his darling ignoring him won’t poke any sensitive spot in his heart, it will just make him mad for the reason that they won’t listen to him and he gives only few warnings.

🌑It’s in general just so difficult to please him since he expects a lot and also never really tells his darling what they can do to help them, it’s just a blind game for them. And he has no qualms about hurting and punishing his s/o whenever they slip up which will happen very fast in here. This small act of rebellion will be short-lived, just wait and see. If we’re talking about a Madara in the village, he would be a bit less intense about this, but still ready to go to extreme lengths, including involving the darling’s family so they start paying attention to him once again.

Hashirama Senju

🌳Good luck with trying to successfully ignore him because Hashirama is a lot to endure. He's extremely clingy and also somewhat very needy for his darling's attention so please just give it to him. Because that guy is really prone and whenever his darling is in a bad mood, he is as well. To go as far as giving him the silent treatment he must have done something pretty terrible because normally Hashi is really charming and funny, besides his clingyness. And if he did something wrong, be that bribing you or something similar to hat, he knows why you act the way you do. And believe me, he feels terrible about it, in a way even thinks that he deserves it. Nevertheless, it will lead him to constantly being down and upset, people noticing that he seems more depressed these days and the longer this continues, the more it might actually affect his work.

🌳Hashirama is different from the previous guys. He doesn't hurt nor threatens his darling. As I mentioned, he might be delusional, but he knows that whatever he did to lead you to going as far as coldly ignoring was wrong. He won't really give up and leave you alone though, he just talks to you in hopes of getting you to respond, also trying to do things to please you. But after a while he will realize that you won't do as much as look at him, letting him leave feeling like a kicked puppy. Most likely way how you started to talk to him again was either through Mito or Tobirama. Both know Hashi very well and are also persons who know about his feelings. So one of them might have visited you to talk to you, Hashirama maybe even requested their help. Mito is the more enjoyable option here because I feel like Tobirama would be somewhat mad at you for a.) upsetting his brother and b.) causing him to not work as good and focused as he used to be anymore.

Tobirama Senju

🌊He expects behavior, as harsh as this may sound. But Tobi isn't the softest Yandere to start with either, he's quite dangerous to be clear in here. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't be the type to sometimes ignore you as well, most likely when he is really busy with stuff or does it on purpose so you have to be the one to come back to him and ask for help because your life is once again in some troubles. He does feel bad about it somehwhere deep down, but if his darling would on the other hand just behave, he wouldn't have to do all of this. It doesn't even make him really mad, it just leads him to being annoyed since he thought you would know better than to behave like a bratty child. I'm pretty sure he expected some sort of rebellion anyways because as I said, he is aware of his wrong actions.

🌊I feel like he wouldn't use his position to threaten you, at least at first. Don't get it wrong, he is very willing to use it whenever he feels the need too. But he would like to not do this for something so ridiculous like this. There is surely another way to solve this. Tobirama feels like he shouldn't use his power simply because you decided to rebel a bit. I think he would just return the favor. He will ignore you as well, at least in private because in public he wouldn't do it. It doesn't sound as bad at first, but the problem is that his darling has to rely on him for a lot more things than they might expect, starting with the permission to go outside since the Anbu are watching them all the time. And so he will humiliate you once again because you can't keep this up forever, ending with you having to beg for forgiveness once again and him just acting smug about it.

Itachi Uchiha

🍡He is the best person in here to deal with this. Itachi is respectful, very much as well and feels also really guilty about what he did. He's a lucid Yandere and is all to aware of what unspeakable things he has done, not only for his s/o, but in general. And he carries this all too heavy burden with him. Itachi would never force you into anything as long as you don't do the first step, the only time when he did force you into anything was when he kidnapped you for which he is quite apologetic. He really doesn't expect much from his darling and tries to be as nice and considerate as he can be with them, it's honestly the only thing he can do after taking everything they knew away from them.

🍡He expected it anyways. He can't expect his darling to not be mad at him since the whole situation is really unbelievable. Who wouldn't flip out when being kidnapped from a stranger who happens to be the famous wanted criminal Itachi Uchiha? He gives you a lot of free space, not wanting to make you feel cornered or pressured in any way. It is hurtful for him to just being treated like air, but he couldn't have expected anything more from you either. He would never show how much this might sadden him and just give you time. There are times where he will still engage in one-sided conversations with you, not even trying to get you to answer. He just wants someone to listen since he has a lot on his mind.

Sasuke Uchiha

💙Except Itachi and Hashirama all the wrong guys in here were chosen, sorry to say this. Sasuke has to start with terrible mood swings and lashes quite often out on his darling for the smallest things, especially if he is already tensed up or in a bad mood. And he's also the type to give his darling the silent treatment as well and won't even apologize for it or even do as much as really feel bad for it either. He is just so incredibly prideful to admit all too often that he loves his darling since he always and still somewhat believes that love and friendship is ajust a weakness to have, meaning his darling makes him weak. His emotions confuse him and he can't progress to why he likes his darling that much in the first place, making him irritated with the whole situation and he blames it on the darling.

💙Sasuke has a controlling mania as well, maybe not that extreme like Madara or Indra, but still worse like in many other Yanderes. Next to that whilst he never really cares what his darling might think and feel when he ignores them, he definitely knows that he hates it when his s/o ignores him. It makes him agitated and from there on you have to be careful or else it will end in just another painful lecture. If we're talking about a mature Sasuke I feel like he would treat you more like a parent a bratty child, definitely not about cruelly making fun of you about being like this. As an adult Sasuke might have a bit more patience, but he still dislikes being ignored and the moment he suddenly becomes serious is the moment where I would advice to stop ignoring him, appreciate a more patient and less violent Sasuke as long as he is this way.

#yandere naruto #yandere naruto shippuden #yandere indra #yandere indra otsutsuki #yandere madara #yandere madara uchiha #yandere hashirama #yandere hashirama senju #yandere tobirama #yandere tobirama senju #yandere itachi #yandere itachi uchiha #yandere sasuke #yandere sasuke uchiha

[yan-twst]

please take care of yourself! if it's not too much trouble, can i please request yandere riddle, ruggie, azul, and epel with a darling who confessed to them before they could even think of kidnapping/murder/etc? thank you very much!

warnings: general yandere themes,mentions of blood, mentions of death, non consensual drug use

riddle rosehearts

he’s taken off guard, at first. riddle is one to plan out everything, to make sure he has a guideline and follow it- his sudden obsession is no different

perhaps it’s early enough he can still tell himself his emotions were simply a crush, simply the kind of romance others speak of; after all, his darling just waltzed into his arms before his heart could provide thoughts of keeping them to himself, before he could grow jealous of anyone who spoke to them

and yet, instead of the newfound relationship putting a halt onto his tendencies, it does little but speed them up

his plan might have changed, but it will have the same outcome. the way riddle loves is controlling and possessive, by nature; having his darling so available and already close to him just fuels the fire

already being in a relationship just makes his heart grow all that much twisted. as his darling’s boyfriend, he feels entitled to their obedience, to their attention

after all, riddle craves control. he’s been controlled all his life, carefully regulated to be someone his mother wanted him to be; it’s only natural he fights to have absolute control now that he’s free, and this absolute control is just intoxicating when it comes to his darling

perhaps the fact they began to date him before he could develop his true colors makes it even harder for them to accept the relationship is rotten. after all, it began so sweetly- it’s hard to accept the way riddle’s behaviour morphs slowly, the way he forces them to follow his rules, how he tries to monopolize their time; after all, that’s just... that’s just him being him, right...?

it’s so difficult for his darling. they’re in too deep- riddle feels entitled to their everything: after all, it was them who asked for his love, right? as much as he’s tyrannical, he’s also desperate for the affection his own mother never gave him. 

he thirsts for power, affection, and reaffirmations; the way he drank up praise and smiled when his darling followed the silly heartslabyul rules at the start of the relationship slowly degrades into his demands to receive affection met by harsh punishment if denied, degrades into him placing so many rules it’s almost impossible for his darling to go a day without being yelled at for their “disobedience” no matter how hard they try

azul ashengrotto

one would think that being confessed to first would soothe azul. his insecurities are his achilles’ heel, after all; growing desperate at the thought of not being enough for his darling, putting on his usual act to impress them. but if they come to him first, even before he can start forging plans to rope them in, then- it should be fine, right?

but it’s not. it’s not fine, and his darling might realize so once it’s too late to escape the octopus’ grasp.

azul is greedy by nature. he wants more money, more contracts, more power over students, more notoriety. it’s not just enough to be dating his darling, not after a  while

it’s so easy to fall back onto bad habits for him, questioning if he’s truly enough, if they’re just with him out of pity; soon enough it only takes him spotting his partner smiling to someone else for him to convince himself they’re cheating on him because he’s not enough, for him to assume any moment they aren’t with him they’re actively trying to get away from him

and it’s just painful for his darling, really. it’s not as if they didn’t know azul had a softer, insecure side- but it’s exhausting to deal with him. emotionally draining. to reassure him every time, to have to prove they’re loyal, to prove their love... it’s almost just easier to spend every moment with azul to avoid him making assumptions

and it’s not like they have much of a choice either. if a relationship is 50/50, then azul thinks his darling’s half should be to not worry him and stay by his side at all times, something he’s eager to bring up. after all, refusing him is just begging for him to either get angry or fall off one of his many insecurity spirals; and both scenarios usually end up with his darling getting dragged away by the twins to “fix” azul

a relationship that started off fine is now just toxic. azul is desperately codependent and controlling, and this isn’t even as bad as he can get; really, his darling gets a front-row seat to see how he’s slowly enveloped in his obsession with them

it’s not hard for azul’s darling to fall out of love, not like this. the azul they knew at the start, the one they fell in love with is mostly gone by the time the three month anniversary rolls around- them trying to break up with the merman is almost a given, and yet that’s probably the straw that breaks the camel’s back and just makes azul fully succumb to his obsession

kidnapping, blackmailing, contracts, killing, violence; azul brings in the big guns once his darling tries to leave. he sees it as his insecurities and fears having been ‘correct all along’- he has to take control, has to make things work by force if it has to be so; after all, it’s clear his darling won’t stay anymore, so... he’ll just have to keep them by force, won’t he?

ruggie bucchi

ruggie might often appear quite relaxed and friendly, but he doesn’t hold himself too high. he sees himself as a slum cat, a no-good opportunist with not too many redeeming features, so when his crush confesses to him just a few days after he himself realized he had a crush is almost mind boggling

perhaps it’s that what keeps the “honeymoon” stage of the relationship alive for so long. the sheer disbelief and joy that he’s getting his way, that life is aligning itself for him to have something nice without having had to work for it

but the honeymoon stage isn’t eternal, don’t you know? everything that goes up must go down- in some relationships that might mean one loses interest, or grows bored, but in ruggie’s case it’s differnet.

he grows paranoid, grows selfish. his darling is finally his. he finally has something that’s entirely his own- no hand me downs, no stealing, no pity gifts; his darling was the one to come to him, they’re his, and they’re not for anyone else 

“something of his own” is perhaps a good way to just see all the ways ruggie’s brain is fucked up on this; his darling is something he owns, more of a belonging than a person. oh, don’t get him wrong- he loves them, he thrives off the attention (he needs it, almost, desperately begging for it) they give him- but in the end of the day, they’re his so they should do as he says, right?

he’s grown up knowing to hide and protect valuables, that everyone else is out to steal other’s precious gems; he comes from a dog-eat-dog world, and that sort of thinking poisons his heart. he can’t stand people even glancing at his darling, spending time with them; his heart says they’re trying to steal them, why wouldn’t they? isn’t his darling just the most precious thing? but they’re HIS precious thing- and it’s his duty to make sure nobody takes them away, right?

it’s so easy to get rid of people with his unique magic. it’s so easy to clean up any mess, with how used he is to cleaning. it’s so easy to hide remains in the vast sands that extend in the distance of the savanaclaw dorm

and it’s so easy to show his darling his work, to make them aware of how hard he works for them- of course, this is nothing short of using fear to control them, but hey, if it works, it works, doesn’t it?

after all, his darling is just that much more willing to stay nice and put in his room while he’s out if the memory of ruggie’s bloodstained clothes is engraved in their mind, and it’s so much easy for ruggie to get the attention he craves so badly if his darling is still processing the news of their close friends’ bodies not being found

epel felmier 

epel is not a complete stranger to being approached with a confession- although tragically, more than once it’s been some idiot student who somehow mistook him for a girl, only leading to bitterness and anger. so of course, when he’s finally confessed to by someone he likes- confessed to by someone who knows him, who is close to him- he’s over the moon

of course he’d worried about his crush not liking him due to his appearance; after all, he doesn’t like how fragile and lithe he is, so it’s hard to imagine others liking it (despite how annoying vil can be about how his form or whatever is perfect)

even though he knows his lover fully supports his endeavors to grow stronger, he knows that they’re weak to him. not in the way someone relies on a strong person, but because they love him- they’ll say yes to anything he says if he bats his eyelashes and speaks sweetly

and at first he doesn’t care. he won’t swoop that low- if his darling doesn’t want to do something he wants, fine. but then he starts craving for things he shouldn’t; he feels clingy and possessive, not wanting to see his darling smiling and laughing with others, not wanting them to wander alone- and suddenly he’s not above using his charm to make them give in

the fact epel wasn’t even aware how dark his desires could go just goes to show how unprepared his own darling could be. after all, at first it seems like innocent things; spending more time with him, not hanging out with students that are too flirty. it’s normal, it’s just small sacrifices needed for a working relationship

but isn’t it curious how all the sacrifices come from his darling’s part...? after all, it’s them who have to cut off contact with certain friends epel deems “too touchy”, it’s them who have to wait for epel to escort them between classes, it’s them who have to spend their free time and days off in epel’s room- but it’s so hard to call epel out. he’s so innocent and adorable; surely they’re just approaching things from the wrong angle, surely the relationship doesn’t have that big of a power imbalance, right...?

he’s a bit scared of himself, in all honesty. surely, not all relationships can be like this- surely, not all love can feel like this, can it...? he’s never been in love before, but he’s quite sure not everyone feels murderous urges to get rid of anyone who even looks at their partner, that not everyone gets as much satisfaction from seeing their partner cry as they do from a kiss from them. it’s not normal, but it’s his way of love- so surely he can’t be wrong for just giving into whatever his heart says, can he?

but epel isn’t fully in control until he brings in fear. love and affection are what he wants, yes- but those can only get him so far. he isn’t fully in control until his darling understands he’s the one in charge, he isn’t fully in charge until his darling is woozy off potions slipped in their food by him- potions that make them sleepy, giggly and obedient, that let him easily shove them into his room and perhaps attach a chain to their ankle, with them just hazily giggling about the situation instead of screaming, not able to comprehend the situation they’re in- the fear can settle in once the potion fades, after all

#yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland #riddle rosehearts #azul ashengrotto #ruggie bucchi #epel felmier #yandere tw #death ment #blood ment #drug ment #Anonymous

[yan-genshin]

a/n: hello to the fellow twst people who came here from my twst blog welcome to my secondary brainrot

warnings: general yandere themes, non consensual drug use, some spoilers for kaeya’s backstory 

♥︎ kaeya alberich

kaeya is obsessive in an almost paranoid way, which is almost surprising seeing how laid back and relaxed he seems to act most of the times. despite his seemingly sociable attitude, kaeya is similar to his brother diluc in that he doesn’t get close to others because he’s scared to lose them (or scared that being associated with him could bring them harm)

maybe that’s why it comes as a shock to the city to hear that the cavalry captain has gotten together with the mysterious honorary knight- everyone knows kaeya flirts and gets around, but nobody’s ever seen him settle down like that

it’s... almost cute, at first. he’s far from touch starved, but emotionally? kaeya seems to seek their attention and warmth almost selfishly, dragging them around on “missions” that are mostly work he’s supposed to be doing alone to eat up their time, interrupting their own tasks and missions just because he wants to see them

“aw, are you mad at me?” he’s got that playful tilt to his voice, the one he always uses when he’s trying to make things go his way or he’s trying to egg someone on. by now, the outlander isn’t sure which effect he’s trying to have on them; this is the third time kaeya swooped in and interrupted their daily commissions for the adventurer’s guild, putting them behind schedule and messing up their plans for the day. the spot in their bag where they would have put away the cecilias they had meant to gather in the evening but didn’t get the chance to just makes them more upset- but kaeya’s sudden embrace makes them drop that train of thought. “now, now, let’s not get angry... i’m really trying my best here to show you i love you- don’t you love me, too?”

kaeya seems to think the ends justify the means- the path to the best ending isn’t necessarily a pretty one, or so he says. he’s well aware of when he starts to use emotional manipulation to pressure his dear traveler into doing as he wants, he’s entirely aware of how he’s monopolizing their time

after all, the easiest way to get them to be as attached to him as he is to them is to break them down and build them back up as he sees fit. it’s cruel, it’s bad, but kaeya is the type of man who relishes in the looks of fear and doubt in other’s faces, and the type of lover who relishes in gently comforting the traveler as they cry when he’s the one who caused their tears in the first place

most of it is just to make them depend on him. oh, don’t get him wrong- kaeya’s well aware that the traveler can fend off for themselves. he’s seen how they fight, how they seem to move with battle experience that should be born from years and years of training despite their youthful appearance. but that strength is also what gives them freedom- and kaeya is not barbatos, and he doesn’t plan on giving them such thing

“can i go to springvale today...?” kaeya almost smirks. who would have thought the powerful hero of mondstadt- the outlander who swept in, who saved the city from dvalin, who once challenged boreas for training- could be reduced to such a meek creature that felt the need to ask for permission to simply wander outside the city’s walls? to outsiders, it might seem like it was just the traveler ‘settling into the relationship’, but he knew better than that. days of subtle manipulation, of using just the right words to drive them to tears, of comforting them while choosing his words oh-so-carefully were the hard work that was showing off now; a hero slowly being reduced to a docile partner

he doesn’t want to be abandoned. kaeya fears loneliness more than anything else, something he keeps hidden deep inside of him- vague memories of being abandoned on a rainy night, of his adoptive father’s passing haunt him, the ever stubborn feeling of being unwanted despite having so many swooning for him- it’s as if every little piece of the travler’s free spirited soul he chips away is a reassurance, a guarantee to him that they’re his and they’re going to stay

there’s no real limit to what he’ll do. he’s always careful enough to keep them right in his palm; even when the relationship has gone far from just a toxic relationship and fallen off into something worse, it’s as if they’re far too deep do climb out. it’s not easy to leave an abusive relationship, and kaeya is always one step ahead in making sure it’s damn near impossible, presenting himself as the only solace for the traveler

it’s almost an art how he’s the one making their life hell and also the one who comforts them and gives them a sanctuarium to “heal” and “feel loved”. whether it’s him destroying their hopes of seeing all archons, claiming it’s simply impossible, or implying that if their sibling truly were alive, word of them would have probably gotten to mondstadt already, kaeya is always careful enough so that his darling’s anger and grief doesn’t fall quite on him, so that he can be the one to gently comfort them and hold them in his arms

“shh, it’s okay darling, you couldn’t have known anything so terrible would happen.” he holds his lover’s shaking body as they cry into his shoulder, hands rubbing soothing circles into their back. despite this, the look in his face isn’t one of a man consoling his lover, but rather a smug smirk. they heave another sob: oh, they have all the rights in the world to be sad. how tragic that the particular knight who’d become their friend had to pass away so brutally- they’d simply asked him if he could gather some lampgrass for them, an innocent request, and he’d ran into a ruin guard. it’s your fault for asking him to go seemed to be the only thought that ran through their head, and kaeya, despite all his comforting, didn’t seem to downright deny it. after all, they didn’t need to know the poor knight happened to ask kaeya where he could find the lampgrass, they didn’t need to know kaeya just so happened to mark a location on his map where it just so happened he knew a ruini guard lurked nearby. kaeya may be a knight, but he’s never been to righteous- it’s not as if he directly spilled someone’s blood just because they got too close to his lover, right? suppressing a chuckle at the thought, he made sure his voice was still in a comforting tone as he spoke, “next time, just ask me for any favours. no need to go and talk to others and have this tragedy repeat, right?”

it’s almost laughable, really, how much kaeya seems to circle around and pull strings just so he can make everything work the way he wants. realistically, it’d be just so much easier to just chain down the traveler, to just downright get rid of paimon instead of constantly bribing her with food or sending her off with amber to the point where the little fae seems to almost forget about the traveler- but kaeya needs to be loved. he doesn’t need the love to be healthy or to be real, it’s ok if it’s born out of manipulation and dependence. but all he does, he needs it to work into driving the traveler into a dark enough headspace wherein he is the only light in their life

... but that said, he’d rather have the traveler be his and lose their love than lose the traveler’s love and also lose them. ideally, they won’t abandon him because they love him (because he’s broken them, because he destroyed the hero of mondstadt and made them into a docile and codependent pet, because he’s destroyed their world and shown himself as the only alternative) but if needed, he’ll make it so they won’t abandon him because they can’t

after all, kaeya loves the sight of fear in their eyes. if they’re so eager to leave him, then perhaps he’ll just continue to indulge in their tears and their begging- this time wholy embracing the fact he’s the one that caused such things. it’s as easy as sleeping potions mixed in their foods to keep them pliable and docile, as easy as a chain keeping them locked to a basement; a treatment so hellish it makes them crave for the toxic hellhole of a relationship he offered before

“aw, are you uncomfortable? it’s too cold down here, isn’t it? poor thing. should i get you a blanket? do you think you deserve a blanket? if you keep acting good, i might get you one tomorrow.” it’s torture, the way he so gently traces their cheek, the way he looks at them with so much warmth in his eyes despite him being the one who’s got them chained up to a fucking basement. their brain screams at them to jerk away, to not give him the satisfaction of accepting his touch, but they’re cold, and despite being a cryo user, kaeya’s touch is so warm that they almost unconsciously lean into it. he laughs, the noise echoing in the almost empty basement; all that’s down here is a ratty old cot, a makeshift bathroom, and the heavy metal chain attaching them to one of the thick wooden support beams on the wall. cold nights like these almost make them miss being back in kaeya’s room, huddled in with him after he’s fallen asleep- probably after offering some comfort after driving them to a breakdown some hours earlier. but that’s long gone, now replaced with kaeya’s almost sadistic glee in keeping them down here, in seeing how the already broken traveler just shatters into a shell of their former self, how even now when he’s being outwardly antagonistic they’re starting to still try to find comfort in him: truly turned into a weak, docile, dependent little thing. 

#yandere genshin impact #genshin impact #genshin x reader #kaeya alberich #yandere tw #drug ment

[askmerriauthor]

It DOES always irk me that the plot device for an isekai to begin is almost always 'jackass dies in our reality, reincarnates in alternate reality, may or may not ever learn to not be a jackass'. I mean you run into obvious lazy writing where the hero just manifests as an adult out of nowhere and nobody questions it or like this one I found where a doctor isekai's himself by overworking to death and then OVERWRITES THE MIND of a noble's young son when he transfers to his new reality like BRO WTF

Oh man, do I have feelings about that kind of bullshit.

One really big problem isekai has as a genre is when it’s applied needlessly.  Like, where it’s obvious the author wants to just do a given setting but doesn’t want to do the work of explaining why a character is special or has more knowledge than they should.  So they just isekai an adult with modern knowledge (often far more than makes sense as well) into a kid’s body and run with it, rather than having the kid develop as a character themselves.

I’ve recently seen three examples of the “adult isekai’d into an already-existing body” which is a troubling theme, but each of these three covers the main trio of types as well.  Read more after the jump, for the sake of me being long-winded and the presence of spoilers for various series.

The first is doing it poorly.  In the story “Hachi-nan tte, Sore wa Nai deshou!“ (I’m the 8th Son, Are You Kidding Me?!), our protag is an overworked modern salaryman who dies from exhaustion and wakes up in the body of a child -  Wendelin von Benno Baumeister - who is a young noble in a fantasy world.  Like, I think he’s five years old or something?  The protag’s adult mind just completely deletes the kid-already-in-progress and it’s never brought up as a plot element at all.  Nor was it even necessary.  A big element of the isekai genre is the fish-out-of-water learning experience where an outsider learns about a culture alien to their own and applies their own understanding to it in return.  But in the case of this story, the protag’s modern sensibilities and context never matter at all - he just continues to live in this fantasy world as anyone native to it would.  All the learning he has to do (the language, the politics of being a noble, magic, etc) are perfectly reasonable for the kid to have to learn on his own because he’s just a small child in the first place.  So there was literally no reason for this story to be an isekai at all.

The second does it satisfyingly and in a more interesting manner, as it plays with its own setting in the process.  In the story “Otome Gēmu no Hametsu Furagu Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijō ni Tensei Shite Shimatta…“ (My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!), our protag is a lady who dies and is isekai’d into the already-in-progress life of a child.  The world she’s ported to, however, is that of an established video game world with a concrete script where the native residents are functionally automatons going through predetermined motions until acted upon by an outside force.  That includes the child our protag body-hops into.  The moment the protag wakes up in that child body, she begins acting like herself rather the child, at which point the entire story begins to change because she’s now an (unwitting at first) X factor foreign to the script.  It side-steps the questionable aspects of the body hop because nobody in the setting are actual independent people until the protag shows up and stirs the pot.  That said, while the isekai element is used well and for humor’s sake, it’s not as vital to the story as other cases and could’ve been replaced by some other altering factor in the setting.

The third is what I consider to be the best example, both in form and function.  “Honzuki no Gekokujō: Shisho ni Naru Tame niwa Shudan o Erandeiraremasen” (Ascendance of a Bookworm) has our lady protag die in her modern life and wake up having hijacked the body of a child-already-in-progress in a medieval fantasy world.  From there, her modern knowledge applies directly to the new world she’s in and drastically changes it, while the new setting itself and its nature impacts her in equal parts.  It really makes excellent use of the isekai formula far better than most others I’ve seen.  Go read this manga, watch the anime currently airing, get it.  It’s so good.

The real kicker comes in how the story manages the body hopping element.  Our protag wakes up in the body of a frail peasant child who suffers a terminal illness native to the setting.  Those who are able to use magic are basically burned up inside by the overabundance of energy unless they can expend the excess via a process that is monopolized by the noble caste.  Caught in the throes of this disease, the protag barely survives and continues to suffer its effects as she grows up in this new setting, confused as to what’s happened to her and having absorbed the memories of the child she body hopped into.  The fact that she’s riding around in an already-existing person is something she emotionally grapples with in the narrative, especially when the nature of the disease she has is revealed.  It’s never directly stated but heavily implied that the original child-in-progress actually died of the disease and our protag’s spirit was deposited into the body to pick up where the original soul left off.  Further, two other characters in the story (one of whom was the original girl’s best friend) eventually catch onto the fact that the protag is different and call her out on it, at which point she actually reveals her real identity and what happened with all the gravity that revelation carries.  There’s legitimate impact and consequences from the very nature of her being isekai’d in the first place.  I love it so much and not enough stories ever bother to consider the weight of it or its implication.

[grandhotelabyss]

My Year in Books, 2020

Introduction

I don’t want to waste your time, dear reader, with a list of all the books I read in 2020—you can track that on my Goodreads, if you care—nor even a list of all the books I wrote about on my site. But I would like to take the occasion of New Year’s Eve to revisit some of my favorites. Please click below for the list. Happy New Year!

1. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Reading old books can help us understand the present better than reading new books, which are often too caught up in today’s doxa to offer a true perspective on today’s world. Austen’s first major novel is a good example; what can help us understand class and gender better than this 19th-century narrative? As I wrote:

Marianne Dashwood (or Lily Briscoe or Sula Peace) has triumphed: today, she issues defenses of desire on podcasts and Patreon and posts pictures of her swollen ankle and putrid tonsils for the fetishists among her OnlyFans subscribers. If Elinor still functions as her conscience, she does so in the administrative bureaus of the corporation and university—human resources, diversity and equity—where her job is to intercept and interdict threats to the untrammeled unfolding of Marianne’s consciousness. This metamorphosis has undoubtedly liberated the individual from the stifling convention of bourgeois domesticity, but is the place where it has installed her now, where she must sell soul and body by algorithm just to stay alive, any less a prison?

I thought I’d get cancelled for that one, but nobody seemed to notice. Here’s another chance, cancel crew!

2. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Like everyone else and for obvious reasons, I read The Decameron in 2020, but it didn’t make much of an impression, besides its historical interest. This might be the problem:

The late medieval personae and settings are different from the postmodern ones: clergy in place of technocrats, princes in place of corporations, and a network of land and sea routes where fiberoptic cables now run. But Boccaccio himself, in writing a comic prose work that has, according to the scholar Robert Harrison, been called “a mercantile epic,” did much to prepare the way for our world.

I’m sure this is a mix of presentism and philistinism talking, but a literary culture divided between Dante and Boccaccio would seem to have something wrong with it. The best writers earlier and later—Homer and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Joyce—seem capable of synthesizing what in Dante’s divine comedy and Boccaccio’s human comedy are held forcibly, artificially apart. 

3. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault

I review a scandalous biography of the theorist who may or may not have made our contemporary world:

His identification of a new oppressed class, and his observation of oppressive power structures working in precisely those institutions meant in the modern period to correct the “barbarities” of ages past with their torture chambers and ships of fools, would change the western left forever. The “abnormal” subject (rather than the worker) was now the protagonist of history, power (rather than exploitation) the mechanism of oppression, and modern scientific and liberal institutions (rather than capitalist economics) the enemy. Foucault’s anti-psychiatry stance is now in abeyance—a recent viral Tweet promised that “under socialism all men will be sent to therapy,” an old chestnut of Stalinist terror that redefines political dissent as mental illness in an instance of exactly the thinking Foucault meant to challenge. But the drift of his thought, toward the emancipation of western reason’s underside, still defines for many what it means to be on the left today. If the left once promised, per the Internationale, “reason in revolt,” Foucault offered unreason in revolt.

4. Plato, The Republic

A much misunderstood book, in my view:

Socrates clearly describes the defects of the soul’s non-rational divisions; by contrast, reason, ordained as it is to apprehend the perfection of the idea, is presumably faultless. Yet I would suggest that Socrates’s forgetting that divine inspiration is the source of poiesis, even as he utters poetry in praise of reason, is a flaw. If the fault of the soul’s appetitive part is an insatiable quest for more and more physical satisfaction, and if the fault of the soul’s spirited part is a desire for victory or conquest without limit, then might we not theorize a parallel danger in the soul’s rational part? And doesn’t Socrates exemplify this danger when he follows the autonomous logic of his argument past all experience, including the poet’s experience of divine inspiration?

What if we took up the hint and patterned contemporary novels on Platonic dialogues?

5. Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I have mixed to negative feelings about this cult classic, but I had fun introducing its conspiracy-laden plot with some paranoia of my own:

Finally, canvassing the Wikipedia entry on the novel before I read it, I found that among the endless occult paraphernalia Eco packed into the text was “[a]n obscure one-time reference to the fictional Cthulhu cult through a quote from The Satanic Rituals—‘I’a Cthulhu! I’a S’ha-t’n!’. The words closed a ritual composed by Michael Aquino.” Aquino was a high-ranking Satanist and a psychological warfare expert for the U.S. military; he co-wrote the notorious Pentagon position paper “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”. Understandably, he recurs again and again in the annals of American conspiracy theory: the politically paranoid on the right abominate him for his Satanism, while those on the left loathe his anticommunist and militarist commitments. Through a vector I’m not at liberty to disclose, I am only two of the proverbial degrees of separation away from Aquino, though I have obviously never met him or had anything to do with him or even discussed him with anyone who has. I imagine conspiracy theorists will promulgate this curious fact widely on the Internet to discredit me whenever I finally become as famous as I deserve to be, considering that I am one of America’s great writers. (Megalomania and paranoia: like horse and carriage.) 

And no, I still won’t tell you how I’m connected to Michael Aquino.

6. Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician

Writing on this classic semi-anti-fascist novella, I wondered whether “anti-” is always the solution:

It is an old problem: how not to become what we behold, how not to transform into one’s enemy—how to be sure anti-fascism doesn’t become fully indistinct from fascism itself. Given our psychology, with its tendencies toward projective and dichotomous thinking, and given political realities, which often make violent confrontation seem fated, this may be an insoluble problem. Perhaps every anti-[X] is doomed by the occult law of similarities to become [X]; perhaps our time is better spent in simply not being [X] rather than defining ourselves against and therefore by [X]. 

7. Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper

I took the opportunity of McCarthy’s preternaturally eloquent first novel to clarify a point of political economy:

As I insist on reminding everyone from time to time, even at the risk of repeating myself, Lenin argues in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (a book I don’t claim to understand in every particular) that the monopolization of capital is the necessary and final stage of history before communism. Monopoly represents “a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation”—i.e., let the corporations do the work of centralizing production so that the biggest corporate body of all, the state, can easily assume the economy’s commanding heights. Marxism, therefore, is not really a challenger to neoliberalism but only the loyal opposition. Hence the chief theme of McCarthy’s corpus: how the inherent flaws of humanity and nature, those organic defaults that make the marketplace a necessary evil in both serving and curbing self-interest, immeasurably worsen when magnified to the scale of organized planetary warfare in the very name of their correction by rationality—or, as a pair of unorthodox Marxists called it, the dialectic of enlightenment.

Conclusion

Speaking of the economy, though, my most important literary event of 2020 was the publication of my novella, The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House, my attempt to turn contingent crisis into permanent art. With that, I leave you. Let’s hope the poet had it wrong when he said, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”

#literature #literary criticism #philosophy #critical theory #literary theory #jane austen #giovanni boccaccio #plato #michel foucault #umberto eco #thomas mann #cormac mccarthy

[tomboyjessie13-artblog]

Dimitri Achilles, regarded as The Second Dealer, is a greedy Peddler from Traverse Town. He lost his heart in the wake of the Heartless attack and was reborn as a Nobody. He would later become involved in numerous incidents and conflicts regarding Organization XIII's Project; "[Project: Pere Noel]", though he nearly lost his lively hood as a candidate due to his illegal dealings and philandering. After graduation, however, he later entered the Organization as their 19th Member, Xidirmit, the Avaricious Peddler.

~Information Bio~ Name(English Translation): Dimitri Achilles Hiragana: ディミトリ=アキレス Romaji: Dimitori=Akiresu Other Names: Playboy/Pureibōi(By Xigbar and Neashi), Pig-dog/Tonken(by Brigitte), The Second Dealer(Pere Noel's code name), Number XIX Xidirmit(Nobody name and rank), The Avaricious Peddler(Organization title).

Age: 20(358/2 Days), 21(KH2 and onward) Gender: Male Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual Race: Caucasian Hair Color: White Eye Color: Green Weapon: Meteor Hammer Element: Crystal Lesser Nobodies: Monk

Occupation: Human(Formerly), Nobody/Vessel(Currently) Affiliations: Traverse Town(Place of birth;Formally), Twilight Town(Formally), The World that Never Was(Currently), *The Pere Noel Project(Graduated), Organization XIII(Currently).

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Inspiration: Milky Eights, Kaspar Blankenheim, Man from the Curiosity Shop, and Gogo Yubari

~Dimitri's Theme~ The Dreamy Stage(Casinopolis)

~Headcanon voices~ Japanese: Ono Daisuke English: Troy Baker

==============================================================

~Personality and Traits~ "Don't be such a Munny pincher, you miser! 200!" "Well, why don't I just offer you even less? And y'know, this is the Moogle Shop's! How 'bout if I tell 'em all about you?" -Dimitri blackmailing Neashi over the price of stolen Moogle Shop merch.

Dimitri was a selfish, conniving, and hedonistic man. Since childhood, however, Dimitri was like most average boys in their youth until his parent's divorce. Having to lose a mother figure at a young age caused him to develop a Don Juan Complex, thus taking on relationships with multiple women to fill the void his mother had failed to fill during his teenhood. After becoming a Nobody, he took on relationships for the sake of feeling the emotions that he lost rather than to fill his complex, this eventually caused him to be consumed by his own eroticism, and many people to accused him of misogyny. 

Continuing into adulthood, Dimitri lived largely for his pleasure and tastes. He thus partook in illegal activities in [Project: Pere Noel] to fund his addictions, even monopolizing the black market against the Organization's wishes for himself and arguing with his Superiors about his activities when confronted. He similarly thought nothing of selling his own teammates' possessions and even Sora's Keyblade for money. Likewise, Dimitri will act chummy with his customers, but has no qualms about rudely turning away business that he does not want. He also seems to have a distrust in children as well, as he is worried that they'll break something valuable for his business. When it comes to dealing with his providers or teammates, he will even resort to threats or lower his purchase price to maintain his illusion of control.

Dimitri put up a polite front when the situation necessitated it, being able to make a select few friendships such as his bond with Xigbar and being capable of romancing multiple women even from a young age. Though able to form such relationships, Dimitri was only loyal to himself and looked after his needs before others'. Shameless in his mistreatment of Neashi and Nemu, treating them with disdain and disrespect, Dimitri displayed no concern for others' opinions and had no worries over potential consequences for his actions. However, he is seen to be very fearful of Lord Xemnas, as he is very much aware of how powerful he is in status and abilities, and is afraid of being executed by said Lord if his illegal activities were discovered.

Outside of the Project and the Organization, he enjoys Video Games, Jazz music, smoking, drinking, pranking, relaxing, and socializing.

==============================================================

Skills and Talents

After becoming Second Dealer, Dimitri became very successful in making illegal transactions within the black market and obtained products from different worlds for himself and his clients, albeit gets his employees and Neashi to do his dirty work. Aside from his apparent popularity as a provider of stolen goods, Dimitri was proficient with wielding the meteor hammer despite the dangers of wielding the chain bound weapon. Having used it to defend him self and attack foes from a far away distance, making hard for humans and Heartless to get close to him, it's also suggested that he strangles his foes with said weapon as well. He also has a circular blade built in the weapon.

When is comes to magic, he can manipulate crystals and stones, he also has the ability to force crystals out of the ground before shattering it, leaving the pieces to fly around and damage the enemy, similar to Lexaeus with his Earth element. Naturally, as a Nobody and later a Organization member, Dimitri can command the lesser Nobodies and use Dark Corridors at will. ==============================================================

Character Connections

Xigbar/Fourth Shadow: Dimitri's Mentor from the Pere Noel Project and later his partner. For the most part, they're practically like brothers, to him Xigbar's fun to be around with, especially when it comes to trolling poor Neashi. On certain occasions, however, they do have a few disagreements, one of them includes a few times where Dimitri's doing things he's not supposed to, like selling things needed for the Organization to the black market for personal profit. Neashi: One of his underpaid employees and and later one of his partners for the Pere Noel Project. Their relationship is nothing but sour as he hired her as a way to require rare items to sell at the black market and was very cruel to her doing so, often threatening her with blackmail if she tried getting a raise for making her do his dirty work. They were both surprised when they discovered that both of them are in the Project together, both being monitored by Xigbar as Second Dealer and Fifth Pierrot, and even worse being relocated to her apartment as a way to keep an eye on him. He ended up taking up the second bedroom much to her chagrin because she uses that room as a Art Studio.

Nemu: His partner for the Pere Noel Project and later his youngest neighbor, he was quite surprised to learn that someone their age was part of the Project as its Third Sleep Bringer, also being monitored by Xigbar. Like Neashi, he only sees them as a way to get his business flowing and was cruel doing so. He also expresses annoyance with their mutism and doesn't allow Nemu near his products as he's afraid of children breaking anything valuable for his business.

Brigitte: One of his partners from the Project. Despite his shameless philandering, he does has a particular attraction to Brigitte out of all his women, often trying to wow her only to be met with rejection due to his personalty, and being called a pig-dog in the process. At one point she turned him into a literal pig-dog hybrid to get her point across.

Xaldin: The 3rd Member of Organization XIII and later his partner, Dimitri is practically scared to death by this man, especially with all those lances he carries, thinking that one day that he'll get killed by one or all six of them. He also gets disciplined by the Lancer whenever he does something stupid or illegal, Xaldin takes pleasure in trying to break him as he thrives in others feeling despair, that and he wants him to be respectful to the Organization and their rules. Like with Xemnas, his hands get clammy when around his presence.

Sora: An Islander from the Destiny Islands and a Keyblade Wielder, he first met the boy in his shop in Traverse Town. While he told him to leave his shop due to his young age, he became interested in his Keyblade, thinking that he could sell it for a high price. However, Sora quickly saw through his ruse as the Keyblade retracted to the boy and left.

Character Trivia ~His weapon is the exact same meteor hammer used by Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill Vol.1 ~He was intentionally made to be unlikable, or at the very least a hate-sink character. ~Pere Noel is French for "Father Christmas" or "Santa Clause", the program is based on the fictional criminal organization under the same name from the Evillious Chronicles during the Sloth/Pierrot and Greed/Wrath arcs.

#artwork #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts oc #oc #character profile

[kibfpatiyxparagpsiqa]

right. added that, and it’s literally just completely done now.

enjoy.

Danny has to admit, it's fun to hang around as Phantom. Even if it gives people opportunity to shoot at him, walking places just doesn't have the same feel as flying. And it doesn't get everyone to shoot at him. A lot of citizens, young ones especially, just think he's pretty cool. When he isn't invisible, they're the ones most likely to try to talk to him. And unlike, say, the ones who yell, Danny's willing to have a conversation. "Yo, Danny Phantom!" And Danny's over there in seconds, his legs quickly reforming as he stands before them. "Hey."

The person who'd called seems suddenly less willing to talk. Danny's used to people being afraid by now, though it's still weird, but even weirder is the times like now when they aren't afraid but starstruck. Someone else wearing a bandanna around their neck picks up. "Hi. Our friend's in the hospital right now." "Sorry." "Nah, you take more hits than all of us combined. But like, she drew you this thing, to thank you, but she didn't think you'd see it. However, Luke here was gonna show you. Luke, phone." Luke, still tongue-tied, unlocks and hands over his phone. The kid scrolls through the photos on the phone. Recently, the people in town are trying to really show their appreciation for Danny. He thinks it might be because of some recent visitors, one of which Danny found out was a ghost, nonhostile guy who still travelled with is friends. The whole group talked about what it's like for ghosts, how recognition and generosity matter. Danny still has their phone number. The kid finds what they're looking for. Danny holds the phone carefully as he looks at the picture. They're admonishing Luke for his terrible folder structures. It's a really sick picture. If Danny were at all willing to risk his cell number getting out, he'd ask them to text it to him. He really likes the particular pose and lighting, and they got his face exactly right, just like a mirror. Well, mirrors half of the time. But the shapes are the same! He grins at Luke while he hands the phone back. "Dude, that's so sweet! Do you like, think she'd let me see the actual physical one?" Luke has found his voice! "Yeah! Terry would actually love that. It's in her art folder, we brought it to the hospital room... not sure when or if you can visit." "Dude, just tell me when. Flag me down sometime, just, yeah. I'll bring my phone, get my own picture." "Awesome." The two other kids with them, at this point, are still messing around, but noticeably less than they were before he came over. When one notices he might leave, they walk over, and the last friend follows. "Uh, Phantom?" "Yeah?" "Can I get a picture of your logo?" "Sure. Why?" The kid swipes open their phone and he stands on the ground in front of them while they snap a photo. "D, P, oh. Never seen it this close before. Right, I'm making a collage of superheroes, and I thought, wait. I should add a real superhero who lives here! Any preference on who you're next to?" "Depends. Marvel or DC?" "More obscure heroes from both." Danny thinks about it. It's been a while since he's thought about this much. Real superheroics have kind of monopolized his focus for a while now. "Hmm. You got Captain Marvel on there?" "Yeah I do! I mean, she shouldn't be obscure. That's kind of the theme here. Too underrated." Danny nods. "These poor unfortunate souls. But yeah, I love the space origins." "Ha, what planet are you from?" "Not a planet... Aliens are cool, but there's a portal to an actual other dimension in your hometown, which is equally cool and also real." The kid can't refute that. His friend, bored, tries to throw an orange slice at him. He misses, but Danny catches it in his mouth. The formerly-bored friend turns out to be a vicious meanie. "You just can't dodge anything, can you. Are you always trying to eat what your enemies throw at you?" Danny is hurt, truly. He puts his hand over his heart and makes his best wide-eyed expression of sorrow. "Gasp. After all I do for you specifically, eating all those explosive blasts before you can, this is the thanks I get. Throw an orange at yourself, why don't you. Maybe you should practice dodging." The kid throws a whole orange this time, which Danny catches in his hand before peeling. "Oh, delicious inciendiary pain." He debates trying to hit himself in the chest and just grow another mouth there, before realizing that's horrifying. He just eats more orange slices. "So like. Ghosts can eat?" The kid with the bandanna seems curious. Danny shrugs. "I don't know. Ghosts can at least taste." He really doesn't know. Danny isn't quite a ghost. "Do you like to?" "Don't get the chance much. But sure, rather taste sweeter stuff than active plasma." He shoots a look at the orange kid, who has an orange in each hand now. Is that why their pockets are so full? They throw the oranges fast enough he reflexively goes intangible. He hears them hit the road behind him, then salutes the other kids and takes his leave. -----(can anybody tell me how to add lines proper?) It's gotten out really quickly that ghosts can eat. Not a lot of incidents involving that have happened, so Danny blames the sudden awareness everybody has of that on the internet. And a couple people are spreading the word that offerings to spirits are appreciated greatly, Danny's pretty sure those people also follow the web log of those paranormal investigators with the ghost. People have started asking if he'd like to share food they have on hand. Danny feels awkward, because he does already eat food at his own house, because he is alive. But then, the people might do that anyways if they knew that? They're trying to show their appreciation. And it's not like he couldn't just avoid their offers if he wanted, easily! Nobody's exactly chasing him down for this, just asking, when they have opportunities. He really does appreciate it too. Most everything tastes better when it's from someone whose life you've saved, or their wellbeing or family member or just their car. So Danny does usually accept whenever people offer to buy him things, or share what they have. Sure, he eats at home, but then sometimes he's pulled away before he can eat breakfast, or dinner, or anything. When people approach him at those times, he really doesn't even want to argue. So he doesn't.

Some of his older fans make similar offerings, but from meals they made through their own efforts. Those ones are also sweet. He's heard of the taste of victory, but the taste of gratitude is great. Danny likes knowing that people appreciate what he does, however they show it, and this is more convenient than all the cards he has in a locked box in his mattress, along with the other gifts, which he finds harder and harder to hide. He vastly appreciates the art, but his parents wouldn't really get this interest as anything other than suspicious. So the food is a welcome gift, even if returning containers to the right people can be difficult. He likes the sweets, but he actually likes salty things better, and after someone asks him about preferences a lot of people get interested. It's not a large percentage of the population, more those who especially like him and who are interested in cooking and baking, but a lot more people are starting conversations with him as Phantom than ever did before. He feels more appreciated. Some people yell at him because they dislike him, but gifts like these feel more tangible, like they outweigh that, even if people already cheered for him. And again, really convenient if he misses his planned meals. Danny's a fan. ------- Rhys is popping gum across the table while Jill continues talking about the annoyance of spices. Blah blah why does everyone use like no spices blah. Benjamin's late again, but as he dashes in and skids into the booth, the mess that is his clothes says it was probably under extenuating circumstances. "Did you forget your backpack?" Rhys swirls their drink with their straw. "Oh, oh crud it's probably still under there." He puts his head in his hands, and Jill pats his head in sympathy for whatever happened. "It must not have phased with me..." Jill shifts her legs like the restless shark she is. "Phased? There was an attack?" "Seems reasonable. Sure, it wasn't on the news, but at this point that's no surprise. There's barely a consensus on how many there are in a week, but too many to fit with regular news." Rhys sticks their gum to an empty wrapper. "But yeah. Why were you getting phased through anything, Benj?" "Um. Phantom. He saved me, I was caught in a collapse, a building was just. Fell." "Shit Benj, are you okay?" Jill's holding onto Benjamin now, like to keep him safe. "You didn't have to come here, do you need medical attention?" Benjamin shakes his head. "It wasn't dangerous! Just, dusty, and I couldn't get out. I'm glad Phantom heard me, though, my mobile wasn't working." "You sure you're okay Benny?" "Yeah. I think my clothes have it worse than I do. And my poor backpack." "F." Rhys leans against the wall, stretching their feet across the booth's bench. "This probably doesn't do you much of a favor in the long run, though. I mean, you thought that crush was bad before? Phantom just carried you out of a building. Tell me, Benj, did he take you by the hand, was it bridal-style?" "Hey Rhys? Shut up in those blue jeans." "Shut up in those blue jorts." Jill cracks a grin. "Shut up 'cause it's blue Jill." They do a mock-bow toward Jill, before Benjamin keeps talking. "All jokes aside, I really wanna thank him somehow. Uh, Phantom. Do you guys have any ideas? Because I don't think my skills in the area of writing are gonna be much help." "Au contraire Benj, I'm sure it'll be excellent help impressing your new boyfriend." "Shut up, I mean it." Jill looks at Rhys, and Rhys shuts up. "Uh, a bunch of people are like giving him food... Do you think he'd appreciate that? I could help, I kind of want to, you're my friend and I'm glad he saved you." She goes very quiet, like she already thinks it was stupid to even suggest. Rhys shrugs, but is smiling. "Sure, if you think he'll have your taste in extra-spicy." "Okay, I am NOT saying that everything needs to fucking BURN, but SOME PEOPLE are WEAK, and spices are meant to be USED and not in INFINITESIMALS," "Come on Rhys he's a ghost, we could probably put tylotoxin in it and he'd thank us. He'd thank us anyway, because Jill is fantastic at this and her idea was excellent." "Oh, cool. Thanks." Rhys shoots up, their face lighting up. "Oh my god, dudes, we should so totally actually do that though." "UH, it was just an example," "I'm not sure where we would get tylo," Rhys hits their hands on the table. "No, guys. He loves jokes, he loves MORBID jokes, he IS a ghost and he'd totally survive it! And again, he'd think it was so funny. All Benji's idea, of course. I'm so proud of you I could die." "Are you sure it won't do anything?" "I mean, he gets tossed around all the time and heals up quick. And this is *poison*, the type that works on *humans*. And if you're so unsure we can add a non-fatal amount, just in case he wants a kiss after." Benjamin nods slowly. Jill is already on board. "Alright but really, where are we going to get tylotoxin?"

---------- Danny had been liking the recent trend of tangible appreciation, but. Damn it all. He didn't have much right to feel betrayed, since he'd let his guard down. Nobody could have done this before anyway. He'd practically enabled them. He was still feeling pretty freaking angry at whoever had poisoned him. He doesn't know exactly who that was, though, since he's not sure when exactly they did it. -- The night he noticed it, he was just going home in the evening. It had a good chance to be one of those nights with no attacks to present issues, especially given that it was summer. He was walking instead of flying home, mainly out of preference, but started feeling tired enough to change his mind. After getting home and landing in his room, he was all prepared to wait another hour or so for ghostly latecomers, and yet so very, very ready to go to sleep. As soon as he turned human, though, he abruptly doubled over. It was a very abrupt, intense pain, and although he managed to get up when the shock wore off, it showed no signs of lessening. He pushed his shoes off and lied on his bed, grabbing for his phone. He couldn't tell where it was coming from. As he dialed for Tucker, he tried to think about the most recent attack, or the one before that. He didn't remember any wounds. Could it have been poison? "Danny, what's up." "Tucker, hey, uh." Tucker was already sighing over the phone. "You have a problem then?" "Don't know what would give you that idea..." "You always do this, man." His tone made it sound like Danny should know what exactly "this" was. "Besides, I'd hope you aren't calling about anything that could wait at this hour." "Okay fine. ...This hurts, like, a lot." Danny felt very tired, now, and his attempts to sit up weren't doing so hot. "Shit, man. What happened?" "I don't know. I think it's poison, some kind. Started hurting when I got home... When I was human." "What? That's not... Hmmm." Tucker sets his phone down. Probably checking something-or-other. Danny was feeling worse by the second. It hurt a lot, and it hit him that he might want to leave his house. He didn't think he could make it through an interaction with anyone here. Of course, he also felt like he didn't have the energy to get up and leave. Man, at least he wasn't throwing up. But now his head was hurting, and he curled up trying not to make a sound. He noticed he was clutching his phone now, hard, and lightened up before it could crack. Did Tucker say something? Shit, could poison do that? Concussions did that, was it a headache thing? "Uhhhh I wanna go. Your place? Sam's place, going there cool." Danny flipped his phone shut in and instant and slipped into a ghostly form before he even checked the door. Remembering that one second later, he zipped his head around to find it was fortunately shut, with no sign that anyone else at home had seen him. His thoughts already felt clearer, and the pain felt much more muted. Now, being Phantom dulled most of the pain, though there was still an ache in his stomach. Did that mean it was poison he ingested? Who'd have done that? He's still not sure. After flying to Sam's place, he discovered that she was on a video call with Tucker. He's really glad he can count on them. "Sam. Tucker. Sorry Tucker, actually. I don't think I was thinking clearly." He sat on the bed, which appeared to be different than the last he saw. Change of scenery, he guessed. "It doesn't hurt so much now, and I can think. It's mostly hurting my stomach now, actually. Did I eat poison?" Sam got him to lie down on her bed, which felt pretty weird considering he was still wearing boots. But he sat up to look at Tucker on the screen, who was talking about what they knew. "Most of your enemies don't use poison. And yeah, Skulker shows up a lot, but he's an outlier, and it's been a while since he was here anyway." "Yeah, 'cause we /totaled/ his suit last time." Danny grinned, and for a brief second so did Tucker. Then he got back to it. "Most poisons wouldn't take that long to affect someone, without /some/ sign. Nothing?" Sam nodded as Tucker spoke, probably out of further poison knowledge. Danny didn't think so. Skulker was about a week or two ago, by now? "No. I mean, I felt tired before flying home, but that was still only today." Sam jumped on his words. "Like, abnormally tired? Is this another symptom?" "It could be. I think it also stopped when I went ghost, too, so there's another point." They listened to Tucker adding that detail to his notes, before Sam looked out the window, furrowing her brow. "The thing is, it's obviously a human poison, if that's true. Which could still be a ghostly enemy, but if you can get out of it so easily then what's the point? Especially since other stuff, like sickness, leaves quicker, when your temperature doesn't already repel them." Danny frowned. "Did someone try to poison me? Human me? Why would someone do that?" "I don't know! Who'd hate you enough for that, most people just don't really care! The only person who comes to mind is Vlad, which seems unlikely." "Yeah, pretty sure he still needs me alive for some reason or another." Even with the cloning efforts, Danny 1.0 wasn't obsolete yet. Sam walked to the other side of the room, to a table. It was a very small table, but as Sam lifted the edge of the long tablecloth, she grabbed a large bag from beneath. She returned with this in hand, her first-aid kit showing from within. "We're hoping it will help if we can tell what kind of poison it is. Might at least give us an idea of where to look." Danny grimaced, but nodded. "Yeah okay, alright, should probably switch back for that? Yeah." Before his friends could protest, he flipped forms to his human self. Danny immediately was forced to lie completely down, without the energy to continue sitting. "Urrrrrr." The pain hit once more at the same time. Was it worse than before? He closed his eyes tightly. "Danny! Damn it. Okay, his breathing is really fast." As she turned toward him, her voice sounded louder. He tried to focus on what she said. "We'll try to get through this quickly, but just turn back if you need to, alright?" He didn't respond. "Alright, temperature. Tucker, you're recording all this, yeah?" After Tucker presumably confirmed, Danny felt something press across his forehead. "Oh, man. Feels way too warm. I'm not liking this..." Tucker's voice from behind Sam said something Danny couldn't make out. It was probably bad. "Okay," Sam said, and Danny couldn't hear the rest. Then something poked his arm, right on the wrist. He opened his eyes, to find he was in Sam's room. She was holding his hand, and he wanted to ask about that, but he couldn't seem to. She seemed to be getting upset about something. He closed his eyes again. It felt like only a second before he managed to open them again. He tilted his head to the side to see what was up, but there was a curtain in the way. Apparently Sam's new bed had curtains on it. He moved to shift them out of the way, and found Sam sitting at her computer, frowning. "Hey, I think the poison went away. It doesn't hurt anymore." She turned around in her chair with wide eyes, before remembering he was weird and partially relaxing. "Are you sure, Danny? That was fast." "I'm thinking pretty clearly, so yeah. Not sure I remember all of that, but yeah." Sam seemed skeptical. "How did you just get the poison out of your body?" Danny shrugged. "Ghost stuff? I dunno, I'm willing to blame it on my good old fighting /spirit/." He smiled at her, but she didn't seem convinced. "Let me try something." Sam got up and walked to stand by where he was lying. "I'm not so sure it's over, but this should test whether it's done." Before Danny could say a word, she'd grabbed his arm and given it a scratch with her nails. "Hey!" he had to shout, touching where she'd clawed. Looking at it, it wasn't bleeding, but some skin was torn. Then Danny realized it didn't hurt. Sam looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Nothing? Probably not quite over, then. Besides, you were only out for a few minutes after your heart stopped, and I doubt all of the poison left your system in that time." "Guess it hasn't given up the ghost, then. But I won't either. I must be thinking with my core right now, which explains why I'm not feeling it. I hope it gets out soon, or else it's going to suck when my brain comes back online. Or worse, my nerves." It did get worse. Even despite the fact he didn't feel the tiredness as a ghost, he couldn't manage to get anything done, since at any point another function, with its associated pain sensors, could come back. He had to stay at Sam's the whole week, and as his human form started working with the rest again, even getting to a different room of the house was an effort. Worse still was when his brain activity did return, and he wished it didn't, because this time it didn't stop his heart. He just had to stay that way, in extreme pain, waiting for it to be over and getting annoyed by how hard it was to focus on anything. By the end of it, he was outright wishing for another illness or poison he could just vomit out. ------- He still doesn't know who did it. Not exactly. But he's figured it out. It must have been someone who gave him food. It must have been someone who doesn't know human poison doesn't work on ghosts, because anyone who knows he's a halfa is unlikely to be involved. And now he's just cursing himself for trusting anybody like that. The worst week of his life, that must have been. After all, the second worst week featured a /fast/ and painful death. ------- Luke's been trying to get Phantom's attention again for ages now, with Terry out of the hospital. After disappearing, the hero has been more reclusive, less willing to talk to people. He hasn't been accepting gifts, anymore, but he'd said he'd like to see Terry's work! His friends eventually convince him to give it up. Phantom doesn't want to talk, right now. ------- What happened to Phantom? He's shown a definite change in behaviour, talking less to civilians. He's declined all offerings since his disappearance. The first time he was seen in a week, he moved differently, almost as if he hadn't moved in a while. Hypothesis: He's been trapped within some place in the Ghost Zone, immobile, and interdimensional time dilation made it a longer stay than we've experienced. He's having trouble acclimating back to Amity. ------- They haven't talked about what they did. Not while Phantom stayed out of commission, the whole week. And not for another week, as the fallout of whatever happened became clear. As it became clear the blame was on them. But Benjamin's guilty conscience wouldn't let him keep silent forever, even if he was afraid to say it very loud. "I wish I hadn't gone to that stupid first-person workshop. Wish we hadn't gotten attacked, and I wish he never freaking pulled me out." He glares into his cup. "Benny, it's not your fault." Jill says, probably about to say something 'helpful'. But Benjamin starts first, and it might not /help/ but it feels just a bit better to blame someone else. "Of course not, I'm not the one who thought it was a /good/ idea to poison a hero." Rhys, previously silent, meets every challenge at equal measure. "Oh, yeah, because it was so stupid. I was totally right, if any one of us /bothered/ to check whether poison affects stupid ghosts. Or said something! You could have /told/ your little boyfriend the secret ingredient wasn't exactly love. Bet he'd know if this could be excused under 'love & war'." "Like you know one thing about love, you black widow. Do /you/ poison everyone you date? It wasn't my /idea/ to make him sick, I was grateful!" "So was I Benj! I'm so glad you're here with me it hurts, and I just thought surely, someone as dead as I am inside would appreciate a joke, but the joke fell flat. It fucked him up. I fucked up, yeah!" And everything's quiet a minute. Benjamin drinks his odd choice in summer beverage, and finds that it's cooled down some. Jill speaks up, quietly. "I poisoned somebody." Sitting sideways in the booth, she curls in on herself, upset. "Jill, no, it wasn't your idea, it was mine. Rhys lifts their sunglasses off. "I'm the one who actually seriously meant that." "I cook and I poisoned somebody. What am I gonna do?" Benjamin tries to offer her a back pat, but her legs are in the way. He pats her knees instead. "You didn't know it would poison him. You had every reason to think it would be fine." "Isn't there a rule or something that says you're not allowed to cook anymore if you poison somebody?" "That's a negligence thing though. Or incompetence. Definitely doesn't count if we gave you wrong information." Jill sips her drink through the straw, ignoring the whipped cream on top. A bad sign. "I never want to do that again." "What- Jill, you love to cook! You passionately rant about spices and-" "I mean the poisoning." "Oh, yeah, totally. Don't do that." -------- Danny Fenton doesn't know every person in this city, but he feels like he's at least seen most of them. Even if he's never talked to them, he's probably indirectly saved their life at some point. The ones he's least directly saved tend to hate him the most. Yet sometimes, even people he doesn't recognize will show him kindness. Danny likes feeling appreciated, more than even as much shouting as his detractors do can take from him. He'll talk to people again, and not just to save them. He'll trust people again, even if it's hard right now. And maybe, years later, he'll be able to hear the true story and laugh. But for now, Danny needs to think.

#danny phantom #my writing #yo danny fenton he was barely any years old by the time he'd died thrice #it was fucked #go ahead and criticize but i doubt it will help

[sissypan]

Dystopias in SF

“Zgreb is a miner on a meteoroid. In the mines, life is extremely difficult. The only thing that helps the miners to endure the quasi-unbearable hardships, is a drug called ‘amber’, very expensive and difficult to obtain. Desperate, many miners end up committing suicide. Revolted by this intolerable situation and by the indifference of his employers, Zgreb strives to incite the other miners to rebellion. As soon as he manages persuading them to strike, some huge, demon-like cyborgs called ‘Ghouls’, working for the international company producing ‘amber’, capture Zgreb and they force him aboard a spaceship which brings him back on Earth.

Earth is like Hell. The development of technology has resulted in disastrous environmental pollution. The air is yellow and contains a huge amount of toxic, especially sulfurous, gases. The inhabitants of Earth can only breathe with the help of oxygen masks and very often, they end up dying of asphyxia. There is almost no water left. Monopolized by an international company, pure water is extremely expensive and the water sold at the black market is dirty and contaminated by plenty of bacteria causing the death of hundreds. Food is extremely rare too. Most people survive by eating cockroaches, worms, spiders and – when they can find them – rats. The wealthiest ones undergo complex alterations of their organism, by means of a combination of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, so that they can feed on sand and stones. An incredible number of deadly microbes have emerged. The king of these mini killers is a virus called LYS. It attacks all the vital organs of humans and provokes atrocious hallucinations in the infected subjects: the patients believe that they turn into vegetables; usually, they think they are broccoli, but sometimes they think themselves transformed into tomatoes, cauliflowers, cabbages or pumpkins.

Zgreb manages to survive anoxia, lack of food and water thanks to his surreptitious wealth, consisting of diamonds that he had stolen in the mine, at a moment when the guardians were muddle-headed by excessive doses of ‘amber’. By living on the meteoroid, Zgreb is immune to the LYS virus.

Things go badly when the mysterious Z-particles attack the Sun. Their contact results in the destruction of any luminous celestial body.

There are hardly a few months left before the Sun explodes. That will be the end of planet Earth.

Zgreb manages to board a spaceship stealthily. He survives the catastrophe, but he will have to spend the rest of his life in deep space which he hates profoundly.”

 Does all this sound somewhat familiar?

This is not surprising. The text is an amalgam of some recurrent themes and points of view encountered in current SF: unhappiness; despair; ugliness; exploitation; decadence and decay; atrocities; disasters; pessimism; defeatism… There is not enough room for an exhaustive list. It is, nonetheless, true that compared to the nightmarish worlds of contemporary SF, even Dante’s Inferno seems like Disneyland. Loaded with pessimism and dismay reaching the apogee of their gloomy glory, the actual SF bears a remarkable resemblance to Marvin, the paranoid android in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy. For those who have not read the book, Marvin is a depressive robot, constantly moaning, overcome with despair and disillusion. Nobody can abide by Marvin’s company. An A.I. who was unfortunate enough to listen to Marvin’s points of view about life and the universe for a few hours ended up… committing suicide!

The occurrence of negative and pessimistic SF is not new. Since the beginning of the 20th century and for many years, under the influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, SF was full of monstrous robots eager to destroy their creators and often the whole humankind.

Isaac Asimov saved the world of SF from the tiresome aggressiveness of robots affected by destroying madness. Even nowadays, Isaac Asimov is regarded as ‘the father of robotics’, the brilliant visionary who inspired the most famous specialists in robot construction to realize their most audacious projects, such as modern robots that are able to learn and to adapt.

However, Asimov has not created his fictitious robots in order to contribute to the advance of robotics. As he acknowledges in the introduction of his book I, Robot, Asimov’s true motivation for creating his mechanical heroes obeying to the three laws of robotics, was not of a scientific, but rather of a literary nature. A hardened SF reader and a brilliant scientist, Asimov could not stand anymore the stories where “the robot destroyed his creator” which was the most frequent recurrent theme in the SF of his time. He also regarded the sickly fear of science expressed by this theme (which Asimov named ‘the Frankenstein complex’), as exaggerated, irrational and unfair to science. The fact that he was right on this point was presumably the reason why the career of the destructive robots in the world of SF soon came to an end.

The improvement of the reputation of the robots by Asimov (with the exception of Marvin; even Asimov could do nothing in his case) did not please everybody. For some obscure reason, a few SF fans and writers suffered from nostalgia. They missed the ‘Frankenstein complex’.

They soon discovered a new subject allowing them to wail as much as they wished about the potentially terrifying effects of the advance in technology: the end of the world.

In contemporary SF literature, this theme recurs ad nauseam. In most stories, “Technology destroys the world. Technology destroys the world. Technology destroys…” with the variations of the theme: “Humankind suffers in a world that will soon be destroyed” and “humankind suffers in a ruined world”. SF writers are so hell-bent on destroying the world that compared to them, the destructive pre-Asimov robots seem like angels; they are so brilliant in inventing new ways and means to make humankind suffer that in comparison, the tortures used by the executioners of the Inquisition were like innocent children’s games.

Apparently, SF is in a period of crisis. Some people presume that the Internet is responsible for this; others believe that comics or video games have overpowered SF literature. What nobody seems to notice is that at this moment, if someone wants to relax, he would prefer spending an evening in the company of count Dracula or J.K. Rowling’s dementors[1] to reading a gloomy and pessimistic SF story.

It seems, nevertheless, that – at last! - the sun will soon shine in the sad, dark and ghastly world of SF -------

[.....What follows is relative to the anthology and is now outdated .]

[1] In the Harry Potter books, the dementors are the hideous guardians of Azkaban prison. They are able to suck the joy and the vitality of anyone merely with a kiss.        

I wrote this article a few years ago to encourage those SF writers who tried to write more optimistic stories. The article was published in French SF magazine Galaxies (where I worked as a co-editor) and in MATRIX, the official journal of British SF Association (BSFA). I post it here because I think that somehow, it has become relevant again. Unfortunately, now it is not just about SF stories - it’s real :(  

#sf #dystopia #isaac asimov #robot #frankenstein #world ending #post apocalyptic #apocalyptic future #apocalyptic literature #humor #optimism

[egoiistas]

may i feel, said he (18)

first | tag | ao3 | ffn 

[co-written with @tsaritsa]

Can you guys believe May I Feel turned one last week? Its been such a CRAZY YEAR. And we thank you guys who read us for making our hearts brim with fuzzy goodness. Honestly. We wanted to get this out quicker than usual because it was also @colonelhotstuff‘s birthday on the 30th! Happy belated birthday!!

Super special thanks to @b-griveros whose commissioned art is featured in this chapter >:3c hope you guys like it! <3

Warnings: Cursing, Suggestive themes  Words: ~12k || Rated: M - Royai

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

soften the parts that we have lost / kiana azizian, infinite

Central City is cool and breezy the following morning despite the bright sunshine beating down, and the air is even cooler in the underground levels of the parking garage. Riza swings in her backpack into the trunk of the rental car with the rest of their belongings. Her eyes feel puffy from the early rise and tired, but she looks forward to sleeping in her own bed - or, rather, a bed that’s familiar to her. They had said their goodbyes upstairs and poor Elicia didn’t want to let go of Roy until she was swayed with good parenting. She even waved a goodbye to Riza in between tears that Gracia assured was her developing melodrama.

“Is that everything?”

“I believe so.” Roy answers after the slam of the trunk door. He gets into the driver’s seat and her into the passenger seat when she sees Maes in the wing mirror flailing an arm and carrying a medium-sized cardboard box with him.

“Roy,” she says abruptly to catch his attention and points to the rear-view mirror.

“What the-” He gets out, leaving the car door open. “I’m sorry, mister. I don’t have any change.”

From where she sits, she can clearly see the Maes’ red face from making the trip and running to find them. He scoffs and shoves the box he carries into Roy’s arms with one swift gesture. “These, forgotten trinkets, are yours.”

Roy digs around the box and raises his eyebrows, recognition cresting over his face and impressed with seeing his old things. “Where’d you dig these up?”

“We started,” he wheezes, needing a moment. “Shut up, your shit is heavy. We started clearing out the extra study room and we found these buried away.”

Roy’s tone is teasing. “Clearing out the study? Hopefully to make way for a gym. Or at least a treadmill, buddy. Cardio goes a long way.”

“No.” Maes glares at him and straightens up from bending over his knees.  He pushes his glasses back up his nose. “Nothing’s set in stone yet. Elicia’s barely turned three, but we’re trying.”

Roy opens the car door behind his and the box is hastily shoved into the seat. The contents shift and the poorly closed box shows her a bunch of papers. Journals, she suspects. When she looks up, Roy is patting his best friend encouragingly. “That’s really good news,” he says; the pride suffuses through his tone. She can’t see it but she can hear the smile on his face. “And know that the offer still stands, should anything happen.”

Maes gives him a humbled smile in return. “I appreciate that. I think this time we’ll be better prepared; no, we are better prepared. Knowing is half the battle. But don’t let me hold you up. I’ll keep you updated.”

Riza smiles as they hug goodbye, again.

“Stay safe,” Maes tells him, before ducking his head into the car and winking at her. “Be good, Riza.”

She waves back. “No promises there.” She moves to figure out where the AUX port is on the radio when she hears Maes speak again.

“She called. Last night.” His tone is quieter. It doesn’t resound off the concrete like it was a minute ago but the open car door lets the sound flow in regardless. “Just wanted to give you the heads up in case of, well, anything.”

Roy sighs. “I’m sure she has. I’ve made myself as clear as I can.”

“I know you have. Just be careful, mate.”

The silence stretches on, almost to the point of uncomfortable. “I’ll do my best.”

The door shuts swiftly as he gets in. Maes knocks the metal frame of the car as they drive off, arm raised in a final farewell.

“What was that about?”

Roy has this dazed look on his face, unfaltering even as they reach the blinding rays of the morning sun as they exit the garage. It takes him a moment to ground himself. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that…” As he says it, he almost looks like a kid himself. “They’re trying for another kid.”

She thinks he looks adorable. “Oh! That’s nice. You must be so ecstatic to be a godfather again.”

He shrugs, trying to downplay the smitten smile on his face. “I just think it’s exciting for them. There were difficulties following Elicia’s birth and it’s admirable that she’s willing to go through that again, knowing the risk.”

Riza holds her tongue on the thoughts of adoption and foster care, reminding herself a single couple do not have the power to change the entire system. “Yes, it sounds very brave,” she replies. “And I think Elicia will be happy to have a little brother or sister.”

“I think so too. But, how are you? You sound a little down.”

Riza looks at him warily and deflects just as quickly. “I think I’m still tired, I don’t think my night was very restful.” In anticipation to his response, she amends, “And please don’t say that it was because of your “hot lovin” that kept me up.”

He snorts and laughter laces his words. “I wouldn’t have used that exact phrase, but you caught me. Why don’t you nap? We’re ways away from home yet.”

“I think I will.” She leans the seat back, getting herself comfortable. “And I know how you operate...sir.”

She wakes up and there are pastures passing them by. Cow, windmills and craggy hills in every direction. The Eastern provinces might be simpler than their neighbours, but there’s a simple kind of beautiful that exists here and Riza wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Good morning.”

Riza inhales deeply. “How long was I out?”

Roy hums. “I’d say hour-and-a-half, two hours tops.”

She blinks, trying to rid herself of the sleep in her eyes. “Where are we?”

“We’re about to cross into the Eastern section. Moomoo cows as far as the eye can see for another hour or so.”

Riza raises an eyebrow. “Moomoo cows?”

“Do you...not… call them that? How do you know what kind of noise they make if you don’t preface it with that?”

She snickers as she peers out the car window. “I think your nickname for them is very valid, Professor. Does your colleague Elicia call them that too?”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

Riza’s face scrunches up when the topic of Aerugo suddenly crosses her mind. She figures now would be a good a time as any. “So… Aerugo.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spies him perking up in his seat. “Yes?”

“Are they getting married again? What’s the whole deal with that?”

“Yes, that’s basically what constitutes as a vow renewal.”

“But I thought vow renewals were something you did when you’ve been married for decades. Not after a few years.”

Roy snorts. “You underestimate what excuses people will give to justify a pachanga. Er, fiesta, party.”

“Wait, what was that first word you used?”

“Pachanga. Fiesta just doesn’t have the right emotion behind it. Anyway, parties like the ones for children’s birthday, like Elicia’s, aren’t rare. The same people would be at another relative’s kids’ communion, baptism, kindergarten graduation and nobody is going to want to be the person tearing down a declaration of love. It’s quite ingenious, really.”

“Sounds like you guys just like to...pachanga?”

“Yes, in some instances it can be used as a verb.”

“So, it’s just the ceremony?”

Roy’s head tilts side to side, considering the question. “No. Well, kind of. It’s a long weekend on an island, getting together with a group of close friends. The amount of people there won’t be as many as they had at Elicia’s birthday party. Obviously not everyone can drop what they’re doing at the drop of a hat to spend a week on vacation but most are gonna try for a few days at least.”

“Will you?”

“I’d like to. The last time I visited Aerugo was for their wedding. I doubt a lot has changed but it’s a beautiful place. The colors are vibrant there and pictures cannot do it justice. From what I remember, at least.” He smirks at some memory. “There was a lot of wine involved last time.”

Riza hums thoughtfully. “Sounds like it will be a good time.”

His eyes slide to hers. “It should be. Even more so if you accompany me.”

She can’t help it - the incredulous laughter leaves her before she has a chance to consider how that could sound. “Right. I’ll just find the spare two-hundred thousands cenz lying around, shall I?”

He does a good job of keeping his face neutral, but Riza knows a hurt tone when she hears it. “I’m only heartless when it comes to grading, Riza. You would be my plus one.”

“No, that’s - that’s too much money. I couldn’t let you waste- spend that kind of money on me.”

Roy lets out a frustrated sigh that pushes the hair out of his eyes. “This isn’t about me trying to shame you because I have disposable income and you don’t - I want you to come with me. I don’t like that I can’t just take you out for a nice dinner whenever I like, or even go catch a movie with you. Y’know - the things that every other couple gets to do without fear. But then opportunities like these come up, and it’s like some big neon sign telling me that here’s the chance you’ve been waiting for, take it. And even if we could go out on dates like normal people I’d still want you to come with me anyway.”

His impassioned response gives her pause. It’s resolute, adamant, but there’s something that burrows at her, disallowing her to be swayed. It takes her a moment to find her response.

“Is it really about the money?”

“Yes! And… no,” she admits ruefully.

“Gracia mentioned Aubrey.”

Riza nods slowly, letting him fill in that space and going with that flow. “It was quite the ambush, for lack of a better word. And I wasn’t about to monopolize your time simply because I felt uncomfortable amongst people I didn’t know. As tempting as it was to do.”

“I know it can feel intimidating and people were just interested because I’ve lost contact with a lot of them. You were a symbol as much as an explanation as to why that was.”

It pains her to admit that he has a solid argument. “Surely there was more talk than that.”

“Quite possibly. I wasn’t interested in hearing it.”

She falls silent.

“Shall I paint you a picture?”

She turns her head to look back at him. “Of what?”

“Aerugo. What you’ll be missing out on.”

“What could I possibly be missing that I can’t find in East City?”

He doesn’t vocalise it, but she knows he's thinking then let me take you. “The ocean, for starters. The miles and miles of vineyards. It’s an island, actually - off the coast. The place is dotted with old churches tucked away. The food is to die for, and the views even more so.” His voice takes on a reminiscing lilt, the corners of his lips turning up in memory. “We’d hire out one of the old villas overlooking the bay. Freshly pressed coffee and fruits for breakfast. Go sailing in the morning and drink ourselves silly in the afternoon.”

“You can sail?”

“I’d teach you - you’d be a natural at it, I’d wager.”

Riza bites her lip. “I don’t even have a passport.”

“Then we’ll figure that out once we get back home.” His free hand reaches for hers and she takes it. “I mean it when I say I’ll pay for what you need.”

He makes it sound so simple.

She starts slow, trying to sort out the muddled threads in her head into an articulation that is cohesive. “I know classes won’t take much of my time now that the semester is over…”

He nods once and slow as he elongates the i in “Right”.

She purses her lips and twists her fingers together tightly. How does she explain what waits for her at a psychiatric facility? “But I don’t think it would responsible of me to simply drop everything and not expect there to be consequences waiting at the end.”

“Consequences like?”

“I do have prior commitments that I can’t just rearrange just like that.” She waves her hand, out of his grip, for emphasis.

“Which commitments?”

Maybe she’s imagining it, maybe she’s wanting to imagine it, but Roy’s tone cuts through harshly. She can’t understand his line of questioning - why he needs to question her at all in the first place.

“I’m not outright saying no, Roy, but I can’t just give you an answer and then let the chips fall where they may.”

“I agree and I’m not saying you should. Just,” He adjusts his tone. “I’m only curious about these arrangements you have. It’s caught me by surprise, that’s all.”

She looks out the window. “Just because I spend a lot of my time with you, doesn’t mean I don’t have a life outside of you.”

From the corner of her eye she can see his jaw drop. “Riza, that’s not, that’s not what I- why are you being so cagey about this?”

“Cagey how?” She bites her tongue, feeling the guilty pleasure of her pettiness.

Frustration seeps into his voice. “Dancing around answers, being particularly defensive about this. Like you’re hiding something.”

“You’re one to talk.” Riza hears the creak of leather from the steering wheel as its gripped harder in his hands. She wets her lips and sighs, because he has a point. This is something so hurtful that she’s bore alone in the past. She doesn’t want anyone to use it against her; as if her father’s failings or his state of mind reflects directly on her. “I can’t just drop plans to see my father. Not…not when they take weeks to plan out. You’ve known about this for a while, so when were you going to ask me?”

Roy frowns. “I wanted to wait until your grades were released. If this ever comes back to bite us I didn’t want there to be any insinuations from anybody that I used an overseas holiday as a means to tempt you or buy your silence.”

“Then tell me what the game plan is, Roy. I should know.”

He clears his throat. “If, at the bottom of all this, this is something you want to do, to come with me, then I’ll help you get it handled.”

“How do you mean?”

He words it carefully. “If your worries are missing an opportunity to visit your father and if it’s within the scope of things you want to do, then perhaps you could reschedule? Maybe see him sooner then, before we leave, than push it out until after the fact.”

She falls silent again, not having considered the option. The visits were usually so static, so concrete in her schedule that changing the dates seemed inconceivable. Anxiety and trepidation clouded her whenever thoughts about visits came up. There were so many variable to consider and this sporadic invitation was creating uncomfortable waves.

“I won’t badger you about it again, but I will ask about it later this week, just so I know where you are in your headspace. Does that sound fair?”

She nods and concedes for now. “I’ll give them a call.”

The rest of the car ride is quiet until the pastures turn into housing developments and suburbs. It’s just past noon when they finally reach his place, and Riza is utterly grateful. The nap, while nice, had given her an awkward crick in her back and it isn’t until she extends her body out fully that she can feel the tense muscles relaxing. They had picked up some Xingese takeaway once they had reached the city limits, and she is more than ready to demolish some quality fried rice.

Roy has barely opened the front door when his phone lights up and it’s kind of hilarious how quickly his face loses colour. “Oh, fuck.”

“Who is it?”

He shakes his head, swiping to answer. “Madre,” he says distractedly, and then amends, “My mother” as if he meant to say it in Amestrian all along.

He walks away further into the apartment and the sounds of a very sharp voice starts talking in a volume she can hear from where she’s standing. The caller is chastising him, judging by the way he pulls the phone away from his ear. Riza figures he’ll be distracted for a while, and motions for the car keys, which he hands her absentmindedly, jabbering away in Spanish.

She leaves the takeaway on the kitchen island, sneaking one of the spring rolls as she drops back down to the carport to pick up the rest of their luggage. It’s a tight squeeze, but she manages to do it in one trip, Roy trying to stifle a laugh as she waddles down the hallway, her fingers protesting as the leather straps of his bags cut deep into her skin.

The dismount is inelegant in the bedroom. She sets down the worn cardboard box atop the bed and then drops the bags next to it without considering how close it is to the edge. The box topples off the bed and spills papers, envelopes, and folders as if it was trying to reach the sunset washed window in one final, desperate bid for daylight.

Riza kneels to the floor to gather it together and stuff them back inside the box until she gets a better look at what she’s handling. Her curiosity piques when she sees a well worn front cover of a PhD thesis with his name on it, gold embossing worn down after years in storage. Looking closer, she sees receipts and old bills mixed in with scholarly journals, dog-eared and faded.

It’s a box of things he left behind.

One of the envelopes tears from seams that has met its limits. Paper of thicker stock spill over her lap, colorful and glossy as it cascades out before she can catch it. Then she recognizes the faces. Military uniform, graduation, candids featuring a younger Maes and Roy, another with youthful optimism, and a sleeping Roy with a scraggly, marker-drawn mustache and Maes grinning at the camera with the marker in question. It’s a handful of them, but there’s a signal going off in her head, telling her this only features people she already knows. Sure, there are pictures of pictures with buddies. It’s strange that she can’t see any that feature his mother or his sisters, she thinks as she reaches for the broken envelope. Or even -

There’s a photo that remained inside, folded in half. “for when u miss me xoxo” it reads on the back in handwriting that is somewhere between half-cursive and half-print. The imprint of a red lipstick kiss is perfectly preserved right below it.

She weighs the decision of looking at this photo in her head for a full minute and her index finger slides in between the folded sides for another. The note left behind clearly implies something suggestive, but she’d get a face to this enigma she’s been placing in the back burner for months. The other photos are returned to the box, and Riza leans back, fully resting her weight on her legs, deliberating.

Her curiosity gets the better of her and she flips the photo open. She breathes out in relief when it’s not a full nude or anything sexually explicit and private. However, Riza studies the photo and acknowledges she has come across something still incredibly intimate.

The photo is casual in nature. A capture of a singular moment in time with two people in their early twenties, set in a tropical backdrop. Roy in his younger years is only discernible by the short cut of his hair. He holds a cigarette and has a smile across his face, eyes bright and youthful like all the others. He’s wearing his standard button up shirt in pink shade that looks exceptionally and surprisingly stunning on him, popping out more than anything else in the photo. And it’s also the first of any photo where he’s pictured holding a cigarette between two of his fingers. His hand is tucked into his front jean pocket. He looks carefree, confident with a cocky smile on his face. Completely unperturbed by the arms wrapped around him.

The woman standing behind him is shorter than him in stature. Half her face hides behind Roy’s shoulder, but just over the crest reveals her brown smiling eyes.  She bears a glowing café au lait complexion with brown curls short and soft enough that would make Rebecca envious. Her arms coil over his tailor-fitted shirt and she’s tucked a hand into the unbuttoned portion over his sternum and slipped it well into his shirt, undoubtedly to feel the well-defined muscle under the fabric. Her other arm is wrapped around his waist. If Riza were to guess, she imagines the image was only supposed to be a shot of Roy until she slipped into the picture and under his shirt.

For months, this woman has been an enigma with only a nickname. It’s one thing to hear stories, to be given little fragments and try to piece together an entire person. Only a nickname and now, a name and half a face. Greta, Riza surmises, stares at her, speaks to her and anyone else who would look at it with body language to corroborate the message she’s sending. It strangely transcends the time from when the picture was originally taken.

She is saying, he is mine.

It’s a sick fascination for her, studying the way Greta’s arm snakes across his chest, catches on the open fabric of his shirt. Logically, Riza knows she’s getting upset over something… not insignificant, certainly, but firmly in the past, and delving further into this Pandora’s box will not make her feel any better.

All her contemplating eats up her time as his footsteps sound in the hallway and in a panic, she stuffs the picture into her back pocket. The lid of the box is hastily folded back over and she pushes it to the side of his dresser, half obscured by the shadow cast from laundry hamper.

He appears in the doorway just as she shrugs on a sweater. “Hey,” he starts, awkwardly hovering. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier in the car. That was dickish of me.”

Riza nods. “You’re okay. I was dickish too.”

Roy’s smile is small, but genuine, and he holds his phone up. “What did you want to do for dinner?”

Riza shakes her head. “I think I’ll go back to the flat after I eat. ‘Becca wanted to give me my present.”

His smile falters for a moment, clearly disappointed, but he nods. “Let me know when you want to go. I’ll drop off the rental at the same time and enter in final grades.”

The trip to her flat is subdued. Roy kisses her forehead in the goodbye, and Riza feels the photograph burn a hole in her back pocket.

When Riza opens the door, the sweet aroma of hot chocolate wafts through the air of her apartment. Rebecca is sitting on the couch, nursing a steaming mug, and is so heavily engrossed in her cellphone she doesn’t hear Riza come in. Her footsteps are light as she approaches. She’s almost succeeds until her friend realises and jerks in surprise.

“Shit, Ri-” Rebecca’s fingers slip against the mug, but manages to get a grip and sets it down quickly. She curls her body to face Riza properly. “You could have killed me,” Rebecca admonishes, dramatically placing a hand over her chest. “Is that what you want, a dead best friend?”

Riza grins broadly, feeling a sudden gratitude for her antics, and she leans down to hug her. Rebecca’s hair is still faintly damp, curls not quite suffocating her like they usually do, and fragrant. “Sorry,” she mumbles, releasing her after a moment. “I did text.”

“Did you? I got up like twenty minutes ago,” Rebecca explains after letting Riza go. “My day so far has consisted of me standing in the shower for ten minutes and another five remembering I needed to turn the kettle on if I wanted to have coffee.”

Riza checks her phone; it was quarter past four in the afternoon. “Don’t forget zoning out so hard an intruder could just walk in. Rough night studying?”

Rebecca shrugs and slides over to make room for Riza on the couch. “You could say that.” She says this with a strange quality to her voice, like the question is inherently funny.

Riza deposits her duffle bag on the sturdy coffee table they nabbed from a yard sale, mindful of the still-steaming mug, and sits on the couch. “Was your last exam today?”

“Yesterday,” she answers quickly.

Riza scrunches her brow. “Yesterday was Sunday.”

She stammers, wrinkling her face to remember, “I meant this morning. I went back to bed after it. Cut me some slack, I’ve only just woken up.”

“Here I thought this was you regularly.” Riza ignores the cutting look from her friend. “Did you have to take a lot of them this semester?”

“Yep,” she says with a slight pop to the end of her reply. “Not matter how easy exams are, it’s always such a relief when they’re completely over." Rebecca gets an equally strange smile on her face. “The exams went fine. I wasn’t too worried about them. Me and Alyssa and Emma - you’ve met them before, Hayden’s twenty-first - we decided to go hit the town last night to celebrate.”

“The night before an exam?” Riza questions as she grabs the mug of hot chocolate, refusing to leave it unattended any longer.

“I was drinking that,” Rebecca frowns and Riza evades a swipe from her mid-sip. “And yes, Mother Hawkeye. I think only the med students have anything left now, rest of the campus is in a constant state of partying.”

Riza moves the cup out of Rebecca’s hands as she reaches for it. “But I thought you swore off partying for exam week. You haven’t done it since-”

“Since that first semester as freshman, I know. But it was a special occasion.” She presses down at her eyes and rubs them. “I could sleep for another week.”

Riza hands the mug back to its original owner. She sighs, relating to her friend’s sentiment. “You and me both.”

“Mm!” Rebecca protests with hot liquid still in her mouth. “And excuse you, you were off enjoying Central!” She swats playfully at Riza’s knee. “Less about me, more about you. How did it go? I was actually dying to message you but I figured I had better let you have your fun.”

Riza lets the topic shift. Whatever Rebecca had going on would come out in due course. Besides, her tongue pokes through her teeth as she reminisces. “It was a good time,” she begins, unzipping her ankle boots to kick them off. Her arm mirrors Rebecca’s as she pushes against the back of the couch, tucking her legs under her. “Had a bit of a crash course in birthday parties.”

“There was a birthday party for you?”

Riza laughs. “Hell no. I think Roy might’ve tried that if he had more time - no, I texted you this, didn’t I? We stayed with some friends of his, their daughter had just turned three. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that much screaming before.”

“And… ?”

“And what?”

Rebecca gives her an exasperated look. “You wouldn’t be looking so smug with yourself over a kids birthday party, novelty or not. I know that expression.” She sighs deeply. “Can’t believe I got kicked out off the ‘best present-giver’ throne after seven years.”

“And what expression is that ‘Becca?” It’s difficult to keep her face neutral while remembering the very vivid events of last night.

“That is the face you get when you’ve been fucked silly. I hope he put in a bit more effort than just whipping his dick out.”

“He did,” Riza answers, well aware of the blush staining her cheeks. “Bought me an outfit, bought me dinner, apparently visited like three bookshops to find my present… it was literally perfect.”

Rebecca makes a grabbing motion with her hand. “You took pics right?”

Riza whips out her phone and starts searching for the location of the photos. “He apparently took some candids while I wasn’t looking.”

“Oh shit I would have been maaaad.” She shakes her head.

“I would have too, but they’re actually not that bad.” She hands her the phone.

“Holy fuck.” Rebecca whistles low, and fans herself dramatically as she inspects the photos closely. “I’m definitely gonna borrow this. Your man has taste. You know I recognize this collection, right? Olivier would have a meltdown if she saw you all dolled up in that.” A sly grin grows on her face. “Please tell me you’re gonna post this up. She deserves to be put in her place. She’s not the only one who can pull off current-season Pronovias.”

“The last thing I need is people sticking their noses into business where they don’t belong.” Riza shakes her head, swiping her phone back. “Not that I’m any better.”

“Semester’s over now! Are you worried about her coming back to strike?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Rebecca tilts her head to the side.

The hastily-stuffed photograph in her back pocket comes to the forefront of her mind’s eye, and Riza wonders whether her best friend can offer an unbiased view. She’s not used to this; a jealousy for a person that’s entirely in the picture. Both figuratively and literally. Especially the kind so fixated on one person, rather than a situation as a whole. She can’t tell if it’s merely nerves at the fact that she will probably have to meet this woman in the flesh at some point, or if it has unearthed a deep-seated insecurity. “Now that the semester is over, he’s invited me to go on a trip with him.”

“Go where? Judging by your tone, you’re making me thinking he’s invited you to a funeral.”

“Roy’s friends…” she begins, trying to think of the simplest way to explain this, “for reference, they’re loaded. Our flat could probably fit in their living room and kitchen alone. Probably as rich as Olivier, to be honest. They’re just a lot nicer about it.”

Rebecca taps over her mouth as she says, “Go on”

“Roy’s friend, Maes - I don’t think I’ve ever met a more devoted father. Family is everything to him… and he likes making grand gestures. They’re throwing this big party for their wedding anniversary and Roy wants me to go with him.”

“And you think you don’t want to go? Why?”

“It’s in Aerugo.”

Rebecca chokes. “Oh fuck!” she manages, furiously wiping away what spilled onto her chest. The mug is placed back down on the table, and Riza passes over some takeout napkins. “Where in Aerugo?” Rebecca asks after a few frantic moments of trying to save her top.

Riza scratches an itch on her brow. “He said they own the island or something? I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s called San Clavel or something.”

“Oh, Riza.” She says with a wagging finger. “You’re going on that trip. That’s final. Like, he’s paying for you, right?”

“He’s offered, but I mean-”

“But what? You know that in Aerugo absolutely nobody is gonna recognise you. You two could commit bloody murder there and all of us back home would be none-the-wiser.”

“I don’t know about that. The problem is that I’d need to reschedule with my father.” Riza knows she’s using this excuse, but she needs time to prepare for these kinds of visits, just as much as the facility that cares for him needs time to prepare him for her.

As painful as it was with every visit, Riza couldn’t cut him out of her life. The father she loved as a little girl might be nothing more than a husk now, but sometimes she’d catch glimpses of the person he used to be.

Rebecca hums sympathetically. “That’s rough. I’m sure if you call them up and explain they might be able to rearrange his schedule a little, right?”

“I suppose.” Riza doesn’t mean to sound as churlish as she does, but Rebecca merely links their fingers together and squeezes comfortingly.

“I think you should. Do you want me to go with you? Maybe if I annoy him enough he’ll snap at me just like the old times.”

That effervescent, irreverent humour is what she needs right now, though Riza might be loath to admit it. Rebecca’s grin is genuine as much as it is teasing.

“No, no,” she tells her, slumping to rest against her: Rebecca’s arm curls around her and draws meandering patterns through her sweater with manicured nails. “It’ll be easier if it’s just me. You should be celebrating your freedom.”

Rebecca hums in a non committal sort of way, and reaches for an thick envelope on the coffee table and passes it to her - to dearest, darlingest Riza is emblazoned on the front in Rebecca’s familiar loopy script. “Happy birthday, Ri,” she tells her. “I thought it’d be better if I let you choose rather than me getting you something you didn’t like.”

She thumbs open the envelope, prying away the glue with care. A gourmet chocolate bar - the kind that Riza knew she’d never bother to buy herself because the price was absurd, and a gift card for the university bookstore. “Thank you ‘Becca. Ten thousand cenz though? You spoil me.”

Rebecca laughs. “Considering the last book I had to buy for my economics class cost me twelve thousand, I’d be surprised if this even gets you an entire book at all. Maybe I should’ve invested in a bookcase for you instead. Not that it was ever gonna compare to lover boy though. I can’t believe he wants to whisk you off to Aerugo.”

She keeps quiet, until Rebecca pinches her.

“Ow! The hell ‘Becca!?” Riza sits up clumsily, rubbing at the reddened skin of her neck.

“I get being antsy about your dad. Really, I do. What I don’t get it why you seem so mopey about it - location notwithstanding, don’t you want to spend more time with him?”

“No - I do-”

“Because this isn’t the kind of reaction any guy would want to get. Hell, if you’re so on the fence, I’ll just don a blonde wig and go in your place. He wouldn’t notice, right?”

Riza snorts. “I think he might. I still don’t think he’s over the little stunt you pulled-”

Rebecca jabs an accusing finger in her face. “There! It is about him! You’re telling me you just had a spectacular birthday with the guy but don’t know about a trip away?”

Riza bites the bullet, and fishes out the hastily-folded photograph out and passes it to Rebecca. She frowns as she accepts it, the corners of her full lips pursing. “What’s this?”

“His ex. His best friend had some old boxes of his. This was in them.”

The eyebrows of her friend almost disappear into her hair. “And you went snooping?”

Riza groans. “I didn’t mean to! I knocked it over by accident and it all just fell out.”

“But… you took this. I assume he doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t.” Her voice is small, and Riza tucks her knees under her chin. “Logically I know I shouldn’t care but…”

“But what? Should you be concerned?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. She just always seems to be popping up even though they’ve been broken up for two years.”

“Talk me through it. You might be too close to the situation - and don’t make that face at me Riza - you can’t not be biased against her. You nicked a photo for crying out loud.”

“Okay, okay.” Riza holds up her hands in acquiescence. It stung having Rebecca - sometimes flighty, occasionally impulsive Rebecca - be more grounded than she clearly was at the moment.

“Roy told me that they’d dated for… seven years. They were engaged too, at one point. Apparently they broke up because he wanted kids and she didn’t.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah. I didn’t expect that either. I don’t think it was the only reason they broke up, but it seemed like the biggest one. What makes it more complicated is that she’s kind of… related to Gracia, his best friend’s wife. But Maes, the best friend, Gracia’s husband  - I get the impression he doesn’t like her. Like, at all. Apparently he was the one who gave her the nickname Axe-”

“Wait, wait wait - the Axe you were telling me about who was drunk texting him?”

Riza nods.

“Disparaging nickname or not… a guy who keeps an ex in his phone like that-” Rebecca sighs deeply, and rolls her shoulders back. “That’s generally not a good sign Riza.”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen the texts - it’s just late night drunkenness.”

“So why doesn’t he just block her number?” Rebecca takes a long sip of her hot chocolate. “Any way you look at it is pretty damning in my opinion. An ex who won’t stop clinging to a relationship that he ended?”

She hates to admit Rebecca has a point.

“Not all affairs are physical, Riza,” her friend warns. “Emotional cheating is very much a thing. And considering you guys weren’t… a couple from the beginning, it’s not a great foundation to build from. A random hookup? I wouldn’t give a shit. An ex? That’s far murkier territory.”

It would be foolish not to admit that the circumstances aren’t great, but neither were the ones their relationship originated from. Maybe she’s refusing to see the forest for the trees, but Riza finds it difficult to think Roy capable of managing two significant secrets in his personal life not interfering by this point. “Sure, but that wouldn’t explain why he had no qualms about introducing me to all his former colleagues at the party. I got the impression that Greta runs - or did run, at least - in similar circles to his. It wouldn’t make sense to even want to bring me to Central if that was the case. If she didn’t know back then, I bet anything that she knows by now.”

Rebecca’s face scrunches up, considering. “I guess,” she says slowly, “...and I guess none of your relationship is really typical either. Nobody made any comments about it?”

“About us?” Riza throws her mind back to the party, and the people she talked to. Most didn’t seem overly interested in her - not to her face, certainly, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t murmurs about the person Roy brought with him. “Most of the interest stemmed from the fact that Roy had lost contact with a lot of them and so they wanted to know how he was getting on. Gracia was the only one to actually bring up Greta in any serious capacity… and she’s her cousin or something so maybe she’d heard a different story of how things went down.

“It’s weird though; Maes genuinely dislikes her, from what I gathered. But the way Gracia talked made it sound like she was still in contact with her? I don’t know.” Riza buries her head in her hands. The more she thinks about it, the more she becomes confused.

“Okay, okay.” Rebecca sets down her empty mug, and pries Riza’s hands away from her head. “In simple terms, you’re jealous of a woman who still has some connections in Roy’s life. Whether those are through his own actions or not I can’t definitively say. What I can say, is that he’s invited you to go to Aerugo with him, for - what did you say, a wedding anniversary?”

“Vow renewal.”

“Okay, so at the very least he wants to spend more time with you, yeah? And it might be a case of him trying to kill two birds with one stone, but I don’t think you should write off the fact that he’s actively trying to involve you into the other parts of his life as best he can.” Rebecca flips the photo over, and makes a disgusted face at the note she finds. “For when you miss me? Is she anticipating that he’ll go back to her? Bleurgh. Clearly he hasn’t, if it was stuffed in a box that he forgot about.”

Riza rings the psychiatric facility the next morning, and speaks briefly to the doctor in charge of her father’s care. The doctor couldn’t make any promises that she could fit in a visit earlier than what they had decided on months beforehand, but she promised to at least try. It was all Riza could really ask for.

It isn't until Saturday morning when she finally gets a returning call, the familiar number of the facility emblazoned on her lockscreen.

“Doctor Cassidy,” Riza answers after a moment. “How are you?” She desperately wants to know whether her request has been accepted, but she can’t bring herself to be completely dismissive of the woman who has ensured the care of her father has been successful. A call on a Saturday, however, is unusual: Riza feels her gut sinking despite her best hopes. It was a lot to ask, in hindsight.

Evelyn Cassidy has been a constant point in Riza’s life since the accident, and her familiar, husky voice brings with it a rush of comfort and reassurance that Riza finds herself in surprising want of. “Can’t say it’s been a great week, Riza - your father certainly gave me a run for my money,” she barks a laugh, “But I was able to wrangle your visit nonetheless. He might not be very happy about it, but he has agreed to see you. Might I know why you’ve changed the date?”

The relief is palpable: Riza feels a line of tension aligning tightly against her spine dissipate into nothing. “I’ve been invited on a trip that was going to conflict with the visit next month. You know I’ve never missed an appointment, and… I don’t know, this seemed like a better compromise than cancelling.”

Doctor Cassidy hums down the phone line. “I’m glad you did call. It’s good for Berthold to have some change in his routine, especially when the result is still overwhelmingly positive. It’s good for you too, you know.”

Riza doesn’t know. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a good kid Riza, the epitome of a devoted daughter. I’m just saying that it’s good that you are putting your own life and commitments first as well. You might have a duty to your father, but he has one to you just as much.” Riza hears the shuffling of paper down the line. “I’ve arranged for you to come in at two-thirty this afternoon. Does that work for you? I know this is last minute, otherwise we can arrange for the following Saturday. He’s just in a relatively stable mood as far as I could tell this morning, and your request seemed urgent.”

Riza leans back in her chair, craning at her makeshift paper calendar pinned to the bottom of her mirror on instinct. It stares back at her blankly: quite literally so. She’s not used to her schedule being so lenient. “Yes, I can make that. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Good! Good. Unfortunately I won’t be here this afternoon, but the nurses know you’re coming. I don't think anybody else has got visits scheduled, so you should have the visiting space to yourself. He’ll appreciate that, I’m sure. I’ll leave you to it then, Riza - the nurses will let me know how it goes.”

Riza utters a quick goodbye, and then stares at the picture on her lockscreen - a view from the guest bedroom, Central gleaming in the afternoon sun like a well-polished gemstone. Their little… spat, she supposes, had left a lingering sour taste that she hadn’t felt able to wash away completely yet. It wasn’t like they weren’t talking to one another, but to Riza at least, she felt like there was a feeling of awkwardness that still clung to her.

However, that wasn’t going to stop her seeking him out in spite of that. Her thumbs drift over the touchscreen, and she navigates to his number. If she was going to visit her father this afternoon, she wanted to be in a good mood when she did - one of them needed to be, apparently.

It rings a few times before he picks up. “What’s up?” Roy asks, after a moment.

“Nothing much, I - where are you?” There’s… music in the background, if she had to hazard a guess, though it’s a stretch.

He laughs, the pleasant, deep kind that travels from the speaker and straight into her bones. “I’m at the gym right now. Did you need something, or is this just for pleasure?”

Riza snickers, shaking her head in bemusement. “The latter, actually. I just wondered if you wanted to have lunch. I’ve got to bug out this afternoon, that’s all.” She had planned on doing some more work for him - Roy had given her his login key and she was going to spend all afternoon down in the bowels of the library, photocopying and printing off an absurd amount of chemical literature, but that could wait until tomorrow morning instead.

“Yeah? I could manage that. Do you want me to pick something up?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. Whatever you feel like, I’m not too hungry.”

“Okay, I shouldn’t be too much longer,” he answers her after a slight pause. “Just let yourself in if I don’t beat you back home.”

Roy is in the kitchen freshly showered when he hears his front door open, debating whether another cup of coffee is a good idea when it’s only lunchtime. A large part of his morning had been spent pouring over the notes Elric had ever-so-helpfully scrawled in the margins of his new paper on organic compounds. The guy might be a real pain in the ass to work with - even distantly - but Roy couldn’t deny that his critiques didn’t have merit. The other part had been spent at the gym, which was the healthier way to work off some steam instead of lighting up.

He wouldn’t consider himself a chain smoker, more social than anything, but he’s struggling to remember the last time he had actually smoked. He had come across a half-used pack of Parliament's while searching for some shorts, and the thought had given him pause. Maes had always been banging on to him about quitting - he had to help be a role model to Elicia, after all - but it was hard to give up after all these years… slight nicotine addiction notwithstanding.

Perhaps it was foolish to be looking for meaning where there might not be any, but Roy was sure that she had something to do with it. She had never made any opinions known about this habit, but there always was a lingering feeling of guilt regardless.

He’s pleasantly surprised when he feels her arms slip around his torso, pressing her head against the expanse of her back. “Hello,” he greets her lightly, reaching for the cupboard with the mugs. “Can I interest you in some coffee?”

He feels her shake her head slightly, feels the heavy exhale she lets go that heaves her shoulders up and down. “No, thank you.”

Roy is quiet as he sets up the machine, only turning in her arms once his espresso is done. His fingers hover over her fringe, delicately pushing it out of her eyes. “Que tienes?” The food he had picked up from the bistro lies forgotten next to the stove, still steaming through the paper bag. This is more important right now - and, he realises, could account for her funky mood earlier this week.

“I’m okay,” she tells him, though he doubts that is accurate. “The clinic finally called back yesterday and said this afternoon would be the best time to visit Father. Apparently he hasn’t been doing so well recently.”

His arms wrap around her firmly and he presses his lips to her hair. “I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps your visit will be a good influence.” The information she’s given freely about her father is scant, but Roy knows that this is quite possibly the only topic that she’ll never truly feel comfortable talking about, no matter how many years pass. He empathises with her deeply - while now he’s come to terms with the ways in which he was treated in foster care, he had the privilege of coming out the other side with not only his blood family, but all of his adopted siblings too. He has had years to build up relationships again, to learn how to trust freely once more.

Riza is not so lucky in that regard. He sees a lot of himself in her behaviour, in how she processes these things. Grief, and the process of grieving, is not as clear-cut and linear as people posit: and for hurts that go as deeply as theirs do… it’s never easy.

Riza makes a strange little snort, and sighs deeply once more. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen,” she says, her voice muffled a little by the way she rests her head against his chest. “It’s always the same with him… silence, and maybe a nod if he’s feeling up to it. Some days I wonder why I even bother.”

She sounds so jaded, and it cuts deeply that there isn’t really anything he can do to help her. Unless -

The epiphany dawns over him slowly. “Would... would you like me to go with you?”

Riza blinks and pulls back to look at him properly. “What?”

“You said so yourself - these visits aren’t nice for you. They’re stressful - and I see that Riza, hell, I experienced it firsthand.” He feels his lips quirk upwards at the memory. “I know they’re important for you, but I don’t want you feeling like you’re having to… I don’t know, get them over with? In order to come to Aerugo with me. The last thing I want is for you to feel like you’ve gone about this the wrong way.”

Riza takes a step back, arms unconsciously curling around herself. “Why would you come?”

“Moral, emotional support. Unless you don’t want me there.” He keeps his tone light, like they are discussing the weather, not an incredibly private part of her life. He knows she can’t have a fuss made of this, or she’ll clam up. This behaviour alone - it’s worrying. There is a difference between debelibrately prying and poking at issues that should be left well alone, and then there’s purposeful pushing away.

She told him mere months ago that it was just easier to keep people at arms length than admit any kind of sentiment, that she had learned long ago from the actions of others that her feelings were inconsequential in the bigger picture. It runs deep in her, and Roy thinks his heart might break at the walls she’s rapidly putting up, even to him.

“I don’t-” she stops, frowning. “No, I-” she exhales harshly, and presses her lips together firmly. “These visits… they’re not nice, Roy. Really. I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.”

“And I don’t want them wished on you.” He steps towards her, fingers sliding under her chin to examine her closely. At this distance he can see flecks of gold in her warm, brown eyes. She is so, so brave. “Not alone, certainly.”

Her eyes widen, her lips part, and she looks like she might cry. Riza’s gaze lowers from his, but Roy keeps quiet, fingers steady on her jawbone. If she moves away, he won’t stop her from doing so.

She speaks up after a few minutes of unsettling silence. “Do you want to meet my father?”

“Yes,” he tells her honestly. “But it’s not a demand. If you’re not comfortable with it now, then we can table it for later. I’d like to at some point, though.”

Riza chews on her lower lip thoughtfully. “And if I said I wanted to meet your foster mother?”

Roy snickers, leaning down to kiss her forehead. Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. “Then I would organise that. Not before preparing you for the Spanish Inquisition that will undoubtedly happen.”

Her eyebrow raises disbelievingly. “I doubt I’m that interesting.”

He turns to his espresso on the counter and takes a careful sip. “I beg to differ, avecilla. Besides, it wouldn’t just be my mother you’d be meeting. My sisters will want to meet you as well.” All fourteen of them goes unsaid, but Roy can only imagine the chaos of that environment.

“Do they know about me?”

Ah - the million cenz question. “Yes,” he answers truthfully. “They know you exist. Remember the phone call I got when we got back?”

Riza nods, her eyebrows creasing together. “Your mother wasn’t happy with you, if I’m remembering right.” She seems to hold herself tenser here, but he dismisses it.

“Yes, well… she had found out I had been back in Central and I hadn’t visited her, so that was strike number one. But word got to Vanessa that you had joined me as well, and I was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t bring you around immediately I would be disowned.” Well, that was the sanitised version. The actual words that were spoken were a lot more intimidating and involved all sorts of colourful threats directed at his person - the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Roy. Of course he wanted to introduce them all to Riza: he merely wanted to make sure she’d survive the encounter as well.

“They must care about you a lot.” He doesn’t miss the wistfulness in her voice, however hard she tries to bury it.

Perhaps it is a bit presumptuous of him to be thinking this far ahead, but given time, he could see her becoming close with his sisters. Not all of them, but the quieter ones; Roy thinks she would find in them kindred spirits. He has no doubts that she will be welcomed with open arms, treated as one of their own - but it’s more a matter if Riza would let herself be… well, adopted in such a manner.

His foster mother is another issue to navigate entirely, and deep down Roy knows no amount of coaching on what to expect will actually prepare Riza for the formidable woman that is Christina Mustang. He’s been careful in what he’s fed to her; enough to keep her placated, not to dig too much - because god knows what his mother would do if she found out the exact circumstances in which they met - but even still, he finds her intimidating, after all these years.

Maybe it’s selfish of him to ask this of her so suddenly, to meet her father who won’t have the capacity to respond in any meaningful way. But he needs to know the truth of her situation, and Riza has been very good about deflecting the issue. He understands that it’s difficult to talk about, especially considering the way in which she had to become an adult… but if he’s being honest with himself, he also wants to meet the man that by all appearances treated his daughter as an afterthought. The two of them might have plenty of parent issues between them, but Roy knows that she’s still coming to terms with her own.

Besides, Chris didn’t raise him to be disrespectful. The man deserved to meet him, even if he wasn’t able to give them much of an opinion or even his blessing.

“They mean well. Perhaps we could drop in for a visit on the way back from Aerugo - bringing them some food back from there would go over well.” It’s not a bad plan, when he actually thinks about it: Cecelia was due literally any day now, and she would be more than willing to run a little interference for him when they visited. Having a new grandchild present as well as Riza would keep his mother from focusing too much on either of them - meaning the visit would be less likely to end with Riza swearing off his family forever. It’s a little strange for him to recognise that he is somewhat nervous for her to meet them, but then again, it’s been years since he’s brought someone home at all.

Riza nods thoughtfully. “I guess that would be… fair.” She rubs at her eyes roughly. “If you’re gonna come with me then you’ll need a sweater or something long-sleeved. The softer the better.”

“Dare I ask why?”

A bitter smile grows on Riza’s face. “Normally he’s fine, but when I was first visiting he’d have… outbursts I guess. Scratching, tearing at his hair… they said it was because it was a new environment, and I was a new face for him after so many months in hospital. He might not even acknowledge us.”

The place is bleak, and Roy has spent a significant part of his childhood in interview rooms waiting for overloaded social workers to remember they had an appointment with his fosterers. There’s an overwhelming feeling of forgottenness here, from the peeling paint on the edifice, to the way the weeds grow in the cracks of the path to the front door. The inside is only marginally better - twenty or even thirty years ago, Roy would have agreed that this hospice was state-of-the-art.

Now it just feels horribly dated, a relic of the past that had been left behind.

Riza approaches the front desk, and speaks in low tones with the woman there. He’s staring at a painted mural that has definitely seen better days when she calls him over.

“Write your name here -” she tells him, indicating to a sheet of large white label stickers, “- and then she’ll go over the rules.”

The list of rules the nurse explains is exhaustive. No raised voices. No sudden or surprise touch. No electrical equipment. Nails to be filed down. No belts, rings - earrings - he realises her ever-present pearls are missing as she hands over her hair clip. The reality of this situation is even more harrowing than he could’ve imagined. Roy briefly debates writing in a pseudonym on his name tag, but considering he had to hand over his wallet, it wouldn't have made much difference anyway.

“We were surprised to hear from you again,” the nurse tells Riza as they turn down another long corridor. “Quite so soon, certainly. I think Berthold will like it.”

Riza makes an discontented noise. “Doctor Cassidy told me he hadn’t been well when I spoke to her on the phone this morning. I don't think this visit will be very long.”

They pass through the metal detector and the nurse - Gladys, Roy gleans from the embroidered section of her uniform, shrugs. “Even if it is, it’s still a good thing Riza. I know your father likes his routine but Evelyn did believe that this… disruption would be worth the momentary tantrums. Healing isn’t always so linear.” She guides them through another shorter hallway, and slides the door open to the visiting room. “Fabian will be here to take you back when you want to leave.”

Riza nods and thanks her, before squeezing his hand tightly. “Ready?” she asks him.

Roy nods. “Of course.”

The visiting room is a sparse affair, but it strikes Roy just how normal it looks. That is, until his eyes are drawn to the way furniture is bolted to the ground, to the heavy grate across the unlit fireplace, to the way the windows are barred and reinforced. The security measure reminds him of one of the rougher foster homes he was placed in while awaiting long-term fostering.

Riza gives him little time to get his bearings, instead pulling him over to a man sitting in a plush armchair near the fireplace.

“Roy, this is my father, Berthold Hawkeye,” Riza says, uncharacteristically chipper, like a customer service employee. Forced smiles and high pitched. She kneels down in front of the man and Roy takes a seat in the chair opposite. “Papa, I’ve been told you’re not happy that I rescheduled,” she continues carefully, like this quiet, catatonic man will maul her at any given moment. “But I’ve brought someone that I’d like you to meet. He’s a chemist, like you.” The man moves his head subtly. Riza glances at him apprehensively, but only for a moment. Her voice certainly doesn’t betray her. “And... also, my boyfriend.”

Slowly, Berthold looks up, and a brief smile appears on Riza’s face. “I had hoped that’d get your attention. This is-”

Roy put his hand up to stop her and he moves to the edge of his seat, nearly off the cushion it as he inches closer. He extends his hand out to her father for a handshake. It stays there, suspended in the air as Berthold’s blue eyes look at them listlessly, then to Riza and then to Roy, before he just as slowly takes the offer on the handshake. He can hear Riza’s breath shudder in relief.

“My name is Roy Mustang and it’s a pleasure to meet you... sir.”

Later that evening, they lie over his sheets in a pensive, post-coital stupor. Both of them naked from the heat that’s beginning to settle over East City; late spring giving way to early summer. It’s been five minutes since either of them has said anything. He’s on his side, head propped up by his hands. She’s lying on her stomach, face turned away from but he knows she’s not asleep from the way she’s breathing. At the moment, Roy is silent to simply be there for her, to let her process. She was in a peculiar mood following the visit with her father; an in-between of being glad that it went well and confusion. Even if she doesn’t wear her emotions like he does, he would be remiss if he didn’t suspect this required a substantial amount of emotional energy.

He also notices that she doesn’t flinch when he traces over the texture of her scars.

Berthold Hawkeye was quiet throughout his daughter’s abridged version of their relationship. This version of the story focused heavily on her job as his assistant and he didn’t fault her for it. Occasionally Berthold had nodded, but largely his head was turned away from the two of them, seemingly transfixed on his left hand, fingers flexing and relaxing every so often.

All the way through her retelling, he had been keenly aware of her bravado. She was so tense next to him, even more so than when Maes was grilling them. Who the act was for, he wasn’t sure: for her father, for him? For herself? In the end, he supposes it was a mix of them all.

Finally, as if reading his mind, Riza says, “I haven’t seen him respond like that in a-” she breathes in, her back just barely cresting to touch the moonlight and then back down into the shadows “-long, long time.”

Her father only given them simple responses, grunts, and nods; very rudimentary social gestures. He feels for her dearly if that had been a vast improvement. “How long?” he asks simply.

“Years.”

Roy breathes out slowly and nears to kiss her bare shoulder. “I’m sorry that’s something you had to deal with on your own.”

Her shoulder blades move in a shrug under his fingertips. “It is what it is,” she says softly.

From the way she’s still looking away from him, into the shadows of his room, he suspects she’s crying or trying really hard not to. He admires her for her fortitude. It must have taken years and years to build up that shell of hers, to keep what she feels hidden from plain sight. Roy remains silent, letting her talk through this.

“My mother, she passed when I was a baby. Growing up, I had a theory that he wasn’t always so distant like he was; that when my mother died, a part of him died with her. I can’t even resent him for that. And then, the accident… that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“He spent day after day locked in his study whenever I was home, for years. It was his life’s work and to this day, I still don’t know what he was trying to do. I was simply too young to understand and even if I did, I don’t think he would have let me in.

“He was very traditionalist. Everything on paper. Nothing electronic. That way he knows it’s real, he’d say. Then something went wrong, some problem that had been giving him grief for weeks on end. He was always frustrated, muttering, banging the walls - he’d been in his study longer than ever, not coming down for meals, and leaving the food I’d bring him to get cold. I shouldn’t have been in there, in his lab. I was only bringing him some tea when he miscalculated and set off something incendiary. All of his research burned the day I got those scars.” She sighs. “He has some too, but not as severe.”

He lacks the words to appropriately respond. She’s unloading a childhood trauma that he knew was severe, but she’s dishing it out so nonchalantly, like it was just another story.

“Did you know I only majored in Chemistry for him?” She sniffles so quietly he almost misses it and his fingers stop.

“To have something to bring up to him for these visits. To engage with him in conversation he’s historically responded to. It would work at first, when I started getting past the general education requirements and then his reactions started to dwindle down again. I had thought I was just going to have to be patient until I got further and further. Career-wise, it wasn’t a bad decision either.

“In the end, it got me to you.” Her head turns to him with her eyes are bright and her mouth smiling. “And today, you helped showed me he’s not all the way gone.”

“I’m glad I can talk nerdy with your dad then.”

“It was good for him. Or at least, there’s some hope that it was.”

“Of course.” He kisses her forehead. “And since we’re exchanging war stories…”

“Is that what we’re doing?” she teases.

“Sure,” he smiles back. “It’s actually very similar to yours. But you have to promise me you can keep it a secret.”

She looks at him from her pillow, and purses her lips. “I believe I kept one all semester. I’d say my record is pretty good so far.”

“I have to cover my bases,” he says with a laugh. “My team in Research and Development were tasked with creating a very specific type of wearable weapons. The simplest explanation for the prototype would be… pyrotechnic gloves, I guess. The idea was that it would be able to pass by unscrutinised by anybody looking closer, so it could be smuggled in by spies and double agents to use at close range. The eventual goal was to be able to make a movement as innocuous as a snap of the fingers, and you’d be able to make a sizable explosion from the resulting fire.”

“This is what you got your doctorate for?”

“Well, hold on a minute, let me finish,” he says defensively. “You don’t have to tell me that what I was doing was morally wrong. It was something I thought about nearly every day. The military doesn’t create this to warm the beds of children, trust me I know. But like your father, it was my work, I had a team and because of what I was doing I was providing a livelihood for others. Or at least, that’s what I was telling myself.

“I was sleep-deprived and stressed and on a deadline. It felt like the walls were closing in on every front. I slipped up. Maybe it was a decimal point in the wrong place, or something else that I should’ve picked up on. The explosion knocked me back, but I had been impaled by - I don’t even know what it was with all burning debris falling on me. I came to a day later to discover that one of my team had died in that fire. An Ishvallan scientist, eager and as willing to learn as I had been. I was in the hospital for weeks, thinking the worst of myself, and Greta…” he swallows down the hard lump in his throat. “She was only making it worse. As far as she was concerned it wasn’t that big of a deal, that it didn’t matter that Heathcliff died because of me. I should’ve ended it there.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t. It was a confusing time and I didn’t give myself time to think straight.” He sighs. “I realize now that how she was treating me during my convalesce, treating our relationship. It was never going to be sustainable, not the way we were heading. We were young, immature, and didn’t know how to communicate honestly with one another. Mix in a near-death experience and I know exactly why we stayed together.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I believe I was twenty-five, if not closer to twenty-six. Almost four years ago”

She doesn’t regard with pity, but understanding when she places a hand on his arm for physical comfort. It was a different and new kind of response. “I suppose I should be grateful for your change in career,” she says after a moment. “Worst injury I need to worry about you getting is a papercut.”

“The hours are a lot more lenient too. There’s never a complaint if I cancel class. But there’s still that missing element. I wonder from time to time what would have happened if I had been more vocal about the research I did for the military. The University is great but...” He trails off.

“But it’s not enough, I understand. And there’s only so much you can do with grants.”

He smiles somberly. “Exactly.”

Riza looks at him for a while. It’s a rare thing to see her so peaceful while she’s awake, no underlying tension present in her expression. “Maybe Aerugo would help clearing our minds.”

He lifts his head, to look at her face. “Are you saying you’ll go with me?”

She nods her head against the pillow and takes a deep breath, like she’s preparing herself. “I do have something to confess, though. That box that Maes gave to you before we left - when you were on the phone the other day, I accidentally knocked it over. And I found a picture, of a younger you. And Greta.”

Ordinarily he’d expect himself to be more uneasy at the revelation, but perhaps her candid honesty - so quickly after the fact - keeps him composed. “Did you? I’m surprised. When we separated, I left all the photos with her.”

“I only bring this up, because I’m curious: do you think she’ll be there?” She sounds so calm, but Roy would be a fool not to know that there is a thread of concern woven within her words.  

Greta is a fleeting creature, letting whims and tempers make her decisions. Roy can’t possibly know for sure and yet he still answers, “No.”

next

#royai #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #fma #*may i feel

[cskiner]

Barak Marshall’s Umbilical Whiplash

(photo by Carolyn DiLoreto for USC Kaufman)

Barak Marshall is a few minutes late to meet me in the lobby. Not because he was stuck in traffic coming eastward from Santa Monica, where he takes care of his elderly parents. No, he just got wrapped up in some work in his office upstairs. I’ve just sent him an email—a “just making sure you know we were supposed to meet five minutes ago” email—when the elevator door opens. Barak steps out of it and spots me sitting in the corner, mouthing I’m sorry the second we make eye contact. I forgive him instantly. I’m one of many students that require his attention. He is one of few faculty members that actually makes the time, and he’s not even full-time faculty.

Several dancers have gathered in the hallway. Their repertory class starts in a few minutes; the class where we first met Barak. A few of them have just performed excerpts of his work, Monger, at the Laguna Dance Festival. It’s a festival founded and directed by our school’s vice dean—comprised mostly of classical ballerinas performing for old white people, to persuade them to donate fractions of the money they bleed in order to support slightly less classical dance work. Barak’s choreography is far from classical ballet (he’s simultaneously had all the training in the world and none of the training at all, but we’ll get into that later), but Monger is quite a crowd pleaser.

           “How was it?” he asks a group of juniors on his way over to me.

           “They loved it,” one girl volunteers, and the rest echo.

A couple more dancers file into the lobby to prepare for their evening classes, and Barak has the same conversation with each one of them. They all give the same response—they loved it, Jodie loved it, we love performing—but Barak welcomes each answer as though he’s never heard it before. His black hair is particularly mad-scientist curly today, and the curls bounce as he nods in earnest at the students. He’s proud of them, and he already knows that, but he’s making sure they know, too.

Marshall finally sits down to answer my questions, but not until he’s heard updates from all the dancers. I don’t actually have that many questions for him, and I know his answers to these ones. It’s more of a formality, making sure that I quote him directly for an upcoming article. But if I’m trying to answer the real questions, no thirty-minute interview will compare to learning Monger last fall; having enough context to perform the piece required that we spend many hours with Barak, learning about his lineage.

~

He was born into a legacy to begin with: Barak’s mother, Margalit Oved, graced Israel’s Inbal Dance Company as a principal dancer for over a decade. Known for her storytelling, singing, and beautifully generous gestures, Oved was praised by modern dance’s mother, Martha Graham herself. When Oved she retired from the company in 1965, she moved to Los Angeles to teach dance in UCLA’s department of World Arts and Cultures.

Barak always tells us that he grew up there, underneath her drum as she counted the dancers in and out of movements. His blood was steeped in rhythm if his genes didn’t have it already, and the dance studio was his second home. Like any teenager, as he grew up, he rebelled against the thing he knew best, swearing he would not become a dancer..

Barak finished high school on the west side and packed his bags for Harvard, where he studied social theory and philosophy and aimed straight for law school. He didn’t get quite that far, though. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he moved across the country for—gasp—a woman. It didn’t work out.

Barak accompanied his mother to Israel in 1994, when she was appointed artistic director of the Inbal Dance Theatre. SuddenlySix months later, his aunt fell ill. She had helped raise him in Los Angeles while his mother was working, and then returned to Inbal to direct the company.—their bond was strong to say the least. But when she died, the Inbal Dance Company was left without artistic direction. she died, six months after the move to Israel, and Barak’s mother had no time to grieve with a company to manage.[I went to Israel with my mother in 1994 when she was appointed artistic director.  My aunt died 6 moths after we arrived and that is how I started dancing by creating my first work Aunt Leah.  My mother remained artistic director of Inbal. I was appointed artistic director 20 years later]

This is the part of his career that Barak refers to as umbilical whiplash, the part in which he runs desperately hard and fast in the opposite direction of his mother’s legacy, and the harder and faster he runs, the harder and faster he is pulled right back into dance’s iron grip. He was not trained—he knew his mother’s [my father is Jewish, but from the Bronkx, Mew York] Yemenite traditions and his mother’s gestures, he knew how to sing (boy, did he know how to sing), but he had never trained formally in dance. Yet he in 1994, he accompanied his mother to Israel, in a last attempt to keep her home company afloat. He sat in on rehearsals, helping his mother here and there, not doing much but doing his bestsupporting her the best he could. One day, a company dancer caught him mourning his aunt in the studio, and was astonished initially. It turned out, however, that nobody was truly surprised.

He was dancing.

The company dancer watched for a few days and finally confronted him, insisting that he make a work for the company to honor his aunt and heal the wounds of loss. He finally agreed, and she filmed his process in the studio, translating it into dancer-language: one-two-threes and five, six, seven, eights. It was built out of the things he knew from his mother, and his father,a and the combination of his Yemenite and Israeli heritage with his anti-training set him apart from the contemporary ballet aesthetic that monopolized the dance world.

The work, titled Aunt Leah, was a booming success—Marshall’s career took off in the direction he thought least possible. He toured Europe with the company, and in 1999, dance pioneer Ohad Naharin asked him to become Batsheva Dance Company’s first in-house choreographer. Naharin, a contemporary dance giant, is known for his insanity, to put it lightly. His temperament is notorious, and though he may make rash decisions, he does not make wrong decisions. Marshall accepted his offer, choreographing for Batsheva until a severe leg injury halted his course in 2001.

~

It’s important to note here that Barak still does not have any formal training. He didn’t pick up ballet or jazz or modern along the way, a la Wayne McGregor (an artist who went straight to choreography and skipped the dancinge training). His choreography is of the movements he knows: bold gestures and Yemenite exclamations, each imbued with a very specific meaning. For Barak, context is everything. If he’s not telling you a family story with each movement, he’s doing an Israeli accent or showing you how to properly spit at the person beside you. His choreography is laden with rebellion: servants against mistress, women against men. These themes are especially strong in Monger, which illustrates ten servants in the basement of a cruel rich woman, doing everything they can to resist breakdown from begging mercy to spitting in her food. Of course, we as dance students don’t have the same background in social structures, so Barak ends most rehearsals with a tale of life in Israel. Usually, he starts his stories when he can tell that we are tired, overwhelmed with midterms and exhausted by other dance obligations. It’s merciful, but also economic and efficient. We come to rehearsal the next day with eyes slightly brighter.

Barak’s always making sure we’re not hurt. In the entire piece, four small counts of the choreography are especially hard on the knees: he doesn’t make us do those four counts until the week before the show—just a few times, to make sure we can actually do it. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t raised as a dance student, but he doesn’t have that insane twisted voice in his head that prevails in our conservatory. You know, the one that tells you that dancing on an injury is just proving your strength and dedicationself.

Monger is almost entirely an ensemble piece, and almost all of the choreography is done in unison. The movement is contemporary, performed barefoot, with fast and furious gestures (four gestures per one count). Nobody has a solos—Barak just wants to make sure that we’re all ourselves, within the greater narrative.

“I don’t want to see the choreography,” he says. “I want to see you. Show the audience how valuable you are, because you are.”

Dancers are given a literal voice in Monger, and in his other works, Rooster, Wonderland, and And at midnight, the green bride floated through the village square. Besides just the exclamations throughout the choreography (hey!, no!, shh!) there is a microphone center stage. The dancers speak monologues that Barak writes himself, some based on seminal philosophy works and some based on Israeli folktales and some just cheeky banter. He coaches the delivery, asking for accents wherever possible and most often giving the note, “louder. Less hesitant.” In Monger, the texts begin as a pleading last effort not to be let go: Mrs. Margaret, please! It’s not my time yet. I’ll give you anything you want, whiskey, cigarette? Mrs Margaret! And end as a biting fuck-you (there are gestures for that, too): I spit in your coffee. I spit in your food! She wears your dresses! So do I! StudentsWe are empowered through this role as servant. They’re We’re yelling insults onstage—we they never do that. WeThey do pas de bourree, jeté, pose, smile. The women are pushing the men, spitting at them. We are encouraged to make real spitting noises. One girl actually spits by accident, and Barak yells, “good!”

We are not students anymore. We are people, and Barak knows us. He tells me one of the reasons he accepted the invitation to return as an artist in residence this year: he wants to know the students better. He wants to see how he can make the work better for us.

The gestures take a long time to learn and even longer to master. They’re incredibly specific and you have to convey so much meaning with just your hands. My hands are really small, so I grow my nails out because every bit counts. I end up dancing almost too fervently and accidentally scratch my shoulder in one gesture. I break skin, but it’s fine. I could care less about the blood: the work is important. Once you learn the gestures, the satisfaction comes in finishing four minutes straight of intricacy with a final exhale. We all feel the liberation—dancing as a unit makes us more ourselves. It’s even better when we put the costumes on: we wear servants’ clothes, and we put on our aprons on to do the work but tear them off when we rebel against Mrs. Margaret. Barak makes sure that we throw them to the ground with enough fervor that the audience can read the subtext, which is effectively, “you bitch, I hate you.”

One very special evening, when we have learned the full excerpts, two special guests are wheeled into rehearsal. Barak pushes both his mother’s and his father’s wheelchairs. They are smiling ear to ear, and —they Mrs. Oved speaks softly and in a thick Israeli my father is American accents only Barak and his father can understand. He translates their her English, but we’re still hanging on to every word, trying desperately to hear what they think about us. To us, they are legends: we’ve only heard Barak’s fond stories of them, of his childhood. Even now, he speaks of them in awe. Even when they’re in wheelchairs and he keeps his phone on ring in case something happens while we’re in rehearsal.

Barak puts a small drum down in front of his mother, and sits behind a larger one himself. She can’t walk, but she has not forgotten how to drum. He tears up as she sings, joining in for the chorus of an old Israeli folk song. Her voice is beautiful—even with the cracks of age, her renowned generosity prevails. Her smile is enough to make an audience sit for hours. Barak’s ties to tradition suddenly make sense. He is American, born and raised. He has no accent. But he is Israeli.

Mrs. Oved finishes her song, and we all applaud. Her smile somehow grows wider.

“My father is a singer,” Barak says, as though his mother isn’t. He counts his father in and a perfect harmony escapes both of their lips, as though they’ve been rehearsing for weeks. They haven’t—his father forgets the words halfway through the song, and Barak prompts him. I start crying when they return to unison.

We run our excerpts of Monger for them (our official performance is next week, so we’re focusing on the details now) and Barak’s mother asks if he can help her stand, just so that she can give us a standing ovation. I cry again. Barak looks at his mother as though she shaped the world with her own two hands, and we all believe it. Mrs. Oved looks back at him, and we know from her eyes that he has carried on her legacy just as she wanted. It kind of makes you wonder if she planned it all along.

Right before the big performance, Barak catches me in the hallway doing what I do best: doubting myself. I probably don’t know the steps. I’m probably going to mess up the unison choreography, and give myself away by being the only dancer that’s off the music. He sits down on the floor next to me.

“I’ve seen the way you carry yourself outside class,” he says. “You are articulate and you are unique. Promise me you’ll be that person on the stage. It’s not about the steps anymore. You have all that. Trust me, I’ve been watching rehearsals.”

Needless to say, I cry again, but not until after he has left. While he’s talking, I just nod and smile and manage to be my least articulate self.

By the time Barak sits down with me for his interview in the lobby, I already know exactly what I want to say about him. This interview is just for an article I’m writing for the school’s communications department. He keeps apologizing, telling me he’s a little frazzled today, that his mind is in a million places at once. Lately, he’s been spending his free time collecting audition postings for graduating seniors and pulling strings to get us into classes at companies where he has connections. He wants to make sure we end up in a healthy work environment, doing the best repertory in the world.

Despite the scattered mind, he isHe’s more articulate than most of the choreographers I’ve interviewed in the last four years, if not all of them. Not a single like or um escapes his mouth. Even if he wanted you to forget he was Harvard-educated, you can’t.couldn’t.

We finish the interview: all my questions are the same, and I’m worried I didn’t cover enough bases. The last question, the one I ad-lib, is what have you learned from the students during your residency? I ask all the artists this—you can tell when they’re making up their answers to seem humble. Barak’s answer is honest: we devour the choreography, and he feels like he has to keep up and give us more material. He respects us, he sees us occupying space as authors and not just dancers.

I decide that now is the time. I pull out a postcard I found in a museum when I studied abroad in Paris this summer, one I have been keeping in my backpack. It’s a Lichtenstein painting, with a  has a lyric from a very special song that accompanies one of his pieces: the melody haunts my reverie, it reads. , and I bought it expressly for the purpose of thanking him, trying to explain what his piece means to me. Though it has been written for months, I have never found the right time to give it to him—he’s always surrounded with people. I’ve scrawled a written a few sentences on the back that could easily be bullshit, but he knows they’re sincereare so sincere they could easily be bullshit, but he knows me well enough to read them accurately. He scansreads it in front of me while I pretend to occupy myself otherwise.

“This is why I teach,” he says. “You know that. Give me a hug.”

By Celine S. Kiner

#celinekiner #csk

[youngrevolutionary]

Misplaced heroics and the tragedy of Seifer Almasy

[ This is an article published by Electric Phantasms but the website is dead. (Original link to article by Andy Astruc & Published 28 May 2014.) ]

So there’s this tall fellow with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. He’s a student at Balamb Garden — a training school of sorts for young mercenaries in a world oft shaken by civil wars — and he’s dedicated to joining the Garden’s elite fighting force: SeeD. He wears a silly coat to match his silly hair, and his weapon of choice is a Gunblade, which is exactly what it sounds like. A training session with a rival student gone wrong left him with a nasty facial scar that marks the boy Handsome Yet Dangerous. He falls in love with a beautiful girl named Rinoa and, with the help of his quirky friends, offers to help with the lady’s resistance movement. This boy travels all over the world becoming stronger, making powerful friends and enemies along the way.

Now go and kill him, hero.

The above description fits both the main character and one of the primary villains in Final Fantasy VIII, of course; Squall Leonhart and Seifer Almasy, respectively. Villain might be overstating  Seifer’s role, however, as he acts as more of an unfortunate antagonist much of the time. It would be easy to dismiss Seifer as yet another JRPG rival, a simple mirror to hold up to the protagonist and an easy way to add some home-grown emotion to a large scale battle against evil. But Seifer is more than that; he’s the main character, stymied. He is the would-be hero, but for a tragic collection of external and self-inflicted circumstances.

From the start of the game, we’re encouraged to develop a mild distaste for Seifer. The opening cinematic shows a battle between the two SeeD cadets, in which Seifer cuts Squall’s face open. Squall retaliates, which gives them delightful mirrored scarring, and it becomes apparent that this was just practice between two lunatics with boundary issues. This scene serves to set Seifer up immediately as a bad guy — although, at this point, not THE bad guy — and the difficult bug bite which Squall just can’t help scratching. His smug smile, the way he always seems to be a step ahead and his abhorrent turn as the head of the Balamb Garden Disciplinary Committee are all factors in your immediate dislike of the man. But it’s all about perspective, and, all things considered, Seifer’s bump from party leader to party pooper is mostly Squall’s fault.

Right from the word go, Squall is more of a thorn in Seifer’s side than the reverse. Their SeeD exam in Dollet ultimately succeeds because Seifer decides their mission to secure the square isn’t as important as finding out why Galbadian soldiers are so insistent on heading up a nearby mountain. While the act of defiance is presented as a reckless response to boredom, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s because of Seifer the Garden so successfully repels the invaders and learns of their nefarious plot to reactivate a powerful communications tower — a piece of information vital to future events. On their return, Squall and Zell are deemed to have passed the exam for their impressive ability to not die at the claws of an invincible spider robot; meanwhile, Seifer is reprimanded, punished and told he failed the exam thanks to his insubordination.

It isn’t limited to professional hindrance. At the graduation event, players meet Rinoa, a pretty young thing who is looking for help from the school principal, Cid. She’s also dating Seifer. Since Seifer isn’t a SeeD, Squall and friends are sent to help Rinoa’s resistance movement instead, and so begins that messy journey from hatred and indifference to the truest of true love. Nobody ever apologizes to Seifer for this whole girlfriend-stealing business, either, because he’s evil by the time it matters, and we don’t apologize to evil people.

Seifer’s clear devotion to Rinoa is obvious from his actions. No matter how irresponsible someone is, they don’t hold the president of an entire country hostage on an international television broadcast just for kicks. His extreme solution to Timber’s independence solution is a result of the Garden authorities tying his hands, and let’s remember that our hero was involved in a plot just as crazy and illegal; it just had more steps. On top of that, Seifer was acting out of genuine, selfless love and a desire to — at least in his own mind — do the right thing. His reward for such actions is a swift execution. Squall’s reaction to the death of his rival-slash-soulmate and the subsequent emotional breakdown of Rinoa is to shout at everyone like a spoiled child after a lengthy period of selfish internal monologue. Squall is the poster child for stunted emotional growth in Final Fantasy 8, a theme which touches all the younger characters in one way or another; more on that in a moment.

Seifer wasn’t actually killed, of course, as he reappears shortly afterward on a neon-lit parade float as the second-in-command of Sorceress Edea, suggesting that reports of his death — initially assumed to be a way to placate the Galbadians — were an elaborate farce set up for someone’s amusement. This moment, where Seifer becomes the enemy, is a junction point for quite a few fascinating facts about the character. Seifer is now the Sorceress’ Knight, a term which seems rather goofy and idealistic given the seriousness of the situation.

It ties into comments made by the character earlier in the game about his “romantic dream”. We’re talking about the more broad use of “romantic” here — the expression of love towards an idea rather than the pursuit of a person — and the subtext also suits the slightly derogatory second definition: “of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality.” The romantic dream Seifer alludes to before his betrayal turns out to be the rather specific desire to become a Sorceress’ Knight. Not only is it specific, it’s rather strange given that in modern times sorceresses are hated and feared. So why would a boy growing up in this social climate idealize evil witches? A lot of it has to do with a small detail that the game merely implies: Seifer is a huge fan of the old stories about the sorceress who successfully defended her country against invasion many, many years ago.

Searching the Balamb Garden library records shows he has checked out the none-too-subtle book The Sorceress’ Knight, but a more compelling fact was confirmed in the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, a book only ever published in Japan which includes plenty of information on the world and events of the game. In its pages, you can find confirmation that Seifer was also a huge fan of the film version of The Sorceress’ Knight, and presumably modeled his aspirations and demeanor around its contents. Seifer even bases his gunblade fighting stance on the knight from the film; we know this because the star of said motion picture was none other than Laguna Loire, and the player participates in the filming during a very odd time travel segment. Laguna isn’t a swordsman, of course, and his stance in the film is utter rubbish, which is yet another sad footnote in the story of Seifer and his blockaded attempts to be the hero. Mercifully, we never get to see the awkward moment when Seifer realizes his cinematic idol is actually Squall’s father.

So it would seem that Seifer is simply the product of his own reckless ambition and a tantrum-like disregard for authority. But a lack of control and choice over one’s own destiny is a strong theme across every part of FFVIII — cities are subjugated by powerful nations, children are recruited into armies, people’s minds are controlled by witches from the future — and Seifer’s destiny is no less directed than anyone else’s. In fact, the very people charged with protecting him as a child are the worst influences in his life.

All the main playable characters in the game, along with Seifer, grew up in the same orphanage. It’s not everyone’s favorite twist, and it comes across far neater than it should be given they began working together seemingly at random, but it does explain why Seifer, in particular, seems drawn to the group. That he is the only other character included in this backstory suggests we give its meaning more than a little thought with regards to his character. Around the time the memory sequence occurs, the characters write off Seifer’s unusual hatred of Squall as a product of jealousy. Squall monopolized the attention of another character, Ellone, on top of generally being the emotional wasteland we all know and love. But we learn at the end of the game that Squall’s involuntary time-traveling after defeating Ultimecia was the catalyst for creating SeeD. His appearance at the orphanage on that day, as a fully-grown man, crystallizes his destiny; from that point on, Cid and Edea treat him as the eventual savior of the universe.

This explains why he makes it into SeeD and is promoted to such a high level so quickly, it explains why he is sent on particular missions, and it answers any questions players might have had about why everyone thinks Squall is so damn special. Now imagine you are a child in the same orphanage, a child without a home or a family thanks to the war. Imagine you have something to prove, and reading about heroic knights and witches makes you feel a little less powerless. Imagine another child, very similar to you, is given preferential treatment. He gets more attention from your surrogate parents, and you have no idea why. You act up, and they still focus on him. When you’re all encouraged to join SeeD — mostly him, though — you see a chance to finally prove yourself. You work incredibly hard and fight to become the best, but that same person is still there, being given all the advantages. He graduates while you get punished; despite a total lack of social skills, he makes friends easily while you’re seen as an annoyance; when your well-meaning actions lead to everyone believing you’re dead, he moves in on your girlfriend.

Seifer is the one who works, and Squall is the one who wins. Earlier I said Seifer’s troubles were mostly Squall’s fault, but that’s not the whole story. Just as our perception of Seifer as an obnoxious fool is simply a mask for the twisting of his genuine intentions, so too is his distaste for Squall actually a distaste for what Cid and Edea did to both men.

Other Final Fantasy games have had characters that either should have been the hero (Basch from FFXII, before focus testing decided he was too old) or are more heroic (Auron from FFX, who only steps aside because he’s simply too well adjusted to get wrapped up in the melodrama of the plot), but FFVIII manages to set up a character that is certainly the hero, while setting him up to consistently make choices that contradict that. He isn’t a mirror for Squall, he’s the guy who has to sleep outside because Squall needed a bed. To his credit, Seifer remains an upbeat and forward-looking character to the very end. He never claims that the world is out to get him. It is, of course.

#final fantasy viii #ffviii #seifer almasy #headcanon // seifer #long post #i can't believe i've gone this long on this blog without having this posted. #because this is the perfect analysis of seifer's character #it gave me so much validation after seeing the fandom portray seifer as a 'troublemaker' #and before anyone asks no #i will never not reblog/post this #Viii // discussion